Conservatives are known for repurposing symbols to fit their narrative. So, let's take the Confederate battle flag and repurpose it into an Anarchist symbol.
General Lee is just a badass name for a car to drive fast around while you run your moonshine because fuck the police.
Just imagined it or don't understand it. There's zero incest in the show, and zero hate crimes. Other than the flag and name of the car, there's nothing racist about it at all, and that flag wasn't perceived as a racist symbol back then, as illogical as that may seem. When black people do appear in the show, which admittedly is rare, they're always equals to the Duke boys. The show is just good fun. If there's any theme to it at all, it's that it's cool to make money with moonshine, and flaunt the law, while making fools of law enforcement.
As I've seen it said many times on Lemmy for many nostalgia moments and am also quite surprised no one said to to you yet (they probably got tired of repeating it..), people yearning for the good old times are the privileged white patriarchy class.
People are nostalgic the world over, not just in America. So all of the undertones of political issues that you're layering on here isn't inherent to the human feeling of nostalgia. Now The Dukes of Hazzard is problematic for a great many reasons as this post highlights. So it's totally fair to call that out. But it's also totally fair to remember being a kid and liking a show where guys break the rules with fast cars. It doesn't mean that he's a bigot that wants to drag us all back to the '70s.
I say, as long as you're self aware and this feeling in nostalgia doesn't push you in the direction of Trump or Andrew Tate, then go for it.
How dare you bring reason and nuance to the conversation? You damn centrist! It's you and people like you that embolden the right in their shenanigans! Only by not tolerating this intolerant symbolism can we rid ourselves of these fascist cults!
People make out it is some sort of factually wrong documentary
Say what you will about stupid people, but I have to tell you this:
I've had more than a few people tell me they did not wear seat belts because "the Dukes never wore seat belts"
I am not even fucking kidding about this. It's not just about people today treating this TV show like it was a depiction of reality, it's about people at the time doing the exact same thing.
Apart from the confederate flag itself, this show was pretty much anarchist. They spent every episode humiliating the cops and breaking any unrighteous law they could. The show treated the flag as set dressing.
They also came from a family that canonically resisted the Union during the civil war. And there's very few black people in the show whatsoever. So.
I know the hate symbol has always been a hate symbol, but if there's any show where you could say "it was a product of its time" (the 70's, btw) I think it's this one.
There's a whole episode of The Cleveland Show (as in Cleveland Brown, the black character from Family Guy) where Cleveland gets upset at his neighbor friend for flying a Confederate flag on his house and finally tries to get rid of it. When he fails, he confronts the hick neighbor and calls him a racist. The neighbor doesn't understand why Cleveland is upset and when Cleveland points to the flag the neighbor says, "What, my Dukes of Hazard flag?"
Cleveland immediately realizes he approached the problem from the completely wrong angle and drops the matter indefinitely. They continue to be friends.
I was never into it or pretty much anything country-related, being an Airwolf, Mission Impossible (the reboot), and MacGuyver kinda kid, but Dad liked it, and explained it to me pretty much the way you did.
Plus the black people that do appear in the show are always equals to the Hazard Boys. They never depict the Hazard Boys being anything but accepting of everyone except Boss Hog and his law dawgs.
And they were always wary of going into the next country because their sheriff actually had his shit together and would bring the pain to the Duke boys. That sheriff happens to be black.
Back in those times, people didn't really knew what it meant, so it got used as a "regular rebel flag", then white supremacists claimed they just flying it for "heritage" and "rebel" reasons...
I really want a new movie with one of the moments being a the general lee with proper stars and bars being paint job used to destroy a confederate statue, maybe have the new duke brothers inherit the car and use it do some good knowing how angry them having the car makes confederate sympathisers
Honestly, just making them good people and having them help and hang out with minorities would be more than enough. So they should definitely add that shit in destroy a statue with it while a minority is in the car with them.
Edit: and you dont even really have to change Boss Hog he pretty much fits.
The Friday night lineup in those days was Dukes, followed by The Love Boat, followed by Fantasy Island. I didn't know it was racist. I thought it was a sort of Robbin Hood story with cool car jumps and a corrupt Sheriff of Nottinghazzard.
I saw a couple episodes when I was a very small child and I don't remember anything racist. They were just like running from the cops and solving crimes sometimes right?
I’m pretty sure that there was at least one episode with a “bad guy” that was black, but I don’t think race had anything to do with it. There weren’t too many positive race stories from that show though.
Yep. I made a comment this morning about how not everyone who flies the stars and bars really understands why it's a hateful symbol with this show as one of the points (there are others I won't go through). Someone else pointed out that the neighboring Sheriff Little was black and was shown to be a way more competent character (not a good guy, but not a dumb , racist stereotype either) than Roscoe P. Coletrane or Jefferson Davis Hogg. The show literally made fun of the guy who was named for the president of the Confederacy.
That flag should never have been used for the good guys but they were "rebels". Showing it was supposed to cement that into the people's minds. It was stupid and short sighted. It also worked to make people feel like if they identified as a good guy rebel they could proudly display that flag.
I got into a heated argument (preschool) about whether the car jumped or flew. My dumbass neighbors (my age and younger) contended that it flew. Their mother backed them up. I bet they turned out really fucked up with a parent who was willing to lie to them and distort reality rather than hit them with a dose of reality. I was super mad about it. And now look at me: I’m an atheist who believes in Leftwing politics, so I’d say that on the spectrum from reality to fucked, I turned out pretty ok. Hate to think how they must see the world today.
I watched it a bit growing up and never got racist vibes from it either. The Confederate flag just meant "the south" to me back then. I knew a lot of people with them on various knick knacks and articles of clothing that I never witnessed being racist either. I don't think people put so much thought into it back then.
These days though, yeah if you're still flying that flag you're probably an asshole.
On the flip side, it was just kind-a ok to be racist at that time. I can remember serious discussion on whether a black man could be smart enough to play quarterback in the NFL.
The Confederate flag just meant "the south" to me back then.
Growing up around the same time, this was how I interpreted it as well. I didn’t give a shit about the flag, but I never got the racist connotation from anyone around me at the time. It was just something that Southern people liked, just as you said.
Southern people just like symbols of slavery. What's wrong with celebrating symbols of slavery? It's how I was raised. I don't need to consider how descendants of slaves feel about seeing the battle flag of slavers celebrated. People who murdered hundreds of thousands of people so they could continue owning black people just used it as a symbol of institutional hate, what's so wrong with that?
Well ill give ya credit you thought about what it historically represents, but you are still missing the reason why it was/is so prominent. Southerners are ignorant as shit, I mean this is the most neutral why possible. They got fucked over by the old southern aristocracy and are still being fucked over just now its the new oligarchy. For someone to right a wrong they must be aware that a wrong needs to be righted, and frankly speaking most southerners are ill equipped for such a task.
Also I really hope ya dont go round making accusations like that, bring attention to the problem gently. The worst theyll do is not listen, but if ya go in looking for a fight they are guaranteed not to listen. I made such a mistake with my kin out in Little Rock.
This site counted and "The conclusion was that with 19 black characters over seven seasons, Dukes of Hazzard had a higher black-character-to-episode ratio than Seinfeld or Friends."
I definitely support that we've pushed this show out of the forefront, but this is where a lot of the arguments for the flag as a 'symbol of southern pride' come from. It's a weird argument, and it is definitely not a fair one, but there's very fond associations in the south with that car even from people who had no clue where the flag came from. Super successful attempt to help the confederate flag be seen as acceptable, whether on purpose or not.
It's a weird show too for someone who isn't from the south... Racial diversity is non-existent in the show, but that's also pretty accurate for its location... It had some awesome car scenes, but no depth. The only hot take in the show beyond the flag painted on top (which wasn't even a hot take then) was that the government was widely seen as corrupt and it was more than a bit sexist.
Yeah, hell, Sheriff Little, the black sheriff from the neighboring county was actually pretty competent. Yeah, it was mostly white, but the black people were always smarter than Roscoe or Boss Hogg.
Non-Yank here. Enjoyed and still do TDOH. Names like "General Lee" and "Jefferson Davis Hogg" are meaningless to me, except as they appeared in the show, and the car could equally have been called Lieutenant Bob or Sergeant Pete. The flag on top of the car was just a fancy design.
If at all possible could you consider this an educational NSQ? Please?
So aside from the use of those symbols and specific names, where exactly - with reference to timestamps and episode numbers - are the racism and incest?
Are you assuming that just because Bo and Luke were frequently within 100 yards of Daisy that they must automatically be shagging her off camera? In which case it's a gay show too because for exactly the same reason Bo and Luke must be shagging each other.
And I have no idea why you think it's loaded with hate crimes. Please refer to a specific instance so that I can understand.
The whole war was about slavery. The Confederate states wanted to have slaves. When Abraham Lincoln was elected in 1860, they threw a tantrum, claimed the election wasn't legitimate (sound familiar?), then seceded and tried to form an independent nation.
Anyone who says that it was about states' rights is being disingenuous. The Confederate Constitution mentions slavery and includes regulations for it.
The Confederacy also wanted to deport all Jews (except for one - the Secretary of The Treasury) and eventually conquer Mexico and use them as slaves as well. The brown ones.
The Confederacy also would have enslaved any Native Americans remaining in those states.
The vast majority of southern soldiers were too poor to ever own a slave and were treated only slightly better than slaves. It was very obviously the white supremacist elitist class exploiting everyone else.
The Republican party regurgitates a lot of the Confederate talking points.
Ah...well, it was always implied. It's a stretch though since in the South, cousin stuff isn't incest. That's just normal, otherwise the population would decline rapidly in terms of numbers.
That's actually quite an interesting approach and I wonder what the limits of implications are.
Could we for example imply that Bo and Luke are not only shagging Daisy and each other, but in addition have raped and/or murdered numerous other people? Could we imply they've lynched anyone? If we can, what else could we infer? If not, why not? What limit did we exceed?
Or could we go the other way and imply that they do lots of anti-racism stuff offscreen and that they're using Confederate symbology and names not to glorify it but to mock it? And that they are therefore non-racist and (with additional implications) non-incestuous?
Since one aspect of racism is ascribing negative traits to a particular people group regardless of any evidence that those traits are true (like for example the English thinking of Irish people as stupid, although for the most part I don't think we do that any more), could ascribing incest and racism to citizens of southern states in itself be racist?
