NOT politics (mostly)--the Princess and the Frog

[purchasemonkey]

   changinganswers, lurkingowl, pixiecrack and I got together on Friday to watch movies. The ladies present voted for Disney's "The Princess and the Frog," having heard good things about it during the Oscars and in general. The gentlemen present voted for something else (I think it was the first episode of the HBO WWII miniseries "The Pacific," but I may be remembering incorrectly).

Comments

[orichalcum]

Thanks for the review, as Mac had been expressing interest. I also find the family details really interesting; was there a strong tendency to marry other French descendants, or was that simply an effect of local population descendants?

And thanks for clearing up the Cajun/Creole issue; I only know it in terms of cuisine, sadly.
How did the progression from doctors to rural farmers to nurse happen?

Marriage

[purchasemonkey]

As I understand it, before the Civil War, my family owned property (there's a town named after the plantation--my uncle always steals the road sign and puts it on his door at work--he's a cop). I believe that the marriage customs at that time involved marrying other wealthy people, who were thus other Creole planters and their family members. My aunt Susan has genealogical data going back quite a way, compiled by my late great-grand-aunt (her namesake, who was born in 1899, was a schoolteacher for 42 years, and who taught me how to use power tools, write in cursive and play Scrabble and card games

Re: Marriage

[orichalcum]

Actually, I love hearing family histories. :) Though amusingly, when I first met the two of you I assumed pixiecrack was the French one given her extremely French pair of names.

Do you think of ever moving back to Louisiana, ooc?

If your grandfather was presumably in the South Pacific and ever wounded, he might have been treated by my grandfather, who was a doctor who spent much of his time dealing with Naval and especially submarine casualties.

I don't know if you know, incidentally, that CP spent about 2 years flying down to New Orleans every few weeks working on a big post-Katrina case trying to restore public housing to people displaced by the hurricane. So he got to know the city reasonably well, although I've only been there once for a conference, in 2003.

I consider myself sadly ignorant of the South in general, due to the aforementioned media bias and a general Northeast/West Coast orientation, and like acquiring knowledge that humanizes areas of the world I tend to make snap judgments about.

Re: Marriage

[gannok]

Unfortunately for me, my grandfather wasn't nearly anything as exciting as a Submariner. Or a Human Torch for that matter. Frankly, he wasn't any of the Invaders. He was a PFC though. He was stationed in Germany. As a mailman. So no really interesting stories. Though the one that he told that I thought was great, was how he told off some 2 star and got a promotion out of it.

He was a chaplin in Korea though. He got to meet the then leader of South Korea. Had nothing but nice things to say about the man.

[orichalcum]

Oh, btw, in reference to your earlier linked post....in the original Greek myths Heracles is explicitly red-haired or blonde and grey-eyed, because he's from northern Greece/Thessaly, which had been conquered by fair-skinned folks from the north. So that part of the movie I didn't have a problem with; our modern perception of what "Greeks" look like is post-several millennia of being conquered repeatedly by olive-skinned people; ancient Greeks idealized light hair and grey eyes (think Athena).

Thanks...

[purchasemonkey]

...for the information. I did not know that; I recall that the Macedonians (and Scythians, for that matter) were red-haired and blond-haired, but didn't remember that about the ancient Greeks (although I did know about grey-eyed Athena).

Re: Thanks...

[orichalcum]

Not true as much for, say, the Spartans (one thing 300 got right), but Heracles is a central/northern Greek hero, and there are some surviving statues with traces of red paint on the hair.There are also dark-haired ones, but it at least goes into the "not wrong" category, which is good for Disney.

[silverstreak]

Reminds me of the buck-toothed Southern tow truck in "Cars". That always bothered me. Not to mention the fact that the whole movie was a remake/rip-off of "Doc Hollywood" with Michael J. Fox.

Southern stereotypes

[purchasemonkey]

There are reasons I have a "newscaster English" accent and usage when I'm here in California. If I'm talking to someone who speaks Black English or to a member of my family, my accent becomes more central-Louisiana; if I'm in New Orleans, it becomes more New Orleans.

Hollywood consistently depicts Southerners very badly. SOUTHERNERS HAVE NOTICED THIS. Some of the red-state-blue-state divide is simply due to the contempt with which New York and Los Angeles popular culture, beamed all across the world, depicts everyone in the middle of the country. I have internalized some of this; I'm embarrassed at times by my family members' accents, despite their good educations and great good sense.

Yes, it wasa ripoff of "Doc Hollywood."