I remember going through the supermarket during the early part of the COVID Epidemic. Many of the aisles were totally bare. People were arguing over paper towels and bleach. Now COVID did claim many lives and Loved ones of many families. I do not mean to minimize it, but I thought to myself what would happen to society if an even more terrible tragedy of total warfare, plague or other similar natural disaster occurred. Perhaps that smiling friendly next door neighbor you once knew would now not hesitate to put a bullet in your head to take a piece of meat from you. It’s sad how the brutality of life can change us, steal our innocence and dignity and strip away all veneer of civilized behavior and remind us that nature sees us as just another animal. In the desperate times of the 1930s you had dance marathons pop up throughout the country offering a winning prize to the couple who were the last to remain awake and standing. These marathons could last days and weeks. The desperation of the times caused many to enter. Spectators would come to watch as the couples became more and more exhausted to the point where their sanity started to disappear into a state of lunacy. They were robbed of dignity and became like animals in a zoo, all due to the primal desire to maintain human survival. Here, I post a trailer of the movie “They Shoot Horses Don’t They?”, which gives insight to this rather bizarre fad of that decade. Yes, I guess you can call this post of mine a bit of a Debbie Downer.
The Troubling Spectacle of 1930s Dance Marathons and the Dark Side of Human Nature: They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?
I remember going through the supermarket during the early part of the COVID Epidemic. Many of the aisles were totally bare. People were arguing over paper towels and bleach. Now COVID did claim many lives and Loved ones of many families. I do not mean to minimize it, but I thought to myself what would happen to society if an even more terrible tragedy of total warfare, plague or other similar natural disaster occurred. Perhaps that smiling friendly next door neighbor you once knew would now not hesitate to put a bullet in your head to take a piece of meat from you. It’s sad how the brutality of life can change us, steal our innocence and dignity and strip away all veneer of civilized behavior and remind us that nature sees us as just another animal. In the desperate times of the 1930s you had dance marathons pop up throughout the country offering a winning prize to the couple who were the last to remain awake and standing. These marathons could last days and weeks. The desperation of the times caused many to enter. Spectators would come to watch as the couples became more and more exhausted to the point where their sanity started to disappear into a state of lunacy. They were robbed of dignity and became like animals in a zoo, all due to the primal desire to maintain human survival. Here, I post a trailer of the movie “They Shoot Horses Don’t They?”, which gives insight to this rather bizarre fad of that decade. Yes, I guess you can call this post of mine a bit of a Debbie Downer.
America Through Time 