Damn your eyes man - It is time for Flashman!

[Random]

Basically sympathetic to the empire, coupled with an alibi in the shape of a nice line in busting the eminent victorians. Fraser's basic line is that while the Brits may have behaved disgustingly at times, they were often the best of a bad bunch, and all other people and nations would do the same if they could anyway.

iirc Flashman describes the (genocidal, remember) war of US government versus native American Indians as something that just happens when two strong people quarrel over land, and makes sure to go into just how disgusting the Indian tortures were. Likewise he excuses the looting and burning of Beojing and the Chinese imperial palace by detailed description of how some British (sepoy iirc) soldiers were tortured to death by chinese authorities. The fact that all this takes place in the context of imperial aggression and colonisation is excused - because the chinese, the souix, etc would have done the same to europe if they could, any way, and do you really think the French would hold back if the English got an attack of the holy joes, eh?

 

[likesfish]

not an unrealistic point of view however unsavory.
I'd like you if possible to point out anytime on this planets history where a powerful state didn't fuck over the less powerful.

 

[DaRealSpoon]

If you like Sharpe, Flashman etc etc. Read this, it's fookin class. The tagline says it all...

Captain Carlo Fantom, a Croatian, spake thirteen languages.. He was very quarrelsome and a great ravisher..

 

[Idris2002]

not an unrealistic point of view however unsavory.
I'd like you if possible to point out anytime on this planets history where a powerful state didn't fuck over the less powerful.

What do you mean by 'history'? If we start the clock from the appearance of states as a political institution, then you're right, it's been roughly 6000 years of 'the strong do as they wish and the weak suffer what they must'. But 6000 years BP is a very recent point in the time that Homo Sapiens has been on the planet. . .

 

[Badgers]

What Ho!

 

[Random]

not an unrealistic point of view however unsavory.
I'd like you if possible to point out anytime on this planets history where a powerful state didn't fuck over the less powerful.

Yes, that's why powerful states are a Bad Thing. Excusing their actions by simply pointing to the other powerful states is missing the point, usually on purpose.

 

[camouflage]

Yes, that's why powerful states are a Bad Thing. Excusing their actions by simply pointing to the other powerful states is missing the point, usually on purpose.

I don't think the North American nations were 'states'... their tortures were cruel and terrible, but in the words of an American civil war general, "War is cruelty".

Had the Apache for instance not been in a fight for survival against the Borg... er, I mean against the United States, how would they have acted then?

War has existed sinces before states though, tribal wars, slavery, genocide, all noble human traditions. (if you're one for beleiving in a God anyway, if it existed then surely we are Gods Toy Soldiers).

 

[Idris2002]

The Cheyenne had two kinds of chief - peace chiefs and war chiefs. The latter were celibate.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Thing is though, Flashman is the sort of unreliable narrator you're meant to be able to see around the limitations of.

For example he continually refers to his wife as a dimwit, but reading around his viewpoint, it's clear that she's running rings around him and far from being stupid, she's as sharp as a razor.

She's certainly not above pulling the dumb blonde act when it suits, from their first encounter and subsequent engagement, through to the unfortunate incident where Flashman finds her in the bedroom with Lord Cardigan (wearing only his boots and a surprised expression) and on into old age (the Tranby Croft Affair) but it's perfectly clear to the discerning reader, if not to the narrator, that it's just an act.

 

[Idris2002]

I think there may also be an implication that he's infertile. Certainly his son is by his own admission likely to be the result of his wife's extramarital affairs. Not really consistent with the Macho image to be firing blanks like that. . .

 

[Flashman]

I think there may also be an implication that he's infertile. Certainly his son is by his own admission likely to be the result of his wife's extramarital affairs. Not really consistent with the Macho image to be firing blanks like that. . .

He wasn't firing blanks; Frank Grouard (Flashman and the Redskins).

 

[Idris2002]

He wasn't firing blanks; Frank Grouard (Flashman and the Redskins).

Doesn't he just convince himself of that, though?

Speaking of which, the attitudes to North America's indigenous peoples are quite ambiguous, IIRC. At one point he follows the usual line about blood-thirsty savages, later he lets the (equally wrong) picture of the noble savage creep into the picture. . .

At least, that's how I remember it.

 

[Badgers]

Still no Flashman news since this thread was started back in November 2007

For those that don't like the bumping of old threads then I care not, you are little more than cads and blackguards anyway.

Let me hear that word on your lips again, and I’ll have them sewn together, with a scorpion in your mouth!

The USA (damn blighters) have been churning out excellent TV series after TV series of late whereas Blighty are frankly stuffed with piety, sloth and ignorance. We should not sit back but demand acidly why something is not being done about it.


Wiki quote

In 2007, Celtic Films indicated on their website that they had a series of Flashman TV films in development. Picture Palace has announced they are developing Flashman at the Charge for TV and that the script has been prepared by George Macdonald Fraser himself. Both companies took an extensive role in developing Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe (TV series). However, no further news has been forthcoming since this time and the project has been removed from both companies' websites.

 

[ernestolynch]

There's a bit in one of the US slavery-related novels (can't remember the title) where some escapees from the Confederacy look at a Union flag (it's only the Union Jack when it's flown at sea, remember) and say 'there's the flag of liberty'.

Perfectly plausible as the Royal Navy were capturing USA-bound slavers in the Atlantic and taking them back to Africa after 1807.

 

[Idris2002]

Perfectly plausible as the Royal Navy were capturing USA-bound slavers in the Atlantic and taking them back to Africa after 1807.

Doesn't really square with the Colonial office's later refusal to even consider tackling slavery in upcountry Sierra Leone, where it wasn't officially abolished until 1928.

 

[Idris2002]

dyed in the wool, i think you'll find.

I think you'll find that it's 'Dyed in the wool, I think you'll find'. Capitalisation and all that, old man.

 

[Badgers]

Just got this in hardback by the author. Have read before but lost/lent out the paperback a decade ago or so.



Read it if you have not already

 

[Pickman's model]

Just got this in hardback by the author. Have read before but lost/lent out the paperback a decade ago or so.

View attachment 118422

Read it if you have not already

yeh that's a good book

 

[Pickman's model]

It is hard to spoil fiction

tell that to dan brown

 

[Pickman's model]

I am getting scared now...

Done all of Hornblower, Sharpe and a few other non-military series. With no sign of Flashman on the horizon what am I gonna watch?

have you done patrick o'brien?

 

[butchersapron]

Flashman tried to grass up/entrap John Brown didn't he?

 

[Pickman's model]

Flashman tried to grass up/entrap John Brown didn't he?

can't quite recall how things fall out, will have a reread over the next few days

 

[butchersapron]

What a cad!

 

[Badgers]

have you done patrick o'brien?

About 20 years ago or so

 

[likesfish]

Oh course Flashman would be an imperial apologist he was on the winning side a character who wasn't an absolute bastard wouldn't get into as many scraps as he did.
The Royal Navy and the Empire did spend a lot of blood and treasure stopping the slave trade often against the wishes of the foreign office

 

[krtek a houby]

Never got round to reading the final book. Loved the others, if that's the right word for it.

 

[spanglechick]

I have the first book on my kindle, and a quick check tells me that I gave up on page 37. I think I was expecting something more knowing or sympathetic to modern sensibilities. It wasn't. Obviously.


Anyway the misogyny got to me, and I didn't like any of the characters, so I gave up.