They are robbers and murderers who live dirty, dangerous lives. Yet there is a glamour about pirates, especially pirates from long ago. I obviously feel that way too -- but I wonder why? 🤔
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@ChipmunkErnie Indeed, but I think there is also an unhealthy tendency to admire even real criminals in our own time if they do something spectacular, like the "Great Train Robbery" in the 1960s.
People seem to "admire" the gang there for managing to steal over £2M in bank-notes - but wilfully ignore the effect on the train crews; especially the poor driver, coshed so hard on the head by one of the cowards that he never fully recovered. I think we still don't know which of the gang did that: he would not have had the courage to admit it, and none of his accomplices would have been brave enough to name him.
Or the tripe spoken by some "celebrities" including the actress Barbara Windsor after the deaths of the Kray Twins, saying each was "one of ours" (London East-end residents). These were among the worst of the crime-gangs of their time, notorious for their utter brutality, and stopped only after their cruel murder of a taxi-driver finally turned enough people against them.
@ArishMell Most of the time it seems people idolized the movie versions of criminals -- glamorized and cleaned up and NOT people they think they'll actually meet in real life.
@ChipmunkErnie I don't think they'd want meet either version in real life!
I gather Disney made a film set in Boston, the NE American not English one, I think about the Boston Tea Party so still an English colony before Independence. The town was practically lawless, ruled by a vicious gang who would beat up or murder anyone for a fee - Disney glamourised even these!
@ChipmunkErnie I forget the title of the film but I learnt of it in a history programme, one of a series examining events that have accrued a lot of myths since. I think it was mainly about the Boston Tea Party, whose perpetrators were smugglers trying to evade a tax on the tea. The gang was a separate lot, part of the town's general lawlessness of the time.
