MovieChat Forums > Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) Discussion > Life without technology seemed exciting!

Life without technology seemed exciting!

posted 13 years ago by rob599999
8 replies | jump to latest

When I watched this film I found it so exciting how life was in the era the film was set in. Life is just so different nowadays because of modern technology. No one could rob banks like this any more and people certainly wouldn't try and outrun the law on horse back. It was nice seeing the spirit amongst people and how everyone was known by everyone. Things seemed easy going and exciting. Simple things were fun to people. It was nice how places seemed so uninhabited and that life wasn't about the daily commute to busy places where you work, in meetings, on the phone working all week for the money to pay all the bills.
This is one reason I love this film so much, life back then seemed more like the life I'd like to live.
Does anyone else when they watch this film wish they were living in that era?

[–] bonsai-superstar 11 years ago

I used to think that, but then I realized that what is shown is not the past - it is an idealized version of the past, the past as seen through today's glasses. Social concepts that we take for granted now (women's rights, access to health care, relative freedom from discrimination, etc.) did not exist then. At all. RE: women's rights - If you even look at relatively recent history, check how Katherine Ross was treated during the making of this movie! RE: health care - If you were strong enough to fight off the thieves and killers (as glamorously portrayed in this movie by two of the most attractive men the world has ever seen), you would work hard all your life and likely die young because of disease. RE: discrimination - if you had the bad luck to be born black, you were a slave or dead. It wasn't all chatting and bicycle tricks.

When you consider that 1. There were no "good old days", and 2. You are not satisfied even now, with machines that brush your teeth for you, take you anywhere in the world you want to go and give you any information that exists within seconds, you have to realize that these are the "good old days" - you only have to appreciate them.

[–] joe_538 11 years ago

I'll take the middle ground. I don't think we should appreciate the way banks used to be robbed, except that Butch and Sundance weren't actually violent; though some of their associates were, Kid Curry in particular (who was later reenvisioned on Alias Smith & Jones). I don't mind living simply for a few weeks a year, there is a certain fulfillment in not always doing things the easy way. A person has to take time to enjoy the little things in life, it doesn't always have to be "now! now! now!" On the other hand, on a hot summer day or cold winter night I'm thankful for heating and air conditioning. Today, the nuclear family is declining, people are being increasingly paid not to work, young people aren't being taught respectfulness, and if the draft ever comes back women will be included, and they're not all happy about that.

if you had the bad luck to be born black, you were a slave or dead.

That might be a little pessimistic, and seeing how slavery had been obsolete in the states for forty years when this movie takes place, I guess that just leaves death. "If you were black, you were dead."

[–] ck1-5 11 years ago

Yeah, everything's relative. Every generation looks back wistfully on a former time period because it looks "simpler". Fifty or one hundred years from now, there will be people romanticizing 2014 as a simpler time. And, as has already been stated, don't get it in your head that crooks were really good looking, wisecracking, fairly pacifist individuals like you see in the two lead characters here.

[–] liscarkat (18388) 10 months ago

"There were no 'good old days.' "

Oh yes, there most certainly were good old days. No time has been perfect, but there was once far less crowding, less intrusive government, more freedom, better public schools, better popular music, better art, no wokeness (or what little there was was just laughed at, as it should have been), and generally more optimism. Everything wasn't politicized; everyone wasn't screeching their ideology in each others' faces. Today's world is very sick. These are not the good old days in any sense, other than the sad probability that decades from now will be even worse. Being addicted to having a little phone/computer device gripped in our hand every moment of the day and night does not make this some kind of wonder age.

[–] robert3750 9 years ago

So, OP, when are you going to abandon modern technology and move someplace where you can live a 19th century lifestyle? Of course, you won't, because you know perfectly well that your romantic notions about how life was then aren't real, and neither is your desire to deal with the reality of living in that time.

[–] ck1-5 9 years ago

...not to mention that loads of people died of things like smallpox and diphtheria that you never even hear of anymore, due to modern technology.

[–] Jakezen 9 years ago

Watch "A Million Ways to Die in the West." They do a pretty good job of making fun of just how bad it really was in the old west. I will take today's comforts and if I want a low tech life, I can go do that on vacation.

[–] lexyladyjax 9 years ago

Sure, it.was.great then. Unless you.we're a woman or an.Indian.or.black. The.average life expectancy at the turn of.the.century was 40 years of.age. A childhood.disease.could kill you. A toothache.could kill.you. People.regularly died of.sepsis. When a woman fell pregnant.she would update her will and.get her affairs in order. Childbirth was a.common.killer of.women. Childbed fever.was.so.common a woman would rejoice when she passed.the incubation stage. She knew she.was.safe if she had no fever after 14 days. Some few survived but it.was.rare.

Yes, life was simpler, shorter and more nasty then. My great-grandmother and grandfather survived childbed fever. It was thought the infant.would die so he was.not.named. They called him Son so long he thought it his name. The baby surprised everyone and lived. They had to name him Summer Calvin. That was at the.end.of.the.19th Century. The fever left Summer Calvin.with a seizure.disorder. He had violent angry fits. The fever.damaged his hypothalamus. There were no diagnoses then, no.treatments, no medicines. Calvin grew up an.angry boy and.an.angry violent man. His family paid the price for the dirty hands of the.doctor who carried the.puerpal fever bacteria to his mother. Joseph Lister had.discovered.germ theory decades previously but it was.slow to be.accepted.

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