MovieChat Forums > The Great Waldo Pepper (1975) Discussion > Altered Personality

Altered Personality

posted 19 years ago by nosnojsirhc
2 replies | jump to latest

I saw this as a child.

The scene in which the crowd gathers to watch the plane crash pilot burn to death, and Robert Redford is forced to club his friend over the head to knock him senseless and end the pain, left an indelible impression upon me.

I think that this scene displays the worst in humankind - that cows-in-the-cornfield tendency to mass around terror, horror, sadness or misery and stare unblinkingly - even while munching on snacks!

I remember watching "Alive" about the plane crash cannibalism, and just when they were using a fork to ply some frozen human flesh for food, a woman in the next row said "Honey, go get some more popcorn."

God. People. Watching them move, slowly, in large packs, has sickened me ever since seeing this movie.

[–] intriguemanda 18 years ago

Agreed. That scene was one of the most harrowing things I've seen in cinema. It reminds me a little of the murder of "Kitty" the young girl in New York way back in the day... was like 40 witnesses to her being stabbed over and over again (the killer kept coming back) and noone called the police or went to her aid.. But they all watched.

Those sorts of stories force us to reconsider what it is to be human. And what the true meaning of compassion and courage is. You become exposed to something like that (in both cases a whole crowd worth of people without one decent human being amongst them) and it sickens you, but it also makes the story of the man who stepped in front of a stranger in a mass shooting even more powerful.. or the hero who sacrificed themselves to stop another senseless murder.. or the people who get involved in bashings or robberys or violent crimes- risking their own back for someone elses. There is no doubt a lot of ignorant evil in the world but there is also a lot of goodness. Unfortunately we have to have the evil in order to laud the goodness- and then hopefully, if we ever find ourselves in a similar situation we'll be able to make the right choice.

[–] Techto (1388) 2 months ago

The case to which you refer, which gave rise to the term ‘bystander effect’, was later found to be inaccurate due to sloppy journalism or journalistic fraud:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Kitty_Genovese