Would never happen in the US
We don't glorify or celebrate the lifes of prisoners in the US. If Bronson had tried 1/10 of this crap in the US, he'd have been pushing up daisies in no time.
shareOh really?!
It's funny because I thought the whole "prisoner" genre is one almost entirely created in the US (Papillon, The Green Mile, Escape from Alcatraz, Birdman of Alcatraz, The Shawshank Redemption, I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, Cool Hand Luke: just to name some precious few).
Also, considering that the US right now incarcerates its own citizens far more than any other country on earth, maybe it's time to give a whole new perspective to the genre just to try understand what's going on.
he is right that what transpires in the movie wouldnt happen in us because us has a system in place for dealing with undesirables. that system starts when you are a kid and born into certain areas or financial status, before you hit 1st grade in school much of your future life in america is already designed to give you only a few options during your adult life. sure there are "Exceptions" but they usually have to be "Exceptional" in order to qualify for a life or career they statistically dont get.
during school certain tests and classes give an idea of what kind of adult you will be, and the school/government weed out undesirables, like if a kid acts up in class too much, they send the kid to special education classes, but before they do that they have the kid get tested in many ways, psychological usually in order to see if the undesirable kid is or could have violent tendencies. if the kid manages to not show any violent tendencies for a certain amount of time, otherwise known as compliance, they sometimes get sent back to regular classes, if not they are lost in the system of special education, aka kid prison for the undesirables.
now if the kid acts up in special ed, the kid is threatened in certain ways by letting them know if they persist they will be sent to other forms of punishment, which are basically junior prisons where illegal activities are allowed to happen to kids in the hopes it will "scare them straight", which doesnt really work for the majority of kids that are sent there, only works for the already scared and angry kids that dont know what to do, all they know is it gets worse.
so if you still act up at juvenile hall or other places like that, they basically quit the kid and label them for the rest of their lives as crazy kids or violent criminals, which might as well be a death sentence because many of those kids have no way out of the life they know.
it is easy to say they chose all of that, well easy to say by cowardly people who have not had one taste of the life these kids live every day. needless to say what happens to a lot of american kids is far worse than what transpires within this movie. yet in many ways it is the same treatment, do what we say or we will make sure your life will be horrible. comply or die, so to speak.
I don't agree with the OP. US culture has most definitely glorified criminals over the years, however your rant is one of the most delusional missives I've read in quite some time. I come from a family of educators, and the system you describe doesn't even remotely reflect the reality of the US educational system. It reads more like some blog post from a jaded political activist.
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