St. Louis Zoo takes down decorations after some say display was offensive (soldier, statistics)

[elston]

Originally Posted by Bulldawg82

All Halloween decorations have the potential to be "hurtful". The very idea of horror/scary feeds on that fear. Think about what you are proposing. All displays of an axe murder or knifed victim (many of those too) - are those insensitive too? Yes. The display of death is the point of Halloween - including the various ways people can be killed. It's very nature is insensitive. I'm more surprised that some aren't offended that all ghosts are white.

There is some truth to what you say.....I do think some Halloween decor are just in poor taste, but this is different to me.... I have never seen Halloween decorations that depict Jews in striped uniforms going to the gas chamber, or a battlefield littered with American soldiers dying in a foreign land.... .so I agree the idea of horror and scarey....is hard to define....but when a group of people say,....."This is hurtful to me and to my family".....that should pretty much define....inappropriate. I am glad that it did in St Louis. Good Job.

[Bulldawg82]

Originally Posted by elston

There is some truth to what you say.....I do think some Halloween decor are in poor taste, but this is different to me.... I have never seen Halloween decorations that depict Jews in striped uniforms going to the gas chamber, or a battlefield littered with American soldiers dying in a foreign land....I havent seen depictions of masacres in the old west....so I agree the idea of horror and scarey....is hard to define....but when a group of people say,....."This is hurtful to me and to my family".....that should pretty much define....inappropriate. I am glad that it did in St Louis. Good Job.

So the technique of blacking out the face with a black mesh is no longer acceptable? Or is it combination of both the lynching and this? Would a dark blue (navy blue) be alright? Because that still looks black at a distance.

[Scotty011]

Hell just paint the faces white and all will be right in the world. This country is going to hell in a hand basket. It seems we cannot have anything these days without offending someone. And why should these places remove items because a few people are ridiculously offended?

[Marlow]

I don't know about it looking like a lynching, but that's a Halloween decoration I don't like. Years ago our neighbors' son hanged himself in their garage. Later, other neighbors who didn't know about it hung some kind of scary creature from their tree at Halloween. I always thought that it must have caused the parents of the boy who hanged himself a lot of sadness every time they drove by.

[old_cold]

Originally Posted by Scotty011

Hell just paint the faces white and all will be right in the world. This country is going to hell in a hand basket. It seems we cannot have anything these days without offending someone. And why should these places remove items because a few people are ridiculously offended?

Disagree.
The solution would better have been to leave the faces as they are and hang from the back/waist or something so they look like ghosts, not hangings,if ghosts were the intention.
Just correct the bad 'art' aspect .

[Bulldawg82]

Originally Posted by old_cold

Disagree.
The solution would better have been to leave the faces as they are and hang from the back/waist or something so they look like ghosts, not hangings,if ghosts were the intention.
Just correct the bad 'art' aspect .

That is probably the best solution.

[Wyndsong71]

Originally Posted by old_cold

Race beside the point.....they did look more like hangings than ghosts.

Yes, they did not look like ghosts, but it is Halloween after all, there are plenty of scary/ugly/gross things out on people's lawns. Depending on the house, sometimes they are REALLY gruesome! That's why this is such a great holiday! Because it's MAKE BELIEVE!! I've seen decorations of a person's head being cut off by a guillotine, how is that any different than this? Except that these decorations didn't show a face, blood, or body parts... actually, even if they did look like humans and not ghosts, they were pretty tame for Halloween Decorations!

[Katarina Witt]

Originally Posted by elston

(I thought this was a thread from several years ago....but since it is current...I will re-post my comment.)

A quick google search reveals Missouri has a history of lynching. "At least 227 mob lynchings took place on Missouri soil between 1803 and 1981, all of which are identified, confirmed, and documented ..."

The decorations sure made me think of lynchings even before I knew they had black faces.

It isnt political correctness or overly sensitive to take the decorations down..it is just correct and sensitive..they have the capacity to be hurtful......just as images of bound and tortured women and children would have in Witchita (BTK)....lynching is imbedded in the American psyche....it was a horrific period in the recent past.....there is no need to enliven those images.

I had the same thoughts (as the bold). Missouri was a slave state. It has a history.

[TigerLily24]

Originally Posted by chielgirl

And people look for articles like this to be filled with faux-outrage.
Do you go to the St Louis zoo?

Pretty much.

Not sure what the issue is really. They got a complaint and they addressed it.
Excellent customer service.

[Bulldawg82]

Originally Posted by Katiana

I had the same thoughts (as the bold). Missouri was a slave state. It has a history.

All states have a history of lynching. It was the most common form of execution in every state for over a hundred years. In Missouri, there were plenty of white people lynched during the Kansas/Missouri skirmishes during civil war alone.