Reviews

To be fair, I've not directly laid eyes on the content of the movie review in question, so I can only speculate about how misleading or pseudoscientific it might be. I would like to assume good faith on the part of the author of the review, along with anybody (or everybody) complaining about it.

In regards to slavery, I should point out that I had in mind the felonies committed by the Dial brothers, in Sumter County, Alabama, back in the 1950s (aka the mid-twentieth century), which wasn't exactly an isolated incident but part of a system of the time. Plus, the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States is worded in so very particular of a way that it includes exceptions:

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

I don't object to the exception, but that's beside the point. A lot of legitimate misunderstandings can arise in the process of utilizing the word "slavery" without context or at least adjective. As I understand it, the main thing that American abolitionists accomplished was largely seeing to it that the United States' style of slavery could no longer viably work the corruption of blood, thus moving it away from being chattel slavery.

I'm neither a moderator nor somebody with an axe to grind, or at least in the case of the latter, I don't think so. Being as it is that I'm not a member of the IMDb staff, I cannot view the details of any submission other than my own just by knowing its reference number, as we know.

There is a big difference between a state-sanctioned act and a crime. The abolition of slavery changed one to the other. It is not ambivalent - the behaviour of a few, treated as a crime by the state, has no impact on the fact that slavery was outlawed.

I confess that I am slightly disturbed by your reference to “corruption of blood”, which makes it sound like you are more concerned with miscegenation than the dignity of humanity, or the morality of owning a fellow human as a chattel.

Anyway, this is (I hope) the text of the review I was challenging. The second paragraph is the most contentious, which is where the writer misdates abolition and Dickens while claiming that nothing major ‘disappeared’ in the 20th century, including the Soviet Union, smallpox, gaslights, horse and cart travel, steamships - before you quote examples, I know there are religious communities, heritage sites, developing countries where these things might still be seen, but they are not the ubiquity they once were.

The review:

• There are human destinies, stories, situations that we could expect to happen in certain poor Asian or middle American countries. At least this is something we are used to consider "normal", "natural", this was a steady state for decades.
  
  But modern world has brought changes. Not changes like that were brought by 20th century, when American slavery or Dickens' England disappeared. Nothing disappeared with 20th century, on the contrary life that seemed to be reserved for Guatemala, Haiti or Indochina today can be found in Europe.
  
  Life has never been easy in Eastern Europe. During socialism years poverty and hard life were mostly hidden, movie makers were forbidden to show dark side of life (it was impossible to accept that life can be rough in perfect society). Therefore the world never got a realistic view of life in these countries, especially in rural distant regions.
  
  Today there is freedom to show everything - and life hasn't become any easier. In fact, even those rare good qualities vanished, among them hope. Old people accept what life brings as they always have. Adults became resigned, they can't expect even what their ancestors got. But youngsters don't have a picture of old world that had some values of their own, they see world as shown on MTV, they grow up with values brought by commercials, and every time they open their eyes reality makes them despair. And resigned adults don't try to input any other values, cause they don't believe in them either.
  
  "Iluzija" is just one in a line of dark and hopeless stories showing this new world, that globalization gave to Macedonia (or Romania, Moldova, Bulgaria, Bosnia...). Romanian "Maria" tells us a true story of a woman that had to enter world of prostitution (with hints that it is the only destiny her daughter can expect, too); also showing infants been sold to families from the west. "König der Diebe" deals with selling older children to merchants from Germany (though it could be any other rich country) for illegal jobs like stealing and prostitution hidden by pictures and promises for better life. And, tragic as they are, these movies show people both adults and children that still have some hope. "Iluzija" is beyond that: you can't steal because everyone is poor, prostitution is limited to few able to pay (UN soldiers) and you can't even sell children cause there's no one to buy them. So if Barbu and Mimma in "König der Diebe" followed Caruso with enthusiasm and faith, and finally returned home understanding that it is still a safer and better place than promising West, Marko in "Iluzija" dreams of leaving, but everyone who could open him the exit door lets him down from teachers to criminals.
  
  And there is at least a bit of good in most characters in "Maria" and "König", we can't find a single character that we would actually like. Even Marko - we can understand or feel sorry for him, but would you like him to be your neighbour, to be your son's classmate? Life in Macedonia is most likely a bit better than in Romania or USSR countries. Being a part of Yugoslavia Macedonia had some more freedom, and there are some traditions (black wave from Serbia in late 60's) that Macedonian authors can lean on, so they are more sharp and radical than their colleagues from Soviet influence zone. "Iluzija" also shows deep political disruption between old left-wings from Yugoslavia years and right-wing mix of nationalist, pro-American democrats, (rare) new enriched people; and the national split though the only Yugoslavia nation that wasn't in war against Serbia Macedonians have problems with large Albanian minority, and the teacher who is Bosnian is also a suspect, because both Bosnians and Albanians are Moslems... In this society bullying among children seems to be an inevitable consequence. This movie is hard to watch, but the authors must be praised for being brave not to avoid any dark side of life in their (and not only their) country.
  
  One thing to add... If each word would be correctly translated, MPAA would probably let it free to watch for persons over 50. But I don't think English is rich enough. No language contains so many obscene words and idioms as Balkan languages. As much as I've noticed, only cats and dogs didn't use four-letter words in every minute on the screen. Yet this is also the part of reality.
• Summary: You can't hope to steal if everyone is poor

I don't believe that working the "corruption of blood" has anything necessarily to do with miscegenation, for as I understand it, this would pertain to how somebody would be conceived/born into the same level of bondage as his or her parents, otherwise how somebody could be punished for an offense committed by a family member with whom he or she didn't exactly choose to be family. The chattel slaves in the United States were like crops, not only to be bought or sold but to be grown and harvested.

By the way, what the Dial brothers did was very much state-sanctioned yet contrary to the federal state, despite the supremacy clause within the Constitution of the United States. Not entirely clear has it been that the United States government ever took corrective action against the Alabama government for its continued system of slavery, so to speak, like attempting to reduce Alabama's share of the seats in the House of Representatives of the United States, but apparently these programs were retired at some point and all the horrors stories largely forgotten by media outlets.

I do wonder if the author of the seemingly-irrelevant collection of paragraphs used to form a movie review, as quoted above, meant to write "19th century" but for whatever reason wrote "20th century" instead. The author may be implying that it was plausible for twentieth-century juvenile citizens of Western bloc nations to have lived experiences similar to that of the characters Oliver Twist, David Copperfield and Nicholas Nickleby. Today, that would be more like the life of an illegal "immigrant" (an "undocumented migrant") in the United States, albeit slightly unusual.

The difficulty then is that we are all left to conjure our own interpretations of what the writer intended and very quickly find ourselves in the realms of “Yes, they said it was fine to keep slaves (to pick a topical example), but probably meant it is acceptable to employ people as free individuals and pay them a fair wage”.

It might well be what they meant, but it is not what they said and they did not invite total revision, nor do we have sufficient information to make a safe guess as to what they intended. There is a principle in law that we cannot know what someone else is thinking, only make guesses from what they do. The author of the post said that things both disappeared and did not disappear in the 20th century. We know which we think is correct, but can only assume what they believe.

On the matter as to how late a variant of slavery closely aligned with the older model of chattel slavery came to an end in the United States, the YouTube channel UC8XjmAEDVZSCQjI150cb4QA, i.e. Knowing Better, provides some insight in YouTube video j4kI2h3iotA "The Part of History You've Always Skipped | Neoslavery" which is an hour and sixteen minutes in running time:

Unfortunately, no insight is provided in regards to how the offspring of these servants were regarded and treated under the system, so presumably they were held to service (if at all) in a way that did not extended beyond whatever obligations an orphanage would impose upon them, because they technically couldn't inherit the parents' bondage.

I am under no illusions about slavery or its legacy - there are numerous examples of maps showing the alignment of current population ethnicity and voting patterns with historic slave ownership - or the continued efforts of some to enforce conditions similar to slavery in supposedly modern liberal democracies - I live in a part of the world where criminal cases are brought against such ‘employers’ with shocking regularity.

My point, however, was much simpler. There was a date at which ‘slavery’ was abolished throughout western democracies. This date varied from one nation to another, but there was a clear change in the law to state that the ownership of another human being, and the trade in human lives, was no longer permissible. 

In the review to which I was responding, the writer claimed that this change in the US came in the 20th Century. However close the subsequent lives of emancipated slaves (or their offspring) came to their previous circumstances is irrelevant. That date that legislation came into effect was in 1865, more than three decades earlier.

Just to note, the amendments to the Constitution of the United States aren't actually legislation. As near as I can tell, the earliest legislation ratified pursuant to the thirteenth amendment was in 1866 (which of course is just as much belonging to the 19th century as 1865, so by no means does that little bit of information "prove" przgzr accurate). The same legislation wound up being ratified all over again in 1870 but pursuant to the fourteenth amendment. Anyway, it so weird how so many United States citizens don't realize or don't acknowledge that the Constitution does not actually specify any penalty for violating any of its provisions, except for States being subject to decreased representation for contradicting (willfully) certain requirements imposed by the fourteenth amendment, thus leaving it the responsibility of the federal Congress to ratify all necessary authorizations for force or adjudication to be used to address violations of the Constitution against perpetrating parties who cannot be immune to prosecution. (The House of Representatives, Senate and the Supreme Court are examples of bodies that are immune, and all of their individual members are immune to a significant degree.) Of course, many decades ago a federal statute for that general purpose was ratified (and affecting Title 18 of the United States Code), but it is almost never used against federal employees. (I'm kind of rambling at this point.)

The bit about Charles Dickens is also very interesting. Even though he died in 1870, the Victorian era is said to have ended in 1901 (the start of the twentieth century), and there is no telling exactly when ceased the last remnant of the real life equivalents to the scenarios about which he wrote. Just a few hours ago, I watched yet another history video report but only nine minutes long and pertaining to the thieving (rarely homicidal) street urchins of the United Kingdom, during and around the time of industrialization: YouTube video C7tzJ70LEwI "How Victorian-Era Britons Hired Child Gangs to Do Their Bidding" off YouTube channel UCc-N24Y5OA0gqbjBwe1ttfA, i.e. Weird History.

The Victorian era isn’t “said to have ended in 1901”. The Victorian era ended in 1901 when Victoria died. “Dickens’ England disappeared” when Dickens died. 

I am not sure why you have such an issue with historical facts. No YouTube video changes reality, only the way some people perceive it. You have clearly given a lot of thought to what you say, but sometimes history books do actually tell the truth, and sometimes the English language does what it sets out to do. Dickens lived and died during the reign of Victoria, but ‘Victorian’ and ‘Dickensian’ are not synonyms any more than Elvis Presley walked on the moon (and there are videos on YouTube suggesting that too).

I can see how a person's tenure in any particular renown endeavor after which the corresponding so-called "era" would be remarked cannot extend beyond span of his or her life, and that may mean that the Dickens era ended when he retired, just like a United States president's era (e.g. the Reagan era) ends when he is no longer allowed to be re-elected. I hadn't really thought about it like that. I'm just not entirely sold on the idea that przgzr made an error on the identification of the century in which anything that had anything to do with "slavery" and a certain style of orphans effectively ended, since the expression may not be as literal as it seems. I did notice that przgzr's review of Iluzija (aka Mirage) does sometimes show up on the URL base path (rather than strictly in "./reviews") for the IMDb title page for that particular movie. I wonder if the IMDb staff have a way to prevent that from happening without reworking the entire IMDb system, as undoubtedly attention is drawn to whichever review shows up there. The particular reviewer's most recent review was in 2015, so this person may have been away from IMDb for a very long time and won't for a long time (if ever) be able to explain what the deal is with this particular spiel being interpreted here. Anyway, I'm don't know often the IMDb staff remove reviews that have information inaccurate by only a century and only in a non-anachronistic way, but the IMDb guidelines do require that reviews be focused on the content of the movie, not so much the circumstances of the movie's creation or topics beyond no matter how much they relate to either one, unless in reference to sequels and predecessor works sharing the same author/universe. Furthermore, I would have to double check which guidelines actually existed back in 2007. If a policy point didn't exist back at that time, then there could be a problem in trying to enforce much later on.

You have certainly highlighted a huge problem with IMDb and those acting as its moderators: desperate convolutions to avoid the basic issues.

Not only has the website been taken over by US-centric Christian fundamentalists, racists and misogynists, but any half-baked YouTube conspiracy can now be invoked to prove that Charles Dickens and Queen Victoria are actually the same person, and the US Civil War has not yet concluded.

Charles Dickens is most certainly not one and the same with Victoria, Queen of England. There isn't even a way to imply such via metaphor, no matter how they lived through the same cultural zeitgeist. However, the idea that the war among States, has not really ended isn't really all that far fetched, since folks have been adamant about referring to it as a "civil war" in the sense that States' involvement doesn't much matter. That particular "war" began before the secession of South Carolina, kind of like how the revolutionary war began before the Battle of Lexington and Concord. The Cold War is back, so to speak, but was it ever truly gone? O, that NATO. We'll write it off as a sequel, of course, like we did with the supposed distinction between the Great War and the second World War. The crash of 1929 came to an end, yes, and supposedly the basis of the associated great depression came to an end too, but all society did was just fake its way through it, and at some point, it margin calls will come in. Certainly it is unfair to say that absolutely nothing has changed, I will agree with that. Technology progresses and the cosmetics change.