I didn't know where to post this, so plumped for this forum, hope it's right.

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player...ctid=1914014570

The video is one that was taken by a CCTV camera inside a Guy's head, on bonfire night. It gives you a birds eye view of what happens at a public burning.

Sounds interesting so far, but watch it and imagine. I found it to be one of the most brutal and horrifying things I have ever seen on the world wide web. And one that I will not easily forget

mmm....yup very brutal indeed. the unsettling thing was the number of people joining in en masse, just like what may have happened at a witch burning or such like.

fizz

Nonetheless, the guy didn't have to supply funds for the cost of his burning, as a great many Scottish "Witches" were forced to do!

How horrible! How can anyone even think of desecrating a camera like that....

Where to start? With the phrase Burning Times, which always gets right up my nose being as it a total fallacy? With the fact that all the people filmed were perfectly aware that no living human being was on the bonfire and were enjoying a community event like every other bonfire in the UK on 5th November?

In the unlikely event that this stuff still needs pointing out - No one in Britain was ever burned alive at the stake for witchcraft. Hanging was the punishment of choice in England and Wales, Scotland favoured strangulation followed by a burning of the corpse. The closest evidence we can find for living people being burned at the stake would appear to be medeval times and the crime in question would be treason - adultery for instance not anything to do with kings that would be High Treason.

However, yes people enjoyed public execution. It was a grand day out for all the family. Why not? It was intended as an example after all. People are people and part of that is finding enjoyment in other people's undoing. If you really want to experience the horror of mankind at a public execution you would do better to observe a group of people devouring Heat magazine's latest feature on celebrity cellulite or make a study of the recent furore over messages left on some former comic actor's anwering machine than watch a group of people at perfectly normal bonfire set to mournful music.

Another alternative take on Joe Public's happy acceptance of public suffering = ...

Now showing at a Church near YOU! Bring all the family for a fun day of contemplation. Etcetera.

As so often, I agree with Esk.

Heretics were burned. If one has any imagination and sympahty it's easy to visualise the pain and suffering of that mode of execution, as with so many other barbaric modes. Actually, one which haunts me is (IIRC) a Persian one. But I shan't describe it, as much out of respect for my imagination as that of anyone reading this thread.

I don't need a camera. The point about recording something digitally/on film is to give something to people whose imagination is lacking. Why would anyone with a decent imagination/visualisation need a recording?

I agree. I must say I find this a lot more disturbing.

Derby Suicide

This was a real life at stake and several people just shouted abuse at him. A sad reflection on today's society. We haven't really learned much in the last five hundred years or so.

I agree. The stake was more favoured it seems, for heretics, take the reign of bloody Mary as an example in England, and her lust for flames. The continent seems to have share a similar belief, possibly for the simple reason that hell was supposed to be aflame, so that is how the heretics should end up there.



The music does help to make it doomful. I was expecting Gerry and the Pacemakers I have to admit!

The spectacle from that side of things was intended to give the viewer an "inside" look at what being burned alive might be like, without the physical pain of course, I don't think it was meant as a social comment and I certainly didn't take it that way.

But on that note, it reminds me just how vicious a mob could get. We watched Executioners on the television last night, and the narrator described how upset the crowds in Paris were when the guillotine came along, because it was too quick and not messy enough.

As for the Derby suicide, it is the desensitised ethics of the mob at work here. And where else do you see a gleeful mob? I was in the military, and the more you train the easier it is to cope with real-life situations. The same could be said of our culture nowadays. The more death, violence etc. we are fed by the various medias, the more desensitised we become to the death, violence etc. Some even revel it.

As an afterthought, if the police spent three hours there talking to him, then why didn't they clear the area of onlookers?

I am tickled (yes, a deliberate choice of word) to read and consider the many views offered regarding the OP.

Human nature never ceases to amaze me. Unfortunately usually only because, as a species, we seem expert at inventing if not new methods of barbarity, then certainly newer and more novel means of applying them. And disseminating too.

Well, it's not a total fallacy. It didn't happen here, but it did happen in other places. But as to the point of this? It's a fucking bonfire! Those people should feel ashamed of themselves for enjoying a bonfire, and one with a dummy, which in my day was made from an old plastic footy sellotaped to an old t-shirt stuffed with newspaper (can't see what this one's like cos of the flames and the camera being inside it). Oh, the humanity!
Pity whoever made the film wasn't holding the camera at the time, what a waste of time and energy.

Like here in Germany...in the town where I live, Bamberg, we actually have spot marked out in the big cathedral square (Domplatz) where they used to burn 'witches'.
It is now covered by glass but, you can kind of see the metal that they used to fix the stake down with.

I am yet to meet someone that doesn't feel icky just walking over it. It is not unlike the feeling you get when walking on someone's grave but a little different and about 100 times worse. Even when you watch the tourists, you see them avoiding it and having visible reactions on their faces if they do walk over it.

Indeed, you only have to go to Scone Palace of a Hallowe'en to see a fully laid on "spectacle" of how this would have been

Meh. At the same time periods there were other types of 'punishment' that were just as nasty if you didn't pay or 'earn' the kindness to be strangled first. Boiling people alive was popular. Also, to be hanged, drawn and quartered wasn't too pleasant as the idea was to have the person almost hanged ( but not passed out yet) so they could see and feel their disemboweling and genital mutilation before their heads were taken off.

Electric drills are popular torture instruments today as well as 'necklacing'.

I'm not sure that saying one method of exterminating people was more heinous than what was, what is and probably, what shall be.

People are people . In what way does one make a value judgment on 'punishment fitting the crime' for different time periods , people and places?

Heresy was against the law in the many places executions were carried out. Was it, is it 'distasteful' and barbaric? Yes. Was it any worse than other punishments - hard to say.

Oh, and one of Charles Dickens favourite pass times was attending executions. Indeed, he got very upset when a women who rented him her premise so he could watch a hanging felt ripped off because his view wasn't that good.


Nowt much has changed if you look around the world today. History is a great desensitizer to past events. But the news flash is it isn't in the 'past' yet.

I truly believe that if they decided to resurrect the Roman Forum, the tickets would be sold out immediately.

Marto

"I truly believe that if they decided to resurrect the Roman Forum, the tickets would be sold out immediately."

Me 3!

That people were burned in Europe for witchcraft and other crimes is not fallacy. The Burning Times™ is a fallacy, using the phrase "The Burning Times™" suggests a belief in a holocaust of millions of innocent Pagan wisewomen by a mysogynistic Christian Church which is even now gathering kindling in readiness for it's chance to rise again.

Yeah, you can't transmit the pain to the viewer but this doesn't even begin to transmit the experience does it? If you really wanted to recreate a burning from the burnee's POV you'd have to have a baying crowd, the subject should be writhing a bit surely, at least shaking with hyperventiation, pain and fear no? I doubt anyone being burned alive ever simply stood stock still until they suffocated on the smoke. Sticking a camera in the middle of an ordinary bonfire doesn't cut it at all, if anything it sanitises a horrific death and makes it look quite calm and quick.
I think perhaps someone just wanted to burn a recording camcorder and had to come up with a reason...