Tag: History

Cold War

RORY: You ready for this? … Even with the Cold War?

LORELAI: That’s been going on for thirty-four years? I can manage.

The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term cold war is used because there was no large-scale fighting directly between the two superpowers, but they each supported major regional conflicts known as proxy wars.

The conflict was based around the ideological and geopolitical struggle for global influence by these two superpowers, following their temporary alliance and victory against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in 1945. Aside from nuclear development and military deployment, the struggle for dominance was expressed via indirect means such as psychological warfare, propaganda campaigns, espionage, embargoes, rivalry at sports events, and technological competitions such as the Space Race.

The end of the Cold War is dated to the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. President George H.W. Bush claimed that America therefore “won the Cold War”.

According to Lorelai, the “cold war” between she and her parents began almost at birth!

Smallpox-Infested Blankets

LUKE: Shouldn’t we give thanks first?

JESS: Thanks for what?

LUKE: Well, that we’re not Native Americans who got their land stolen in exchange for smallpox infested blankets.

Luke refers to the commonly held belief that British colonists gave Native American tribes blankets that were infected with smallpox, as an act of genocidal biological warfare. There is only one recorded instance of this actually being planned, in Pennsylvania. It is unknown whether this cruel scheme was ever put into operation, and if so, whether the blankets made anyone ill – they were old, and may have no longer been infectious.

Nine months later, smallpox was raging in the community, but it was everywhere by then, and cannot be traced to a blanket. There is no suggestion that land was traded in exchange for the blankets (if they were given at all).

However, while Luke’s statement isn’t strictly correct, there is no denying the overall truth that Native Americans had their land taken from them, often brutally, and that their population was devastated by smallpox, to which they had no immunity.

Visigoths

RORY: What is the oil for?

LORELAI: For pouring on Visigoths.

The Visigoths, an early Germanic people. Under their first leader, Alaric I, they invaded Italy and sacked Rome in 410. They later settled in southern Gaul and Hispania (modern France and Spain), and maintained a presence there from the 5th to the 8th century AD.

Lorelai refers to the popular idea of medieval castle defenders pouring boiling oil onto their assailants in order to protect themselves during a siege. There are only a few known instances of it actually happening (none against the Visigoths).

Historians think that the oil would have been hot, rather than boiling, and that it had the added advantage of making everything too slippery to climb. It probably wasn’t used very often, as oil was so expensive that hardly anyone had enough of it in stock. Boiling water and hot sand were far more commonly used.

Jammed, Shanghaied

LORELAI: We got jammed. Shanghaied by my mother and what with the other things we have going . . . well, too many commitments, not enough us.

Jammed: I think Lorelai means “jammed” as in a traffic jam or a logjam – stuck, and with so many things on that they have no room to move. Please correct me if you think this is wrong!

Shanghaied [pictured]: Also known as “crimping”. The practice of kidnapping people to serve as sailors by coercive techniques such as trickery, intimidation, or violence. The name probably came about because Shanghai was a common destination for ships with abducted crews. The practice flourished in the mid-19th century, in port cities such as Liverpool in the UK, and San Francisco in the US. Although there were many attempts to crack down on it, only the widespread use of steam vessels instead of sailing ships rendered the practice unnecessary, as steamships don’t require such a large crew. Once it was made a federal crime in 1915 the practice was entirely stamped out.

The Donner Party

RORY: I never realized Luke’s was a hundred miles away.
LORELAI: We’re lucky it wasn’t snowing. It would’ve been The Donner Party all over again, but with slightly better hair.

The Donner Party, sometimes called The Donner-Reed Party (!!!!!), was a group of American pioneers who migrated to California from the Midwest in a wagon train. Delayed by a multitude of mishaps, they spent the winter of 1846–1847 snowbound in the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Some of the migrants resorted to cannibalism to survive, eating the bodies of those who had succumbed to starvation, sickness, and extreme cold.

Rescuers from California attempted to reach the migrants, but the first relief party did not arrive until the middle of February 1847, almost four months after the wagon train became trapped. Of the 87 members of the party, 48 survived the ordeal. Historians have described the episode as one of the most fascinating tragedies in California history and in the entire record of American westward migration.

This is the second reference the show makes to cannibalism during extreme survival in snowy mountains.

“It makes me want to ration sugar”

SOOKIE: Wait ’til you see Jackson’s suit. It makes me want to ration sugar.

It seems to be a tradition, although not a rule, that contestants in the dance marathon dress in period costume from the 1930s and ’40s as part of the fun. Jackson is wearing a suit from the 1940s, which makes Sookie think of wartime sugar rationing. From 1942 to 1947, sugar was rationed in the US to half a pound (about 225 g) of sugar a week. This meant that Americans were allowed about 6 teaspoons of added sugar a day. Interestingly, this is about how much sugar nutritionists think we should be eating anyway!

Aryan Breeding

GAIL: She’s going to be beautiful.

SUSAN: Yeah, you and Christopher are like a poster for Aryan breeding.

Susan refers to Lebensborn e.V. (meaning “Fount of Life” in German), an SS-initiated, state-supported, registered association in Nazi German with the stated goal of increasing the number of children born who met the Nazi standards of “racially pure” and “healthy” Aryans, based on Nazi eugenics.

The Aryan race is an obsolete historical race concept that emerged in the late-19th century to describe people of Proto-Indo-European heritage as a racial grouping. There is no evidence to support this. By the 1930s, this false concept was used to promote white supremacist ideology, portraying so-called “Aryans” as the “master race” – ideas which formed part of the ideology which led to the Holocaust.

Appallingly, Susan implies white “Aryan” babies are naturally beautiful (even before they are born!). To add to the discomfort, she says this in front of Gail, who is black. I think this is meant to tell us just how awful Sherry’s friends are, and by extension, Sherry herself.