Often, too often really, I run into someone who thinks that they understand something, an issue, subject, era in history merely by virtue of reading a book or seeing a movie. And by book I don't mean a history written by a responsible historian with appropriate citations of source material, no I mean fiction.
I have watched a movie and become fascinated by some aspect of the movie, after I try to find out more about whatever it was that sparked my curiosity. Sadly, that doesn't seem to be true of many people. I can not tell you how often I have listened in confusion to someone outraged over some issue or another, trying to figure out what the heck they are referring to only to discover during the conversation that it was something they saw in a movie or read in a book.
Nonsense abounds in movies, like the junk about Che Guevara in "Motorcycle Diaries", dude was not a revolutionary liberating the masses, he was a brutal executioner working for Castro to subjugate the Cuban masses. Fashion is even worse, everytime I see a t-shirt with Che on it I want to scream and then educate the idiot wearing the shirt as quickly as I can. I say "idiot" because most of the people wearing the shirt would have been quickly put to death by Che. It's akin to wearing the image of the Granddragon of the KKK, or Pol Pot, Stalin, Hitler or Amin.
3 comments:
I always find it amazing to do some research and find out how the movies got it WRONG. sure it was a great story, but to infer it was history wrong.
Hidalgo was a great movie and I did some research and sadly found out most of the story was just that a story.
Truth is really stranger than fiction, and in reality makes a better story, but then one would have to drop political correctness.
Yes, PC has ruined so much truth and taken away our freedom.
My favorite punching bag, Titanic, is a perfect example of how Hollywood misses the incredible wonderful true story to instead go after a perverse and sordid fiction. The actions and miss deeds of the passengers and crew aboard the Titanic the night she sank are tales of mythic courage and sacrific alongside tales of diabolical selfishness and cowardice. There was plenty of true story to tell in that movie. Instead we get an ookie "love" story filled with anachronisms crammed down out throat. bleh.
After Braveheart came out, and I love that movie, I can not tell you how often I heard people making judgements and baseing opinions on the medieval world because of what they "learned" in that movie about clans. Arrgghhh!
I will still watch Hidalgo, cause Viggo is in it, but you are correct, it's mostly fiction.
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