Why does the USA change history and events within film and media??
Good question. As a historian I HATE it when a so-called historical film differs greatly from the truth. While I certainly understand artistic license, I cannot understand why total falsehoods are portrayed as historical fact. The worst part is that many people who do not read history accept what they see on film and TV as the truth. Of course, much of Shakespeare’s history was incorrect but he did not have at his disposal the immense volume of evidence that is available to modern writers, and he lived at a time when society was not as free as it is today. It is sad that many modern writers/filmmakers etc. take advantage of their freedom of speech and use it to promote unthruths.
A Hollywood movie does not alter or change historic events, many of which are already well documented and preserved in aspic long before Hollywood gets it’s grubby hands on them. If people wish to live by the rules of Hollywood and ignore real history, then that is their choice. It’s a free country and I cannot see anything wrong with that. The notion that Eroll Flyn single handedly won the jungle war in Burma is the biggest laugh ever, especially here in UK, considering the enormous number of Burma Star veterans still alive at the time the movie came out. It was just greeted with dirision, not just by the vets of that jungle war but also but the entire nation. Don’t worry. World history over the last 200 years was not made by the Americans, it was in fact made by the British, who had the worlds biggest ever empire. By comparison USA is just a wimp in sheeps clothing, believe! Someone told Winston Churchill that he might not look good in the history books. He laughed and told them, not
Because it makes bucks to see Johnny Hero from mid western US defeating all comers in the wars. Also quite a few of the American people are so anti European with their History. Don’t forget, the idea of making an acurate looking film about History would bore the majority of film goers. Plus the yanks really hate the idea they did not save the world and it took a multi national force of armed forces to do this. They never talk about the Commonwealth and Empire forces in the Far East against the Japanese, nor there defeats in North Africa and Incompetance in Italy much, only the push to Germany or the later battles of the Mid Pacific.
As a Brit and an historian I often appauld American/Hollywood history films because at least it gets more people interested in history. A really great history film may inspire someone to do more reading about it or take a history course in school/uni. Historical films are very expensive to make, considering the sets, costumes etc. When something in a film is inaccurate by mistake or is an anachronism this can be forgiven due to the difficulty of making a film like this (e.g. The watch on the soldiers arm in Ben Hur, the perfect white teath of actors in medieval films, the appearance of Queen Elizabeth in the playhouse in Shakespeare in Love.) However it is counter-productive and offensive when history is literally re-written in films e.g. Americans capturing Enigma machine in U-571 when it was the british Navy and two men died doing it, or braveheart. These films become part of the popular consciousness and the unreal events they portray can colour present day popular and political att
