On historical accuracy in Movies

In my assessment there is no perfect pasta sauce only pasta sauces. Basically we need to separate historical art into based on history and historically accurate. I feel a lot of the resentment comes from people purchasing something other than what they thought they were getting.

Bryce Ostrem

i refer to atun shei films and brandon f for this, historical accuarcy is not hard, and it does bring a lot to the film.

aquiles

Well since a lot of people do get their historical knowledge from movies/ stereotypes spread by such movies, Id say accuracy is rather important. That can of course range. Having a slightly wrong model of gun in a movie that almost noone will ever be able to identify who isnt a huge gun buff isnt as severe as the clean wehrmacht myth still portrayed by other movies.

Trollon

I wonder how Ridley Scott’s Napoleon plays a role in these thoughts. Making a review of it now!

David Malinsky

As someone who worked in the field as a "Tourguide" (German "Kulturvermittler") in a Museum about Celtic (actually Pre-Celtic) History in Austria, I can say that i spent for sure at least half of the time when talking to school classes and other visitors to debunk BS spread by TV, Movies and Documentaries. So yes - Historical Accuracy IS important in Movies.

Stefan Borissov

History is its own kind of fiction that likewise is equally subject and influential to all the political forces other fiction is. Make it a video though. Get paid for filling an hour or so of my time instead of making an open letter I won’t read.

Yoko The Spacewhale

One more thing I'd like to point out in support of my earlier post regarding how accuracy does matter when the story happens to make an impact on its audience. Birth of a Nation, Gone with the Wind, and Gods and Generals are three movies that have done immesurable damage to the American psyche and historical understanding of the Civil War. These movies are heavily credited for the reformation of the KKK, the perpetuation of the Lost Cause Myth, even among the minds of Northerners, and a dogged persistence that Blacks actually kinda sorta liked their place in the south. These movies are deeply a-historical. But their impact on American Culture is undeniable. For example, the prevalence of confederate flags throughout the entirety of the US, not just the southern states that seceded, can be credited in part to the way these movies cast the south as fighting a lost cause for their State's rights in the face of the inevitable victory of a power-hungry federal government.

The problem with historical inaccuracy is that no one wants to say that their movie is historically accurate. As long as a movie claims to be based off history or true events, historical inaccuracies in movies will be problematic.

Dan Ahn

I think it may be important for you to give a good faith accounting of arguments for the importance of historical accuracy when telling stories. There are good arguments for it, and so I feel there is an obligation to give strong counter-examples. Though, I otherwise have a third perspective on this issue that I'm curious to hear some thoughts on. All human communication of past events is a form of storytelling. The platform, tone, and the particular individual telling the story play an enormous role in changing whether society categorizes that story as news, fantasy, artistic license, documentary, or some other genre. The War of the World's broadcast shows how thin the line is between artistic drama and the forms of storytelling that the public broadly considers to be the "telling of the facts." Gearing an audience up ahead of time as to how they ought to categorize the story they're about to hear will change how they act on that info. Radio broadcast drama? The audience is interested to see where the story goes. Official news broadcast? Panic ensues. Donald Trump was portrayed as a wheeling and dealing business mogul in “The Apprentice.” The portrayal of him as a competent business leader heavily influenced the public when he ran for president, in which a huge percent of the republican voter base and independents were swayed by the perception of Trump as a "do things right and efficiently" leader who could bring that gumption to Washington. But the narrative of Trump in the Apprentice does not line of with the reality of his leadership abilities. Certainly, the directors The Apprentice had no duty to portray Trump as he actually existed, nor can you make them culpable for telling that story the way that they did. But the real-world consequences of that storytelling played a definitive role in helping get Trump elected. I guess my thesis on this discussion would be something like this: Telling historically accurate stories both does and doesn't matter. And whether or not it matters really depends on the individual cases. Storytelling from any medium has a messy intersection of narrative, art, and the particular life experiences of one's audience that will alter whether or not that accuracy matters. And whether it matters is sometimes unknown to the storyteller before they tell that story. I think this video would be polarizing for the same reason that you and that other youtuber got in the argument in the first place. That unknown outcome. For every example you can pick out where the storytelling didn't really matter or had good consequences, someone can find an example where it did. Neither reality creates a default moral obligation to do things one way or the other. But it does kind of make it untenable to land solidly on one side of the argument or the other. At the end of the day, it really just depends on how that story affects the audience... even if that audience isn't the one you intended. The moral obligation only seems to exist where one makes a story for the deliberate purpose of inflaming hatred. And even that may be debatable.

Personally I like the topic. I think it would be an interesting topic and I do think it matters because for those of us (like me) who do less reading on history or are less versed in fact checking we may take Media as our only understanding and there is a healthy balance between making it enjoyable to watch while being worthy of history. For example Chernobyl the HBO series is the only way I could image explaining the intendent to someone who isn't going to read about it. I think it is accurate enough to showcase the general events and feelings and is inaccurate where it doesn't matter much. It also does a nice bonus of point out its liberties it took at the end to give a clearer history after the drama story is finished. Video games likewise can benefit from accurate costumes, audio, and locations even if they are fantasy when considering balance and fun of gameplay.

Quincy Canady

Good script, but I have to point out one counterarguement: What about movies like "JFK" which actually created wrong assumptions about history and spread misinformation. Many actually claim that "JFK" made conspiracy theories about the J.F. Kennedy assasination more popular. But I believe -and I 'm not the only one- that we should take this film seriously. We should just treat it as a historical fiction and read a book about the real events and facts.

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