Pretty much.
My favorite source for Politically Correct History was DR. QUINN MEDICINE WOMAN, a show so bad it was almost good. Every week a new minority came to Colorado Springs: Asians, Jews, homosexuals (yes, really- specifically Walt Whitman [played by a decades too old Lloyd Bridges]), Mormons, an autistic kid (yes, really), old men with Alzheimers (Ray Walston no less), and others, all just so that they could get there and be misunderstood and villified and just as the mob with the torches and the dogs was about to lynch them Dr. Quinn could come around and give them the week’s “________ are people, no better and no worse than me or you! They are what they are because [choose one: God made them that way/a condition they can’t help/they choose to be] but we owe them respect!”, whereupon the villagers would put down the torches and say ‘good doggie’ and learn a little about acceptance and tolerance, at least until the next week when the cross-dressing Asian Mormon guy comes to town and she has to remind them again.
Meanwhile she gets along great with the Cheyenne, who not only spoke English but lived in a village that was less Plains Indian than ‘Burning Man’ before the tourists, and whose men -like most Indian men- completely trusted and admired and held as equal and loved getting counsel from a female (a white female from back East no less).
10 Day Bump.
Does anybody happen to know how accurate or inaccurate the miniseries The Jacksons: An American Dream is? I was just curious since it’s on YouTube and excerpts have been playing all week. Wiki liststhese very minor inaccuracies but I was wondering more about the “big picture” stuff.
On a completely different note, one of the things I don’t understand is when the facts are changed to make way for a story that’s less interesting. (A major case of this was in a recent novel called The 19th Wife, a complete waste of paper about Brigham Young’s apostate ex-wife Ann Eliza; it’s not just that the novelist changed her story and those of her family but that in so doing he made them a whole lot less colorful than they were before.)
A movie example is Kinsey. In the movie the character of his father (played by John Lithgow) is a domineering religious fanatic who’ll allow no talk of anything sexual. In reality it seems he was domineering but not the religious fanatic (devoutly religious but not puritanical), though Kinsey’s mother was the fanatic. In the movie Kinsey’s mother dies when Kinsey’s in his late 30s and he deposes his father for one of hsi sex surveys, learning that his father was humiliated as a child for his masturbation and this informed much of his later character.
The more interesting (to me at least) truth is that when Kinsey was 37 his father, then retired from his job as a science professor, left Kinsey’s mother, his wife of 40+ years, to marry his longtime mistress. Kinsey never spoke to him again or acknowledged his second marriage.
The reason I think this is more interesting is that Kinsey is shown to be a bit more judgmental than he liked to think he was: sexual freedom and expression was fine, but not when it affected those he loved (his mother), and that he was in fact somewhat prudish. Admittedly divorces were a lot less common/more of a stigma in 1931 but they weren’t unknown, and you’d think he’d want his dad to be happy in his final years since in the marriage apparently neither he nor Kinsey’s mother was happy.
Maybe the writers of the film were concerned that including that incident would make Kinsey unsympathetic? Biographical films tend to whitewash their subjects.
Braveheart,total tripe from beginning to end.
There is a country called Scotland and thats about all they got right.
My favorite is the Battle of Stirling Bridge. With absolutely no bridge.
Gibson also has to go after the homos. It’s historical record that Edward II had homosexual lovers, but Gibson does it up brown: he’s a mincing stereotype who can’t get it up with a woman (thus the Scotsman has to impregnate the queen- don’t know where all the other kids come from) and who’s a craven coward on the battlefield (never mind historical accounts he had to be physically dragged from the battle when the British retreated).
He returns again to this trope in Passion of the Christ where the villain Herod Antipas is seen as a mincing fop with a curly wig whose throne is filled with a loincloth clad toyboy. This is a man who the New Testament records as first stealing his brother’s wife and then being so in lust with his stepdaughter [and niece and grandniece] Salome that he offers her half his kingdom and risks insurrection by executing a holy man as a reward for her erotic dancing. The movie is filmed with Aramaic dialogue for historical accuracy but the actors are all white westerners, the Latin lines are Vulgate (and would have been spoken in Greek anyway), there’s all manner of extrabiblical additions (Jesus’s bunjee jump on his chains and the dwarf-demon come to mind) and instead of the veil tearing- one of the most beautifully symbolic scenes of the Passion story (Jesus Christ has died and through his sacrifice the veil twixt God and the people/the Temple and the World is torn etc.) Mel changes it to the exact opposite: a wrathful God sends an earthquake to tear up the temple.
No, it’s not. It’s widely supposed that he did, but it’s not known. He was extremely close to his “Favorite” another young man= Piers Gaveston. He also sired a good number of children.
Edward II might not have been a coward on the battlefield, but he was incompetent.
Well, I suppose that “proof” would be impossible (any more than it’s possible to prove Henry VIII was exclusively straight), but the circumstantial evidence is fairly convincing. Ed1 banished Piers because he was worried about the relationship he was having with the prince and for his “vicious tongue, a supercilious manner and an over-developed dress sense” (in other words, an effeminate bitch and clothes horse). Ed2’s not only recalling him from exile when he was king but lavishing favors on him (which was certainly not for brilliance) and- perhaps symbolically- taking back the jewels his wife was given at the wedding to give to Piers (to symbolize his true life partner perhaps?)- it’s more than just a “Lincoln and Speed shared a bed” evidence.
While Ed2 was unquestionably an incompetent and terrible king, incompetence isn’t a homosexual stereotype while cowardice and effeminacy in a fight are. Had Ed2 actually been cowardly in battle then I’d have no problem with it being included, but it’s a matter of record he wasn’t (any more than Richard “cease those Greek vices and go back to your wife” the Lion Heart was), which is why I think it’s a deliberate homophobic slap by Gibson (who evidently can’t conceive of gays being “manly” in battle or actually being able to consummate a marriage). Add to this the king’s murder of his son’s lover being used for comedy relief.
I’m just surprised he didn’t kill two birds with one stone and offer the role of Piers to Harvey Fierstein (assuming he didn’t). “I just wanna be the pampered favorite of the king of England… is that so wroooooing?”
Not by Roman legionaries.
:rolleyes:
I can’t believe that comments like this are made in the SDMB, specially the second one.
The blatant ignorance of history is inexcusable here.
But I am tired of fighting the good fight.
Carry on.
I’m referring to Pontius Pilate in the “Ecce homo” scene.
And, I must add, The Life of Brian.
I mean, was there ever really anyone in the Roman Empire named “Biggus Dickus”!?!?!?
Yes. He had a villa in Pompeii. (A legitimate but probably not work safe mural from a Pompeii villa.)
Speaking of The Tudors, next season is going to be the last one. They’ve only gotten up to Anne of Cleves, although Katherine Howard is hovering on the edges. I mentioned this to my BIL and SIL, who do English Civil War re-enactments, and my BIL’s response was “Well, Henry’s going to have to kill a lot of people to finish up.”
I wish Showtime had carried on through Elizabeth, but considering they haven’t put a fat suit on Jonathan Ryse-Meyers or aged him much, I shall just enjoy the beautiful people in pretty clothes.
One thing I find bothersome is how well-fed everyone appears in historical movies. They put some dirt on the kids’ faces in Braveheart, but they all have plump faces and good teeth. Even in **Gone With the Wind **(the book) the O’Haras/Wilkes/slaves go through a period of near starvation toward the end of the war (which leads to Scarlett’s nightmares and her voracious appetite later.) I know they can’t ask kids to go on a diet just to portray a peasant child of medieval times (not that that would do much good, we’re talking years of malnutrition and hard labor) but I notice that from time to time when I’m watching a historical film.
I used to watch **Little House on the Prairie **when I was a child. I don’t anymore, but I’ll read the synopses of the shows as I come across them, and it strikes me that there’s almost as much drama in Walnut Creek as there is on Wisteria Lane.
I was thinking about that last time I watched GWTW; amazing how Mammy never loses weight. (You only think the other slaves ran off; I think Mammy’s doing some Sweeney Todd stuff out back.)
I didn’t care for Cold Mountain due to— well, many reasons- but I did like that they filmed it in eastern Europe strictly because American extras looked too well fed to be Civil War soldiers. (I think they used many active duty Rumanian soldiers.)
I have a nightmare that it will come back on as LAW & ORDER: Walnut Grove. They’ll drag out “The case of the raping clown” and “Who burned the Garvey’s barn?” into multi-episode arcs.
Off topic, but I was looking through Melissa Gilbert’s memoir at the bookstore the other night. She mentions that everyone on the set was super nice… except one person. She doesn’t name the person. I know it wasn’t Landon (she was nuts about him until he divorced [kind of hypocritical since she did herself]) and it wasn’t Allison “Nellie” Arngrim (who’s still a close friend), and there’s pictures of her hugging Victor “Mr. Edwards” French and Allison Arngrim has said that Katherine “Mrs. Oleson” McGregor is one of the nicest people on Earth. I wonder who the “except one” is. (Doc Baker, Mr. Oleson, Ma Ingalls, Ms. Beadle… hmm.)
That’s two seasons too late for me. :mad:I mean, the real story of Henry VIII is plenty juicy, so why change it?
Oddly, the otherwise not very historical A Knights Tale, hired real Eastern European peasant-types which made the crowd scenes more realistic than most.
I’ve seen 2 trailers recently for the movie 2012. The trailers have major historical inaccuracies.
This onebegins with “The Mayan Calender predicted it” to a busy moving CGI graphic of the AZTEC calender stone.
This one shows pics of Mayan ruins which it identifies as “Mankind’s Earliest Civilization”. (Uh… yeah… if you discount the Romans- bunch of guys in dresses checking out each other’s butts. And the Greeks- columns, yeah that’s original. And a few dozen Egyptian dynasties- overrated. The Phoenicians- putzes. The Sumerians- how can you take a civilization seriously that has city states with two letter names? The Babylonians- who bases a freaking number system on 60? India- not that important, they gave us curry, big deal. A few thousand years of recorded Chinese history- eh, a bunch of schlemiels. Israel… whoever even heard of it til Charlton Heston started making movies about it?
Other than the cultures with far more advanced literacy systems and incomparably higher technology and architecture who came hundreds and even thousands of years before them, the Mayans were the earliest civilization on Earth. And Nebraska was the first state in the USA.
Make up your mind, darling. Either you believe that the Spaniards were like Muslim fundamentalists, in which case it wouldn’t be insulting but realistic, or you believe that it’s insulting, i.e., that Spaniards weren’t like Muslim fundamentalists.
Oh no. I can call someone a complete idiot dipshit and it could be both insulting and realistic.
The Spaniards were nothing like Muslim fundamentalists. After all, no Muslim fundamentalist country ever exiled its entire Jewish population.