Well, I hope that’s true. LBJ gets a bad rap (and rightly so) for the mess of Veitnam and sometimes that spoils his entire presidency. But the fact is, he played a HUGE role in getting legislation through Congress. MLK was a hero, for sure, for raising the consciousness of the nation, but it takes more than consciousness raising to get Legislation passed, and that’s where LBJ came in.
At any rate, I suspect people are making a mountain over what amounts to a cinematic mole hill in terms of screen time, but still… the best way to avoid criticism of historical inaccuracy in your historical film is to not include historical inaccuracies in your historical film.
n.b.: I’m not trying to diminish what MLK did, because he was a Gandhi-like figure. And I hate to make it sound like “it took the white man to save the black man”, but back in 1960, “the black man” had little, if any power to affect change at the Congressional level. It’s not so much that LBJ was white, but that he was a president who made civil rights a very high priority.
Inglorious Basterds admits from the get-go that it’s nothing but a fairy tale, no more an accurate representation of history than* Xena: Warrior Princess*. Selma makes no such admission. Given people’s unfortunate tendency to assume that biopics are, you know, factual, the misrepresentation of LBJ’s attitude and actions is egregiously dishonest.
That role is clearly shown in the movie. In fact, if his importance hadn’t been central to the plot, the story wouldn’t have worked at all.
In the film, MLK uses Selma to raise awareness and generate the public support necessary for Civil Rights legislation to pass. Because he needs LBJ to create that legislation–and LBJ is initially interested in his own pet project–he has to use his own political savvy to influence the president’s hand to get what he wants.
This is not a story about good and evil. I think the movie does a solid job of showing humans who acted like most people act–one way in front of the cameras, other way in secret, but who ultimately trying to do what they think is right. For the sake of storytelling, I can accept a little license. For instance, the fighting within SNCC was clearly exaggerated. Didn’t cause me to lose sleep because the movie is not a documentary and character tension is a useful device when making an interesting story.
There were a decent number of white people shown positively in the film. Can’t say I cared enough to track their accents, but I didn’t leave the theater thinking southern accent = evil.
Good catch you! I haven’t seen it yet because it’s only playing in 2 theaters in Chicago, neither easy for me to get to after work, and they’re expensive. It opens wider tomorrow and will be playing at a theater I attend often for after-work matinees and Discount night (Century Evanston, Tuesdays, all showings $5.75!).
He was pro-Civil Rights but like a lot of people at the time, very distrustful of Martin Luther King for a variety of reasons and did authorize Hoover’s wiretapping of King though he despised Hoover.
He was also extremely arrogant, always convinced he was the smartest guy in the room and tended to believe that disagreeing with him was a sign of evil or stupidity.
One of the sayings about him and his brother was that John was the first Irish Brahmin while he was the first Irish Puritan.
For what it’s worth, so was Jon Stewart. He said that, having read of the controversy, he was expecting LBJ to be portrayed as a villain. But then, seeing the film, he said that LBJ was “in no way” treated as a villain. Stewart actually used the word “baffled” to describe his own reaction to the controversy.
Thanks for posting this, as it sadly reveals how shallow a lot of the criticisms have been toward this movie. I also have to agree with this opinion, from Sherrilyn Ifill:
It’s almost as if people want this to be another Lincoln and are disappointed that LBJ came across as more conflicted than Abe did. But that is an immature reaction. MLK would probably have annoyed me too if I were in LBJ’s position. And I think that is what the movie helps the viewer to see. By presenting the president’s perspective in an understandable way, the viewer is reminded that fundamentally LBJ was a politician not a revolutionary.
For what it’s worth, my fiancé is a historian who teaches courses centered on the civil rights era and he loved the movie.
I read the article and it refutes none of the accuracy issues of the critics. It’s more along the same line “Why does it matter we’re telling a story!” and “Hey now, we’re not saying this is accurate history, but it’s truthy enough for movie” and of course “This is all old white guy anger because we didn’t make LBJ a hero”.
The issue here is this was such a dramatic story on it’s own, and the events are near term history, and extensively documented WHY step on your dick and make up a conflated, inaccurate narrative that turns your movie into an “homage” to history that people are forced to defend by referencing “Inglourious Basterds”.
Interesting you bring up Lincoln, as it had glaring inaccuracies as well. I’d prefer Selma wasn’t another Lincoln! I’d prefer historical dramas get as many facts right as possible, especially the ones that don’t affect the main plot (such as the ones in Lincoln). Sad to say, people DO get their facts from movies.
Rubbish. Which substantive criticism does it not address? Name one.
More rubbish, which makes me doubt you read the article. Combined with not seeing the movie, that makes you extra ignorant about the subject of your complaint.
That’s nice. I suggest using your own brain when drawing conclusions about what is accurate or not, rather than using the op-eds of people with their own biases and knowledge gaps. Richard Cohen, for instance, is one of the critics that has complained against Selma’s portrayal of Johnson, but it’s obvious to me he has zero credibility when it comes to historical fact. After all, it took him seeing 12 Years a Slave to realize that slavery was not the benevolent, good-time-having institution he thought it’d been. Perhaps those who have jumped on the hate Selma bandwagon should take this as clue that they need to see the film themselves before parroting anyone else’s opinion.
I haven’t seen the movie so I’m not going to opine on the “smears LBJ as an outright villain” question. But based on reports it seems to be fact, not opinion, that the movie takes Robert Kennedy’s action of directing the FBI to surveil MLK, and attributes it to LBJ.
I find this annoying because it’s difficult to understand it as anything other than pandering to shallow biases. Specifically: that handsome glamorous Kennedys can do no wrong, and that ugly old Deep-South-accented pols MUST be bad people.
Now, I haven’t seen the movie yet, but from what I’ve read, the main act of outright villany allegedly attributed to LBJ was sicking the FBI into making sex tapes to blackmail him (or at least, LBJ approving of this use). The article itself calls this the issue that has “most riled” critics.
The article cited addresses it as follows:
This simply isn’t a refutation of the claim made by the critics.
‘Passing the tapes to a Johnson aide’ does not equal ‘Johnson sicked the FBI on King’, or even ‘Johnson approved what the FBI was doing’.
If this is the only evidence of LBJ’s involvement in the tapes (and I’m not claiminig it is - it is the only one cited in the article, though), it is weaksauce - a second-hand account that the materials were passed to an LBJ aide, with a second-hand account that this aide approved of turning the materials over to the press. It does not go anywhere to prove LBJ’s involvement.
Assuming that, in fact, the movie portrays LBJ approving of that dispicable tactic (and again, haven’t seen the film so I can’t say), seems to me that, based on the article, the charge that the movie falsely claims LBJ was a villian has teeth.
Well, that’s nice, too. The trouble is, I wasn’t there. I may not know what the facts actually were. I may not even know I should check them.
But I wasn’t deriding Selma. I haven’t seen it. But I stand by my comment that historical movies should strive to be accurate in their non-critical details, and as accurate as possible when facts must be changed to support the story.
In Lincoln, for example, the movie had the Connecticut congressmen vote against the amendment, when in fact they voted for it. Why change that? I don’t think the CT people even were mentioned by name in the film, let alone do anything that would cause the actual facts to need to be changed for “art”.
In The King’s Speech, a lot of little details were changed, characters omitted, time compressed. Maybe those could be allowed under “better storytelling”, but having Churchill’s opinion of Edward be 180 degrees off of what it really was is a lot like the critics are saying Selma’s portrayal of LBJ was. Why must they do that?
And in Inglourious Basterds, having (Spoiler alert!) Hitler be killed and the war end differently doesn’t bother me, but i still want the German uniforms to be correct.
The following facts are not in dispute though: 1) the FBI monitored and taped MLK during Johnson’s administration, 2) Johnson was aware of this, and 3) he allowed it to happen. Johnson and Hoover were in fact very close friends, so it strains credibility that he wouldn’t have known and tacitly blessed his conduct toward King. So yes, we should assume he approved of what the FBI was doing in the absence of proof that he denied otherwise.
It’s valid to point out that Johnson did not, in fact, sic the FBI on MLK with the explicit goal of hurting his cause. But to act as if this fact fudgery was a beyond-the-pale affront to LBJ’s legacy? Such melodramatic theatrics belong only in Broadway. As POTUS, he was ultimately responsible for anything the FBI did that he didn’t expressly forbid. Acting as though Johnson was completely blameless in how the FBI treated MLK’s privacy is more disturbing than the opposite.
Weak sauce is what I’d call the inordinate focus on this detail. Perhaps if there was a was any doubt that the FBI actually, in fact, harassed MLK while Johnson was president, I’d assign more value to this complaint. But that’s not even in dispute. The best we can say that Johnson is only indirectly responsible for the FBI’s conduct, and since that pretty much disqualifies him from sainthood, all the hurt feelings about it only look shrill and hysterical.
TDLR: RFK might’ve sicked Hoover on MLK, but it happened on LBJ’s watch. So he carries a lot of that hot potato, sorry.
Not in this context. I think you know what I’m asking. Are any white Southerners portrayed in a positive light?