Should Hollywood teach history?

[Flying Pig]

That sort of thing is very easy to spin - it doesn't take long for people to start hearing 'Polish concentration camps' and for that to become 'Poland took part in the Holocaust', 'Poland was equally to blame for the Holocaust', and 'the Holocaust wasn't entirely the Germans' fault'.

I know that there's nothing in the language itself to make that happen, but it's the sort of unintended but predictable implication - a bit like taking the lack of Armenian genocide in The Water Diviner as a sign that it wasn't all that important, or all that bad, or even as giving support to people who say that it didn't happen at all - that we ought to take responsibility for.

There's a historian called Guy Halsall, whose work on the barbarian migrations of the 5th and 6th centuries is passed around here fairly regularly, and who even popped in at one point to post in a thread. He keeps a blog, and one recurring theme is the historian's responsibility to society. I'll quote his view on the matter, for discussion:

It is simply not good enough to disclaim any responsibility for the use made of one’s words, as an excuse for lazy thinking and lazier writing in the discussion of politically sensitive, current issues like, oh, ... say (for the sake of argument), immigration. One hard-of-thinking possessor of a D.Phil accused me (in an offensive message) of having a ‘shallow’ understanding of history because I didn’t appreciate (or accept) that how someone uses your words is independent of what you write. One might call this the philosophically-uneducated man’s post-modernism because it shows absolutely no understanding of the issue at all. This kind of lazy get-out-of-jail-free card – or, as I would rather call it, this kind of complacent, elitist, sophist dim-wittery – just won’t wash. All readings are not equal (and, as far as I am aware, neither the terribly-maligned Derrida nor any of the other continental philosophers regularly blamed for the idea ever said they were). At one extreme, no guilt can be laid on an author for a clearly forced reading with little or no regard to the text itself; but when, at the other extreme, one can interpret one’s words (whether or not the author agrees) via a more or less straightforward retelling, then – whatever you believe – you have responsibility for not being able or willing to think more carefully and responsibly about the composition of your text. Taking (ironically given the usually avowed contempt for what they call ‘post-modernism&#8217 the relativist line that anyone can read your text any way they like might enable you to quaff your free port at Saint Frithfroth’s high table with a clear conscience the next time someone, drawing their motivation from a matrix of ideas and attitudes to which you have - however unwittingly and in however small a way - contributed, fire-bombs an immigrant hostel or guns down an island-full of Norwegian children in the name of the defence of Europe, but it cuts no ice around here.

 

[r16]

However, one line from it is worth bringing out:

"The Water Diviner, filmed partly in Turkey and produced with the co-operation of the Turkish government, paints the Greeks as barbaric invaders. That, of course, plays to Turkish nationalist mythology. But it is certainly true that the Greeks invaded Anatolia in the wake of the Great War and that atrocities were committed (on both sides, though the film portrays them as being one-sided). The Greek troops are dressed and act as murderous banditti, not as Evzones, who wore a khaki military uniform and who operated as formed military units. Some Greek troops did operate as banditti, as depicted in the film, but the film-makers have basically reflected a Turkish view of the Greek invasion."


A more often-raised criticism of the film is that it does not mention anything of the Armenian Genocide, despite being released on the 100th anniversary of the Turkish government's order to commit it. You might fairly say that the plot doesn't demand it, but somebody wrote that plot. We usually rightly complain when writers create stories making heroes of Nazi soldiers without mentioning the Holocaust, or of Confederates without mentioning slavery. We've seen right here on CFC that many people have no context for this film, and can hardly expect most of them to go and look up the details of Ottoman history after seeing it.

ı have seen quite a few Turkish war films myself , and actually my only "command" ever has been the case when ı was a 11 years old kid on holiday leading a charge of 8 to 10 years , possibly on street cats , after watching the "epic" on the Korean War . It took me some 5 minutes , when ı saw parts of the Water Diviner on TV , to understand those were Greeks . Considering in every single movie they wore uniforms , practically the same with ours but the cap oriented Forward-Behind , instead of ours' Left-Right. ı also imagined they had captured the artillery piece from some Turkish Army depot . ı also believe the train driver they killed would quite likely be a Greek himself , but can't tell from the glimpses . The Greek "bandits" were possibly never portrayed in Turkish movies ; or since everybody was talking Turkish anyhow ı would assume them to be traitors to country .

hollywood needs a White and Black story to sell the hero of the movie as an uncomprimising idealist that can never fail . There are other sorts of movies where the heroes fail , but whatever . ı only shudder how we would have been depicted if the story involved looking for a lost son in Greece .

armenian issue on the other hand is a never ending source and ı think we will have to force it throughly to be discussed "properly" . Yes , the Water Diviner could have mentioned the problems but then how could Russell Crowe could ever talk to Turkish officers ?

 

[warpus]

By the way, Polish doesn't necessarily mean 'operated by Poland': it could simply mean 'located in Poland'. Which would seem to be the obvious interpretation.

The proper nomenclature is "Nazi concentration camps in Poland" or "German concentration camps in Poland". "Polish camps" would imply that they were in some way operated by the Polish authorities - and that is in fact how a lot of people were interpreting it.

Anyhow, like I said, if that was the complaint, I'm on board with it. If it's the denying of random Polish citizens being dicks, that's a stupid complaint, as that stuff is well documented (I thought).

 

[Frank Sobotka]

All I know is I would like to see more historical epics like the Kingdom of Heaven. Now to say it is in anyway accurate, is something I would never expect Hollywood would do. But hell, it would be best for the health of our mass culture to siphon all of that funds and energy away from those crappy superhero movies and place it where it really deserve.

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[Flying Pig]

I've always had a soft spot for A Bridge too Far - epic (perhaps too much so) in scope, and scrupulously accurate in its history. It turns out that sometimes, the truth does happen to make a good story.

 

[Cutlass]

I've always had a soft spot for A Bridge too Far - epic (perhaps too much so) in scope, and scrupulously accurate in its history. It turns out that sometimes, the truth does happen to make a good story.

That's the problem. Telling a good story is the first priority of the fiction filmmaker. And while there are many things in history which makes good stories, boiling them down to a 2 hour good story is not necessarily an easy thing to do.

 

[Flying Pig]

The film-maker does have the luxury of cutting, though, both in deciding which scenes to omit and in where to begin and finish the story. It doesn't matter too much if what really happened is complicated and messy, or ends on an anticlimax, because you can play around with things to make a story which might not be everything that happened, but is still essentially accurate. I'd bring up films like Jarhead or Fury, which are set during the Gulf War and the Second World War respectively, and acknowledge the relevant historical details, but don't actually feature many of the great 'historical' events - in other words, it doesn't particularly matter if the story of the invasion of Iraq isn't naturally suited for cinema, because the film doesn't try to tell that story.

 

[Kyriakos]

An issue is that Crowe convinced himself that he is presenting a truth. Imagine the main actors of 300 claiming that "up to now we weren't being told the reality, that persians were deformed golems" etc

Anyway, r16 put it better in the other thread, when he noted that it took him '5 min to realise those were greeks', given the presentation is outside of any reality.

 

[r16]

in a similar vein whenever ı see a depiction of William Wallace , ı immediately think he is some English swordsman , with the mail and helmet . Even when being a wannabe historian with a trace of the integrity stuff that one is supposed to have to study history . when the Braveheart came out our Literature teacher was a young woman and as would-be-English-Language teachers we were advised that movies improved speaking abilities . There was indeed a discussion at class and it turned out ı was the only one to notice Wallace burned York . Nobody paid much attention to it , now that the English murdered his wife , on dishonourable grounds that went against the grain of a man ... While the Court in London was proven to be unmanly right at the same time . ı remember the teacher was hurt ; possibly because she had enjoyed the movie . While am always a sore loser ; my kind of movie has to always end good .

good movies tend to need a clear definition between good and evil , so that we will enjoy the spectacle and come back next week for the next movie .

 

[r16]

Fury

which ı just saw on a DVD channel . Especially the fight against the Tiger which somehow feels a need to drive out of its lair so that the sides can race headlong on each other so that the superior mobility of the Sherman can be combined with the rather low turning speed of the Tiger turret to result in a hard won kill for the Fury . All historical facts but most unlikely to have ever happened in the sense depicted . Brad Pitt would immediately order driving back and would call on the 9th Airforce . Or artillery fire to knock out German Machine gun teams and if all that failed he would spend a whole day to get behind the Tiger . Single Tigers stopped entire Allied armoured divisions for like 24 hours , but certainly not by playing chicken with Shermans . It's just the translation of the Dogfight cliche where the good guy throttles down and pops the speed brake and the pursuing enemy ends up in front in the climb . Just movie stuff that looks good .

 

[Flying Pig]

An issue is that Crowe convinced himself that he is presenting a truth. Imagine the main actors of 300 claiming that "up to now we weren't being told the reality, that persians were deformed golems" etc

Anyway, r16 put it better in the other thread, when he noted that it took him '5 min to realise those were greeks', given the presentation is outside of any reality.

In the other thread, though, we realised that a lot of people don't have a benchmark for 'reality' - that they're coming across the whole idea of Gallipoli, and even the Ottoman Empire, for the first time when they see it on screen.

 

[Kyriakos]

In the other thread, though, we realised that a lot of people don't have a benchmark for 'reality' - that they're coming across the whole idea of Gallipoli, and even the Ottoman Empire, for the first time when they see it on screen.

Which, coupled with the fact this is a film about quite recent history, rather makes the end result of the one-sided and non-truthful presentation even more problematic.

Anyway, it is a movie. I am sure it is not the first one that has such issues, even on relatively recent past. Yet i was very surprised to see those bandit-rambo people representing the marching greek army in Asia Minor

Irregular units would function, but not in the front, obviously. There would be some in the Pontic Republic, but that is nowhere near central Anatolia. The army marching was regular army, with artillery and cavalry and supply lines and tried to cover a vast region.

 

[Dachs]

Anyway, it is a movie. I am sure it is not the first one that has such issues, even on relatively recent past. Yet i was very surprised to see those bandit-rambo people representing the marching greek army in Asia Minor

Irregular units would function, but not in the front, obviously. There would be some in the Pontic Republic, but that is nowhere near central Anatolia. The army marching was regular army, with artillery and cavalry and supply lines and tried to cover a vast region.

Greek irregular units fought on all parts of the front in 1919-23. In the northeast, there were few regular forces and many irregulars, but in the west and in central Anatolia there were still well over ten thousand of them. Which is still not that much compared to the hundreds of thousands of Greek regulars in the area, but they still absolutely existed.

The distinction perhaps isn't that relevant, though, because the Greek regulars were more than willing to commit horrifying atrocities all on their own.

 

[Kyriakos]

Greek irregular units fought on all parts of the front in 1919-23. In the northeast, there were few regular forces and many irregulars, but in the west and in central Anatolia there were still well over ten thousand of them. Which is still not that much compared to the hundreds of thousands of Greek regulars in the area, but they still absolutely existed.

The distinction perhaps isn't that relevant, though, because the Greek regulars were more than willing to commit horrifying atrocities all on their own.

To their defence, they were fans of US history so sometimes a corrupt idol pushes you to do stuff you don't really intent to

I apologise for the greek army's genocides of ionian greeks, pontic greeks, assyrians, armenians and all the others, Daχs; are you not entertained?

 

[Flying Pig]

I suppose it's a reminder that there are rarely clear-cut 'good guys' and 'bad guys' - which makes telling the story in those terms, as nearly all films do, at best a little bit dishonest. I've seen it done with no obviously 'evil' side, though that runs into the problem we had above - the series Band of Brothers, for example, is set during the war and generally takes the side of a company of American paratroopers. However, the Germans they fight are never evil (except as implied through the showing of a concentration camp), and their own side shoot prisoners at least once. I can't think of one which doesn't have a 'good' side, though. That wouldn't make for a good story.

 

[r16]

and that Captain apparently was a regular in shooting people ...

 

[REDY]

My subtext was that the methods of enforcing a responsibility are fairly perverse and highly political (as is inevitably the case when speaking of a 'correct' view of history). That calls into question the desirability of thrusting any sort of responsibility onto filmmakers. The Hungarian government is probably the best example of this, although I haven't heard of them specifically entering the field of films. Orban has made a concerted effort to whitewash the post-Trianon past and demonise the Communist past, and this has played into the revanchism and xenophobia sweeping that country. The government has funded propaganda museums with borderline Holocaust-denying messages, because this is what it views as the 'correct' take on Hungarian history (whether it actually believes that, or is merely using the narrative for political gain against the ex-Communist opposition, is another question).

If such things happen, they are quite contradicting to recent Hungarian movie Son of Saul, which was largely financed and propagated by state and is one of most disturbing strong movies about Holocaust ever.

 

[Spartan_X]

No, I don't think that Hollywood has to teach history. That isn't the purpose after all. But it would be nice if at least it could give the incentive - to young people especially - to learn history.

 

[Flying Pig]

What sort of incentives are you thinking of?

 

[Samez]

As the US military has the right to/does alter movie scripts if the movies wants to use it's equipment (a kind of positive censorship) Hollywood should in no way teach (modern)history.
Usually the US military takes care that the forces are depicted in a positive way (no shooting of innocents and so on).
An example for a historical movie without military support is Thirteen Days, which had some trouble getting enough material as the filmmakers refused to picture the military in a more positive way. They had to resort to Philippine F8s as placeholders for US planes.