hist

I've just returned from the Edinburgh Festival and think this article from the Guardian is of interest. IMHO no European wants to belittle our role, but I can understand when they resent our claiming deeds we didn't do. Surely there are enough heroic episodes where Americans took part. We don't have to try and steal other people's. <BR> <BR>Novelist condemns Hollywood's yen to rewrite history as cultural imperialism <BR> <BR>Fiachra Gibbons, arts correspondent <BR>Guardian <BR> <BR>Monday August 20, 2001 <BR> <BR> <BR>The novelist Robert Harris yesterday hit out at the "cultural imperialism" and "sheer stupidity" of Hollywood films which reduce world-changing events to "slushy romances". <BR> <BR>Harris, whose own thriller Enigma, about the code breakers of Bletchley Park during the second world war, has now been turned into a film starring Kate Winslet, Dougray Scott and Saffron Burrows, said the American reflex to rewrite history so they "always came out top" had become so deluded it was now dangerous. <BR> <BR>"It's a form of cultural imperialism. No matter what the situation, or where the film is supposed to be set, an American has to be central, to be seen as the good guy, or to save the day in some way," Harris said. "This domination of the popular imagination has been allowed to go to ridiculous lengths. What worries me most is that it has become an almost instinctive reaction now, so you have British and European films incorporating these pointless American elements now too. That is very worrying and quite dangerous." <BR> <BR>His fears were echoed at the Edinburgh book festival by the US novelist and screenwriter Gore Vidal, who said the twin American desire to "dominate and to be seen as entirely innocent at the same time... had led to the casual disregard of history and all its lessons. We now see ourselves as the one indispensable nation". <BR> <BR>Their attacks follow furores over big budget Hollywood movies which have taken liberties with history, including U-571, which had the Americans rescuing an Enigma machine from a sinking U-boat, when it was the Royal Navy which pulled off the coup. <BR> <BR>The capture of the machine which the Germans used to encode their messages was one of the turning points of the war, allowing the "boffins of Bletchley", led by Alan Turing, to read communications. <BR> <BR>Harris said his book Fatherland was a victim of Hollywood dumbing down. But he added that he was delighted with the way the playwright Tom Stoppard had adapted Enigma. "Fatherland was supposed to be an all-singing, all-dancing number until the studio bosses consulted the target audience, 16- to 21-year-old Americans, and discovered that they didn't even know there had been a second world war let alone who had won it," said Harris. "Enigma is different, thankfully, it takes no prisoners in that way, it is very British, and it is also quite intellectually demanding for a mainstream movie." <BR> <BR>

Brit

To Hist: <BR>I take my hat off to you sir (or madam), for your comments on this and the other Madonna thread. You are, in my humble opinion, both sagacious and wise. <BR> <BR>

Capo

Great post...thank, hist. <BR> <BR>I'm sure that more than a few Hollywood folks churning out movies for mass consumption feel little responsibility to be historically accurate. I bet they'd claim that their movies are meant to entertain, not inform.

Bert

Wrong! The Enigma machine was captured by the Poles early in the War and smuggled into England.

Buffy

I do believe the Hollywood Film Factory churns out movies to appeal to the mass audience. More Americans go to the movies so they think American heroes will sell more tics. It is a matter of money not facts. If you want facts limit your viewing to documentaries.

Capo

Consider the power of Hollywood... <BR> <BR>Has any other country besides the United States had a former Hollywood actor as its head of state for eight years? <BR> <BR>I disagreed with Reagan's politics but the first time I saw him give a news conference I could understand why this guy was so popular: he was a good actor starring in the role of his life.

Steve Mueller

<BR>For Harris to be irritated, or even offended, is understandable, but to describe this tendency as "dangerous" suggests a substantial mental deficit. Harris' obvious distortion of the language suggests a greater degree of "sheer stupidity" than Hollywood's alleged distortion of the facts. <BR> <BR>To set the record straight, more than a single Enigma machine was captured by the Allies during WWII. The British captured the first in 1941, but the American Navy also captured an Enigma machine from U-505 near the Azores. So the Hollywood version is not completely fabricated. <BR> <BR>Frankly, I find the marginal distortion of historical events for entertainment purposes less insidious than the dramatic official distortions of historic events intended to minimize complicity. According to most French accounts, it would seem that 100% of the population of wartime France were resistance fighters. So, then, who were those people in the Vichy government and who deported nearly 100,000 French Jews to extermination camps? Polish survivors of WWII erected a monument to 2000 Jews massacred at Jedwabne, despite the fact that it was local residents, and not German troops, that were responsible for the slaughter. Many Japanese adamantly maintain that WWII was something inflicted upon them. Is Harris offended by these genuine distortions of history? Apparently not.

Semper simple

Hollywood is out of control, which is why the BEST American films aren't made there anymore. But Europeans might not know that, since Hollywood is such an aggressive exporter. <BR> <BR>Hollywood has stopped experimenting and just repeats "surefire" (pun intended) plots and topics, largely action and simple-minded machismo-themed that could have been made in the 1950s had we had computer-driven special effects then. One of the reasons this works is not only that the target audience is 14-35- yrs. males but ALSO that those males can be either American or of any foreign country. Violence, car chases, explosions, etc. do not need translation, and foreign audiences (including Europe, Asia, and Latin America) never seem to get enough. <BR> <BR>I hated Reagan and his political descendents, but I also hate to think about the 20-some percent of the voting population who actually vote for these people (only 40 percent vote, and all it takes is 50.0001% of them to elect -- not even that if the electoral college system has been skillfully manipulated). <BR> <BR>I will defend much of what is best about America -- and Europeans who dismiss that risk ignorance themselves -- but I am horrified at what the legacy of local control of education has wrought. <BR> <BR>Question: is it impossible to be a true, pure democracy and still have elite-level education as a universal goal? How can the anti-intellectualism that defines American politics be overcome? <BR> <BR>The only way I can see that US schools can be guaranteed to improve if there are nationally enforced standards and if students are expected to compete to excel. But anti-federalism is a core value in current conservative politics, and there is such suspicion and antagonism toward the academically gifted and the well-educated that it doesn't seem possible that Americans will rally to improve their education. <BR> <BR>We know how to make and market widgets. We don't know the history, use, or ecological consequences of the widgets. <BR> <BR>Correction: some of us do, quite well. But we are shouted down when policy is to be made.

Capo

Steve, Re: "Frankly, I find the marginal distortion of historical events for entertainment purposes less insidious than the dramatic official distortions of historic events intended to minimize complicity." <BR> <BR>Excellent point. <BR> <BR>The United States, of course, is guilty of dramatic official distortions of historic events too (after all, it's been said that history is written by the winners.) Just one example: the so-called Mexican War which was basically an egregious United States land grab, justified under the concept of "Manifest Destiny" (i.e. it was America's destiny to reach from sea to sea, even if it involved taking half of Mexico's existing territory.) <BR> <BR>No less a person than General Ulysses S. Grant called the "Mexican War" "the most unjust war ever undertaken by a stronger nation against a weaker one." <BR> <BR> <BR>Semper simple, excellent comments as well.

Buffy

How many of us are guilty of seeing the watered-down versions of wonderful foreign movies that the USA makes? <BR>We are all a part of the whole....

nancy

Darn, <BR>for a minute I thought this was a variation on the Monty Python / Fawlty towers theme going on a bit ago. <BR>Basil keeps telling everyone <BR>"remember, don't mention the WAR" in the episode with the germans at his hotel. <BR>Sorry, did not mean to make light. but that was the first thing that popped into my mind

James

Interesting that those comments came from an Englishman. The English like to believe that they won WWII all by the themselves, and that the Americans really didn't have anything to do with it. <BR> <BR>This is the same country with many statues erected to honor Oliver Cromwell. <BR> <BR>Same country which instructed its soldiers to shoot everyone present at a peaceful rally in India while it was a colony. These people, all murdered, were professors, poets, writers, intellectuals--all peace lovers who simply wanted their voices to be heard. <BR> <BR>The English also maintain that they acted quickly and with humanity during the Potato Famine in Ireland. In reality, even though the potato crop failed for several years in a row, there was more than enough food in the country to feed everyone in Ireland. Where did it all go? To England. The English also sponsored many ships to take the Irish to America. Was this out of kindness? No, this was simply to get rid of "the beasts" as the Irish were called. And, luckily enough for the English, some 30-50% of the people who sailed on these coffin ships died before reaching America. <BR> <BR>If you don't believe me, check out a British history text sometime.