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Tuesday, August 04, 2009

Me Grinding an Axe (sorry)

This is Steven Petrick Posting:

I see quite a few movies, within Genre's that appeal to me, but they are often painful to watch. Too often the purported histories are twisted out of "truth". I find that increasingly painful, mostly because I keep running into people, college students, who think that what is shown on the big screen as "history" must be fact.

So students are not aware that Islam came to most of the regions it now holds sway over not by missionaries preaching a faith, but by conquest and forced conversion. By the destruction of the symbols of other faiths, conversion of non-Muslim houses of worship into Muslim houses of worship. North Africa was Christian, so were the Balkans and Turkey, before the coming of the Green Flag. Most of the college kids I meet are convinced that those places simply always were Muslim, even as the Romans and Pharoahs marched around, and that Christians, and Jews, should stay out of them.

Thus I meet college kids who believe that the United States was responsible for training the Japanese Army because that is what "The Last Samurai" taught them.

Thus I meet college kids who believe that the Texicans committed atrocities at San Jacinto, but are utterly unaware that there was even a skirmish at Goliad.

Thus I meet these people who believe the 54th Massachusetts was formed mostly of "escaped slaves" rather than mostly from freemen living in Northern States. (Much less that the Regimental Sergeant Major played by Morgan Freeman, as well as the Lieutenant Colonel played by Cary Elwes, both historically survived the attack on Battery Wagner . . . Most people who see the film believe the regiment was the only unit that attacked Battery Wagner because they will not read the minor text mention at the end, and that the regiment was wiped out to the last man because of the final cannon scene. The film really should have shown something of the regiment's retreat. There was no shame in it, the other regiments involved in the attack also retreated.)

The list of things that are in movies that are just wrong is disturbing at least in part because it is twisting the way people vote, and having a major impact on the future of the country, and not for the best.

That is not to say that I think Hollywood should be turning out "rah rah pro-America propaganda films", but the films that do come from Hollywood should at least be truthful (with the "real truth" and not "a truth" or "the truth as it should be" or any of number of other balderdashisms Hollywood likes to use) about real historical facts and events. Or be more straightforward about their built-in agendas.

If they decide to pretend Israel does not exist, they need to at least be upfront and admit that they did it in hopes of making more money from Muslim countries (which I am pretty sure is the real reason there was no mention of Israel in "Transformers II").