One of the things that piss me off more than anything when I watching a movie or a TV show is when there is a blatant and unnecessary historical inaccuracy that is just put in there to make the story more politically correct or to dumb it down for the casual viewer.
Just the other day we were watching a stupid Without a Trace where they go to question a suspect at a civil war reenactment camp at Gettysburg. One of the characters who is playing a reenactor states that the Confederate could not stand up to the tactics of Ulysses S. Grant. Now any fucking idiot knows that Grant was not at Gettysburg. He was commanding in the West at the time. Everyone knows this and a reenactor who goes to the trouble of wearing clothing woven by hand would never make such a mistake. So I am yelling at the screen per usual and my wife keeps telling me to calm down. Man I hate that.
Today blake was talking about the movie The Patriot in which Mel Gibson basically plays Francis Marion the Swamp Fox who led a Guerrilla war against the British regulars who were led by Colonel Banastre Tarleton. The war in the South between the loyalists and the rebels was savage and very similar to fighting in the civil war between irregulars led by Quantril and Bloody Bill Anderson than a genteel reel between forces arrayed in white powdered wigs. It was a dirty war and Gibson’s movie only scratched the surface of it. Marion was a natural leader in the mode of John Brown or Quantril and he shrunk from telling the real savage story. Hangings, burning and murder were par for the course on both sides. One person who was swept up in the whirlwind was future President Andrew Jackson whose brother was killed and who was scarred for life with wounds from some of Taeltons men. There were savage atrocities on both sides which continued right up to the siege of Yorktown. You see the Brits considered the rebels traitors and terrorists and though waterboarding was throwing a suspected patriot down a well.
There was a TV show covering the same period called the Swamp Fox starring Leslie Nielsen of all people as Francis Marion. It was made by Disney and was meant to be a sort of spin off of the Davey Crockett experience. A rival series about Daniel Boone starring Fess Parker succeeded covering the same period and the Swamp Fox series never took off. I remember it as a lot of fun though.
Mel Gibson took a lot of the story and changed the details. Of course he cleaned it up. Marion was a killer and a stone racist plantation owner as well who thought nothing of whipping a slave to death. No one will ever have the balls to tell the whole story about people like that. You can be a very effective soldier, a leader, even a hero but still be a racist murderer. Portraying that on the screen is beyond the scope of the feeble talents of most people in the movies today.
It’s a shame John Ford is gone. Or Kurosawa. Or Griffith. Only those three might have a chance to do it right.
Just the other day we were watching a stupid Without a Trace where they go to question a suspect at a civil war reenactment camp at Gettysburg. One of the characters who is playing a reenactor states that the Confederate could not stand up to the tactics of Ulysses S. Grant. Now any fucking idiot knows that Grant was not at Gettysburg. He was commanding in the West at the time. Everyone knows this and a reenactor who goes to the trouble of wearing clothing woven by hand would never make such a mistake. So I am yelling at the screen per usual and my wife keeps telling me to calm down. Man I hate that.
Today blake was talking about the movie The Patriot in which Mel Gibson basically plays Francis Marion the Swamp Fox who led a Guerrilla war against the British regulars who were led by Colonel Banastre Tarleton. The war in the South between the loyalists and the rebels was savage and very similar to fighting in the civil war between irregulars led by Quantril and Bloody Bill Anderson than a genteel reel between forces arrayed in white powdered wigs. It was a dirty war and Gibson’s movie only scratched the surface of it. Marion was a natural leader in the mode of John Brown or Quantril and he shrunk from telling the real savage story. Hangings, burning and murder were par for the course on both sides. One person who was swept up in the whirlwind was future President Andrew Jackson whose brother was killed and who was scarred for life with wounds from some of Taeltons men. There were savage atrocities on both sides which continued right up to the siege of Yorktown. You see the Brits considered the rebels traitors and terrorists and though waterboarding was throwing a suspected patriot down a well.
There was a TV show covering the same period called the Swamp Fox starring Leslie Nielsen of all people as Francis Marion. It was made by Disney and was meant to be a sort of spin off of the Davey Crockett experience. A rival series about Daniel Boone starring Fess Parker succeeded covering the same period and the Swamp Fox series never took off. I remember it as a lot of fun though.
Mel Gibson took a lot of the story and changed the details. Of course he cleaned it up. Marion was a killer and a stone racist plantation owner as well who thought nothing of whipping a slave to death. No one will ever have the balls to tell the whole story about people like that. You can be a very effective soldier, a leader, even a hero but still be a racist murderer. Portraying that on the screen is beyond the scope of the feeble talents of most people in the movies today.
It’s a shame John Ford is gone. Or Kurosawa. Or Griffith. Only those three might have a chance to do it right.
1 comment:
Ed Harris, maybe.
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