Historical Accuracy?... In Hollywood?... Yeah right....

     The relationship of history and Hollywood, as Glassberg mentions, is complicated and much more based in profit than accuracy.  Toplin critiques the critics of cinematic history, wanting to place the fictionalization of characters and timelines in the context of cinema as a genre.  Davis argues that history told through film should also be told through a book in order to remain closer to the factual information, and allow readers to know the holes in the historical record, and plausible conjectures in accordance with contemporary society.  Frisch also deals with a war documentary, like Glassberg, but Vietnam was still alive in living memory, unlike the Civil War.  All of these readings have both positive and negative things to say about the adaptations of history in the media.

     I thoroughly enjoyed Glassberg’s look at the letters Burns received about his Civil War documentary.  The interesting divide between the letter writers consists of a regional difference along gender lines.  The fact that most women who wrote to him were from the North, and most of the men from the South is an interesting way to look at how America reacted to this representation of the Civil War.  The largest criticism seemed to be the glossing over of slavery, including the reasons for actually fighting the Civil War.

     The overly critical historians whom are dissatisfied with historical representations in film should consider the points that Toplin and Davis make about the limitations of film and providing history to a general audience.  Simplifying timelines, and focusing more on character development than events are necessities for translating history to the screen.  Unfortunately this means that romanticized affairs and misrepresentations of village life create collateral damage of actual relationships and social strata from that time period.  For some reason, movie directors seemed to think that the public cannot handle accurate interpretations of “foreign,” bygone eras, and will not be able to figure out the motivations of a wife claiming an imposter as a husband unless they injected feelings of love.

     While I admit that I do not give the general public much credit when it comes to understanding cultures from the past, maybe movie directors should give their audience a chance.  Although documentaries are not as lucrative as box-office movies, movies do not have to sacrifice exciting story lines in order to portray historical characters in a complicated, and realistic light.  Whether dealing with war, or with legal history, there are considerations that have to be made when critiquing historical films due to the medium of communication.