Story in News about MN Prom

[Doc Hudson]

Thanks Nelson, I thought I had read something about it, somewhere or another.

We could all get together and buy it for Doc...

If you do, I'll take it with me when I go visit my pal Dan Staley in Ft. Wayne.

He'll help me set it up in your front yard. :P

[Mike1]

Doc, you are too kind!

[awoodfellow]

as taken from ...

http://www.wallace-manandmyth.org/man_and_myth/

Mel Gibson said about Braveheart: “We adhered to history where we could but hyped it up where the legend let us”.


'brose

[Mike1]

You know the really good thing about Braveheart, in spite of all the historical inaacuracies, is that it inspired a lot of people to investigate their ancestry. A lot of those folks are recognizing their Celtic blood, for the first time in their lives and are checking out places like X Marks and kiltmakers' Web sites, etc. Is this a bad thing?

Mr Gibson used a lot of literay license in Passion of the Christ too, but it brought a lot of non-Christians into the theaters and it made a lot of Christians walk away with a new perspective. From where I stand, every Sunday morning ;), this is a good thing.

Seems to me that both of those movies have accomplished a lot of good.

[macwilkin]

I agree with you to a point, Mike: yes, historical movies do encourage some who see them to do some research, not only into their own families history, but history in general. I make a lot of references to historical movies in my history class because my students can relate to them; I even did an assignment last semester where my students had to do a critical analysis of one of the films about Wyatt Earp and examine if the film followed the documented story, if it used any of the many legends & myths, etc.

The problem lies in the fact that so many people take these movies at face value and do not "follow up", and accept them as Gospel (no pun intended towards Mr. Gibson!) Those of us in the history business, be it teachers, park rangers, museum folks, usually are the ones that have to "clean up" the mess that Hollywood makes of history.

Ft. Smith National Historic Site in Arkansas, btw, has a great exhibit in their Visitor Center which deals with several of the movies made about Ft. Smith and Judge Parker, the "Hanging Judge" -- "True Grit", "Hang 'em High", etc. Rangers at Ft. Smith deal with these movies on an almost daily basis -- and the park service, to their credit, uses these movies as an interpretive "tool" to "reel" people in after they've seen Hollywood's version to get the other side of the story, so to speak.

Cheers,

Todd

[Mike1]

The problem lies in the fact that so many people take these movies at face value and do not "follow up", and accept them as Gospel (no pun intended towards Mr. Gibson!)

As you've pointed out, that's where we come into the picture, to provide the education that is lacking. The good part is that these movies can (and often do) provide us with people that are yearning for more information.

Besides, Blind Harry would have been hard to sell at the ticket office. ;)