June 21, 2000

Already the screeching has started over Mel Gibson's latest attempt at a new Braveheart-esque historical epic. Now I like Mel Gibson and I usually like his movies. Ignoring their historical inaccuracy is a bit tougher for me than for people who don't play historical boardgames for fun, but I'm generally so glad to see Hollywood attempt to portray history as something other than the high-school torture most people view it as that I can forgive quite a bit of artistic license.

Some of the objections to The Patriot, though, seem ridiculously contradictory. On the one hand, busybodies have whimpered over the fact that—gasp—a movie about the American Revolution depicts kids shooting British redcoats. On the other, an article at the Internet Movie Database (great site) expresses concern over the movie's remolding of the main character, who may have been a good deal less wholesome than Mel Gibson portrays him. Apparently historical inaccuracy matters only when it offends left-wing sensibilities. And, on the flip side, it's perfectly okay to mangle history as long as the sanitizing runs to the left. (Remember when the Postal Service edited out a cigarette from the hand of a WWII aviator for their new stamp?)

Now I wouldn't want to watch a movie about the real "Benjamin Martin" (the movie's name for Francis Marion, known to the British as the "Swamp Fox")—that's how nasty he was. But IMDB sure didn't seem to care about the massive inaccuracies in the lefty movie Erin Brockovich, which conveniently omitted the facts that Brockovich and her co-sharks haven't paid very much money out of the $300 million they extorted from Pacific Gas & Electric to the alleged victims whose names and stories they used to get the swag, not to mention the utter lack of scientific evidence supporting the dangers of ingested chromium. Even the EPA doesn't have a single study suggesting that ingested chromium causes any of the health problems depicted in the movie. But so what? Artistic license. Fine. As long as it's for a sufficiently feel-good cause.

Oh well. I'll still go to the theater and pony up my $5 for the movies. Until they make the inevitable Mumia Abu-Jamal movie, that is.

Ananda