When will we see a more accurate filmization of the Scopes Trial?
-
efs2 — 14 years ago(October 17, 2011 02:26 PM)
Inherit the Wind is another of those films that many people take at face value. And with all the remakes following the same pattern of fictionalization, the public at large is sure to believe that that's how the Scopes Monkey trial went down. It's also sure to keep vitalized the "Christianity vs. science" myth invented by enlightenment thinkers like Edward Gibbons and which has been perpetuated by popular film and literature in the succeeding generations.
I understand your broad criticism. But what's the answer? To impose "realism" standards on movies?
More narrowly, as I noted above,
Inherit the Wind
coincides with reality in that the Tennessee legislature did enact a law outlawing the teaching of evolution. Within that context,
Inherit the Wind
is part of a debate that I find especially meaningful. And that is what distinguishes it from
The Da Vinci Code
and
Kingdom of Heaven
, at least for me. I haven't seen
Agora
. I do not view
Inherit the Wind
as historical narrative but rather as a milestone in a debate that continues to this day.
Somedays it's just not worth chewing through the restraints. -
Enlil-An — 14 years ago(October 21, 2011 07:35 PM)
I understand your broad criticism. But what's the answer? To impose "realism" standards on movies?
The only thing we can do for the moment is continue to enlighten others against films like this. But it seems to me that the reason the film and television industries get away with distorting history to such a degree is the public's overwelming ignorance of the past. Obviously America's educational system has failed us as far as history is concerned.
More narrowly, as I noted above, Inherit the Wind coincides with reality in that the Tennessee legislature did enact a law outlawing the teaching of evolution. Within that context, Inherit the Wind is part of a debate that I find especially meaningful.
Even the most polemical period pieces coincide with an actual event from history. The benefit of such films depends on the extent to which the event in question is distorted for political or other bigoted purposes.
Distorting the facts in an attempt to demonize one side over the other in such a divisive issue does not contribute anything to the debate. It especially doesn't help bring people in the debate together to agree on a resolution. The net result is that there are that many more people who now don't understand the debate as well as they could have if the facts weren't doctored to promote a myth that favors one side over the other.
I do not view Inherit the Wind as historical narrative but rather as a milestone in a debate that continues to this day.
If it is, it's a milestone in propoganda and misinformation. Because of its sheer dishonesty, it definately hasn't provided anything useful to the debate. More the contrary. -
Enlil-An — 14 years ago(October 21, 2011 09:45 PM)
When I was in public school, the only film I recall being shown in history class was Glory, and there was no question that it was an incomplete dramatization of historical facts. For one thing, the film didn't last four years.
I don't think any historian (or honest person) has a problem with film makers changing incidental facts of history (like compressing time) in order to maintain a flowing narrative. Historians also understand the need to sometimes fuse multiple historical people into one or a few characters to keep a strong cast and not bog the story down with too many personalities. Sometimes even inventing a character out of thin air can be helpful in revealing something true about the time period being represented.
Inherit the Wind
is guilty of something worse - the distortion of history for the purpose of demonizing a group of people on the other side of the debate.
I don't recall anything particularly sinister or bigoted in
Glory
(Amistad on the other hand) unless it's there in the person of the northern captian (or whatever he was) who said something like, "You see, the South needs to be swept away like the Jews of old." But I don't know very much about the time period either.
The fact of the matter is, many people do believe what they see in films.
And this is the responsibility of the filmmakers in what way?
Morally, of course. I think we all have a duty not to misrepresent people and relevant events. Film makers who are in such a powerful position of influence are even more accountable for what they do. Art today has more of an influence on the public than scholars, unfortunately. Is it your contention that the makers of
Birth of a Nation
are in no way responsible for the negative perceptions their film put into the minds of the many Americans who saw it?
Then make your own film, because you're the only person who cares. Seriously.
This isn't true. But even if it were, it's counterproductive to promote knowledge in one field of study by destroying it in another. I would think that anyone who cared about what was right would care about the public's preception of the truth and always promote things that enhanced it - and decry films like
Inherit the Wind
which distort it.
But don't complain when your didactic movie turns out to be unwatchable.
Once again, changing incidental facts for dramatic purposes is different than changing them for polemical purposes.
By the way, I feel compelled to ask this given how you talk about "remakes": you do realize that Inherit the Wind is based on a source play, don't you? Given that they're taking the play as their source, of course the fictionalization is going to be retained, because the play itself was fictionalized. Like I said, I don't think H.L. Mencken spent his whole life speaking blank verse.
The question is, why are there always people in the entertainment industry willing to remake the story of a narrowminded and bigoted play when they know it's full of crap? Because it's a popular propoganda piece for those who are at cultural war with creationists and love to demonize them behind a facade of historical legitimacy.
If they wanted to do a straight adaptation of the Scopes trial, they wouldn't call it Inherit the Wind, because then they'd have to pay for the rights to adapt the play when the court records are there for free.
Well, of course it isn't in their interest to do a more accurate dramatization of the Scopes Trial. I doubt we'll ever see a film so fresh and original. That would ruin the purpose of the project - to demonize Christians. The reasons for this demonization is obvious. It has little to do with science. Most people in the entertainment industry are liberal and support things like gay marriage and abortion on demand (as well unrestrained sex, alot of swearing etc.) and they know Christianity is a threat to these things. That's why any form of Christian influence in school scares them. Mind you, I don't want creationism taught in school either. But I'm not so afraid of it that I support promoting falsehoods about Christians and their history.
Another thing that keeps the conflict theory perpetually vital are people being told from the pulpit that they must believe that the earth is 6,000 years old, that Adam and Eve were literal human ancestors, that evolution is a lie propounded by hellbound secularists, and that if they don't accept these things then they're claiming "God is a liar".
If fighters for scientific truth have enough ammunition from the present age to attack Creationists, why do they feel the need to reach into the past and distort history to score points? People who trash history in order to promote science probably aren't the humble seekers of truth they claim to be and are just as dangerous as people who believe falsehoods sincerely. I find it hypocritical for film makers to continue making a film that supposedly champions honest inquiry over biased dogmatism knowing that the chances of a counter film being made to debu -
Enlil-An — 14 years ago(October 24, 2011 05:25 PM)
Inherit the Wind
is guilty of something worse - the distortion of history for the purpose of demonizing a group of people on the other side of the debate.
No it bloody well isn't. You spout off about historical accuracy, but in a one-sided way that throws your religious agenda into stark relief.
I suppose I can see how crying out against the constant, bigoted portrayal of Christians in modern film might seem like a sinister religious agenda to certain leftist extremists, but I really thought I was pushing more of a tolerance agenda. Of course, generally liberals only recognize tolerance when it's directed at their favorite races and classes.
Aside from creating a damn silly post on the Elizabeth: The Golden Age board decrying the "anti-Christian" nature of the filmmakers' depiction of historical factnamely that Elizabeth frequently consulted with her court astrologer John Dee (indeed belief in astrology was ubiquitous in the Early Modern Period)
Elizabeth: The Golden Age
is anti-Christian because it completely strips all remnants of Christian culture from England's "Golden Age" but hightens the Christian element behind Spain's aggression. The only scene from the film that shows that England even had a religion is the one where Elizabeth is the victim of a failed assassination attempt in a chapel where she goes to pray in public (don't know if there's a hidden message there).
I explained all this in the post you cited.
here you are misrepresenting history by pretending that the targets of Inherit the Wind were creationists. They were not. Inherit the Wind was written in 1955 as a McCarthy-era parable. The Senator from Pepsi-Cola was its target, not creationists.
I did not say that the targets of the original play and film were creationists. All I said was that the film (not the play) is guilty of distorting history for the purpose of demonizing a group of people on the "other side of the debate." The term that
efs2
used which was who I was originally responding to when I said the above. I went on to say that its popularity and several remakes are designed to attack creationists/Christians which is an entirely reasonable assertion.
But let's broaden the discussion to both the play and the film for a moment. Suppose I were to make a film that portrays Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights movement of the early 1960s the same way
Inherit the Wind
portrays its antagonists? And when the rightful moral outrage ensues upon the film's release I tell everyone, "Don't worry fellas cause, you see, it's not really a film about the Civil Rights movement but actually a parable of the Tea Party movement," how do you think that will work out for me?
Or suppose instead I were to say, "Listen guys, I'm not racist. I was merely being faithful to a book I read in college. Afterall, how could I resist such a catchy title as
Whitey Havey, Blacky Wanty
?"
Come to think of it, where are all the remakes of
The Clansman
? I understand it was a very well written play in its day and the film adaptation a landmark in cinematic achievement. Obviously ideology plays a big part as to why there are no remakes of
Birth of a Nation
and several of
Inherit the Wind
.
Do you honestly think that creationists even factor into the remotest considerations of most Hollywood producers?
I'm not certain at which level of production creationism and Christianity come into consideration (writers, directors, producers) but it's definately there, yes. Sometimes its a central or major part of a film and other times only engages the story for a scene or two. Sometimes it's a major theme and sometimes a sub-theme but the message is almost always the same: Opposition to religion in general and Christianity in particular.
Well, of course it isn't in their interest to do a more accurate dramatization of the Scopes Trial. I doubt we'll ever see a film so fresh and original.
Or so unimaginative and boring.
So I guess you didn't enjoy
Good Night, and Good Luck
then. Being an intellectual yourself I find it hard to accept that you actually believe there's no one left in society who enjoys intelligent diologue and subtle story telling instead of two-dimentional characters and over-the-top melodrama.
Besides, it's still possible to make a historically plausible piece and make it rediculously over-the-top. Ever seen
The Bounty
with Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins? Plenty of conflict in an otherwise very plausible re-imagining.
So is the project to demonize Christians or to demonize creationists? You seem to be waffling on the target here
It's all the same to most film makers. I don't know if I've ever seen a film that differentiates between Christians and Creationists. It's been a while since I've seen
Inherit the Wind
. Were there any sympathetic Christians in it at all? Was the conflict between Christians who take a narrow view of Genesis and Christians who take a broad view? Or were the adversaries the religious against the non-religious?
Really?
Christianity is -
Enlil-An — 14 years ago(October 26, 2011 02:54 AM)
Now, I really am finished. You've shown that you have nothing to say about Inherit the Wind worth knowing, and that anything you are likely to come up with is just going to be windy generalizations and folderol based on your unshakeable belief in an anti-Christian conspiracy that spans all of the U.S. and Western Europe.
"When Thrasymachos had finished, he had it in mind to go away, after he poored this flood of oratory over our ears like a bathman[Socrates] said, 'What a speech to throw among us, my dear man! And now you want to go off without sufficient proof or disproof whether it is so or not!'"- Plato's Republic, Book I
I didn't say "sinister agenda", but your one-sided and utterly ahistorical take on Inherit the Wind does show such a religious agenda. The fact that you chose to dishonestly append "sinister" to a perfectly straightforward observation shows your fundamental lack of respect for the truth.
Why don't you explain what you think this religious agenda is exactly so we're both on the same page and I don't have to try and play detective in interpreting your vague accusations?
For your own benefit, I'm not a Christian. I was raised LDS but studying history as a hobby convinced me from believing that the Bible (and Book of Mormon) were inspired by anything other than the men who wrote them and the cultural, political, and religious climates they came from.
I think there's a God, believe in the supernatural forces of good and evil, hope there's an after life, but that's as far as it goes.
Thank you for making your agenda diaphanously clear by leaping to the assumption that I am a liberal. I'm not. I've never been a liberal.
You like to employ a double standard in your condemnations of my miscalculations while your own dismal exegesis of my posts are rife with wrongful assumptions.
I knew you weren't a liberal. A cursory look at other posts of yours shows that plain enough. You were the one who brought up "liberal Hollywood". If you're going to get after me because you didn't use the word "sinister" in referring to my "religious agenda", you need to hold yourself to the same standard and read into my posts only what is typed. Not once did I call you a liberal and was not referring to you.
So in other words, it does actually show that Christianity existed, and that Elizabeth was a Christian, but you just don't like how they went about it. However, you did not bother to elucidate ways that they could have made the film more "historically accurate"
You're confusing historically inaccurate with anti-Christian based on other things we've discussed in this thread. Historical distortion can play a big part in deciding whether a film is anti-Christian or not but it depends on what's being distorted. The point is that the "bad guys" in
Elizabeth
were painted with a thick coat of religious (Christian) composition and the "good guys" were the opposite. If you're not utterly closed-minded to that suggestion, I suppose I can rewatch the film and count how many times Christianity is displayed on the side of Spain compared to how many times it's displayed on the side of England.
You completely ignored my comparison's which, in my opinion were completely valid. If any film maker had portrayed black Americans or American Indians the way that Christians are portrayed in
Inherit the Wind
, it would be a national upset and a major media event. You know that (just look at the controversy that surrounded the making of Mel Gibson's
The Passion
).
If you want, I'll even rewatch
Inherit the Wind
so as to point out exactly how it is bigoted not that it will do me much good. My purpose for getting invloved in this discussion was never centered around this film. You made a remark that people who go the movies to get history are fools. That's when I jumped in. My point has always been that people do believe what they see in films and that the entertainment industry today has a very strong anti-Christian temperament (I never used the word conspiracy nor did I label the producers as the culprits). I don't need a 51 year old film as you put it to make my case.
Being raised in Utah, I guess I can't say for sure if Christianity proper is a threat but Mormonism definately was until Hollywood and the courts got involved.
Hollywood involved itself in the issue of "swearing" in Mormon country?
My fault. I left out something crucial in what I was trying to say here. What I was trying to say was that Mormonism was a threat through its support with companies like CleanFlicks that threatened Hollywood and they went after them for it.
Or, more likely, you're saying that there is no "entrenched" hostility toward Christians in the entertainment industry and those who think there is are only suffering delusions wrought by extreme right-wing paranoia.
At either rate your wrong
My wrong what? You haven't shown that I'm wrong.
The film industry's anti-Christian bigotry is easy to demonstrate. Let's look at a simple list of movies as an experimen
- Plato's Republic, Book I
-
Enlil-An — 14 years ago(October 29, 2011 01:25 PM)
The agenda that you have which makes you present vague and unfounded accusations of "anti-Christian" bias on the part of Hollywood films, even when you yourself admit that you can't remember central points of the plot!
Inherit the Wind
is well known for it's vicious portrayal of the Christians involved in the event. One of the few things in the film I do remember are the violent Christian mobs and Spencer Tracy in jail. So whatever positive Christians were in the film, they were completely overpowered by the demonic ones. I saw it when I was a teenager. It is also famous (in right-wing circles at least) for being historically inaccurate in making Spencer Tracy's opposition out to be more negative than they were.
I haven't seen
Birth of a Nation
all the way through either but it's reputation for racism is notorious. Just as
The Last Temptation of Christ
's reputation for offending Protestants and Catholics alike is also well known. Are these reputations unfounded? Just like those two films, the reputation of ItW precedes itself. The success of the play and film caused millions of Americans to turn a deaf ear to religious-based opposition to the theory of evolution. Likewise, it was not until after the 1960 film that the Scopes trial began to be mentioned in the history textbooks of American high schools and colleges, usually as an example of the conflict between fundamentalists and modernists, and often in sections that also talked about the rise of the KKK.
The reputation of these films is common knowledge. The only thing you've said that doesn't, in your opinion, make ItW take an anti-Christian position is that 1) it's based on a play 2) the original playwrites meant it as a parable of McCarthyism and 3) has a couple of positive Christian characters. I'm afraid all of that is just too thin. For example, several posters believed there were positive portrayals of Christians in films like
Agora
and
Kingdom of Heaven
until they were shown the critical points in the scenes that showed that they were not. I'll bet these same arguements could be used in defense of films that you feel contain negative depictions of Blacks and Native Americans.
Oh, so you just decided to throw out that guff about liberal tolerance because you have a compulsion to make irrelevant observations, like a form of political Tourette's.
It was completely relevant because you mentioned "liberal Hollywood" in the same post (I read the full post before I responded). My main point in bringing up liberals and left-wing extremists was to demonstrate that your accusation comes commonly from those sources and to see if you fell in the same company. If you're saying that your views on art and Christianity haven't been influenced by these sources, very well. -
Enlil-An — 14 years ago(October 29, 2011 01:27 PM)
I see. So it doesn't even matter if the material is accurate or not as long as you judge it to be "anti-Christian".
The portrayal of Spain and England in
Elizabeth: The Golden Age
was not accurate. I follow a strict set of criteria to decide if a film takes an anti- or negative position toward Christianity and I use the same rules for determining if a film is anti- or negative toward anything else.
Historical inaccuracy in a film can be a factor in deciding whether a film is anti- or pro-who or whatever it is they're portraying but it's not the only factor and sometimes isn't a contributing factor at all. With
Dances With Wolves
you might know more about the historical Sioux civilization than I do but I've seen the film enough to know that it wasn't portrayed negatively no matter how historically inaccurate it's portrayal was. Are there some small nuances I've missed?
That is because Spain was an theocracy controlled by the Catholic Church and under the thumb of the Inquisition.
Not even close. The Spanish inqiusition was under direct control of the Spanish monarchy. It was established in Spain for precisely this purpose and was against the wishes of the Papacy in Rome who initially attempted to stop its creation. The inquisition played no part in Spain's war with England, none, and neither did the Catholic Church (Philip II originally supported Elizabeth against the Church when she was under threat of excommunication). Elizabeth was just as active in advancing the Protestant cause as Philip was in promoting the Catholic cause. Her first act as queen was to establish a Protestant state religion with herself at its head. She also supported Protestant rebels against the Spanish government in other states.
In short, England was just as Christian in her makeup and her policies as Spain and the Anglo-Spanish war was divided along those lines as much as it was along commerical lines. In the film, the religious character of the war was all stacked to one side, the
bad
one.
negative depictions of Blacks and indigenous Americans abound in films without a word of public criticism. So that's two ways your analogy fails.
First of all, if your idea of negative depictions includes the Sioux Indians of
Dances With Wolves
, they don't even come close to comparing with the negative depictions of Christians in any of the films I mentioned (including
Inherit the Wind
). Secondly, even if all these bountiful negative depictions of Blacks and American Indians exist, so also do a host of positive depictions. These far outweigh the positive portrayals of Christians in film.
The producers would have to be the culprits.
Obviously the producers green-light all these films. It seems too incredible that they are soley or even primarily responsible for the content of all or even most of them. That is the measure of a film's bigotry,
the content
.
The icing on the cake in this egregious misrepresentation is that one of the people who sued CleanFlicks is your hero, Mel Gibson, for removing three minutes of violent footage from The Passion.
That doesn't mean a thing. First of all, he's not my hero. I don't agree with his characterizations either. In my opinion, he's as much a Hollywood propagandist as the worst of them. I merely used his movies as a rebuttle to your assersion that films with positive Christian characters and themes are not commercial. Second, Mel Gibson is not a typical representative of the Christian community. He is a definate product of the 80s action flick and is known for his love of putting graphic violence, language and sexuality in his films. To say that Christians generally aren't against these things because Mel Gibson is for them is not an argument.
You are deliberately and dishonestly conflating secularism with being anti-religion.
If you've got another theory as to why so much anti-Christian content permeates the film industry, I'd like to hear it. That will be pretty hard since you don't even believe an anti-Christian bent in popular entertainment exists.
There is no such thing as "right of center on social issues". This is one of the key errors that both parties propagate to further the illusion of choice. The distinctions between right and left are entirely economic, whether they are capitalist or anti-capitalist, or some mixed version of social democracy. The "social issues"I would prefer to call them civil liberties, because that is what they areare a matter of libertarianism vs. authoritarianism. It is equally possible for one to be libertarian-left, authoritarian-left, libertarian-right, and authoritarian-right. Stalin banned abortions, divorce, and homosexuality in the Soviet Union: are these policies "right of center" or "left of center"?
A closely accurate construct of the spectrum but there are some serious problems with it. First of all, politics and civil liberties (a very good term) were included in the right/left dichotomy from the outset. In the French National Assembly of 1789, conservatives -
Edward_de_Vere — 14 years ago(October 23, 2011 11:01 AM)
. I think we all have a duty not to misrepresent people and relevant events.
Why do so many people have trouble accepting the notion that there are works of fiction that are loosely based on historical events and people while maintaining no pretense of being works of history? The authors went so far as to change the names of the characters just in case people took their work of fiction seriously as a history lesson, as opposed to the work of fiction and parable that it is.
How much more do you want? -
efs2 — 14 years ago(October 24, 2011 11:44 PM)
I do not view Inherit the Wind as historical narrative but rather as a milestone in a debate that continues to this day.
If it is, it's a milestone in propoganda and misinformation. Because of its sheer dishonesty, it definately hasn't provided anything useful to the debate. More the contrary.
I could not disagree more with the idea that the movie's presentation of the debate is dishonest. I think the debate is presented fairly. I'm sure that many creationists think Bryan is the winner. Only to be betrayed by politics.
And, more than that, I think the courtroom sequences comprise one of Hollywood's finest moments. I remember watching
Inherit the Wind
as a child and being fascinated by the debate. And as an adult, I still find it wholly engaging.
Dishonest?
I think the debate presented in
Inherit the Wind
is orders of magnitude more honest than the the right-wing playbook. An anti-Christian conspiracy? Geez. What's next? A dissertation on the "War on Christmas"?
Somedays it's just not worth chewing through the restraints.