When will we see a more accurate filmization of the Scopes Trial?
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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.