Revisionist History

Only Leonardo Knows For Sure


I watched the Peter Jackson remake of King Kong the other night. It was a good movie although a bit depressing. Nothing like killing a helpless animal all because he falls in love with something he can't have (or society won't allow) but that gets totally off the topic.

While watching this film I noticed something that keeps popping up time after time in the current crop of entertainment from Hollywood. The studio executives are slowly changing history over time. Soon the past will be a fabrication and not the truth. But in a media society, I guess that is to be expected.

When I was a young man working in a classical radio station in Oregon back in the 1970 I read a book. The book was a little known science fiction novel called 'Choral'. It had to do with a society that had to travel back in time and 'relive' history in order to keep the present alive. The theory being, that if history no longer existed, neither would the present. Seems a bit far fetched, but I recall it being a rather interesting read. The fact that it also had to do with the classical music of Ludwig von Beethoven sort of connected it to my job at the time.

What I have noticed in the current output from the boys at Dreamworks and Universal/MCA is that they ARE changing history and passing it off as fact. I don't know where this is going but it concerns me. I will give you some examples of what I am talking about.

Movie: U-472 - Story of a bunch of sailors that highjack a Nazi submarine in World War II. Only problem is, one of the sailors is African American. Not going to happen folks. American society was highly segregated back in the 40s and blacks and whites didn't serve together on the same ships, EVER. So the fact that we have this token black as a part of this otherwise all white crew is sort of like putting a Japanese-American in Roosevelt's war cabinet. Just wouldn't have happened.

Movie: Pirates of the Caribbean - In the later half of the movie, Jack Sparrow (excuse me)...Captain Jack Sparrow is rallying his old crew to go after the bad guys that stole the Black Pearl. Among this group of rag tag lusty ex-shipmates is an African American woman in her 20s. Once again folks, it ain't going to happen. Women were not sailors in the 1600s. Women were not even allowed on ships back then, it was considered to be bad luck and against the current moral code of the time.

Movie: King Kong (remake-2005) - When onboard the 'Venture' on the way to Skull Island, the first mate is an African American. Excuse me? Back in the 1940s, there were NO blacks in the merchant marine of almost any navy in the entire world. In the 1940s, the number of African Americans that were literate and educated numbered in the thousands and most of them were servants. Most would not have been running a tramp steamer around the globe, the fact that he was an officer and in charge of lesser white crewmen makes it even more unbelievable.

What is going to be next? Is there going to be an openly gay George Washington at the battle of Valley Forge? Is Brad Pitt going to portray Martin Luther King in the Selma Bus Boycott movie?

It is nice to make believe that in the past we weren't prejudiced, or sexist, or racist, or cruel, but I am sorry folks. That is not what really happened. We got to where we are today, because we lived that way, changed over time and evolved into what we are now. The fact that there are Hollywood studio executives saying that we need to have a token black in this movie or make the next James Bond and Asian dude isn't serving any purpose except to make people assume the wrong thing about what actually happened in the past.

We need to be enriched by how far we have come and how far we have to go and not be ashamed about our past and lie about it.