i From: GUEST,Chicken Charlie - PM
Date: 26 Mar 08 - 12:44 PM

Sorry, but the "it's just entertainment" argument doesn't work for me. Regardless of WHY a film is made the way it is, people who see it will have their perception of reality shaped by it


For me, that is one of the more interesting threads in this thread ! !

Several people have made a point like that.

CC's view doesn't, in turn, work for me.

How you see a film 9or anything) depends on several elements: your previous knowledge, education, agenda, relationship to (in this case) films and film-making, your idea of authority re facts and history.

If an audience's perception of reality is shaped by films, that's the audiences's lookout.

Part of the answer is education. If audiences, aka the general public, were better educated, they's have a better idea of what films and film-making were about, how the sociology of knowledge works, how the mass media work, even, heavens, how the society they live in works.

And they would be proactive rather than reactive in relation films (if not the whole of their life. because they would have been even-handedly critical (as distinct from against-everything critical).

Hollywood has no particular reason to be really interested in historical accuracy at all times. Nor does the audience. They have turned up basically because they want to be entertained. So why the hell should the audience think what they've seen is historically true.

As the car sticker had it, "If you think education is expensive, have you tried ignorance."

Harumfph


Ivor