History by Hollywood
Is it dishonest how Hollywood is portraying history? Should we try to understand how Hollywood works in order to be able to assimilate what we are being shown? There is wide range of how history is portrayed by Hollywood. ... Nevertheless, there are movies that totally misinterpret history and use historical events as a way of entertainment, or reinforcement of nationalism and patriotism. Those movies, generally, show an unrealistic history. ... According to them, many Hollywood movies that represent historical and real life events alter reality and show what is suitable for the director and the filmmaker’s industry. Through this paper, the issue of Hollywood’s reliability in portraying history will be analyzed. Hollywood does not give realistic interpretations of history, but some of those interpretations can give people, students, and even historians good historical insights about customs and behaviors. Researching how history is portrayed by Hollywood will help historians and students to take advantage of Hollywood’s historical representations. “Cinematic History: a Defense of Hollywood,” an article written by Robert Brent Toplin, suggests, “movies can communicate important ideas about the past. ... According to Toplin, criticism of history from Hollywood would show more sophistication and would be more enriched if critics and historians could understand Hollywood’s genre and uses of fictionalization. Toplin concludes that cinematic history has to be addressed with a different vision (2001) in which there is an understanding of the elements that filmmakers have to use in order to improve their chances of profitability. “Cinematic history necessarily involves creative license. ... Toplin, in an earlier article “Hollywood’s History: The Historian’s Response” (1996) reviews Marc C. Carnes’ book, Past Imperfect and analyzes the approach of other historians that have written about Hollywood. In this article Toplin states that even though many historians recognize that historical books are superior to the history presented by films, many movies shape and create ideas of how people understand historical events.