Ben Elves
Ben Elves
Jul 21, 2017 · 3 min read

Hollywood versus History.

Given what schools teach in history lessons these days, many of the more interesting events of the past are taught mainly by Hollywood.

There have been many great historical epics which claim to be true, and sadly many believe the film industry has got it right even when they are unbelievably wide of the mark.

There is a certain film about a certain Scotsman who fought against a certain English king which is a classic case in point. The film centres around a man called William Wallace, who did battle against the forces of King Edward the First. A minor character in this film is Robert the Bruce. These people did exist, but that is where the only reality of the film ends. The battles of Falkirk and Stirling were fought in a manner completely unlike the way they have been depicted, and the film even hints that William fathered King Edward the Third, by having an affair with a French princess who in reality never met him, and in any case was only 12 years old when she came to England. The story continues in this manner throughout.

Why care? I hear you asking this question quite loudly, but there is a reason. A scary one. You see it is Hollywood that’s gives Americans their world view; and we, the more discerning British, are in danger of suffering from the same affliction.

The Americans already think that they won WW2 on their own whilst being irritated by the overpolite and incompetent British; who all have upper-middle class English accents, and that everybody in Vietnam wanted to live in a corrupt American style democracy. Unless they were utterly evil and communist.

The Hollywood view of the American War of Independance is just as warped. They are fighting against the greedy and controlling English King for equality and human rights and freedom. Forgetting of course that this particular war and therefore the foundations of the USA was started with acts of murder and terrorism, followed by a colossal land-grab of territories belonging to the natives which had been protected by the Crown. This then became Genocide; sometimes carried out with Biological warfare, and a huge increase in the slave trade. The Land of the Free indeed. And why did this start? Because they didn’t want to pay tax….which would have been used to protect them from foreign invasion. I do not remember any of this being mentioned in Mel the religious zealot’s film. Funny that the film about the certain Scotsman was one of his too.

Hollywood would have us believe that anyone from Mexico is untrustworthy, all the English are either Evil master criminals or stuttering Buffoons, The Irish have been nothing but innocent victims throughout history, and the rest of the world is somehow backward.

The simple fact is however, that reality is for more interesting than Hollywood portrays. We should make an effort to find out real history, because that tells us who we are; and it then effects our attitudes, and therefore our future. If Hollywood is going to show us history, then it has a responsibility; when a film states that it is based on true events, then it actually should be.

There are a raft of American films which show us Brits as being quite despicable; power crazy monsters who want only to curtail the freedom of others. But the reality is that we the Brits abolished slavery a long time before our cousins across the pond. They forget to mention that the majority of explorers who planted the Union Jack and claimed foreign lands for the British Crown were Scottish or Irish. And they also forget that that England has actually never had an English family on the throne; they have all been French, Scottish, Welsh or German.

Please note- this was written in 2013, way before Americans started to complain about the lack of women and black people in Christopher Nolan’s WW2 epic “Dunkirk”.

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