Difference between revisions of "329--Week 1 Questions/Comments"

   Good point Jonathan, movies are influential in shaping our views of history and usually leave certain impressions.  Tombstone was a good movie. While thinking of westerns, it is interesting to note how many movies seem to have reoccurring themes.  For example, movies usually portray Italians as organized crime goons or gangsters (sopranos/Godfather/Goodfellas), skinheads as Nazi’s or punks (American history X, Romper Stomper, Made in Britain), Indians as brutal savages with feathers in their head (most westerns), Asians as kung fu kickers(Year of the Dragon, Fist of Legend, Rush Hour), and blacks and Latinos as drug dealers (American Gangster, Scarface, Blow, Superfly and various 70s Blaxploitation movies).  Many of these movies have a lot of truth to them; however, other movies like them, which have no truth to them at all, could pass as being very real to a viewer with no true historical backgrounds.  Fictional aspects added to movies based on real events (whether to make them more interesting, appealing to the viewer, or to portray/introduce certain messages and images), or movies having purely fictional plots taken place in parallel situations to historical reality (I.E. Three Kings, Tombstone, MASH) seem to make the motion picture a historical contradiction, while portraying only half-truth and half fiction.