
How Tom Hanks Became America's Historian in Chief - barticz
http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1969606,00.html
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Tichy
TV series like Band of Brothers are not history, strictly speaking. They are
fiction.

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pan69
Uh? Where did you get that from? The Band of Brothers series is based on true
stories from the men who fought in 101st. You even see the interviews with the
guys now (10 years ago). Maybe some parts of it are romanticized but
definitely based on true stories.

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Tichy
Didn't know that. Even so it seems very unlikely that they simply filmed the
1:1 memories.

OK then: but Saving Private Ryan definitely was just fiction? That was
mentioned in the article along with BoB.

The reality is that in the long run these movies will be what people think of
as history (as in it will be the only history they know). I think that is
slightly disturbing.

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brc
History is always viewed through the lens of the person retelling it. Very few
historical accounts are immune from the flourish of an author or historian
eager to leave their view on the way things happened.

Strictly speaking, it doesn't matter if Saving Private Ryan was fiction, it
depicts the reality of war quite well. The accuracy of dress, vehicles,
weapons and command structures is enough to make it a useful film, even if the
story is complete fiction.

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Tichy
Useful, yes - but few people will watch it that way. Nobody goes to see that
movie just to see a realistically looking uniform.

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brc
True, but they will subconciously absorb the level of detail, such that when
watching another, poor recreation of WW2 that they will see it as such.

I'm looking at this through the prism of any improvement in historical sense
is better than nothing for the average joe, as long it isn't off by orders of
magnitude.

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Tichy
It's hardly the accuracy of costumes that matters about history. What matters
is motivations of people and reasons for stuff happening. Hollywood movies are
especially bad at portraying that accurately.

