Why Hollywood "History" Is Dangerous Even When It Takes The Right Side - Hate Mail

Nothing could be a more sacred duty of scholarship, of history, of anyone who wants to touch on the period of the Shoah and the other genocides of the 20th century than to get the facts right. 

Hollywood never does.  It isn't in the business of telling the truth about anything, it is in the business of making money by telling stories in what those in control figure will make the most money by appealing to audience members, most of whom couldn't care less about the truth when they're watching a movie and being manipulated.  And that's a feature of the enormously expensive medium of the movies, no matter where the production is based or financed.

I haven't seen the "Eichmann movie" that's out right now, "Operation Finale" because I am so totally disgusted with movie "history" that the distortions in it would probably only make me angry.  The Nazis did what they did through mythification of history, through lying, through creating a romantic lie about history, it is beyond obscene for Hollywood supposedly giving an account of his discovery and trial and execution to resort to the same kind of mythification, though they got late to that party because the whole thing has been distorted through lies from the start.

Her name was Sylvia Hermann. Her blind father was waiting nearby.

They were on a hunt for evil.

When a middle-aged man came to the door, Sylvia gently inquired: “Are you Herr Eichmann?”

The man, at first, said nothing. He seemed startled. His strange reaction to such a simple question convinced Sylvia that he was Adolf Eichmann, the senior Nazi officer who implemented Adolf Hitler’s “Final Solution” — the systemic slaughter of Jews in concentration camps throughout Europe.

This extraordinary moment, described by historians in several books about Eichmann’s life on the lam following Hitler’s demise, is depicted early on in “Operation Finale,” a new movie about how operatives from Israel’s Mossad intelligence service captured Eichmann, who is played by Ben Kingsley.

But like other based-on-true-story movies, “Operation Finale” is filled with distortions.

Minor: A male doctor on the real capture squad became a female character in the film and the love interest of Peter Malkin, the Mossad agent who kidnapped Eichmann.

Major: The role of the blind man and his daughter.

Sylvia Hermann and her father, Lothar, are portrayed as good Samaritans to Mossad operatives pursuing Eichmann, who is living under the name Ricardo Klement.

On screen — and in real life — the teen is the perfect informant. She dated Eichmann’s son, who kept the family name, either out of sheer stupidity or deep reverence for his father’s accomplishments (or both).

I'll let you read the rest of it at the link.  Especially the distortion of the role of the Mossad is worth noting.   The Mossad, like all other shifty, shady intelligence operations are well experienced in lying and propagandizing to their own advantage.   The facts of how Eichmann was captured, tried and executed would make a great story but the right people and agencies wouldn't come out smelling like roses and all Hollywood crap needs a love (read sex) angle to it if reality didn't provide one.

And the list of distortions and fabrications in that movie are minor by Hollywood standards.

Lying about history has real dangers, the Nazi genocides, the genocides of Stalin, Mao, etc. were all based in lying and lying about history, creating it as needed to consolidate and exercise power.  Mythification. Hollywood has its own history as discussed here recently, starting with Birth of a Nation, which revived the major terror arm of American apartheid.  "Reality TV" has given us Trump.

It was fifty-six years ago that a major Hollywood movie, for once, famously told the truth, in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."   No one in the world with even a vestige of a glimpse of reality believes they really meant it.  Given the choice, they've been printing the legend continually, ever since.

Hollywood isn't alone, fiction and theater that treats historical subjects are almost uniformly a fabric of lies, distortions, polemical and ideological dishonesty.  Even the longest plays are too short to do the job of telling the truth.  It's rare they do history right, they should stick with making up stories about things that never happened based on invented characters who don't stand for real people in history.  The few times the "based on true. . . " stuff works doesn't excuse the many times it doesn't.

Update:  Stupy, I meant it, you're never going to learn anything before you go to your eternal remediation if I answer your stupidest efforts.  Come up with something substantial and I might post it.   I'm not going to encourage the stupid and trivial, that's what Duncan did.