Am I the only one in America who’s tired of Hollywood enshrining lies in our collective history through the use of propagandistic movies?
asks
Benny Huang a few weeks before the release of Robert Redford’s latest film, “Truth”.
Too many of us learn about history
through cinema, a pitfall we should all try to avoid. We shouldn’t
confuse movies for depictions of actual historical events. Besides the
fact that they’re meant to entertain, most of them are also made by
loony leftists.
In that regard, “Truth” reminds me of another cinematic abortion
released five years ago called “Fair Game,” which supposedly told the
story of Joe Wilson and his CIA officer wife Valerie Plame. Its
depiction of events was so far removed from reality that it can only be
called fiction.
When the Washington Post asked Joe Wilson about the film’s veracity,
he said something very telling its defense—“For people who have short
memories or don’t read, this is the only way they will remember the
period.” How’s that for honesty? I think what he’s saying is that even
though “Fair Game” may not align with the historical record, in time it
will
become the historical record. People who just didn’t pay
much attention to the story, or were born after the fact, will conjure
up images of “Fair Game” when they think of Plamegate.
And they will think that they saw events as they really happened. What a terrible disservice.
… No film has used subterfuge to influence public opinion about an
historical event quite like Oliver Stone’s 1991 blockbuster “JFK.” It
supposedly tells the true story of District Attorney Jim Garrison of New
Orleans, the only man ever to charge anyone for President Kennedy’s
murder. As it turns out, the man he put on trial, businessman Clay Shaw,
also happened to be innocent. The case Garrison’s office assembled
against him was a textbook example of reckless prosecution. After a
lengthy trial, the jury deliberated for just 54 minutes before returning
a verdict of not guilty.
But that’s not how Stone tells the story. In Stone’s film, Garrison
is the hero. His investigation meets stiff resistance from the federal
government, presumably because Kennedy’s killers are still very much in
power. The assassination is a conspiracy of epic proportions, involving
top military brass, defense contractors, the CIA, FBI, Dallas Police,
Vice President LBJ, anti-Castro Cubans, the Office of Naval
Intelligence, and even the President’s own Secret Service. Lee Oswald
not only didn’t act alone,
he didn’t act at all. Just a patsy.
Oswald was conveniently “sheep-dipped” to look like an unstable Marxist
then placed in proximity to the murder so the real killers could make a
clean get-away.
The Chicago Tribune editorialized, “The
danger is that Stone’s film and the pseudo-history it so effectively
portrays will become the popularly accepted version.” Very true, and
there’s no doubt that Stone intended to make his film an historical
reference that would guide public memory of the assassination. Released
with the film was a companion book sent to thirteen thousand teachers
across the country. To think that any teacher would present the film to
her class as truth! But I’m sure some did and do.
Stone offered an insight into his thinking in an introduction he
wrote for a book by Fletcher Prouty, the archetypal crackpot and basis
for the mysterious Mr. X character portrayed in “JFK.” Wrote Stone: “Who
owns reality? Who owns our history? He who makes it up so that most
everyone believes it. That person wins.”
