On revisionist history

Yesterday I saw Oliver Stone’s recent movie “W.” The film chronicles the life of George W. Bush from his early days to the decision to invade Iraq. The movie was quite entertaining—thought it was almost two and a half hours long, the interesting portrayal of Bush and his advisors kept it from being soporific. However, like some of Stone’s previous works, the film reeks of revisionist history. Stone deliberately inserted some of Bush’s more embarrassing quotes into the film, often out of context. He certainly took liberties in depicting the Bush family dynamic—several of the Bushes criticized the film for this, in fact. He also included several scenes featuring confidential meetings between Bush and his advisors—the details of these are obviously unknown, so it is clear Stone made them up for the film. Overall, the film definitely has something of an anti-Bush bias—George W. is portrayed as bumbling, clueless, and overly dogmatic.

But today’s post is not just about beating up on Oliver Stone—I would like to talk about the dangers of revisionist history in general. Like “W,” much of the American media has become politically charged. Conservatives point the finger at liberal elites and the so-called “liberal media”—though they do have a point there are conservativism-based news broadcasters as well as liberal ones. But regardless of which side manipulating the facts, the fact is that the media is often not as neutral as we would like to think. And I don’t just mean news stations—as I showed with “W.” the deep divide between Democrats and Republicans has infiltrated all corners of our media. Perhaps worst of all are the films and television shows that, like “W,” pose as truth but are actually fiction. I have the same complaint about the “docu-drama,” a new genre of television that twists the facts about historical events for entertainment purposes.

Overall, revisionist history is dangerous, in both the long term and the short term. In the short term, it manipulates people’s opinions about a person or thing for false reasons. This is obviously the intent of such material in the first place; I am sorry to admit that it often works. In the case of “W,” the film probably cemented many people’s anti-Bush feelings for the wrong reasons. In the long term, too, revisionist history is dangerous. When future generations look back on our era, what they will see in our media is not the truth but fabrication; the real truth will be lost in time because our politically-charged media does not bother to cover it.

But what can we do about this? Very little, it seems. The spirit of partisanship has cemented itself in American politics and in the American media, and there is little the average person can do. I read the BBC news, as I have mentioned before, but I am not solving the problem by doing so—I am merely circumventing it, though only temporarily and to a certain extent. For now, we can merely hope that the US will someday rise above the petty partisan squabbling and resume reporting the truth.