WSC Literature Historical Distortion

The Gandhi debate

The movie Gandhi is a movie from the 80’s and it talks about Mahatma Gandhi, the Indian historical hero who made the bad British colonialists go out of India and other colonized places, while still being a symbol of peace. The director Richard Atterenbough wanted to make a historical “all hits of Gandhi”, going after all of his successes. For that, he had Ben Kingsley, a white Hollywood actor, but still he wanted him to look Indian so he painted his face in Indian skin color. At the time it was not controversial, and so a lot of Indians were happy that a Hollywood actor played such an important role in their hearts. Kingsley’s real name is actually Krishna Pandit Bhanji, and he’s a son of a British mother and an Indian father, but nowadays when people say the casting is racist, they say that the actor who plays the one who wanted the British to go away is 1⁄2 British. Nevertheless it is the extreme opposite of the criticization in Hamilton, in which the black actors play their own oppressors.

Woman King

A movie released just a few months ago, based on the Agoodjies, the women warriors of the ancient Kingdom of Dahomey led by King Gezzo in today’s Benin, who fought against the Oyo Empire and the Mahi tribe, who wanted to capture their people to sell them to white people as slaves. The movie tries to sell us that Dahomey was an anti slavery kingdom, although in reality King Gezzo sold a lot of black people as slaves to the white colonialists too, making the movie distorted. The article also claims that if the production wants to base their movie on a historical society that was anti slavery, they should do it on Toussaint L’Ouverture, the hero of the Haitian revolution, and coincidentally the son of a woman that was sold as a slave by the Dahomey kingdom.

Braveheart

A film based on the true story of the Scottish Warrior William Wallace, and his efforts to lead a rebellion against England in the 13th century. It distorts the acts of the rebellion, by putting a finger on the wrong battle as the battle that led to Scotland getting independence, and distorts the complex mindset of William Wallace to a straightforward hero, and making the complex appearance of England a simple evil one.

Pocahontas

A Disney film based on the Powhatan Native American woman that helped establish a peaceful relationship between the tribe and the English settlers in Virginia. It is distorted because Pocahontas was not a teen in real life, and on top of that, the movie makers created a whole romantic relationship between her and John Smith, a relationship that didn’t happen at all. The relationship between the Powhatans and the English were very violent unlike what is seen in the movie.

300

A film that is based on the battle of Thermopyale, where 300 spartans fought against the Persian army. It is pretty accurate except for the fact that the Persians were portrayed as one dimensional villains, though they had a lot of reasons to strike the spartans. Also, the Persians didn’t get as much culture and history as the Spartans in the movie.