I'm reminded Steven Speilberg gushed over his love and passion for David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia, defending its narrative license and deviation from historical truth or fact by saying
"Are you talking about the kind of history that most... Americans, at any rate... don't know about? Or are you dealing with the sort of history that is taught every day in [American public] schools?"
Read that back very carefully - what he is saying is that for the sake of storytelling and making a more coherent, more enjoyable and therefore more marketable and profitable product, it is perfectly acceptable for Hollywood to invent, distort and falsify popular history, provided that it IS popular history and/or popular myth - i.e. Spielberg considers it perfectly fine to falsify history, provided that it broadly conforms with what is currently being taught in schools (if anything) on that topic.
In other words, film-makers can falsify history to their hearts content, provided you don't contradict anything about those events that the people in the audience think that they already know - you can add things or rearrange things, exclude things or put in people, things or incidents that are completely made up, provided that you don't confuse people with contradictory information.
It's not that you're lying to the public is the problem, it's that you are inviting cognitive dissonance which might cause them to have to think critically about what they had previously been told.
Steven Spielberg is someone who has pledged a significant portion of his time, labour and personal wealth via The Shoah Foundation to the teaching of the Nazi Holocaust in a particular, homogenised way, approved and agreed upon by committee by the leadership of this private group, within public institutions, subsidised by public tax dollars.
He says (on the DVD extras to Lawrence of Arabia) :
"There's a kind of a revisionism in film-making in Hollywood that I don't agree with if it violates such an important.... Era... I would rail against anything about the Holocaust, for instance, that wasn't absolutely authentic...."
He says (in the introduction to the documentary The Last Days) :
" "Shoah" is the Hebrew word for 'Holocaust'"
Now, this is a lie.
At best, it's profoundly and consciously misleading - "Shoah" is the Hebrew word for "suffering/sadness", "Holocaust" is the Hebrew word for "burnt offering/sacrifice".
The Pillar of Fire - The Ten Commandments (1956)
The Pillar of Fire - Raiders of the Lost Ark
(Spielberg/Lucas, 1981)
"Abraham - I've come up with a brilliant new idea : Human Sacrifice..!!"
(Mitchell & Webb, circa 2004)
Genesis 22 King James Version (KJV)
22 And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold, here I am.
2 And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.
3 And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and clave the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of which God had told him.
4 Then on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar off.
5 And Abraham said unto his young men, Abide ye here with the ass; and I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you.
6 And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and laid it upon Isaac his son; and he took the fire in his hand, and a knife; and they went both of them together.
7 And Isaac spake unto Abraham his father, and said, My father: and he said, Here am I, my son. And he said, Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?
8 And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering: so they went both of them together.
9 And they came to the place which God had told him of; and Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood.
10 And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son.
11 And the angel of the Lord called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here am I.
12 And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me.
13 And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son.
14 And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovahjireh: as it is said to this day, In the mount of the Lord it shall be seen.
15 And the angel of the Lord called unto Abraham out of heaven the second time,
16 And said, By myself have I sworn, saith the Lord, for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son:
17 That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies;
18 And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice.
19 So Abraham returned unto his young men, and they rose up and went together to Beersheba; and Abraham dwelt at Beersheba.
20 And it came to pass after these things, that it was told Abraham, saying, Behold, Milcah, she hath also born children unto thy brother Nahor;
21 Huz his firstborn, and Buz his brother, and Kemuel the father of Aram,
22 And Chesed, and Hazo, and Pildash, and Jidlaph, and Bethuel.
23 And Bethuel begat Rebekah: these eight Milcah did bear to Nahor, Abraham's brother.
24 And his concubine, whose name was Reumah, she bare also Tebah, and Gaham, and Thahash, and Maachah.
King James Version (KJV)
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