By Christopher B. Daly
Hooray that more than half of the leading contenders for Best Picture at this year’s Academy Awards have historical themes.
A question that always hangs over such films is: how accurate are they? Accuracy, of course, is often in the eye of the beholder, but a more useful question might be: do any of these films revise history in a way that improves our historical understanding, warps our historical understanding, or makes no difference?
Keep that in mind tonight when watching the Oscars show a propos the following:
–Les Miz (just how often do the poor break into song?) 
–Argo (does it matter that the character played by Ben Affleck was really Hispanic? If you don’t think so, then Ah, go fuck yourself!)
–Zero Dark Thirty (who says that torture “worked”?)
–Lincoln (did one weary, kindly man “free the slaves” all by himself?)
–Django Unchained (was the past an orgy of stylized violence?)
Prof Chris Daly's Blog 
I feel like Tarantino’s films are purposely revisionist. That’s the reason for the last two films he’s made. They are historical revenge fantasies (i.e. Jews killing hitler and a slave destroying a bunch of slavers)
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Excellent point. But I can’t watch his movies any more — the violence just seems so recreational.
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fair enough 🙂
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