Movies do far more good than harm when it comes to our understanding of history when you take into account that they are products that are usually stretched in order to add value to the finished products. The viewer must take into account that it is a movie and movies are designed to entertain but more importantly make money which does mean stretching the truth in order to create drama and excitement. After this is taken into account the viewer is able to get a somewhat accurate depiction of the past because films do incorporate true facts, where else would they get the story? Great examples of this are the films In the Heat of the Night and Birth of a Nation. Both of these films are based on true stories but are tweaked here and there to create excitement and a pleasurable viewing experience for the public.
These films can be used as a primary source as long as a warning is given that it is a film and films do stretch facts, followed by an accurate explanation of the situation shown in the film and if possible inform the reader of the true facts compared to the movies stretched version. Otherwise the reader may take the instance from the movie literally and either miss the point or believe a false truth shown in the movie.
When movies say in the opening credits, “Based on a true story” viewers tend to believe since the movie was based on actual events that all of the events in the movie must have also happened. This is a key mistake and can do harm to our understanding of history when not taken into account. Therefore viewers must be careful when seeing things like this that they acknowledge that not everything the viewer will see is true. On the opposite side when a viewer does not see this statement in the beginning of a movie they tend to not believe any of the events even if they did happen.
Movies add to historical inaccurateness in a couple of ways but there is one major way. When an audience sits down in a theatre most do no attempt to separate true facts from wrong. They solely want to be entertained which is the main purpose of a movie. This causes that audience to tell people about the events in the movie and in turn those false happenings become fact and common misconceptions. For example the movie Troy is based off the Iliad. Despite historians having little to no evidence on the happenings of the Iliad this example is still effective in that the movie is very similar to the epic however there are slight differences. These differences were apparent in my English class where we are reading sections from the Iliad and they were key differences between the two that cause many errors in class. This is the same in movies and real life in that people talk about the movies they saw which in turn becomes the new truth due to massive popularity of the movie. This can all be prevented if the viewer knows that not everything they see is factual.
Films add another dimension to history, a dimension that textbooks can’t come close to touching. Movies are able to create feelings and display ideas that are not possible to portray in textbooks. For example textbooks talk about the civil rights era and go into in depth analysis and provide graphs and statistics but hearing an African American living in the Ghetto talk about his/her experiences is worth much more than a statistic in a book. It touches people and motivates them to act more than textbooks can. Textbooks educate where movies inform and motivate.
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