Hi, Anita-- Thank you (and others) for your thoughtful replies! As devil's advocate, I thought I might tug a bit at one thing you mentioned: "Many people start to really learn about history as children by watching tv or movies with historical themes." Indeed, I absolutely agree--which is why I'm not as concerned at historical inaccuracies on film, because to me the chief virtue of historical films isn't their accuracy, it's how they serve to hook people into a field that we each find so endlessly fascinating. You went on to say, "From watching film, I wanted to learn more so I started to read about it and got more detailed and accurate information." That was very much my story as well; my own personal experience has been that my understanding of historical events hasn't suffered, because while the films inspired me, I learned to look elsewhere for the detailed and accurate information. As a dark confession: I sometimes have the radical thought that no *real* harm comes from inaccuracies in historical films: for those to whom history means little anyway, it doesn't matter if it's accurate or not (it's likely that their sense of historical events is very skewed no matter what they see on screen)--whereas for those to whom history comes to mean much, they'll do the work to find out the "real" story. I place responsibility in the hands of the larger historical and educational communities, rather than on filmmakers, to encourage a broad sense of what makes history important, and good, and real. This shouldn't be seen as support for inaccuracy--on the contrary, I'd always much MUCH prefer them to be accurate however and whenever they can be (and am always willing to help them be so). But I don't get bent out of shape as an educator and historian when they "get it wrong," for the reasons I outline above and in my earlier message--the primary one being that we shouldn't look at an art form to be the basis for education. And with that said, I'll hop off my little film canister box. ;) --Eric Eric D. M. Johnson Proprietor The Village Factsmith Historical Research & Consulting http://www.factsmith.com/ [log in to unmask] ----- Original Message ----- From: "Anita L. Henderson" <[log in to unmask]> To: <[log in to unmask]> Sent: Tuesday, January 24, 2006 9:46 PM Subject: Re: NYT praises "The New World," new version > Dear Eric: > > I think historians and living historians like myself get heartburn > watching > Hollywood's attempts at historical interpretations is that they have such > a > wide audience and a lot of people take look at what appears on film as the > truth! > Also so many people will go to movies rather than read poetry or go to > the > National Gallery of Art or MOMA, sad to say. Many people start to really > learn about history as children by watching tv or movies with historical > themes. > I know by personal experience that watching historical films got me > interested in history specifically Civil War, Western and WW II. From > watching > film, I wanted to learn more so I started to read about it and got more > detailed > and accurate information. To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html