I never watch the Oscars, even though I do like the movies. I never go to the movie theatre any more, either, although I do like the movies. (I've got about 10 days worth of movies backed up on the DVR, a bunch of Blu-Rays and DVD's and even VHS tapes stacked in the closet, and subscribe to every movie channel known to man, so I don't feel deprived. And this is despite that I shun Netflix, too.) Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, and whenever I make an exception to my "never" rule and go to the theatre anyway, I come away feeling that it wasn't really worth the hassle and the expense, and vow never to do it again. A year or so later, I'll make another exception, and go through it all again.
This year, I did go to see one of the Oscar-nominated films, the one starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Sally Field and imaginatively titled "Lincoln." Maybe because it was the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation or the 13th Amendment or something. Anyway, there was a lot of Civil War stuff in the news. And after the movie, which wasn't all that bad, I renewed my vow to wait 'til it came on TV the next time, for the same old reasons.
Another film with a "historical" theme, "Argo," was on the Oscar ballot this year, and according to this morning's Internet headlines, it won. Although I didn't see the movie, I did read something about it in the Sunday paper. Ben Affleck, who is now an "auteur" of cinema, apparently, was explaining to whomever was writing the article that he felt it was O.K. to take some liberties with the facts to jazz up the picture, and I heartily agree. They obviously did it in "Lincoln," too, in such stirring scenes as the one where a lawmaker virulently opposed to enacting the 13th Amendment, which abolished "involuntary servitude" in the United States (for most people, most of the time), came out onto his front porch and apologetically explained to Lincoln that he couldn't vote for the Amendment because he was a "prejudiced" man who blamed black people for his brother's death in the war. Not only would it have been better writing to show the audience that he was "prejudiced" and why, instead of having the guy just blat it out like that, the language was anachronistic. If one really to know how "folks" in this country, including Members of Congress, spoke to and about black people in the 19th Century, "Django, Unchained" would probably be a better source.
But all of this is beside the point, because when you get right down to it there is no such thing as an accurate "history," anyway. "History is written by the victors," Winston Churchill said, and that's true as far as it goes. What Churchill either forgot or chose not to mention is that the victors themselves never agree on just what happened, and moreover the "official" version of anything has a tendency to morph over time. In a society where most people get most of their information about "history" (and everything else) from television and the movies, and the distinction between "news" and "entertainment" has blurred to the extent that some people feel fully justified in getting their information about the issues of our time from "The Daily Show" or "Fox News," it's pretty clear that "history" becomes "fictionalized" almost immediately.
Add to this the research that shows that a) eyewitness testimony is unreliable; and b) people hear and see what they expect to hear and see; and c) people interpret all that they hear and see to conform to their pre-existing beliefs, and what do you get? A world where the truth of anything, from climate change to statistics to evolution to nutrition science, is simply a matter of opinion. Our world, and welcome to it!
So, what's so wrong about that? Isn't everybody's opinion as good as everybody else's? Well, most Americans would answer, "Sure, if it is based on the facts." (Translation: "Sure, if their opinion agrees with mine.") Or, more realistically, they might just say "No. I am privileged to order my own reality, and in my world there is no climate change; statistics prove that the death rate for everybody is identical to that for smokers (100%); evolution is just a 'theory,' and it's wrong because the Bible says so; and "McDonalds serves healthy, nutritious meals."
In our world, people can believe that the best way to stimulate the economy is to raise payroll taxes and cut government spending when unemployment is high. They can believe that manipulating the tax code to allow more billionaires to make and keep even more money will stimulate the economy, too. They can believe that privileged people sitting at home clipping coupons or plotting hostile takeovers and running hedgefunds and "downsizing" corporations are "job creators" who will make life better for the common man. They can believe all that, for a while, just like Marie Antoinette, sitting in her splendid palace, could believe, for a while, that if the poor had no bread, they could solve their supposed problems simply by switching to cake.
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