Reel History 2: Natives without noses- 1607 with Disney and Terence Malick

She's supposed to be 13

So what's happened since Columbus discovered (the) America(s)? We're jumping a good 100 years for this next entry, so here's the simple version: in 1497, John Cabot landed on the mainland of North America (Columbus continued southward so, goodbye Columbus) on behalf of England, rediscovering Newfoundland; the French went deep into Canada to set up their colonial empire, who we'll meet again in The Last of the Mohicans; and Walter Raleigh was sent by Queen Elizabeth I to explore North America, paving the way for colonial settlements. Since this is all about American history, and Canadian history is boring, we're heading to Raleigh's Virginia to the first permanent settlement in what is now the United States, Jamestown. 

Pocahontas has one of the most interesting early American mythologies built around her; it comes mostly as the result of early American propaganda, but hey, that's usually the case with these historical types. Even so, we know very little about her apart from her European life, but she was still an important early American- a partner in the first mixed marriage in the country's history (sorry, not with John Smith), the matriarch of a dynastic Virginian family, entertaining the king and queen of England. She was also, before her conversion and Anglicization, the daughter of the chief of the tribal nations of Virginia- in effect, an American princess, making her the ripest of historical figures for a Disney movie.

Let's start at the beginning, though: in 1606, the entrepreneurial Virginia Company of London looked to set up settlements in the New World explored by Walter Raleigh (he of the coat across the puddle and, later, the imprisonment in the Tower of London). Their first settlement was Jamestown, founded deep inland on a peninsula of what is now the state of Virginia in May 1607. It turns out there were other people on the peninsula first- a collective of 14,000 Algonquin-speaking, Tidewater region natives under the leadership of Chief Powhatan (whose real name was the mouthful Wahunsenacawh). The Algonquins initially celebrated the arrival of the settlers, and provided crucial early support that helped the struggling colony. But with a growing colony came growing tension, and Chief Powhatan made an uneasy peace with the English, which lasted until his death in 1618. And it's the uneasiness of the peace that drives the conflict in both 1995's Pocahontas and 2005's The New World. But one of them glosses over most of the truth with cardboard cutouts of real historical figures- guess which one?

Okay, it's Pocahontas. The movie simplifies the motivations of the settlers and their native counterparts in typical Disney fashion, turning a complex history into a battle on behalf of greed and revenge. Also, animators decided it wasn't worth drawing noses on the Virginian Indian women, but that's their problem I suppose. Breaking down the biggest issues with the basic story of the settlers, of which there are many: Governor John Ratcliffe (actually the second governor) sails with his crew on the Susan Constant (he was actually the captain of the Discovery) in search of gold (in reality, the motivations weren't explicitly gold but to turn a profit for the investors, and when gold didn't turn up they focused on other industries like tobacco).

But it's not the white people who had a problem with their portrayal. The Powhatan tribe of today, led by Chief Roy Crazy Horse, said shortly after its release that the movie 'distorts history beyond recognition', despite Roy Disney calling his movie 'responsible, accurate, and respectful.' In the first part of this article, entitled 'The Pocahontas Myth", Chief Crazy Horse says that the history of his people isn't as fun or romantic as the movie makes it out to be, that calling the character 'Pocahontas' in the first place (a nickname given to her in her youth) was offensive, that her life was highlighted only because of European propaganda, and that the saving of John Smith never took place. Bummer.

Terence Malick's The New World would be taken to task based on second half of Chief Crazy Horse's open letter, as both deal with the adult life of Pocahontas (she was 13 when she first met with Smith and the English settlers, significantly younger than portrayed the Disney movie). The latter part of The New World concerns Pocahontas (now Rebecca) being taken into captivity in 1613, her separation from John Smith, meeting and marrying  tobacco exporter extraordinaire John Rolfe (played by Christian Bale, who also voiced Thomas in Pocahontas) in 1614, and her death in 1617 at the age of 22. According to Chief Crazy Horse, the real Pocahontas was used as propaganda for the colonial enterprise and 'wined and dined' in the presence of those that mattered. And while the movie doesn't shy away from these things, it portrays Pocahontas as leading a rather happy and wonderful life with her new love and sons, something the Chief portrays negatively.

But Malick's version of the story is more sensitive and detail-oriented than Pocahontas, and is, quite frankly, almost a masterpiece, making hard for me to hate on it for reasons Chief Crazy Horse would give. It's chocked full of gorgeous cinematography, it's got an even-handed story, and Malick shows more emotion in quiet contemplative shots than the Disney musical does in its big songs (which aren't bad at all). Also, in a particularly Malick-ian detail, King James is played by actor Jonathan Pryce, who has no lines, is barely on screen for ten seconds, and isn't recognizable. This, the main guy from Brazil. Awesome.

Chief Crazy Horse has many legitimate gripes, as do the Native peoples all over the continent, but his account has to be taken with a grain of salt. He says Pocahontas, the nickname given the young girl actually named Matoaka, means 'naughty one' or 'spoiled child', when from what extra research I could find, it was just emblematic of her frolicksome nature; colonialist William Strachey said it meant 'little wanton', and there's nothing to suggest it was a negative label. There's a reason for the Powhatan tribe to badmouth Pocahontas; there may be less at stake than when the settlers had to praise her, but reputation is, in some cases, all that indigenous groups have left.

The crucial (and contentious) detail in the stories of Pocahontas is her saving John Smith from certain head smashing at the hands of Chief Powhatan, after he captured Smith in December 1607 on a hunting expedition. And of course, both Pocahontas and The New World use this story to establish an emotional connection between Pocahontas and John Smith, but they use it differently- Pocahontas has it as the story's climax, taking place just as the two armies go to war; The New World puts the incident more in the middle and in the more accurate context of the Powhatan village after Smith's capture, because as it turns out, The New World goes much more in depth about Pocahontas than the movie that bears her name (to be fair, that movie is a Disney movie). Even if Malick is more accurate, there's much debate about whether or not it actually happened- one source says that John Smith didn't record the incident until 1616, after learning Pocahontas would be entertaining the king and queen, in hopes it would make them treat her better.

But the story, much like the relationship with John Smith, is now an integral part of who Pocahontas is, and what Disney does with her is like what Ridley Scott did with Christopher Columbus: tell the story the way it's been told for generations. And from what I gather from independent research (talking to my girlfriend), girls who watched it when they were little loved it to pieces, and it's hard to tell little girls that one of their favourite movies is nothing more than Eurocentric propaganda. But it's also hard to tell Native groups that their history is the wrong one, simply because it's not as fun.

1616 portrait engraving by Simon de Passe

Jamestown was briefly abandoned in 1610, but with increased support became profitable around 1613, and stayed an entity until 1699 when the state capital was moved to Williamsburg and the town was abandoned, now existing as an archaeological site. The settlers faced elimination from Chief Powhatan's successor, his brother Opchanacanough; one attack in 1622 killed more than 300 settlers, a quarter of the colony's population; and while a 1644 attack killed 500 settlers, it represented a tenth of the increasing population. This non-functioning coexistence lead to increased offense by the English, and as Jamestown became a royal colony in 1624 and attracted wealthier settlers, the Indian population declined, moving out of the area altogether, living amongst settlers, or moving onto ever-shrinking reserves.

NEXT UP: More settlements set up by more religious folk means more Puritanical fun in The Crucible, dealing with the Salem witch hunts in 1692.

Reel History 1.5: Columbus and early Americana

In the last entry, two movies were watched- 1492: The Conquest of Paradise and the 1949 biopic Christopher Columbus- and the conclusion was reached that movies are scared to take the awful side of Columbus and put it in context because he's an official founding father. 1492 portrayed him as a forward thinking idealist and tragic figure, while Columbus took the straightforward and simple way, something old biopics like to do. The American people love the idea of him, but academics, what with paying attention to their ivory towers and monocles, feel differently. The former feels odd, seeing as Columbus never set foot in the United States proper, but whatever.

I ended off with this quote from Felipe Arnesto of History Today, where he says:

Columbus remained a model for nineteenth-century Americans, engaged in a project for taming their own wilderness. Washington Irving's perniciously influential History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus of 1828 – which spread a lot of nonsense including the ever-popular folly that Columbus was derided for claiming that the world was round – appealed unashamedly to Americans' self-image as promoters of civilisation.

I thought it was interesting that the popularity of Columbus comes from early post-Revolutionary propaganda and has essentially stuck around. Michael Kammen, in his Mystic Chords of Memory explains that "repudiation of the past left Americans of the young republic without a firm foundation on which to base a shared sense of their social selves." In the entry for A History of the Life and Voyage of Christopher Columbus, the aforementioned 'perniciously influential' Washington Irving biography, Wikipedia quotes an article by John Hazlett entitled "Literary Nationalism and Ambivalence in Washington Irving's The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus", which in turn says that Irving "...saw American history as a useful means of establishing patriotism in his readers, and while his language tended to be more general, his avowed intention toward Columbus was thoroughly nationalist." And Irving wasn't the first- examples like Philip Freneau's The Pictures of Columbus from 1774 and Joel Barltow's The Vision of Columbus from 1787 precede it by decades. A whole host of influential American literary superstars used the idea of Columbus to separate themselves from their British past and construct a new mythology for themselves.

One remarkable example is from Phillis Wheatley, the first African-American poet; her use of the term 'Columbia' in her poem 'His Excellency George Washington' from 1775 became a popular name for the whole United States, personifying the country as a female. It also means 'Land of Columbus', severing whatever colloquial monikers it had and successfully creating a new identity. The first verse:

Celestial choir, enthron'd in realms of light,
Columbia's scenes of glorious toils I write.
While freedom's cause her anxious breast alarms,
She flashes dreadful in refulgent arms.
See mother earth her offspring's fate bemoan,
And nations gaze at scenes before unknown;
See the bright beams of heaven's revolving light
Involved in sorrows and the veil of night!

Let's not forget the place names: the District of Columbia, where the capital resides; King's College became Columbia University in 1784; and Columbus, Ohio, founded in 1812- these are just a few of the major ones. 

Images of Columbus are found in many government buildings. Some examples: The Landing of Columbus, a painting in the Capitol Rotunda, Washington, D.C, commissioned 1836/1837 and placed in the building in 1847; the Library of Congress has a statue by Paul Wayne Bartlett of him- both it and the painting are two of a dozen images of Columbus in the Capitol complex; and in the California State Capitol in Sacramento a statue by Larkin Mead was placed in 1874, showing Columbus with Queen Isabella of Spain.

And just like in 1992, early Americans celebrated the achievements of Columbus on major anniversaries. In 1792, on the 300th anniversary, the first statue of Columbus was erected in Baltimore; for the 400th anniversary, celebrations lasted all year, with Italian Americans raising enough funds to set up a giant monument to Columbus in Central Park.

Columbus is just so ingrained in American culture it's not hard to understand why the movies chose to soften his character- that's how tradition has it, and you don't mess with an American hero.

The Landing of Columbus

NEXT TIME: 1607 and the first permanent English settlement in the United States, and two contrasting tellings of the Pocahantas story

Monument information taken from http://columbus.vanderkrogt.net/

Reel History 1: Christopher Columbus: 1492: Conquest of Paradise and Christopher Columbus: The Discovery

Gerard Depardieu as Christopher Columbus, 1492: The Conquest of Paradise

Americans have been celebrating Columbus' achievement of miscalculating the distance to Asia since Independence. And it makes sense - the country can trace its foundations back to the year 1492 with the discovery of a new landmass that would take centuries to fully explore (plus 1492 makes for a pretty nifty poem when rhymed with 'ocean blue'). Columbus is an ancestral American, the first American.

And really, the people of the United States have always loved Columbus. In 1792 they had celebrations commemorating the 300th anniversary of the discovery of North America, but they were lucky enough not to have the technology to celebrate it with dull major motion pictures; they made Columbus Day a federal holiday in 1937; they even made a crappy Sopranos episode about it! It was the worst one.

But sarcasm can't diminish what was accomplished by Columbus. He set the stage for New World colonization and expanded the known globe by thousands of miles, maybe (according to Charles Van Doren) "the greatest addition to human knowledge ever made by one man."  The world was changed because now there was more of it. And more land means more wealth to make your own.

That's the kind of image conjured up by the title our first picture, 1492: Conquest of Paradise, one of two movies released on the 500th anniversary of the historic voyage - the Howard Zinn idea of Columbus the tyrant, the conqueror of the indigenous and slaughterer of primitive peoples. Ridley Scott's movie (released October 9, 1992, three days before the official 500th anniversary) doesn't fully play this hand, however. It tries to find a middle ground on Columbus, the great man of unmatched ambition and first tyrant of the new world (inevitably settling on the former) that makes for a rather boring movie.

Played by the miscast Gerard Depardieu, Columbus in 1492 is a tragic hero, a man with a crazy dream who does essentially the right thing, but other people mess it up for him. He's a man without control because Depardieu plays him in such a subdued manner, when by all accounts the real Columbus was a passionate man. Depardieu's Columbus only loses his composure when the savage natives attack his colony, and in what is probably the most offensive detail in the movie, Columbus kills a native warrior who makes explicit animal sounds as he fights.

For all its faults, 1492 at least notes some of the megalomania that often gets lost in details - being brought home from the New World in chains for being a tyrant, insisting to his final days that he had found Asia But even this latter detail is played with Columbus as a victim, be it of forces beyond his control or his own dreams. This is a role suited for Klaus Kinski in a Herzog film, unfortunately far from what we ended up with.

I'm not going to lie, I couldn't find Christopher Columbus: The Discovery, the other movie released in 1992, anywhere. Not at the library, not on the Internet for 'free', not on Netflix. For all I know, they only released stills of Marlon Brando and made a poster. But from what I gather, it is bad. A 4/10 on IMDB, a dismal 7% on Rotten Tomatoes, with critic Paul Brenner calling Marlon Brando's performance the worst of his career (Brando gets top billing despite not playing the namesake character). Maybe it's so bad they don't want anyone to see it, but that unfortunately it means I can't compare it to 1492: Conquest of Paradise, so I'll take a Columbus biopic I could find: 1949's Christopher Columbus.

Christopher Columbus is a stereotypical take on the story: played by Frederic March, Columbus wants to find an alternate route to Asia, finds what he thinks is Asia, treats indigenous peoples with respect (on camera, that is), comes home a hero. He brings home a talking parrot (saying 'long live the queen' and 'hurray for the admiral') and the natives he kidnaps do a nice exotic dance for everyone. Everything is happy and shiny and fun. It's like an elementary school telling of the story, not a serious biopic. Though it does eventually include the inconvenient details - disease and death and slavery and whatnot - all that is told in the last ten minutes with a series of quick scenes, portrayed matter-of-factly with mostly exposition. Columbus eventually comes out mostly unscathed, and the movie ends with him ironically (hindsight being our friend) worrying about his legacy. Like 1492, this movie was dreadfully dull, but at least this movie has the hilarious image of Chris himself body-slamming a sailor during a mutiny.

As recounted in the prologue, Columbus falls for the idea that everyone in 15th century Europe believed the earth was flat. This myth comes from the Washington Irving biography of Columbus published in 1828, and is peddled as fact all the time in popular storytelling, even in the rigorously academic Looney Tunes version. This is probably because it provides simple motivation for the children's story version of Columbus, in order to avoid messy, complex discussions of theology, colonialism, and greed. In reality, most people thought the earth round since the time of Aristotle, and it had been reinforced many times before Columbus was born.

Both movies add the religious perspective to the Columbus story that you hardly ever hear about, one that played a huge role yet is routinely dropped from the simplistic stories. Placed within the context of the Spanish Inquisition, 1492 is heavy on the religious symbolism, telling the story of a man sent on a quest from God. And from what I gather, this was an accurate portrayal of Columbus, because he was by all accounts quite the fanatic. He was convinced that a verse in the second book of Esdras (apocryphal in both Catholic and Protestant teachings) was good proof that he could reach the Indies by sailing west; 6:42 reads:

Upon the third day Thou didst command that the waters should be gathered in the seventh part of the earth; six parts hast Thou dried up and kept them, with the intent that some of these, being planted by God and tilled, might serve Thee.

This was part of his argument to the Catholic monarchs of Spain that the western route was the one to take, and he convinced these incredibly religious leaders with this evidence. Columbus clung to Biblical prophecy all his life, and thought his voyage was divine and he a 'messenger of a new heaven' to the pagans he would encounter. 1492 portrays the religious aspect a little more complexly, adding a narration of Columbus from his log, taken October 21, 1492, nine days after landing:

If the natives are to be converted to our ways, then it will be by persuasion and not by force.

But neither movie shows his beliefs with a nuanced view. At the beginning of 1492, Columbus is seen witnessing the brutal deaths of several people convicted by the Spanish Inquisition, but this doesn't shake his faith in the Catholic institution or have any bearing on his actions later in the movie, making it a strange detail to include.

The motivations of Columbus can't simply be explained. He was motivated by religion, sure, but also by greed, fame, adventure, a myriad of things, and this makes him harder to portray on film. The geopolitical forces that shaped Columbus are so broad that they make it hard to summarize him in this post. But his demands reflected his need for power and personal glory: he would be knighted, appointed Admiral of the Ocean Sea, made the viceroy of any new lands, and awarded ten percent of any new wealth.

In the end, though, Columbus was taken back to Spain in chains, having ticked off his benefactors with the way he ran the New World operation. But really, they could have seen it coming. In an entry Columbus wrote in his log shortly after the first landing at the Bahama Islands, he said:

They brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks' bells. They willingly traded everything they owned. They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.

It's funny, because in Christopher Columbus, he forces a sailor to trade a native at least a hawks' bell for a piece of gold jewellery, in a detail that's supposed to make him look like a generous benefactor. But when he returned on his second voyage the following year, he came with 17 ships and 1000 men in an effort to colonize, finding the island of Hispaniola as a suitable home and making the capital of his new territory Santo Domingo. He also sent a letter to the Queen asking for permission to enslave indigenous peoples. Though permission was flatly denied, he went ahead and did it anyway, forcing natives to work on mines and farms. According to Spanish historian Consuelo Varela, "Columbus' government was characterized by a form of tyranny," and he used many acts of torture to punish the new people under his rule. "Even those who loved him had to admit the atrocities that had taken place."

In 1502, the Spanish court sent Francsico de Bobadilla to replace Columbus as governor of the Indies, and there he was met with many complaints about Columbus and his two brothers, Bartolome and Diego. Bobadilla arrested the three of them, and wrote up a report that was lost until 2006. In it, he transcribes testimonies of more than 20 people, both enemies and supporters, describing brutal treatment of their subjects over their rule. One incident saw Columbus punishing a man for stealing corn by cutting off his nose and ears and selling him into slavery. Bartolome de las Casas, the son of a priest who accompanied Columbus on his second voyage and a priest himself, describes in his History of the Indies: 

 Endless testimonies...prove the mild and pacific temperament of the natives... But our work was to exasperate, ravage, kill, mangle and destroy; small wonder, then, if they tried to kill one of us now and then... The admiral (Columbus), it is true, was blind as those who came after him, and he was so anxious to please the King that he committed irreparable crimes against the Indians.

According to las Casas, male and female slaves did not see the each other during mining operations that could last up to 10 months, and up to a third of male slaves died during each these periods.

1492 does what the antiquated Christopher Columbus does, portraying the Admiral of the Ocean as a pious soul who just gets carried along with common European brutality. In one scene, the commanding officer cuts off the hand of a native for lying about the location of the gold. Columbus is in Europe at the time and had no control over the situation, and this is really one of the only moments of brutality included in the movie. It's more concerned with Columbus' tragic failure than what lead to it.

The religiosity of Columbus, something worthy enough to play a major role in both movies, did not prevent him from allowing exploitation of the indigenous populations. And the counterpoint that Columbus was just acting as someone of that time doesn't really hold water when taking into account how other people of just as strong a faith acted at the time- not just de las Casas and Bobadilla, but also Pope Paul III, who issued the Sublimus Dei in 1537 forbidding the enslavement of indigenous Americans. What was Columbus' religiosity for, then, if it didn't guide him in the moral direction?

I had a history teacher who warned of 'tearing down the individual', where a new version of history was popularized in an attempt to cast the heroes of the past in a damning light. But it's not fair to the victims to only recall Christopher Columbus the groundbreaking navigator, because there was so much left in Columbus' character, and more of it comes out with newly discovered primary documents, like the Bobadilla report. According to some, like Felipe Arnesto of History Today, he's a hero to the United States because the Founding Fathers needed a hero myth on which to base the new American values:

Joel Barlow's poem, The Vision of Columbus, appeared in 1787, Columbus remained a model for nineteenth-century Americans, engaged in a project for taming their own wilderness. Washington Irving's perniciously influential History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus of 1828 – which spread a lot of nonsense including the ever-popular folly that Columbus was derided for claiming that the world was round – appealed unashamedly to Americans' self-image as promoters of civilisation.

So in 1992, 500 years after Columbus sailed the ocean blue, Hollywood released two movies - one incredibly boring, one (though I can't say for sure) terrible - in commemoration. But maybe the man didn't deserve much better than that.

NEXT TIME: Comparing the actors to what Columbus actually (maybe) looked like; and we jump forward 100+ years to the founding of Jamestown with Disney's Pocahontas and Terence Malik's The New World. 

The Toscanelli map of the hypothetical westward route to Asia, which Columbus took on his first journey. For reference, Cippangu is Japan.

Consuelo Varela quotes come from http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/aug/07/books.spain. 

Felipe Arnesto quote comes from http://www.historytoday.com/felipe-armesto/columbus-hero-or-villain

Bartolome de las Casas quote comes from Wikipedia, which sites the book History of the Indies as its source for the quote. 

The Reel History of America: Introduction

A film tour of the history of the United States of America? Why not? I don't even have to leave my home (the best kind of vacation*)!

There are a number of reasons why I chose to do a rather straightforward project like this - catch up on movies I've missed and haven't had a chance to see (e.g. Lincoln and Django Unchained), learn more facts about the United States for Jeopardy!, have an excuse to watch more movies, etc., etc. But the biggest factor is that I just love the history of the United States - its minutiae, the cast of strange and eccentric characters, reading about and stewing over its bad qualities. Even my hate is love! Because, if you'll forgive me for quoting Christopher Hitchens:

What a subject America [is]: an inexhaustible one, in fact, begun by written publications and assertions that were open to rewriting and revision and amendment, and thus constituting an enormous "work-in-progress," which one might hope to play a tiny part. 

And nobody - not even me, a Canadian with zero ties to the US of A other than a couple of pairs of jeans from a Lewiston outlet mall - loves American history more than the entertainment industry. Telling the stories of those who make up the 'work-in-progress', from the mightiest decision-makers to the tiniest of bit players, is good biz.

But the big-wigs also like a good story. And the problems surrounding a good story like Argo caught my attention.

I saw Argo opening weekend, and I enjoyed it. And while the film got rave reviews after its release, Ben Affleck's historical thriller came under close scrutiny leading up to and immediately following its Oscar win, and not just from Canadians who felt jilted at our nation's role being underplayed. What was true and what wasn't true suddenly made Argo not worth the gold it won, and Affleck was attacked from all corners for adding things to make the story- a very real story- more action-packed. The close call at the airport? Never happened. The Iranian security chase as the plane taxied off the Tehran runway with the six American hostages? Didn't happen either. Reading the Wired article the film is based on, you learn it certainly was tense for the Americans who managed to escape their besieged embassy during the Iranian revolution. But a minor, routine delay at the airport (what actually happened) isn't great for a story, so the facts were embellished.

The Globe and Mail came to Argo's quasi-defense: "Anyone who watches U.S movies should realize that there is often something very false in the depictions of people, society and history and, paradoxically, a reflection of something very true to the U.S mythos." There's a mindset you have to have going into and coming out of a movie: what you are about to see and/or just saw may have been based on reality, but it wasn't real. And to be fair, it is more than a little stupid to get your facts from mainstream films; crucial details are often changed, added, or omitted to ramp up the drama in every movie, not just Argo.

I think the only way of getting past this is always, always, always taking everything with a grain of salt. Like a screenwriting professor says in this Boston Herald article, "People going for a history lesson are going to the wrong place."

Unfortunately, people do get their history from the wrong place. For the longest time after seeing Amadeus, I thought that it was the real-life story of Mozart, and not until I got interested in the deeper story that I found out it was mostly BS (albeit very entertaining BS). If people don't get interested in the deeper stories (something that really isn't their responsibility, movies being entertainment after all), they'll come out with a wrong version of history.

So in the interest of setting the record straight (as much as one blogger can) and for the love of both cinema and American history,  I'll be watching movies that either tell the stories of the United States or reflect them, from the voyages of Christopher Columbus to the presidency of Barack Obama.

I'm going to try and concentrate on fictional films, and though documentaries are used as sparingly as possible (this is a project looking at America through fictional storytelling), movies like 2016: Obama's America and Fahrenheit 9/11 are about versions of reality that critics claim are the opposite of the reality, and thus have been criticized as fictional. Even if that means me clawing my eyes out watching those movies.

And the itinerary:

1. 1492: Conquest of Paradise / Christopher Columbus: The Discovery
2. The New World / Pocahontas 
3. The Crucible 
4. The Patriot
5. 1776 
6. The Alamo
7. The Devil and Daniel Webster
8. Amistad
9. Gangs of New York
10. Gods and Generals / Gettysburg
11. Abe Lincoln in Illinois / Young Mr. Lincoln 
12. Abraham Lincoln (1930 DW Griffith) / Lincoln
13. The Birth of a Nation
14. Jesse James (1939) / I Shot Jesse James (1949) / The True Story of Jesse James (1957) / The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
15. There Will Be Blood
16. Inherit the Wind
17. The Grapes of Wrath / Bound for Glory
18. Public Enemies / Bonnie and Clyde / The Untouchables 
19. Modern Times
20. Pearl Harbor / Tora! Tora! Tora!
21. U-571 
22. The Great Escape / The Big Red One
23. Red Tails / Miracle at St Anna
24. The Great Dictator
25. Dr. Strangelove 
26. The Steel Helmet / M*A*S*H
27. The Front / Guilty by Suspicion 
28. Thirteen Days
29. JFK / Bobby
30. Mississippi Burning / Ghosts of Mississippi
31. Malcolm X
32. The Green Berets / Full Metal Jacket
33. Born on the Fourth of July / Platoon / Heaven and Earth
34. Easy Rider
35. Nixon / All the President's Men / Dick / Frost/Nixon / Secret Honor
36. Argo
37. Red Dawn 
38. Wall Street
39. Do the Right Thing
40. Jarhead / Three Kings
41. Slacker
42. Primary Colors
43. The Straight Story
44. W.
45. United 93 / World Trade Center / Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close / 25th Hour
46. The Hurt Locker / Zero Dark Thirty / Green Zone 
47. Fahrenheit 9/11 / 2016: Obama's America

A great number of high-profile biopics and historical dramas have been omitted from this list, but I haven't forgotten them. I'll be using related movies as a springboard to the filmed version of history that includes the more serious fare. Believe me, if there's a movie about American history, I've got it on a list somewhere. I won't restrict this series to just the main entries though, so check back for other things I learn along the way!

"When the legend becomes fact, print the legend," says Maxwell Scott in The Man Who Shot Liberty Vance. And when legend becomes fact, print a lengthy blog post about why it isn't. Or is. Or maybe both.

*note: I do in fact like leaving my home for vacations.