Hollywood's racist lies about Britain and the British
By Andrew Roberts
The news from Hollywood is that yet another movie is about to be made distorting history to the disadvantage of the British. Mel Gibson's'Patriot' will be the bracingly anti-British story of an American general in the War of Independence, Francis Marion, who fights a brilliant guerilla war against the evil British invaders. When the movie's historians discovered that in real life Marion raped his slaves and hunted Red Indians for sport they changed his name to Benjamin Martin. Yet one thing stayed the same; the movies' 'baddies' are, as usual, the treacherous, cowardly, evil, sadistic Brits.
The list of films depicting us as villains is now so long as to amount to a virtual declaration of war on this country by the geographically small but globally incredible powerful Los Angeles suburb of Hollywood. Think of Charles Dance in the woefully historically inaccurate 'Michael Collins'. Or caddish Tim Roth in 'Rob Roy'. Or Jeremy Irons and Alan Rickman in the 'Die Hard' movies.
The toffee-nosed Brits in 'Gandhi', 'Braveheart' and 'Pocohontas' are caricatures, as is the genuinely funny Sheriff of Nottingham in 'Prince of Thieves'. But the British officers in 'Titanic' are portrayed as battening down the steerage class hatches, thereby deliberately trying to murder the happy, jig-dancing Irish folk below. We always play the villians, even when no amount of historical revisionism could place us at the scene of the crime. Did Steven Spielberg cast a German as the homicidal concentration camp commander in 'Schindler's List'? No, it was the Englishman Ralph Fiennes.
Even in Disney cartoons such as 'The Lion King' the role of the treacherous, murderous lion Scar is played by Jeremy Irons with a cut-glass English accent. Sher Khan, the tiger in 'The Jungle Book', Cruella De Ville in '101 Dalmatians' and many other Disney villains are also recognisably English.
British actors love it; they know that the bad guys often have the best parts but is there something more important and sinister going on here than just boosting the job opportunities of such British career "baddies" as Tim Curry, Brian Cox, Richard E. Grant and Jonathan Pryce? Might there not be an insidious form of genuine racism at work here, something that Britons have hitherto been far too indulgent to complain about?
Larry Mark, producer of Jerry Maguire, is explicit about what is going on. 'The villains used to be the Germans, the Japanese or the Russians', he admits, 'but they protested. If the English get a bad rap they can take it.' Until recently this has been true, indeed we have almost taken it as a compliment that Hollywood bothers to cast Britons as villains. It shows that we still matter in the world. After all, no one tries negatively to stereotype the Finns, Norwegians or Thais.
Yet there is a point where the incessant bad-mouthing has to stop, and for many people that point was reached in the mid-Nineties when historical accuracy was stretched so far that movies actually attempted to explain away anti-British terrorism and helped the propaganda efforts of organisations such as the IRA. The glamorisation of violence is bad enough but in several recent films the assassination of serving British officials was actively justified by horrific distortion of the historical truth.
The 1996 biopic 'Michael Collins', for example, posing as a true story, simply invented scenes in which British troops machine gunned perfectly innocent Irish sports spectators, portrayed a car bomb decades before such a weapon was invented and showed the torture and murder by the British in 1922 of an informer who in fact died peacefully in his bed in 1972. When the Irish director, Neil Jordan, himself a history graduate, was told that Irish historians had pinpointed these falsifications and many more, he simply answered; 'Well, f..k them'.
Another such movie, 'Some Mother's Son', about Bobby Sands and the IRA hunger-strikers and starring Helen Mirren, was written and directed by Terry George. American audiences were not told that Mr George, far from being an objective witness to the events of 1981, had in fact served three years in prison in Northern Ireland for possession of a gun with intent to endanger life. When it was screened at the prestigious Hamptons Film Festival in 1996 these were some of the remarks made afterwards by ordinary Americans leaving the cinema: 'Those bloody British. I do hate them a lot.' 'God, I hate Thatcher.' 'The way they speak, the way they act - I hate the British'.
In this country and in America incitement to racial hatred is illegal, but that does not seem to apply to movies biased against the British. There were also factual innaccuracies and sheer invention of events in the notorious 1997 movie 'The Devil's Own', so much so that even its co-star, Brad Pitt, denounced its pro-IRA bias. 'The New York Post' described the film as 'an eloquent apology for murderous terrorism', and the former Irish foreign minister, Conor Cruise O'Brien explained how such a distorted, sick film could have been released: 'In the structure of the American movie industry there is a large Irish-American lobby which is basically pro-IRA. Any film which depicted the IRA overall unfavourably would run into trouble at the box office.'
Part of the problem is that although America has its vocal and politically-motivated minority racial groups - Irish-Americans, African-Americans, Native-Americans, Hispanics, and so on - no-one terms himself a British-American, even though millions are. If British-Americans insisted on their right not to be so constantly denigrated and offensively portrayed they could very swiftly change attitudes.
If they simply voted with their wallets at the box office and refused to see shows in which they are stigmatised as vicious sadists, Hollywood would soon be forced to listen. The first film to boycott might be the new James Bond movie if, as reports suggest, the screenplay depicts one of the few genuine British cinema heroes as being in league with Gerry Adams and the IRA.
If we stayed away from a film with such a disgraceful story-line it would hurt the film-makers where it hurts them most - not in their (clearly non-existent) consciences, but in their wallets. In 1981 the film-maker Colin Welland famously told the Oscars ceremony; 'The British are coming!' If the message got through that the British weren't coming to blatantly anti-British movies any longer, Hollywood would soon see a significant proportion of its profits disappear, and more honest depictions of the Troubles screened.
It is easy to explain psychologically why in film after film the British Empire is depicted as genocidal and grossly exploitative, when in fact it was neither. It is because with their own record of killing 12 million American Indians and supporting slavery for four decades after the British abolished it, Americans wish to project their own historical guilt onto someone else. In the process they also try to grab the glory for winning the Second World War, screening such movies as U-571 which deliberately denies the British role in crucial theatres of the war.
As educational standards decline, British schoolchildren learn a greater and greater proportion of history from movies. Yet most of the ones Hollywood currently produces seriously misrepresent the motivations and achievements of our forefathers.
Fifty years ago, George Orwell wrote: "England is the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality." In a few years' time, if these films continue to be made, it will not just be intellectuals but ordinary Britons who will have been conned into feeling entirely unwarranted shame about their country's past. With 'Patriot', Hollywood seems about to unleash yet another offensive against our honour.
If so, in the name of historical truth and justifiable national pride, let's at last fight back.
Andrew Roberts yesterday won the Wolfson History Award for his 'Salisbury: Victorian Titan' (Weidenfeld & Nicolson £25)
© Express Newspapers, 2000
------------------
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By Andrew Roberts
The news from Hollywood is that yet another movie is about to be made distorting history to the disadvantage of the British. Mel Gibson's'Patriot' will be the bracingly anti-British story of an American general in the War of Independence, Francis Marion, who fights a brilliant guerilla war against the evil British invaders. When the movie's historians discovered that in real life Marion raped his slaves and hunted Red Indians for sport they changed his name to Benjamin Martin. Yet one thing stayed the same; the movies' 'baddies' are, as usual, the treacherous, cowardly, evil, sadistic Brits.
The list of films depicting us as villains is now so long as to amount to a virtual declaration of war on this country by the geographically small but globally incredible powerful Los Angeles suburb of Hollywood. Think of Charles Dance in the woefully historically inaccurate 'Michael Collins'. Or caddish Tim Roth in 'Rob Roy'. Or Jeremy Irons and Alan Rickman in the 'Die Hard' movies.
The toffee-nosed Brits in 'Gandhi', 'Braveheart' and 'Pocohontas' are caricatures, as is the genuinely funny Sheriff of Nottingham in 'Prince of Thieves'. But the British officers in 'Titanic' are portrayed as battening down the steerage class hatches, thereby deliberately trying to murder the happy, jig-dancing Irish folk below. We always play the villians, even when no amount of historical revisionism could place us at the scene of the crime. Did Steven Spielberg cast a German as the homicidal concentration camp commander in 'Schindler's List'? No, it was the Englishman Ralph Fiennes.
Even in Disney cartoons such as 'The Lion King' the role of the treacherous, murderous lion Scar is played by Jeremy Irons with a cut-glass English accent. Sher Khan, the tiger in 'The Jungle Book', Cruella De Ville in '101 Dalmatians' and many other Disney villains are also recognisably English.
British actors love it; they know that the bad guys often have the best parts but is there something more important and sinister going on here than just boosting the job opportunities of such British career "baddies" as Tim Curry, Brian Cox, Richard E. Grant and Jonathan Pryce? Might there not be an insidious form of genuine racism at work here, something that Britons have hitherto been far too indulgent to complain about?
Larry Mark, producer of Jerry Maguire, is explicit about what is going on. 'The villains used to be the Germans, the Japanese or the Russians', he admits, 'but they protested. If the English get a bad rap they can take it.' Until recently this has been true, indeed we have almost taken it as a compliment that Hollywood bothers to cast Britons as villains. It shows that we still matter in the world. After all, no one tries negatively to stereotype the Finns, Norwegians or Thais.
Yet there is a point where the incessant bad-mouthing has to stop, and for many people that point was reached in the mid-Nineties when historical accuracy was stretched so far that movies actually attempted to explain away anti-British terrorism and helped the propaganda efforts of organisations such as the IRA. The glamorisation of violence is bad enough but in several recent films the assassination of serving British officials was actively justified by horrific distortion of the historical truth.
The 1996 biopic 'Michael Collins', for example, posing as a true story, simply invented scenes in which British troops machine gunned perfectly innocent Irish sports spectators, portrayed a car bomb decades before such a weapon was invented and showed the torture and murder by the British in 1922 of an informer who in fact died peacefully in his bed in 1972. When the Irish director, Neil Jordan, himself a history graduate, was told that Irish historians had pinpointed these falsifications and many more, he simply answered; 'Well, f..k them'.
Another such movie, 'Some Mother's Son', about Bobby Sands and the IRA hunger-strikers and starring Helen Mirren, was written and directed by Terry George. American audiences were not told that Mr George, far from being an objective witness to the events of 1981, had in fact served three years in prison in Northern Ireland for possession of a gun with intent to endanger life. When it was screened at the prestigious Hamptons Film Festival in 1996 these were some of the remarks made afterwards by ordinary Americans leaving the cinema: 'Those bloody British. I do hate them a lot.' 'God, I hate Thatcher.' 'The way they speak, the way they act - I hate the British'.
In this country and in America incitement to racial hatred is illegal, but that does not seem to apply to movies biased against the British. There were also factual innaccuracies and sheer invention of events in the notorious 1997 movie 'The Devil's Own', so much so that even its co-star, Brad Pitt, denounced its pro-IRA bias. 'The New York Post' described the film as 'an eloquent apology for murderous terrorism', and the former Irish foreign minister, Conor Cruise O'Brien explained how such a distorted, sick film could have been released: 'In the structure of the American movie industry there is a large Irish-American lobby which is basically pro-IRA. Any film which depicted the IRA overall unfavourably would run into trouble at the box office.'
Part of the problem is that although America has its vocal and politically-motivated minority racial groups - Irish-Americans, African-Americans, Native-Americans, Hispanics, and so on - no-one terms himself a British-American, even though millions are. If British-Americans insisted on their right not to be so constantly denigrated and offensively portrayed they could very swiftly change attitudes.
If they simply voted with their wallets at the box office and refused to see shows in which they are stigmatised as vicious sadists, Hollywood would soon be forced to listen. The first film to boycott might be the new James Bond movie if, as reports suggest, the screenplay depicts one of the few genuine British cinema heroes as being in league with Gerry Adams and the IRA.
If we stayed away from a film with such a disgraceful story-line it would hurt the film-makers where it hurts them most - not in their (clearly non-existent) consciences, but in their wallets. In 1981 the film-maker Colin Welland famously told the Oscars ceremony; 'The British are coming!' If the message got through that the British weren't coming to blatantly anti-British movies any longer, Hollywood would soon see a significant proportion of its profits disappear, and more honest depictions of the Troubles screened.
It is easy to explain psychologically why in film after film the British Empire is depicted as genocidal and grossly exploitative, when in fact it was neither. It is because with their own record of killing 12 million American Indians and supporting slavery for four decades after the British abolished it, Americans wish to project their own historical guilt onto someone else. In the process they also try to grab the glory for winning the Second World War, screening such movies as U-571 which deliberately denies the British role in crucial theatres of the war.
As educational standards decline, British schoolchildren learn a greater and greater proportion of history from movies. Yet most of the ones Hollywood currently produces seriously misrepresent the motivations and achievements of our forefathers.
Fifty years ago, George Orwell wrote: "England is the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality." In a few years' time, if these films continue to be made, it will not just be intellectuals but ordinary Britons who will have been conned into feeling entirely unwarranted shame about their country's past. With 'Patriot', Hollywood seems about to unleash yet another offensive against our honour.
If so, in the name of historical truth and justifiable national pride, let's at last fight back.
Andrew Roberts yesterday won the Wolfson History Award for his 'Salisbury: Victorian Titan' (Weidenfeld & Nicolson £25)
© Express Newspapers, 2000
------------------
Need help writing a letter to Congress or whomever?
Do you have a great letter or post that you would like to share with us?
Then stop by the NEW 2nd Amendment Activist's 'Copy & Paste' Forum!!!
