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We all know that America has problems understanding the rest of the world and likes to think of itself as the only country worth living in. At the same time they have their own special ‘history’. For example, how many times have we heard Americans refer to their country as the worlds biggest democracy? They are wrong but many believe it. What about the notion that they were responsible for the fall of the Soviet Union? Wrong again – although let’s be fair – they helped.
The one that triggered rather a lot of anger here at home in England in recent times was the movie U-571, (2000 directed by Jonathan Mostow). This was a blatant re-writing of second world war history that had US servicemen capturing and boarding a German submarine to acquire the much needed Enigma coding machine. The event happened of course, but as we all know here in Blighty, it was English servicemen who did the boarding and capturing.
It was, of course, Hollywood that decided that the real history was just not good enough. It had to have been Americans of course, because didn’t they save the world and win the war? And I am probably right in the assumption that the bulk of the US audience who saw the film left the theatre fully convinced that what they had seen was the absolute and honest truth.
So it was nice to see, even if it is six years a little too late, an ‘almost’ apology from screenwriter David Ayer who publicly stated what we all knew already:
It was a distortion… a mercenary decision to create this parallel history in order to drive the movie for an American audience
Next you will be telling me that God is not American
I’ll look it up on Wikipedia…
Well, to be honest, Americans are known to “twist” the truth just a little bit.
It was a fictional event of WW II, get over it.
@Chuck: What kind of stupid comment is that? There was nothing fictional about it. It happened. It just happened tp be an English sub manned by English navy personnel wi thater thw factthout an American in sight.
So what does ‘get over it’ mean? Get over the fact that Americans are the biggest re-writers of history in the modern age? Get over the fact that you seem to know nothing about history? get over what?