I was watching the John Adams miniseries the other day when I saw that scene of the main character complaining that the famous painting of the signing of the constitution was bad history. It kind of stuck with me. The scene itself obviously never happened and wasn’t based on any real complaint John Adams had but the point of it was to critique how we retell history in media and take liberties for storytelling that warp the public perception of history.
Pocahontas and Hamilton are some obvious examples of this. Pocahontas has people telling her entire story wrong and Hamilton has some big errors that came from making the narrative (and no i’m not talking about how it’s a hip hop musical with all black people). The big part from that play that hops out to me is how James Monroe had his role in Hamilton’s life cannibalized and given to Jefferson and Burr. It also creates the impression that Burr never served as VP, that the duel between him and Hamilton was because of the presidential election and not the later election for New York governor, and that Burr was running against Jefferson instead of effectively being his running mate with the election deadlock being the result of moronic early election laws. The writer did this for the purposes of plot but it raises the question of ethics in portraying history. Do you think writers have a moral obligation to portray history accurately i’m writing historical fiction?
And for context because I forgot to mention it his complaint was that all the signers were there at one time when in reality they had been in and out of the building all summer giving their signatures whenever they happened to be in town.
What do you want me to ask Pocahontas when I meet her in paradise ?
>Most influential people in history
>Pocahontas
I mean she’s important I guess but too 5?
Photography was invented in 1826, Pocahontas definitely shouldn’t be there and there are many people more influential than all of them except maybe Jesus, including but not limited to Adolf Hitler, Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, Christopher Columbus etc.
>Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, Christopher Columbus
What do you want me to ask them when I meet them during the Millennium ?
I’m not sure what religion you subscribe to is but i’m pretty sure none of them except maybe Zoroastrianism would have all of those people in it.
zoroastrianism is ok
jwschizophrenia is cringe
Next you're going to say Louis Pasteur didn't invent the cure to rabbies
Did a redditor draw this?
I am not a redditor
I can forgive gross inaccuracies if the MC is hot
Fair enough
>How much responsibility do writers have to when making something “based on history”?
Zero. That's on you.
Or the 3/5ths compromise
Ah so 3/5 of every piece of historical fiction should be historically accurate
No. Hamilton glosses over his complicated relationship with slavery for muh black excellence and lecturing the audience about freedom
Jokes aside everyone had a complicated relationship with slavery back then. It was kind of a problem they inherited and fixing anything was complicated. Yeah the play glosses over a lot of it but i’m just saying that even people who were anti-slavery had to play ball with everybody else because of the situation they were in.
The real Pocahontas was 11 and she never had a sexual relationship with John Smith so they couldn't make her look like that if it were accurate.
I don’t know, this is Disney we’re talking about
The sequel is actually a lot more accurate given that it depicts events that actually happened.
I have been a purist for all of my life, but these days I have come to accept that entertainment's main purpose is to entertain not educate, but on the other hand, I do not understand certain creative decisions.
I love hating History's Vikings because it is full of these decisions. Like why would you make Rollo Ragnar's brother? What the fricking purpose does that serve?
plot
how?
inclusivity is not a right
creators are not your employees
The more realistic these things are, the worse it is, because that makes people think it's real. Luckily neither Pocahontas nor Hamilton has that problem.
I’m not really talking inclusivity just realism. Though that’s a fair point on disconnections. That said I still meet people who mix up the Johns with Pocahontas.
Lots of people probably think Salieri scared Mozart to death by dressing up as his father's ghost, but a lot of these kind of works are meant as introductions. More than a passing interest is required to really understand history.
That’s a fair point. My interest in mezoamerican mythology came from watching Road to El Dorado as a kid
>This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Problem solved.