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Hollywood rewriting history

To the Editor,

Actress Kate Winslet’s new movie, “Ammonite,” is a historical biography of 19th century paleontologist Mary Anning. It features a lesbian relationship, between Anning and an associate.

The movie’s producers freely acknowledge the relationship never happened, and is depicted, simply, as a nod to “modern sensibilities.”

In other words, it’s totally irrelevant to the story, and an outright lie.

It’s been crowbarred in, due to nothing more than the “social injustice” of Anning, a strong, intelligent woman in a “patriarchal” society and profession. The simple fact that that’s just the way it was back then, and Ms. Anning deserves credit for her work and accomplishments in such an atmosphere, just isn’t enough.

Not content to simply, and in this case rightly, skewer “the patriarchy,” producers couldn’t resist the compulsion to make it “woke,” utterly disregarding historical accuracy.

Anning couldn’t simply have been a female working–often without credit–in a male-dominated field, in a male-dominated society, in a male-dominated era. No, the Hollywood hand-wringers had to paint a bigger, even more “oppressed,” picture. She had to be a repressed homosexual, too, in a bygone, much less tolerant, time.

Oh, woe to her! Even though, you know…not.

All, at the expense of plain historical fact, but whatever. That’s Hollywood.

Writing a straightforward biographical film would seem a lot easier, and more honest, than unnecessarily making up inaccurate details. That’s not even “dramatic license.” That’s flat-out lying, likely just because you know the effete liberal snobs at the Academy will be impressed, perhaps giving you a shot at an Oscar.

Myself, I feel it’s wrong, fabricating such important details. That’s a pretty sizeable liberty to take with someone’s life story, just to make a (false) point.

I posted this opinion to several different pages on social media. The responses were quite telling.

Conservatives understood my point.

“Progressives” who responded, however, saw absolutely nothing wrong with making up details about the life of a real person. Simply put, liberals were okay with lying.

Several ultimately expressed the opinion that my only problem here, stems from the fact that I’m just a mean, old homophobic bigot. That’s their default position, though, whenever they see you have a point; you’re just a rotten, no-good hater.

“So what?” one said, “They’re just telling a story.”

No, they’re telling a real person’s story. That’s different.

Inelegant browbeating with awkward, “woke,” virtue-signaling is what modern Hollywood does.

Indeed, there’s speculation of making future incarnations of Captain Kirk and Luke Skywalker, long-established characters, and chief heroes of “Star Trek” and “Star Wars”, respectively–and now considered outdated “symbols of the patriarchy”–bisexual. There’s also talk, after 83 years of lore, of making the next cinematic Superman black. Perhaps bisexual.

Why? Because, silly. “Woke”!

They’ve slathered more recent entries in these film franchises with rather overt sociopolitical messaging, not well-received by many longtime fans. Fans just want to see their heroes, minus the ham-fisted “empowerment” subtext and guilt trips.

To some of us nerds, continuity matters. That doesn’t make us haters.

Rob Denham

Weirton

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