Feeling Patriotic Yet?
We talk a lot about bad history films. Chief among them are Gone with the Wind (1939) and The Birth of a Nation (1915), two very different films that purportedly tell a story of the nation’s past. Both are rooted in the Myth of the Lost Cause, an idea that says that the Civil War was not about slavery, it was about defending southern honor. This idea, of course, is complete bullshit.
Despite that, legions of Americans hold true to the idea that antebellum and post-bellum southerners actually defended the truest notions of what it meant to be Americans—even if that meant actually warring against America itself. Don’t get lost in the details. American myth making has always played fast and loose with the facts anyway.
Which brings us to The Patriot. This film does not do damage to American society in the ways that the two aforementioned movies do. I don’t think anyone is looking to Mel Gibson for ideas of what the United States did or should look like these days. But in ways that GWTW and TBOAN are not, The Patriot is fun. You can sit and watch this movie and not feel entirely weird about it afterwards.
When HATM was in its infancy, we got a lot of requests to show this film. We were finally able to show it on May 24, 2000—nearly two years after we started. I remember it being one of our bigger nights. People were eager to tee off on it, and perhaps they should have. The Patriot doesn’t quite proclaim to be a historically accurate film, but it takes itself pretty seriously. And films that take themselves seriously tend to end up in the crosshairs.
All that said, we’re joined this week by HATM Podcast mainstays Craig Bruce Smith and Robert Greene II to talk about this movie. Craig and Rob are two friends of mine and brilliant scholars in their own right, so I think you’ll enjoy what they have to say. That said, here are the links to the podcast:
And while you’re at it, be sure to mark this Sunday, February 19 on your calendar. We’ll be showing The Woman King on Netflix at 8pm eastern. I hope that you’ll join in.
Finally, if you’re interested in my scholarly work, I’ll be presenting online at the Morris Forum on the Native South on Wednesday, February 22. I’ll be precirculating some work from a chapter I’m crafting for my manuscript. It is open to the public and admission is free. If you’d like to attend, please email Andrew Frank at afrank@fsu.edu to receive the precirculated paper and zoom links.
Whew! That’s all for now. Thanks so much for reading and listening and being part of this community.