Accuracy is a tedious and irrelevant criterion. Folks get that for textual literature, and no reasonable Romanist is scolding, e.g., Vergil for misrepresenting what 12th cent BCE Carthage actually looked like. What is it about the medium of film that makes scholars lose all literary critical sense?
As someone into Mesoamerican history and archeology, I like to think about things in terms of "authenticity" rather then "accuracy".
You can still use art motifs, iconography, specific historical figures or conflicts, cultural norms or practices etc in ways that tie into their actual meaning or...
...their significance that feels well handled even if it's not strictly "accurate".
An example of this is Tlalocmon from Digimon. It is VERY much it's own thing (and I do have some critiques), but much of what it does references Tlaloc's iconography or symbolism:
Yeah i remember having to compare Gladiator the movie to the time period it was placed in, as a assignment in an undergrad history class. Needless to say none of the movies discuss the Antonine Plague that was taking place lol.
If I can’t get a world class education in the Politics of Greek Theater at an IMAX while sucking polysaturated fats off popped kernels of corn then I don’t want to be alive.
I’ve come to feel this way about “is the science of x blockbuster accurate?” pieces and similar. I feel like it feeds deficit model thinking where it’s assumed the public at large are gullible and don’t get they’re seeing a work of fiction, so it breeds condescension.
It's so frustrating when experts are nothing but accuracy police. It's not correct? Cool, the audience doesn't know that or care, because they're not yokels looking for a film to help them pass an exam in your class.
Right? And really there are all sorts of movies involving office jobs or firefighters or people in software or whatever that aren’t accurate and raise “Yeah, we don’t really do that” responses and it’s not A Thing.
I'm not critiquing #GladiatorII for lines like "hose them down," though I admit to wincing. But when Scott/Scarpa postpones Rome's conquest of North Africa by 300 years, they also label Africans as uncultured barbarians rather than as one of the most stable & assimilated provinces of the Empire.
But I think your point with those isn't "this is inaccurate" as much as "look at the white supremacist work this film is doing in the context of the 21st century," right? My gripe is with the tut-tutting "oh Rome didn't have cafes or newspapers or sharks, this is lowbrow trash" op eds.
Understandably, though the sheer accumulation of sharks and cafes and hoses and women in the Senate and stirrups does start to just feel lazy after a while. There’s not exactly a shortage of historical consultants.
Maybe lazy, but also maybe legible shorthand to a modern audience for a constellation of significance that'd otherwise be cumbersome to convey if you're not a classicist. How do Romans get their gossip? You can try to explain salutationes and acta and praecones, or you can just have a coffee scene.
Or you can just have people meeting at a bar or in the marketplace or someplace that doesn't have literally the exact same tables as any modern Italian piazza, with glass wine decanters? That's why I'm saying lazy; there are equally plausible shorthands that aren't jarring.
I remember one of my history professors out for a class or two, because he had been flown out to be a consultant on the Crusades movie “Kingdom of Heaven”
I’m fine with historical fiction not being completely accurate as long as there’s no major brain dead depictions of the period. But mainly I hate people who see like one historical fiction film set in the ancient or classical world and act like they know what they’re talking about
the first one has a real life emperor die in a gladiator fight against a made up dude and prominently features the thumbs down, some things are just to be expected
i'm not super interested in the sequel but i heard on npr it has features a (checks google) naumachia and that is sick as hell
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You can still use art motifs, iconography, specific historical figures or conflicts, cultural norms or practices etc in ways that tie into their actual meaning or...
An example of this is Tlalocmon from Digimon. It is VERY much it's own thing (and I do have some critiques), but much of what it does references Tlaloc's iconography or symbolism:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Efs7Fpw3AusYTV3DyrVSaGmB10V8NqFy7ZHZxzDw7ww/edit?usp=sharing
Vibes >>> Facts when it comes to entertainment
i'm not super interested in the sequel but i heard on npr it has features a (checks google) naumachia and that is sick as hell
i feel like they say a lot about roman society even if the exact specifics are wrong