Hollywood History

“Joan of Arc or Attila?” I ask my husband as I hold up two red envelopes from Netflix.

“Oh, brother,” he says, looking them over.

They’re both made-for-television mini-series and include pauses for commercial breaks and everything.

“When are you going to give me the online password so I can pick our movies?” he asks.

I admit that lately I’ve been going overboard in the documentaries department. Last week it was Fidel: The Untold Story and next week it’s The Crusades: Disk 1.

I’m trying to make up for lost time. In high school, I never paid attention during history class. Nothing but battles, and wars, and pictures of men in military uniform.

Blech.

But now I’ve come to regret those days I spent doodling cartoon characters in my notebook instead of listening to lectures. Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it, right?

So I’m creating this huge timeline in my head:

While the white men were continuing to invade the tribes' land (Dances with Wolves) women were single-handedly holding down farms while pointing shotguns to fend off vagrants (Cold Mountain). After the civil war, Americans built log cabins and spent their days milking cows and haying to store up food for winter while they tried to claim land under The Homestead Act (Frontier House). Fast forward to the 1900s and a man dressed in loincloth who barely ate helped lead the Indian independence movement (Gandhi) when shortly afterwards China began taking over Tibet and Heinrich Harrer made friends with the Dali Lama (Seven Years in Tibet).

Yes, yes I realize I’m including some fiction films.

And Ron is quick to point out important matters such as: “I don’t think they used the phrase ‘Give it all you got’ in Germany in the 1940s.

But that’s Hollywood History for ya.