Week of 2/16: Emiliano Zapata film

This week, we watched a film having to do with the Mexican revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata. Just like after we watched the film 1492: Conquest of Paradise, I was thinking about the fact that the film can inadvertently add in details that are inaccurate, and we would absorb that information and not even realize that it is inaccurate. Such details can seriously warp our perspective on historical events. One such example in this film was that all the characters were talking in English, not Spanish. There is an obvious reason why they were, but still, this Americanizes the characters and does not portray their culture accurately. This made me wonder how many other inaccurate details I completely overlooked. While the film was much, much less fictionalized than 1492: Conquest of Paradise, the filmmakers of Viva Zapata! inevitably did not get every historical and cultural detail correct. Therefore, when watching films, we must watch with discretion and be careful about making judgments based on what we see.

Comments

  1. Joseph GreendykFebruary 18, 2022 at 7:39 PM

    Hi Seth! I liked your point that it's very easy to think a movie does a good job of representing reality. I think seeing the images of a film helps bring home or make a reality the narratives we learn in a history class. Seeing the things we learned about happen in a video seems to somehow trigger our brain to take it as fact, even if it's very obviously inaccurate. As you said, I think we need to be careful how we view movies because it's very easy to form incorrect notions based on a fictional movie.

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  2. Linnea FrantzFebruary 18, 2022 at 7:50 PM

    Hey there Seth! I really like the point you made in your post about watching with discretion. I had not thought much about how the film being in English may have distorted the, already dramatized, information. I totally agree that we need to utilize just as high of a level of critical thinking skills when we watch films, as we do when analyzing a primary source.

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  3. Médar SerrataMarch 11, 2022 at 2:25 AM

    Thank you, Seth, for your post. What you say about the use of English in a film about the Mexican Revolution is very interesting. It left me wanting to know more about how this choice “can seriously warp our perspective on historical events.” In what way does the use of English affect our interpretation of the revolution? What other signs of Americanization were you able to identify?

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