> I'm currently spending a lot of time in bed listening to the radio with a back problem.
> A few hours ago, they were talking about Pearl Harbor (the movie) and somehow got
> into a debate on what I call the 'US Propaganda' genre (PH, Patriot etc.). During this,
> an American guest suggested that Hollywood was becoming more and more like the
> Ministry of Truth where Winston Smith works in '1984'.

Hmm. There are still a number of significant differences, I think.

For one thing, there is still an alternative to "Hollywood history". The Ministry of Truth didn't just create new history, but removed all traces of the old. In our case, the old history, the real history, is still where it always was.

Another thing: note the quote marks about "Hollywood history". What Hollywood presents us with are fictions. The lazy and the foolish may fail to take them with a suitable grain of salt, but Hollywood is not trying, in any real sense, to make us believe that it's version is genuine historical fact.

So there's a major difference in the reality of the phenomenon. The Ministry of Truth enforced Truth on the people; if anybody *really* gets their idea of historical Truth from Hollywood, then it's their own silly fault and they're doing it to themselves.

There's also the question of motive and involvement, on which Hollywood stands precisely opposed to the Ministry of Truth. It mattered to the Ministry of Truth what people thought was true, which was why so much effort was invested in telling the people what the truth was; whereas Hollywood offers its twisted versions of reality precisely because it *doesn't* matter to it what people think, as long as they buy tickets.


> What does everyone think?

Actually, what I thought was "This reminds me of that bit in 'Continuity Errors'", but as I'm probably the only person here who's read 'Continuity Errors', I refrained from going on about it and came up with the above instead.


Paul