Is it getting to the point that it takes movies to remind us of our own historical narrative? Gauging the reaction to the new Secretariat poster at the movie theater has been interesting. It's not a movie about secretarial work, as some people seem to think. It hasn't quite been forty years since Secretariat won the Triple Crown, but the feat has already faded from memory.
Granted, not everyone is a horse-racing fan, and granted, I don't think it was an event that altered the course of history in and of itself. But the fact remains that we now apparently must rely on Hollywood to make us aware of our own past. It doesn't matter that we are blessed with instant access to a wealth of information; we prefer to ignore that and have it spoon-fed to us by a film studio. Taking Orwell into account (who controls the past controls the future...) that's a scary thought.
From Hollywood's perspective, of course, our historical ignorance is a good thing: people are probably more likely to see a movie if they don't know the ending already. It makes me wonder if Valkyrie's ending came as a surprise to anybody... or if, in twenty years, a whole generation of Americans will think that Hitler died in a Parisian cinema on the night of the Nation's Pride premiere.
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