hello and welcome to the first official history buffs podcast I’m going to talk a little bit today about something that really bothers me when it comes to historical movies but before then I just want to say thank you all for the wonderful support you have given me this past month and the feedback you’ve given me has really helps in me trying to make this channel the best I possibly can recently I uploaded an unofficial podcast asking you guys what kind of podcast you wanted to hear and most of you have asked for the same thing which is that you would like it if I can go to further detail on some reviews that I have done or I’m about to do which actually makes perfect sense because due to time constraints I can’t go into detail about every single thing that is wrong with the movies that I’m reviewing because otherwise you could just go on for hours so some of you have also asked if I could do an email segment which is of course I’m happy to do so if you message me through the history buffs YouTube channel I will answer that question in the next podcast now it doesn’t have to be history related though you can ask me anything you want whether it be about movies games or about my private life if you want although I’m sure that there’ll be nothing more boring for me to talk about but generally there are no restrictions I’m still trying to figure out what kind of show to do but any case I am just blown away with how quickly you guys have come aboard for my channel I mean I’m looking at the view count for zuly right now and it’s about 1161 views for a video I uploaded just three weeks ago and Gladiator which I uploaded just a week ago has nearly a thousand views already which is just incredible for a small channel starting out so I thank you for that and if you can think of anyone else who might be interested interested in this show please share it out whether it be anyone you know from the old spill comm website or any of your mates it would mean the absolute world to me so back on point I wanted to talk about something that I’ve noticed a lot recently in historical movies it seems to me that more often than not we are getting movies where the protagonist seems to be a man out of his time sharing moral views that seem closer to what we currently believe in in the 21st century rather than what everyone else in that protagonists time period now the justification behind this is that filmmakers will argue that they have to make the hero relatable to the audience otherwise we won’t like him or sympathize with him which is just ridiculous if you ask me I mean I can name dozens of movies off the top of my head which counters this argument like one like one example would be a Tony Montana in Scarface how on earth does a psychopathic criminal relate to us what because he had like a moral code of not killing women and children okay okay but killing everyone else’s anyone else is absolutely fine all right okay so why is this concept so constant with historical movies if it’s ridiculous I mean this is something I’ve noticed when I was doing my research for Kingdom of Heaven there’s one scene that just infuriates me the more I think about it okay well this is the one of the many scenes actually infuriate me but of course due to our time constraints I won’t be talking about this specific one when I finally review the movie so I actually thought it’d be a good idea to do it here instead so anyway it’s that bit towards the end of the movie when Saladin’s army is just about to besieged Jerusalem an Orlando blue gives one of those really weak speeches where in this instance he’s talking about which religion has the the right to be the dominant one in Jerusalem so he says which is more holy the war the mosque the Sepulchre who has claimed no one has claimed all have claimed what a bunch of tofu farting tree-hugging hippie bollocks I mean I don’t think the filmmakers are aware of how outrageous his statement is to the medieval mindset it’s not any controversial then but it’s controversial now this doesn’t sound like something a medieval knight would say but it sounds like something a stoned liberal protester would say when being interviewed by journalists I mean he would probably say something like a the thing is those Israelis should just totally chill out and those Palestinians should also chill out I mean who has claimed Oh have claimed oh really and uh and how should they go about it I don’t know man I’m just a sophomore see how this sounds so why on earth is Orlando Bloom spouting this rubbish I mean I can guarantee you that no man in that medieval age was ever thinking this way this idea of tolerance is really only a modern invention one that we still have yet to perfect this has been part of the human condition for thousands of years not even the Islamic world in the Middle Ages where there was there much tolerance and like I’m of course referring to the general misconception that we’re Christians and Jews lived happily side-by-side with Muslims in peace that usually held is the gold standard of Tolerance with many historians during that time period yet they were just barely tolerated I mean anyone who is a non-muslim were low class citizens with very little rights and had to pay a heavy tax called the jizya as a humiliating public ceremony where they would be like struck on the head or the nape of the neck this was to symbolize their humiliation and to assert Muslim dominance and this actually carried on until the until the 20th century so yeah if you consider not having your head cut off as tolerant then I guess yeah yeah they’re pretty cool another example I could think of isn’t that seen the Patriot whether the British bad guy goes to Mel Gibson’s slaves and says anyone who fights for the crown will earn their freedom and then they say sir we’re not slaves we work this land as freedmen so basically they want to make Mel Gibson’s character likeable but also own a plantation well we all know that anyone who owned a plantation in eighteenth-century America had slaves working it so rather than just being faithful to history they have they have Mel Gibson free his slaves and hired them back to work his land okay now I’m sure they were like a couple of people here and there that probably did do this but that was obviously not considered the norm back then so these movies are supposed to recreate our history but this one wants to take out all the nasty bits which quite Frank being reeks of desperation oh no you can’t have the main character be a slave owner because owning slaves is wrong and and audiences don’t like slavery so ok you know what while you’re at it if he’s so ahead of his time why doesn’t he put in motion the idea to abolish slavery altogether and in fact he could also put forward the idea of women’s right to vote and to legalize gay marriage I mean after all why not oh yeah that’s right because that hasn’t happened yet I’m still watching a history movie right we haven’t moved on to fantasy epochs all of a sudden I believe these kinds of movies really do insult our intelligence not only I think that us liking a character has nothing to do with us finding common ground with their moral code if you want a perfect example of that I would really recommend you guys to watch the TV show Vikings there’s this scene in season one with the Vikings Raider Linda’s bond which was an island monastery in northern England so our heroes our protagonists come into this monastery and they slaughter all of these unarmed priests which is exactly what happens in real life did anyone stop watching the show when that happened no though they accepted it because they understood that that’s what Vikings were like if the writers from Kingdom of Heaven or the patriot were to do that scene then they would have a bit where the protagonist probably says uh no we shouldn’t do this killing priests is wrong which would be outrageous but ask yourself is it any less outrageous then putting out of the idea of having black people working a plantation as slaves or having a medieval night challenge the idea of the Crusades in the first place I don’t think that modern audiences should be pampered like little children whenever something scary pops up on the screen these movies should be able to remind us of how far we have come in improving our civilization if you take out the bits we are ashamed of then you undermine your own credibility and calling yourself a historical movie I mean like why is it that I find more realism in Game of Thrones the story that takes place in a fantastical setting with dragons then in Kingdom of Heaven or the patron it’s probably because it’s unapologetic and gives you an idea of how brutal medieval society can be this includes intolerance and backward thinking understanding the roots of such problems today is the first step towards fixing it so I implore you guys whenever you watch a historical movie don’t settle for one that feels like it has to hold your hand if it sounds like and smells like then it’s probably so anyway uh hope you guys enjoyed that as you can see this is still a work in progress of course but hopefully I could start doing more podcasts in the future and I’m going to see about getting myself a co-host as well and I think next show might be a little bit longer if I had some emails to answer as well I mean I also can’t do I can’t very well do a news update like Jeff does and rage select since this is a show all about history but in any case I am Nick Hodges and thank you very much for this Video source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HC4o_pT9de8
