Historical inaccuracies in fiction
I posted this over at HSA and thought I’d post it here as well:
How much would you put up with in books or movies? I’ll tolerate a bit, but there are times so much is wrong and all they care about is having a good story, and that rather ruins it for me. For instance, a WWII movie where some of the uniforms used wouldn’t have been worn for another 15 years, where they have people in the OSS before it was even formed, where they have songs that weren’t even released yet being sung, etc. Or a Civil War movie where people aren’t acting appropriately for the time period, historical facts are all messed up, etc. When a movie is just full of things that were wrong/didn’t happen at the time, I get fed up and find it too hard to enjoy the movie.
With something like Pirates of the Caribbean, I can overlook it more. That was meant to have fantasy elements, so it’s not as bad, I don’t think. But when something is trying to be passed off as “a WWII movie” or something set during the Civil War or whatever, I think people should do what they can to make it as accurate as possible. Also with writing. I’ve seen people on a writing forum who basically don’t care if they get historical facts right. “So what if they didn’t wear crinolines for 20 more years? I want my characters wearing them and want it set in this era.”
So I thought I’d come ask all you about it and get y’all’s opinion on historical accuracy in fiction, though this post is quite a bit longer than I intended. 
Do you care if a film or book is historically accurate? Does it really matter all that much? Why or why not?
System restore…
While giving my hand a rest(I’m typing one-handedly), I’m going to back up my computer files to our external hard drive and do a system restore on my computer. That will include re-partitioning my hard drive and installing Ubuntu(a Linux distribution) to dual boot with Windows XP. I’ll be able to install the new version of Ubuntu then too! They released it last week, but due to their server lag and my computer issues and work I needed to do in Windows, I haven’t installed it yet.
Backing up my files shouldn’t take too long. Most of my pictures are backed up, except one or two smaller folders, because I’ve been backing them up pretty regularly. Most of my music is backed up already too, so this should go pretty quickly, I would think.
I’m about to watch Meet the Robinsons while working on all this. It looks good. Netflix is great about getting out new releases. If you have one at the top of your list, they ship it the day before it’s released so that you get it on the actual release date.
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