Oh, dear II…
So if you want to find out about the life and times of Winston Churchill, do you look at PRINTED facts, artifacts, dates, witnesses and records? Or do you watch a film which to be made ENTERTAINING, has to have a certain degee of artistic liscence?
If like myself you were doing a degeee course and had to look at facts and figures from various sources, and you looked at a documentary about Churchill and made notes to back up your other sources, then fine. However, if you were to look at a hollywood film and use that as the basis of your research, then don’t be suprised to be heavily marked down for poor reserch.
By the way, I mentioned Bowling for Columbine as an example of a “factual” documentary. I could have mentioned Super Size Me, by Morgon Spurlock. McDonalds for obvious reasons dislike the message behind this film. They have two major arguments:
1) People hgave been eating Meat, Bread and Potatoes for generations with no ill effects.
2) Of course if you did what Spurlock did and eat Big Macs every day for a whole month, then of course its not going to be very good for you. Once in a while is our (McDonnalds) message.
Spurlocks counter reply was that whilst most do not eat Big Macs every day, too many eat them too often and can still suffer the ill effects he did, albeit over a longer time frame.
Of course one mans fact is another mans exageration, see above poiont. Not everyone agrees with such facts and there are several sites in the US slagging of Micheal Moore, calling him unpatriotic and un-American.
I mentioned Micheal Moore and Morgan Spurlocks docs as the aim to inform THROUGH being entertaining. Yes, they were entertaining. Perhaps I did not make that point too clear. However, they were not historical stories which many films such as Pearl Harbour, Titanic and U-571 were.
Ever seen the BBC series A History of Britain?? Presented by Simon Schama, it is a history lesson in its purest form. No special effects, Just one man presenting a history of Britain from 3100bc to modern Briatin. A little heavy going at times but a better TV history lesson on Britain is hard to find.
Or what about The Worst Jobs in History presented by Tony Robinson?? Fact based again, but very entertaining as it shows Robinson tackling these jobs himself.
P.S. If you were doing the degee course I am with your attitude to books, you’d be heavily marked down and told not to rely on films and websites. Yes books can conflict with one another. However, with short run print on demand, books can be reprinted, even out ouf copy editions and ammended.
You’re far more likely to find conflicting websites as there are far more of them compared to books on any given subject. And have you never come across an out of date web site??? Or a website where the info is wrong but has not been corrected???
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