Popular Culture Review Vol. 14, No. 1, February 2003 | Page 125

Hollywood Cowboys and Confederates in
Mexico: Andrew V. McLaglen’s
The U n defeated (1969)
Among the critics of the popular cinema it is generally thought that the his
torical film does not do justice to the facts of history. Typical of this claim is Stephen
Jay Gould’s statement in his deconstructive review of Jurassic Park: “All records
of history must present biases, yet factual reality remains our partially attainable
goal....But films intended for popular audiences include more fact-distorting con
ventions .. .than any other medium.” ' Hollywood, it has also been argued, is much
more interested in entertainment and escapism than in historical accuracy with
regard to the production of its “costume pictures” (so termed because these mov
ies cast their characters in the elaborate costumes of the historic period in which
the story is set). Novelist, George MacDonald Fraser, author of the notorious
Flashman adventures (a series of satirical-historical novels that debunk the Victo
rian myth of the honorable and virtuous British officer), however, takes exception
with this criticism in his film study. The Hollywood History o f the World; From
One Million Years B.C. to Apocalypse Now (1988). Fraser, who has himself writ
ten for the movies (authoring the screenplay to director Richard Lester’s elegant
1973 motion picture adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers, among
others) articulates the minority opinion that, rather than being frivolous or incom
petent with its subject, Hollywood has instead taken history quite “seriously.” His
thesis is that moviemakers have done a good job of presenting history, given the
many and varied difficulties in producing motion pictures. Fraser writes in his
Introduction to The Hollyw ood History o f the World:
In view of some of the monstrosities that have been put on the screen in
the past half-century, that may seem a bold claim. There is a popular
belief that where history is concerned, Hollywood always gets it wrong
— and sometimes it does. What is overlooked is the astonishing amount
of history Hollywood has got right, and the immense unacknowledged
debt which we owe to the commercial cinema as an illuminator of the
story of mankind^
He includes as one of his chapters in this book, entitled “New World, Old
West,” an examination of the classic Western. (Fraser reminds us that, technically