Filmic Context
Print Resources
Chadwick, Bruce. The
Reel Civil War. New York: Alfred
A. Knopf Publishing, 2001. 276-98.
Chadwick’s book takes an in-depth look at how more than 800 Civil War
films have sculpted an inaccurate image of "gallant soldiers, beautiful
belles, sprawling plantations, and docile or dangerous slaves." To
achieve a greater understanding of the Civil War, Chadwick tackles significant
issues such as slavery and racial injustice. The
chapter featuring Glory, which also includes analysis of Gettysburg,
gives director Ed Zwick and the film high
praise for not only using such accurate battle scene portrayals, but for
confidently tackling the controversial and previously unmentioned topic
of African-Americans in the Civil War.
Cullen, Jim. The
Civil War in Popular Culture. Washington: Smithsonian
Institution Press, 1995. 139-71.
Popular cultural works draw from common myths and then re-affirm those
myths; sometimes they may alter the interpretation, other times overthrow
them for new interpretations. Cullen’s
view is that we are still affected daily by the impact of the Civil War,
and it is important to understand how it has shaped our knowledge today. Glory’s
highlighted
chapter titled “A Few Good Men," compliments the film, calling it “a search
for a just war,” and “a story of how a black regiment and its white officers
challenged history, racism and the fortunes of war.” Cullen
goes on to state the importance of Glory, saying that the film not
only depicted a cause worth dying for, but also one worth killing for,
making the film more complicated.
Vera, Hernan,
and Andrew M. Gordon. Screen Savior: Hollywood Fictions of Whiteness.
Totowa: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2003. 27-30.
Vera and Gordon take a different view from other Glory critics. In
line with the title of their book, the authors find persistent misrepresentations
of the ideal white American self as powerful, brave, generous, and natural-born
leaders. In the eye of these
authors, no apparent racial progress is attained in the fifty years that
separate Glory from Gone with the Wind. The
main character in the film Glory, Robert Gould Shaw is extolled
as a flawless persona while the four main black characters, who were degradingly
fictionalized, earned nothing more than stereotypes ranging from "Uncle
Tom" and "the rural hick" to "the Wild Tom."
Roquemore, Joseph.
History Goes to the Movies. Garden City: Doubleday, 1999.
64-65.
Similar to the vein of Cullen's and Chadwick’s accounts, Roquemore
reiterates the importance of our awareness that Hollywood
can distort history and our views of actual events. The
brief coverage of Glory compliments the film for its "hard-hitting
account of the 54th Regiment, despite ample factual slippage."
See also:
Blatt,
Martin H., Thomas J. Brown, and Donald Yacovone. Hope & Glory.
U of Massachusetts P, 2001.
Bogle, Donald. Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks:
An Interpretive History of Blacks in American
Films. New York: Continuum, 1994.
Cameron, Kenneth M. America
on Film. New York: Continuum,
1997.
187, 229, 233.
Cripps, Thomas. Slow Fade to Black: The Negro in American Film,
1900-1942. New York:Oxford UP, 1993.
Loewen, James W. Lies My Teacher
Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong.
New York: Touchstone, 1996.
Toplin, Robert Brent. History by Hollywood:
The Use and Abuse of the American Past. Urbana:
U of Illinois P, 1996.
---. Reel History: In Defense of Hollywood. Lawrence:
UP of Kansas, 2002.
Copyright (c) 2003, Todd Scurci
and Denny Boyle, Undergraduates at LehighUniversity.
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