20th century of the USA

Iron Curtain

• Non-physical boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945
• Later became a term for the 7,000-kilometre-long physical barrier
• The Iron Curtain extended to the airwaves as well
• Iron Curtain largely ceased to exist in 1989–90

Truman doctrine, policy of containment

• Harry S. Truman established that the US will provide assistance to all democratic nations under threat
• The Truman Doctrine arose on March 12, 1947
• US was afraid of the Soviet Union influence on the Greek war
• President Truman requested that Congress provide $400,000,000 worth of aid to both the Greek and Turkish Governments
• Strategy of "containment" is preventing the spread of communism

Arms race

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  Occurs when countries increase the size and quality of military resources to gain superiority over one another
• The United States didn’t notify the Soviet Union about the plan to drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima
• The start of the Cold War was in 1949, when the Soviets tested their own atomic bomb
• The Cold War ended in 1991; however many argue the arms race has not

McCarthy era

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  Byname for defamation of character by means of widely publicized indiscriminate allegations
• Sen. Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin was constantly investigating various government departments and questioning innumerable witnesses about their suspected communist affiliations without any evidence
• He failed to make a plausible case against anyone
• The public turned against McCarthy, and the Senate censured him

Korean War

• In August 1945, two young aides at the State Department divided the Korean peninsula in half along the 38th parallel
• The Korean War began on June 25, 1950, when North Korean People’s Army poured across the 38th parallel
• In July 1951, President Truman and his new military commanders started peace talks at Panmunjom
• Nearly 5 million people died

Role of J. F. Kennedy

• The 35th president of the United States, youngest U.S. presidents
• Kennedy confronted mounting Cold War tensions in Cuba, Vietnam and elsewhere, provided federal support for the growing civil rights movement
• In July 1963, Kennedy won his greatest foreign affairs victory in signing a nuclear test ban treaty
• On November 22, 1963, Kennedy was struck twice, in the neck and head, and was pronounced dead shortly after arriving at a nearby hospital

Critical response to The Help (2011)

The movie starts off with showing us, how the Jim Crow era was like. There were multiple scenes of blatant racism, which back in the day was normal. Blacks had to use different bathrooms and go to different schools than whites. The coloured people were not even allowed to sit on the same bus and if they did, they had to give the seats to the whites. I couldn't imagine this happening in today's USA. I believe that Tate Taylor has shown us a fantastic brief overview, what was it like before the 60s and 70s.
If we were to be talking about the historical accuracy, then I would review it as a 3 out of 5, but I do have to comment on the stereotypes of the African Americans. Antonia Quirke from Financial Times commented that this movie suffered from an obscure amount of stereotypes. The only food that the blacks cooked was fried chicken. Now, I have not lived in that era, but I am almost certain that the coloured people ate more than just fried chicken. It's a common stereotype even today that they only eat KFC, watermelons and drink Kool-Aid and I think that this is just a blatant lie. Another common stereotype is that every white person lived a luxurious life. Of course, the film was appointed to the history of the coloured people, but I have to comment on the life of the whites as well. Not everyone was riding luxurious cars and wearing fancy dresses, there were actually people that were in worse situations than the blacks, but don't get me wrong, altogether the coloured people suffered the most.
Moving away from the historical topic, we have the dramatic scenes that I would call as "woman's drama". Some scenes were just not understandable and felt like I was watching a soap opera. For example, whenever Aibileen stands up to Hilly at the end of the film. Aibileen insults Hilly and therefore Elizabeth orders Aibileen to leave. Aibileen gets her chance to talk to Mae Mobley, the daughter of Elizabeth, and bids farewell to her. This upsets Elizabeth and she starts to cry and just stand in place, while Hilly stands in front of the door, also supposedly crying. As Aibileen leaves she grabs her stomach and it seems like she is having stomach pain and moments after she is totally fine and just walks it off. I believe that this scene was just unnecessary and incomprehensible. If Taylor would've wanted this film to be historically accurate then I would've suggested to leave out the drama and actual research the period better. Even Keith Uhlich from Time Out sarcastically said that there's nothing a little race-transcending girl power won't cure. Which from his point of view the movie was all about, a white woman named Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan, who saved the blacks by writing a book. The writer could've concentrated more on the risk that the blacks were taking by contributing to this book, not the actual writer, who had her life all intact. But looking at the fact the writer himself is also white, this doesn't even amuse me.

SOURCES

Uhlich, Keith. “The Help - Movie Reviews.” Rotten Tomatoes, 10 Aug. 2011, www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_help/reviews?type=top_critics&sort=&page=2.

Quirke, Antonia. “The Help - Movie Reviews.” Rotten Tomatoes, 27 Oct. 2011, www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_help/reviews?type=top_critics&sort=.

The Help

The US has had controversial judgments to the coloured people before, but in the Civil Rights era, a lot was about to change. The coloured people had gotten more rights as time went on, but after this era, they could feel themselves becoming actually free. Before 1954 all-white public schools refused to admit the coloured people, which was outrageous, so the schools were ordered to integrate. Still, this was not enough since some African Americans received harassment and insults when trying to attend Little Rock Central High School, so the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People) had to be formed. Sadly, this was all erased by the Jim Crow laws, which stated that coloured people couldn't use the same public facilities nor have interracial marriages. For that reason many years later on August 28th, 1963, 250 000 people gathered for the Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech, which drew the attention to the inequality for the coloured. One could say that this was the reason, why in 1964 the Civil Rights Act was written and in 1965 the Voting Rights act was passed through. This ended the discrimination on the basis of race, colour, religion, sex or national origin, at least it was written down as a law. We all know that racism is still even in today's world, but it definitely is better than it was 70 years ago. I hope that one day we could say that racism is the thing of the past.

Immigrant

Throughout history, there were lots of immigration waves to the US. Everything dates back to 1607, but since it was mainly undocumented, we don't know a lot about that period. In the second wave (the 1830s-1880s) most of the immigrants came from Germany, Ireland and the UK. For example, the German immigrants travelled to the USA to buy farms and all of this resulted in anti-immigrant sentiment. The next wave came in 1892 and this wave is separated by the fact of opening the Ellis island. This was the place where 12 million immigrants passed through in the period of 62 years. Near the Ellis island, there was a statue built to symbolize freedom and democracy, the Statue of Liberty. Currently, on Ellis Island, there is a museum running that was opened in 1990. You can visit their website on https://www.libertyellisfoundation.org/immigration-museum. If you look at the graphs of immigration waves, then you can see a large decline after 1924. This was because of the Reed-Johnson Immigration Act, which limited the number of immigrants allowed entry into the US through a national origins quota. In the present day, the US has more immigrants than any other country. About half of the current immigrants are Mexican and this has come to the attention recently due to Donald Trump addressing this situation. The suggestion of building a wall near the American-Mexican border didn't work out since the wall should have cut through homes and mountains and that is why the plan has failed.

Glory

Before the American Civil war, the nation was divided into 2 parts: the South and the North. Their cultures were varied by many aspects of life. For example, in the North coloured people were not seen as only slaves, but also as people, at least in the other half of the 19th century. In the South, the economy relied heavily on slave labour, whilst in the North, there were lots of factories and the population was much bigger than in the South. We could say that the North was more liberal and diverse than the South. The main cause of the war were conflicts over slavery and when Lincoln defended the coloured people and wanted to give them rights, then the South was outraged by that and thus the war has sparked. The coloured people were still not obliged to fight since the whites did not believe that they have what it takes to be a soldier. This was the case for the North since in the South, the slaves were treated far worse. Though, in the war, the first coloured regiment became known as the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment. At first, they were not even allowed to have guns, but later in the war, they fought for the people of America and had a huge impact on creating more coloured regiments. As you know, the North had won the war, but with lots of casualties, over 700,000 people had died, most of them from diseases. The most important outcome was that this marked the start of a new era called the Reconstruction era, which was important for the coloured and also the whites.

Critical response to The Patriot (2000)

The Patriot was a film that was interesting to watch, but the history of the movie just doesn't add up. The protagonist of this film is a farmer in his 40's named Benjamin Martin. He had 2 sons, who were in the military. One of them died early up in the movie and the other was also killed, but almost at the end of the film. Benjamin was known as the “Ghost”, because of his attack on the British in the woods. In this movie, the Americans were visualized as the better and the British as the cruel, which if you don’t know the history, should add up. That was the case for Benjamin, as he lost his 2 sons in a war that he didn’t want to fight, but he had to since he wanted to be free from the British and as did the rest of the colonists. He was known as the hero or should I say as the ghost of the film. He fought for his nation and led his people to victory, but at a considerable cost. On the other side of the war, there were Brits. They didn’t play by the rules and that was made clear as possible. They burned down villages, killed Benjamin’s sons and also murdered innocent civilians, but the Americans did everything by the rules. Of course, this was all predictable looking at the fact that this is a Hollywood film, but this should definitely not be called a historical film. As Mick LaSalle from the San Francisco Chronicle has said that the battle scenes may look authentic, but the movie doesn't deal with the issues of the war, and it only touches on its history. The movie itself was interesting to watch, which was not a surprise since it was a Hollywood film. The actors like Mel Gibson were great at playing their role. Like Elvis Mitchell from the New York Times has said that Gibson was an astonishing actor for someone whose technique all seems to come from the outside. He was great at relating to the performers playing his children, but at one scene the camera had to fade out since Gibson’s acting was so terrible, it almost made us laugh while Gibson weeps over the body of a dead child. The other major downside was the length of the movie. There were moments that even if watching at 2 times the normal speed, it felt like it was still in slow motion. The film could’ve been cut to 2 hours, maybe even 1.5 hours without overexaggerating some of the scenes and definitely could’ve cramped in more of the actual history, not just Hollywood’s fantasies. Going back to the fact that it was interesting to watch, it definitely might be because of Hollywood’s fantasies and that’s why this film came out likewise. If the writer Robert Rodat had filled this movie with only historical facts, then I would be sure that this would have not been that interesting to watch. In conclusion, The Patriot was an amazing production, but the film should not be generalized as a historical movie. While it was set in the past and it did glimpse over the history of the Revolutionary war, that’s not enough to be called a historical film.

SOURCES

LaSalle, Mick. “He's Just Begun to Fight / Mel Gibson Blasts His Way through a Bloody, Bloated `Patriot'.” SFGate, San Francisco Chronicle, 6 Aug. 2012, www.sfgate.com/movies/article/He-s-Just-Begun-to-Fight-Mel-Gibson-blasts-his-2715482.php.

Mitchell, Elvis. “A Gentle Farmer Who's Good at Violence.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 28 June 2000, archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/film/062800patriot-film-review.html.

The Patriot

Before the Revolutionary war, there were multiple conflicts between the colonists and the British, as the political differences on taxing, taxation without representation and colonists demanded more rights. All of this led to the violent war between the British and the Americans. The war was brutal in many ways such as the killings of innocent people and unlawful burnings of civilian villages. At the start of the war, the Americans didn't know what they were fighting for, but since they wrote the Declaration of Independence and signed it on July 4, 1776, they were destined to get their own nation. The war didn't get easier for both and the Americans were starting to lose hope. The British had a larger army, but they didn't have one thing, which was hope. The Americans were fighting for their freedom, but the British were just ordered to fight by George III. The hope kept the Americans going until the French came to the rescue and helped the colonists defeat the British. The first president was elected and was, of course, George Washington. He was the first to sign the US copyright law and he made the 26th of November a national holiday of Thanksgiving. Without him, the war would not have been the same and we wouldn't have the USA as we have it today.