Posted on 08/20/2009 12:30:12 PM PDT by JoeProBono
If you thought Tom Cruise's character in "The Last Samurai" represented a real figure from history, you were wrong. But don't feel ashamed. A new study shows that even students, with facts staring them in the face, tend to substitute Hollywood fiction for historical fact in their minds.
"What we found is that there's something really special about watching a film that lets people retain information from that film, even when they had read a contradictory account in the textbook," said Andrew Butler, a psychology researcher at Washington University in St. Louis during the time he and his colleagues conducted the study.
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
It was a really good movie, though.
Its called stupidity
No room for Hollywood left in your brain.
I will never see it. How can a white guy be the last samurai?
This kind of Hollyweird pretension drives me nuts. If we meet an alien race there will be Tom Cruise playing the Last Gulkinek.
That movie should have caused Japan to declare war.
Tom Cruise is.... the Last Zulu!
Hollywood and the teachers unions/left wing education establishment has done this deliberately. They have produced nearly 2 generations of idiots since the 1960’s. Idiots addicted to American Idol are easier to control than people capable of critical thinking. All part of the left’s master plan.
No.
It was Ken Watanabi who was the “last” Samurai.
Cruise played a disallusioned Civil War hero/drunk who’s hired to train the Japanese Emperor’s soldiers in modern warfare.
He goes to Japan, trains the Japanses Imperial Army, and escorts them into battle. The soldiersa are ROUTED by the revolting samurai, and Cruise is taken prisoner and spared.
Ken Watanabi is the samurai clan leader who’s trying to retain the tradition and honor of his samurai during a time of technological evolution (rifles, gatling guns, etc.).
Cruise is spared so the clan leader can converse with him and study.
I’ll leave the rest for you to see, but it’s a pretty good movie.
Students aren’t the only fools. Many Americans think that the “Boxers or Briefs” question was a spontaneous moment.
Short answer, don't turn to Hollywood for history.
It's only a movie...
It's only a movie...
It's only a movie...
It's only a movie...
Actually, I thought the move was silly, but I knew it was set during the Satsuma Rebellion.
It’s not just the libs who are guilty of this. Most people who think of Patton think of George C. Scott. I know that I do. From what I’ve read, however, I’m pretty sure that the man himself was quite different.
That is one of the reasons I’m tired of people telling me “Its only a movie...”
Crap movies have more influence on the ignorant and weak minded than is safe.
Which goes to the state of teaching these days... students cannot tell fact from fiction... G-d help this country, please!
An Inconvenient Truth IS ALSO only a movie. Despite special defects portraying floods.
The film has a very, very loose historical precedent in the 1877 Satsuma Rebellion, in which the last samurai resisting westernization were in fact, brought to heel with gatling guns.
I know that part.
The Cruise character was the biggest fabrication.
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