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Alamo story evolves in Hollywood's new movie (Kerry social justice vs Bush freedom)
The Houston Chronicle ^ | March 28, 2004 | JEANNIE KEVER

Posted on 03/27/2004 11:17:38 PM PST by Cincinatus' Wife

.....For more than a century, popular lore and classroom teachers portrayed the defenders as virtually all Anglo, heroically battling a faceless Mexican army.

Textbooks published 40 years ago presented good guys (the Texan defenders) and bad guys (the Mexican army), says Jim Kracht, associate dean for academic affairs in the College of Education and Human Development at Texas A&M University.

But it wasn't that simple.

"From Mexico's point of view, people in Texas weren't observing their national laws," he says. "They weren't becoming Catholic, like they had pledged to do. They were trading with the United States, which they had pledged not to do. They were trying to bring slavery into Texas, which was against Mexico's national laws."

After being ignored for decades in both classrooms and popular culture, that more complicated view is spreading, even in the movies.

...........The importance of the Alamo isn't so much about what happened there -- more people died at Goliad, and the ultimate Texan victory came at San Jacinto the following month.

"The idea was that the men at the Alamo had not surrendered and had fought to the end," says Winders, author of Sacrificed at the Alamo: Tragedy and Triumph in the Texas Revolution. "Where there is no disgrace in surrendering, it does not get you the icon status that sacrifice does."

But even under that rubric, the Alamo mythology is always shifting, in some ways the perfect mirror, reflecting whatever the viewer wants to see.

"The Alamo seems to be a universal symbol," says Gilbert Cuthbertson, a political science professor at Rice University. "It's a gateway. If you go in as a (John) Kerry supporter, you are going to see the Alamo as a symbol of social justice and the struggle for civil rights. If you go in as a (George W.) Bush supporter, you're going to see the Alamo as a symbol of freedom and individualism.

"The Alamo has this focusing effect, in which you can see almost any set of political values that you want to, because it reflects universal kinds of struggle."

.......

(Excerpt) Read more at chron.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; Miscellaneous; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; US: Texas; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: heroes; politics; thealamo
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***......Jim Kracht, associate dean for academic affairs in the College of Education and Human Development at Texas A&M University…………..Gilbert Cuthbertson, a political science professor at Rice University......***

So much history to "correct," so little time.

1 posted on 03/27/2004 11:17:39 PM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
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To: Cincinatus' Wife
The classic movie to see is still The Alamo made and directed by John Wayne in 1960. It tells it like is without the PC garbage rewriting of history from post modern academics.
2 posted on 03/27/2004 11:22:10 PM PST by goldstategop (In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives On In My Heart Forever)
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To: goldstategop
The Left wants to taint any heroes, ideals and/or ambitions the American people ever have or hope to have. They want to discredit America as "the home of the brave and the land of the free." If they want to put history under a microscope, I suggest they have a lot of material. They could start with Fidel Castro. Oh, I forgot, he's a "social justice" kind of dude.
3 posted on 03/27/2004 11:28:21 PM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
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To: Cincinatus' Wife
"From Mexico's point of view, people in Texas weren't observing their national laws," he says

It was the same with the American Revolution...

4 posted on 03/27/2004 11:35:53 PM PST by GeronL (Freep, Freep........ Freeping to the Oldies.)
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To: GeronL
Indeed. To the Left we've been nothing but trouble.
5 posted on 03/27/2004 11:41:04 PM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
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To: Cincinatus' Wife
Oh, I forgot, [Castro]'s a "social justice" kind of dude.

Heh, heh. CW, is it just me, or can that adjective "social" actually reverse the meaning of the noun it modifies?

Individual liberty yields unequal outcomes. Enforcing equal outcomes, therefore, can only come at the price of individual liberty. These contingent results are observed with such consistency across wide ranges of social conditions, that we may deem them social laws.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

6 posted on 03/27/2004 11:43:04 PM PST by Criminal Number 18F
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To: Cincinatus' Wife
Will "Alamo" become the next "Pearl?"

-PJ

7 posted on 03/27/2004 11:45:57 PM PST by Political Junkie Too (It's not safe yet to vote Democrat.)
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To: Cincinatus' Wife
Alternative Universe News Alert!!

President bin Laden of the United Islamic States announced from Mosul that the western terrorist nations would soon be challenged to renounce their terrorist ways. President bin Laden said that the time is coming where a battle between the west and the islamic world will be inevitable.

8 posted on 03/27/2004 11:48:01 PM PST by GeronL (Freep, Freep........ Freeping to the Oldies.)
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To: Criminal Number 18F
Heh, heh. CW, is it just me, or can that adjective "social" actually reverse the meaning of the noun it modifies?

***........For these self-appointed social redeemers, the goal-"social justice"-is not about rectifying particular injustices, which would be practical and modest, and therefore conservative. Their crusade is about rectifying injustice in the very order of things. "Social Justice" for them is about a world reborn, a world in which prejudice and violence are absent, in which everyone is equal and equally advantaged and without fundamentally conflicting desires. It is a world that could only come into being through a re-structuring of human nature and of society itself.

Even though they are too prudent and self-protective to name this future anymore, the post-Communist left still passionately believes it possible. But it is a world that has never existed and never will. Moreover, as the gulags and graveyards of the last century attest, to attempt the impossible is to invite the catastrophic in the world we know.

But the fall of Communism taught the progressives who were its supporters very little. Above all, it failed to teach them the connection between their utopian ideals and the destructive consequences that flowed from them. The fall of Communism has had a cautionary impact only on the overt agendas of the political left. The arrogance that drives them has hardly diminished. The left is like a millenarian sect that erroneously predicted the end of the world, and now must regroup to revitalize its faith.

.....In the 1930s, Nazis used "The Third Way" to characterize their own brand of national socialism as a equidistant between the "internationalist" socialism of the Soviet Union and the capitalism of the West. Trotskyists used "The Third Way" as a term to distinguish their own Marxism from Stalinism and capitalism. In the 1960s, New Leftists used "The Third Way" to define their politics as an independent socialism between the Soviet gulag and America's democracy.

But as the history of Nazism, Trotskyism and the New Left have shown, there is no "Third Way." There is the capitalist, democratic way based on private property and individual rights-a way that leads to liberty and universal opportunity. And there is the socialist way of group identities, group rights, a relentless expansion of the political state, restricted liberty and diminished opportunity. The Third Way is not a path to the future. It is just the suspension between these two destinations. It is a bad faith attempt on the part of people who are incapable of giving up their socialist schemes to escape the taint of their discredited past. ....*** Source

9 posted on 03/27/2004 11:51:34 PM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
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To: Political Junkie Too; GeronL
Bump!
10 posted on 03/27/2004 11:52:15 PM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
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To: Political Junkie Too
Will "Alamo" become the next "Pearl?"

It's produced by Disney, isn't it? Thus, 50% of all the defenders of the Alamo will be gay in the movie.

11 posted on 03/27/2004 11:54:17 PM PST by LdSentinal
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To: Cincinatus' Wife
Whoa!

You just wrote that?? Or did you cut&paste?

12 posted on 03/27/2004 11:54:20 PM PST by GeronL (Freep, Freep........ Freeping to the Oldies.)
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To: Cincinatus' Wife
LOL. I just saw the SOURCE... haha
13 posted on 03/27/2004 11:54:46 PM PST by GeronL (Freep, Freep........ Freeping to the Oldies.)
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To: Cincinatus' Wife
If you go in as a (John) Kerry supporter, you are going to see the Alamo as a symbol of social justice and the struggle for civil rights. If you go in as a (George W.) Bush supporter, you're going to see the Alamo as a symbol of freedom and individualism.

No, if you're a Ho Chi Kerry supporter you will be admiring the courage of the Mexicans and rooting for the slaughter the Americans.

14 posted on 03/27/2004 11:59:11 PM PST by LdSentinal
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To: LdSentinal
It's produced by Disney, isn't it?

Is it? Well, if Phil Collins does the music, and Lea Salonga does the vocals, then it will be popular.

I'm thinking... How do we renovate Frontierland based on this movie? The Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse is now the Tarzan Treehouse, Country Bear Jamboree has been redone, Pirates of the Carribean is a big hit, so what's next?

-PJ

15 posted on 03/28/2004 12:00:15 AM PST by Political Junkie Too (It's not safe yet to vote Democrat.)
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To: Political Junkie Too
Mr. Toad's Wild Ride would be an awesome movie.
16 posted on 03/28/2004 12:04:47 AM PST by LdSentinal
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To: LdSentinal
Mr. Toad's Wild Ride would be an awesome movie.

Didn't it start out that way?

I know they closed that ride in Florida a while ago.

-PJ

17 posted on 03/28/2004 12:08:22 AM PST by Political Junkie Too (It's not safe yet to vote Democrat.)
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To: Political Junkie Too
You are correct. The ride is based on Disney's animation of a section of The Wind in the Willows. The chapter used was called "Mr. Toad Gets a Motor-car."
18 posted on 03/28/2004 12:46:27 AM PST by Miss Marple
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To: Political Junkie Too
The Alamo was fought to give the Americans enough time to gather their forces and make a stand at San Jacinto. The defenders of the Alamo knew this was their purpose. The Mexicans made the tactical mistake of winning the battle but losing the war. If Santa Ana had continued on and bypassed the Alamo, concentrating on rounding the leadership up at San Jacinto and elswhere, Texas would still be part of Mexico.
19 posted on 03/28/2004 12:59:04 AM PST by meenie
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To: Cincinatus' Wife
.....For more than a century, popular lore and classroom teachers portrayed the
defenders as virtually all Anglo


Well, any classroom teacher has done this after visiting The Alamo and reading
the plaques listing the NAMES of the defenders...then tells their classroom the
defenders were all Anglos...
should have their teaching license stripped from them for life.

They are either too dumb or too mendacious to be entrusted with teaching anyone.
Let alone be paid for it.
20 posted on 03/28/2004 1:02:42 AM PST by VOA
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