Those ugly little details...

I finally got myself a Harry Potter icon. Behold the first picture of Miranda Richardson as Rita Skeeter, journalist extraordinaire, in the upcoming Goblet of Fire.*g*

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Having read a lot of good reviews, both in newspapers and on lj, of The Aviator, I'm really looking forward to seeing it once it starts on January 20th here. However, one complaint by an otherwise glowing review made me think of something which isn't just a symptom of biopics but also of many entirely fictional films set in another period. The complaint in question was:

There is no reference to Hughes's anti-semitism or right-wing, near-fascist politics (…).

Now, my Howard Hughes knowledge is limited to having read Ava Gardner's memoirs and Katherine Hepburn's memoirs, and having seen F for Fake by Orson Welles, which deals at length with the guy who produced fake Hughes memoirs in the 70s. So I have absolutely no idea whether or not he was an antisemite. But it wouldn't surprise me if he had been; sadly, it would fit with the times of his youth. Moving on to other films, you can bet that one of the earliest and most successful films about Charles Lindbergh, The Spirit of St. Louis, leaves out both Lindbergh's anti-Semitism and (naturally, since this is about him flying over the Atlantic in the 20s) his pro-Hitler stance. Two years ago, one of our most prestigious tv productions in Germany was a three-part-movie dealing with the family Mann (Thomas, Heinrich, Klaus, Erika et al.). Starting after WWI, said production not only got around Thomas Mann's fervent nationalism and war enthusiasm in the first world war but also around the casual anti-Semitism both he and his brother displayed in their Wilhelminian youth. (Check out their letters and early works.)

This isn't all about whitewashing. You can make a reasonable argument that the fact Thomas Mann made anti-Semitic remarks as a young man isn't crucial to his personality; that at any rate he changed his attitude later on, and that there was so much else going on in his life which was more important, and deserved to be examined more in the limited time a tv series offers. For all I know, this is true of Howard Hughes and The Aviator as well - the reviews I've read don't sound as if he's presented as perfect, after all. However, I think this touches on the same reason why, say, in what was intended as a popular box office film, The Patriot, Mel Gibson's character does not own slaves, he pays his black workers, no matter how unlikely that is in 18th century South Carolina. Or why in an actual box office hit like Gladiator, one of the most glaring ahistorical elements is having Marcus Aurelius and the sympathetic part of the Roman characters wanting to reintroduce the republic. We've seen the horrible, horrible result of anti-Semitism. We know that slavery is utterly and completely wrong. And outside of fantasy movies, we're deeply uneasy with monarchies and dictatorships.

Ergo, characters the audience is supposed to sympathize with can be flawed in other regards, but they must not be racists, antisemites, or antidemocratic. Which is no problem if you make a contemporary movie, but demands some editing in most stories set at in an earlier age.

To give myself a counter-argument: but if a character the audience can like and sympathize with is shown as racist/anti-Semitic/anti-democratic, couldn't that lead to the audience regarding these kind of attitudes as acceptable as well?

I can't quite make up my mind on that one. A few months ago, there was a minor kerfuffle in Harry Potter fandom when jennyo wrote a blistering post quintessentially boiling down to the question: if Draco Malfoy would use the term "nigger" instead of "mudblood", would you still find him hot and/or likeable? Among the many arguments used by various people in reply was that the "pureblood" attitude re: Muggles and muggle-born witches and wizards was more a class than a racism issue, and that at any rate it was fantasy, and thus not applicable to RL. But I don't think anyone at the time actually replied to the question originally posed with "Yes". Now Draco isn't an ideal example, because obviously his creator never intended him to be "hot" or sympathetic and is somewhat bewildered, poor woman, that anyone would think he is. But we can find fantasy or sci-fi characters actually intended to be sympathetic who display racist attitudes, though usually this gets pointed out by other characters. (Case in point: my guy Londo who is a blatant imperialist which everything that entails.) In any case, in a fantasy or sci-fi context this probably is easier to take because we don't know people of the race/religion discriminated against in real life. So, Quark turning the tables on Sisko and accusing him of racism vis a vis the Ferengi is an intriguing and powerful moment early in DS9. But the Ferengi aren't "real". Kira can call them disgusting little trolls throughout the show without anyone in the audience flinching, or either losing sympathy for Kira or practicing discrimination on Ferengi in turn, whereas if they were a human race this would be impossible.
There are films which portray characters sympathetically who are racists without leaving themselves open to the charge of encouraging racism in the audience; In the Heat of the Night, for example. (Which couldn't be more clear about its racism = wrong message.) Rod Steiger's character qualifies as both a good guy and a racist. But he's not the hero of the movie, he's the foil of the hero, who is embodied by Sidney Poitier. Also, that was, at its time of making, a contemporary story, and a fictional one. Right now, I can't think of a biopic and/or historical film managing this particular tight rope act…