Facts just get in the way

For all teh people who think Jim Garrison was the spittin' image of Kevin Costner and a bunch of gay mafia Cubans assassinated JFK, it's always good to see mythic Hollywood extravaganzas get fact-checked, even a little tongue-in-cheek. The credulous are often the same folk who can't tell the mythic stories of the Bible from historical documents. No matter how many times you say Gilgamesh, they keep right on replying, "Never give up. Never surrender." And they believe "The Passion of the Christ" is history. Hey, it's in Aramaic!

It's amazing how well-represented Mel Gibson is in this panoply of bullshit, though it would be religiously incorrect to notice that "The Passion" is tendentious bullshit (not to mention a pornography of violence quite in keeping with Mel's secular work), and it is therefore omitted. Gives a whole new meaning to the line from "Notting Hill", "Mel does his own ass work. And why wouldn't he?" When it comes to gibsons, put your belief in Henry or in pearl onions steeped in gin.

I do have a hard time understanding how a movie released in 1968 can be held accountable for inaccurately predicting 2001. If "Back to the Future" showed the ridiculousness of Ronald Reagan's presidency from the eyes of 1955, even Ray Bradbury, who got closest with "A Sound of Thunder", couldn't have predicted the avalanche of decadence and stupidity that allowed Duhbya to take office in 2001.

It also cracks me up that sending a computer virus to alien spacecraft should be held up as an exemplar of authenticity. Probably just a Mac product placement and thus representative of the modern American commoditization, purchase, and sale of factoids as if they were true.

I have nothing against a good rollicking blockbuster myth. It's just that I can distinguish it from reality, and I wish more Americans could, too.