20. Using warfare as entertainment
The use of war as the backdrop for entertainment is a device which dates to ancient times, with the Odyssey and the Iliad two early examples of the genre. It has never lost popularity. While there have been some attempts to depict warfare accurately, for the most part, it has always been distorted. Film was especially guilty of distorting warfare history. In films of the American Revolutionary War, for example, brave patriots marched off to fight the British whistling Yankee Doodle; in reality, less than one-third of American men supported the Revolution, and fewer than that fought in the war.
The same pattern is found in the movies made in Great Britain during the Second World War, where the stiff upper lip of the British citizenry is second only to the gallantry of the men and women in uniform. In both the United States and Great Britain extensive black markets developed and operated throughout the war, dealing in rationed goods. Neither has been covered in films, other than as an aside as a plot device. In the United States, organized crime figures were recruited to help secure the docks in New York and New Jersey. Such didn’t jibe with the patriotic feeling of the time, and it remained unnoticed by the film industry, which focused on crime of another type.