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The road to nowhere

Lora J. Mackel

Just when you thought children's movies could not get any more revisionist, good old DreamWorks pictures came out with their answer to the Disney cartoon musical epic, the charming "Road to El Dorado." In this film, the heroes are two white Europeans in search of gold in what they like to call "The New World." So. why the hell should we care if DreamWorks wants to make a great tragedy children's entertainment? Because revisionist movies, with their emphasis on the warm and fuzzy, fail to teach any of the essential lessons of history.

First, some background on the movie itself. In this film, our European heroes, Julio and Miguel, leave from Spain in search of gold in the unexplored territory across the Atlantic Ocean. Once there, they encounter kooky savages who, guess what, think they are gods. Could this movie get more offensive? Yes, actually, it could. Turns out Julio and Miguel enjoy keeping up their ruse as gods. To do so, they enlist the help of this anatomically exaggerated female. The busty female, annoyingly voiced by Rosie Perez, helps these Europeans manipulate her culture's demise. Good times, great fun.

Let us contrast this movie's plot for a moment with the reality of the European invasion of the Americas. First, like Miguel and Julio, Europeans came over to Americas in search of gold. What they found instead was a whole lot of native people. Some of them were nice to these invaders, some were not. Some explorers were nice to the native peoples, most were not. The issue is way too complicated to be summarized in this article, much less be done justice to in a children's movie.

Regardless of how the Europeans and the indigenous people of the Americas interacted, their contact had immediate and deadly consequences. Thousands upon thousands of people who ran into the "white devils" came down with European diseases like small pox and influenza which wiped out entire villages of people. You can bet your bottom dollar that DreamWorks was not able to have Elton John and Tim Rice write a catchy tune about that little fact. Those who did not die of disease might have died at the hands of the Europeans. The few that survived were forced to abandon their cultures and religions to become the slaves of their Catholic oppressors.

Defenders of this film will say that the movies have never portrayed history correctly. They are correct in their assessment, but this attitude is just another way the movie industry bows out of their responsibility for their work. Movies do make statements, and are especially influential on children. The statement this particular film makes is that children should glory in the romantic past of European exploration and conquest, without giving thought to the price paid by the Native Americans.

What revisionist films like this one do is reinforce the traditional racial, political and gender roles that have been marginalizing the non-whites in this society. The message sent to a Native American when watching her ancestors being depicted as half-naked dupes to the clothed European enlightened is that her culture and background is less important.

Sure, this is not the first time children have been fed a less than accurate picture of what happened in the past. Just because it has happened before does not mean it should continue.

Not all historically inspired movies are terrible. Many, especially those made for an adult audience, take on the complex issues involved in the human epic. But historically inspired movies for children are notoriously offensive and vacuous. This is because history is full of the things that are deemed inappropriate for children: like violence, rape, death, ignorance and hatred.

The problem is, when you take the difficult issues out of history, you take away the value of the story. In history, the really valuable stuff are the mistakes. If children are never exposed to the mistakes, they can never understand how to live better than their predecessors.

What is best, for children's films, is to leave off being inspired by history unless they can do it justice. If they cannot stomach exposing children to the hard stuff, then clearly, it is time they take their inspiration from other areas. American children deserve to be given better entertainment than offensive, superficial, revisionist history.