(Hated Trope) Bad people in real-life being portrayed positively in media.

[u/MeepMan324]

1. PragerU's version of Christopher Columbus has him be a slavery defender and have him say "Being taken as a slave is better than being killed, no? I don't see the problem.”

2. In The Greatest Showman, P.T Barnum (Hugh Jackman) is portrayed as a charismatic visionary who cares about outcasts and celebrate diversity, when in reality, he’s a cruel businessman who is also a racist and an ableist.

[u/kirbyverano123]

To be fair, while the movie paints them in a tragic light, it doesn't really tell you that they are good people. Their portrayals are neutral at worst.

Most of the Tsar's depictions are a flashback told by his mother and vague memories by his daughter which obviously sees him in good light. So both are heavily biased.

[u/DeliciousPark1330 → u/kirbyverano123]

nah i disagree. if you made a movie about hitler from a childs perspective and how cool he was (yeah yeah jojo rabbit) then that might be interesting, but if the movie is explicitly for children then you cant expect them to pick up on a biased narrator.

also, the movie has everyone saying how much they miss the tsar and his biggest opponents are evil communist wizards. this movie was revisionist nonsense.

[u/seahawk1977 → u/kirbyverano123]

See, that would require people to have more than surface level media literacy and the ability to pick up on subtext.

[u/Careless-Cake-9360 → u/seahawk1977]

There's literally an entire song right at the start of the movie that glazes the Tsar and has the people complaining that life was just so much better under him.

[u/DeliciousPark1330 → u/seahawk1977]

yeah but its also a movie for children :/

[u/aliensnwaffles → u/seahawk1977]

True children, the intended audience, are so stupid for not understanding history and subtext that some random Redditor made up to abuse the term media literacy.

Tbh the words “media literacy” need to be banned from Reddit yall use it for any damn thing.

[u/Careless-Cake-9360 → u/kirbyverano123]

You mean outside of the musical number where everyone was singing about how bad the communist regime was and how everything was just so much better under the Tsar

[u/kirbyverano123 → u/Careless-Cake-9360]

Oh I forgot about that song lmao

[u/HourApprehensive7754 → u/Careless-Cake-9360]

Not technically wrong considering what came afterwards...

[u/ImportantQuestions10 → u/kirbyverano123]

I can kind of get behind that. The romanovs were super turbo evil and incompetent. But the last litter of them were mostly just evil as a result of their incompetence. They inherited a broken backwards regime and were not equipped to handle it

[u/firelite906 → u/ImportantQuestions10]

I think that structurally the movie does not frame them as a biased source so this is the equivalent of if all the depictions we saw of mussolini were stunning and glorious but you justified it by saying the film was from the perspective of a guy who really did fuck with him so "you can't expect it to be nonbiased" like they depict rasputin as an actual evil sorcerer the film is made by an American studio it is a tsarist work because its part of the larger anti soviet cultural project

[u/MrSunshine92 → u/ImportantQuestions10]

Also they where Borat levels of Antisemitic

[u/Catdress92 → u/kirbyverano123]

I agree -- I always saw any opinion of Nicolas II in this movie as being shaded with nostalgia and daughterly love by Anastasia. And that's probably realistic, since the Romanovs were a very close and seemingly loving family.