Here’s a lesson I should have learned by now: Beware of movies claiming to be “based on a true story.”

The trailer for “Emperor” hinted that it would reveal the inside story behind the peace deal reached between Japan and the U.S. after World War II. So, always seeking movies with more substance than special effects, I bought tickets. And, once again, I was disappointed by a movie claiming to be based on historical facts.

It’s an okay-looking movie, with lots of scenery and atmospherics—but rather heavy on fake-looking, post-Atomic-Bomb devastation. There’s a sentimental backstory about the central character—General Bonner Fellers—and his Japanese girlfriend Aya—though it’s not very well developed,  the attraction seems rather unmotivated, and it’s probably all made up, anyway.

But that’s not my chief complaint. I was thinking that, with World War II fading from our collective memory, this would be a chance to find out some of the details of the complicated, culturally sensitive and geo-politically important peace deal hammered out between General Douglas McArthur and the defeated Japanese government. Silly me.

Sure, it’s an interesting twist that General Fellers, charged with deciding whether to prosecute Japan’s Emperor Hirohito as a war criminal—and whether to execute him if convicted—purportedly has a special affinity for and understanding of Japanese culture, because he fell in love with a Japanese exchange student while at college. And, sure, that’s a source of conflict in the story, as at least one of Fellers’ more vindictive colleagues doubts his objectivity and calls him a “Jap lover.”

But so much time is spent on the glacially developing love story, the phony sets and the idyllic pre-War Japanese landscape, that we don’t get much insight at all into the intricacies that surely were involved in negotiating with the tradition-steeped, ritual-bound, formalistic Japanese leaders. You don’t get much insight into the way things must have worked, when the script calls for General Fellers to demand a meeting with a high-ranking Japanese official, and –poof!–then to simply have it happen.

I know that I shouldn’t expect a documentary. But the level of oversimplification in this treatment is very disappointing. A missed opportunity, to say the least.

It’s not as bad as some other “based on historical facts” movies, such as Oliver Stone’s “JFK.” “Emperor’s” sin is that of having left out a lot of details; Oliver Stone has a penchant for creating new facts. (In “JFK,” if I remember correctly, Richard Nixon appears at the Dallas airport, creating a vague impression that Nixon was somehow mixed up in the assassination.)

More recently, Steven Spielberg’s Hollywood version of “Lincoln” served up similar distortions, such as the scene in which black Union soldiers meet Lincoln at the battlefield and recite, verbatim, the Gettysburg address, which Lincoln had delivered only weeks before. It’s a nice, sentimental touch, but not very believable. Nor is the presence of former slaves and even First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln in the Congressional gallery for the vote on the Emancipation Proclamation.

The problem with these movie distortions and omissions is that they can be mistaken for the truth and become part of what is later known as historical fact. In an era when science and fact are mistrusted by many, that’s a dangerous phenomenon, especially for younger audiences, who didn’t live through the events and can’t fact check them via life experience. For example, a few years ago, during a conversation with a very bright high-school student, I discovered that she believed, after having watched “JFK,” that Nixon was, in fact, part of the assassination plot. No doubt, Stone helped create confusion by mixing contemporaneous documentary footage with the storytelling. I’ve heard Stone call his movie-making style “impressionistic.” I call it scary.

In the end, though, the things I’m objecting to in “Emperor” did serve an educational purpose. Knowing that there had to be more to the story, I went home and looked up some facts on:

• General Bonner Fellers: An actual general, who later served in Congress and was a commie-fearing member of the ultra-right John Birch Society. My research didn’t turn up anything about that romance with Aya, though. And there’s some question about his effectiveness as an intelligence officer earlier in his career.

• Terms of the Japanese peace deal: Emperor Hirohito was not tried as a war criminal and not executed, not because he was innocent, but mostly because American post-war planners feared that executing him would cause cultural and political chaos in Japan, and because he could play a symbolic role in America’s plan for rebuilding Japan.

• General Douglas McArthur: As depicted in the movie, McArthur did arrange for an unprecedented photo to be taken of himself with Emperor Hirohito. It was an effective propaganda move that demonstrated to the Japanese people that the Emperor, who was considered a god, was actually a very small man. McArthur also convinced Hirohito to renounce his status as a god-on-earth. (Those interactions would have made an interesting movie by themselves.)

As we watched the credits, my companion suggested that movies claiming to be based on a true story should distribute pamphlets after the movie, with the actual facts. Better yet, how about not doctoring up and Hollywood-ifying inherently intriguing stories and just getting it right in the first place?

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Recently,  twelve high-school  students and four staff members of our non-profit went to see the exciting political thriller, “Fair Game” at the Tivoli Theater  in University City. The movie  is the true story of Valerie Plame and her husband Joe Wilson and how their work resulted in Ms. Plame being  “outed” by the Bush Administration as a CIA operative.

As outstanding as the movie was, its “box office” revenue reveals the poor state of American  political cinema.  In St. Louis, it is  showing  only at the two, indie-oriented  Landmark Theaters (Tivoli and Frontenac).  The saleswoman at the Tivoli box office (incredibly nice: She helped us scalp two tickets after we had overbought) was somewhat distressed that other films at the Tivoli were outdrawing it.  Combine  Fair Game’s limited run with the fact that the exceptionally powerful Pat Tillman Story was in St. Louis for only ten days, and it’s virtually impossible to see any meaningful cinema about contemporary or recent historical events.

We can complain until the cows home about the lack of thoughtful, meaningful films in our theaters, but the bottom line is that Hollywood and other producers of movies are only feeding the public what it thinks will sell.  As is frequently the case, we see part of the problem with our schools.  There are terrific teachers who encourage students to see enlightening films.  However, most teachers and schools in general just follow the bland or hyped popular culture that populates our movie theaters.

Above the National Archives Building in Washington, DC is the inscription, “What’s past is prologue.”  If we as citizens don’t show more interest in historically relevant films, we increase our chances of repeating the mistakes of the past.  There’s still time to see “Fair Game” if you have a chance, and we suggest checking it out.

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Inside Job presents an illuminating account of how the financial meltdown of 2008 came to be. My biggest take away is that we are no longer one nation. There are those who have immense wealth and power—who currently control our economy and our government—and then there are ordinary working people.

Politicians often speak as if there is a single “national interest” that applies equally to all of us, no matter if we are rich, or poor or middle class. They imply that the directors of Goldman Sachs, Halliburton or United Health Care have the same interests as the rest of us, as if presidents share the same interests as the young men or women they send to war. Unfortunately, the phrase “protecting American interests” is not about protecting the American people, but about protecting corporate interests.

If I’ve learned anything in the past two years, it’s that the interests of the corporate and financial sectors are fundamentally opposed to the interests of ordinary people. Howard Zinn, who passed away this year, understood that we do not have “one nation” or “one people.” He wrote Peoples History of the United States to make that point. To Zinn, there are the elite who hold positions of power in both government and corporations, and then there are the rest of us. He wrote the story of the rest of us.

The poor and middle classes, and the powerful banks and corporations who dominate the political process, do not make up one united nation. As the gulf widens between the rich and the working and middle classes, our nation is losing its integrity. We no longer belong to the same America. As Elizabeth Warren has warned, we are losing our middle class, which has held this country together.

Our politicians, our representatives in both parties, backed and bankrolled by corporate money, allow lobbyists to write legislation, and the majority of Americans are left without real representation. At best, we get watered down, corporate friendly legislation that fails to deliver for the majority of working people. At worst we get our hard earned tax money transferred upwards to the top 2% who least need it.

Corporate interests are single-mindedly focused on profits for managers or shareholders—at any cost—most often at the cost of working Americans. Corporations reject any regulation of their activities, however questionable or destructive, that would impact their bottom line. They willingly break the law if doing so increases profits, and if caught, consider fines a cost of doing business.

Ordinary Americans have needs and interests than banks and corporations do not support. We require a functioning government rather than one corrupted by money, a healthy environment, safe nutritious food, a productive economy, affordable housing, good, well-paying jobs, single payer health care, inexpensive quality education from pre-school to university, an up-to date infrastructure, good public transportation, renewable energy sources, and a real pension plan for our elderly. These are not utopian ideas. They are well within what is possible in a truly functioning Democratic system. That is, if the corruption of money in politics, and if the undue influence of corporations and banks, is removed.

American corporations and banks, often conduct business on a global scale, and are not loyal to the United States. Many use sophisticated accounting practices to avoid paying taxes that fund the services and government programs ordinary Americans need. Often, they pay no taxes at all while tax paying Americans foot the bill for services they enjoy. To say that ordinary Americans, and corporations and banks, are “one nation” and “one people,” or that our interests are the same, defies credulity.

With few exceptions— for example, Dennis Kucinich, Bernie Sanders and Raul Grijalva—our politicians do not give the interests of poor and middle class Americans priority, but, rather, strive first to make their corporate and banking donors happy. Working and middle class anger has been distorted and channeled by corporate owned media which pushes the myth of America as a “middle class country” with a common “national interest.” Working people have been manipulated to view corporate interests are identical to their own. They are taught to love the “free market” that is robbing them of their homes and livelihoods.

During the recent mid term elections, confused Tea Party members repeated the phrase “we need to take back our country.” The corporate-backed Tea Party movement pushed the ludicrous idea—on frustrated and frightened Americans—that socialists control our current government. This, to make sure that no real populist resistance to the continued corporate control of government emerges.

In order to truly “take back our country” we may need to admit our interests, at this time, are fundamentally opposed to the those in power—corporations, Wall Street, and the politicians that do their bidding. And we need to name and express that difference. Only through a true populist movement—one that challenges money driven party politics—will we be able to create a functioning government and an equitable society that serves the interests and needs of ordinary people. We also need a regulated business community, one that considers the American people their “stakeholders” whether they own stock or not.

Meanwhile we need to keep the progressive fires burning, and let progressive voices be heard. The American people want a government and a society that works for them, and with effort and organization, we can make it happen.

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