But then again, I would say that the photo itself serves to commemorate that individual moment (and I’m certainly not advocating that the original photo be altered to be more diverse), while the monument would be commemorating all emergency personnel involved in the response, and thus making it more representative would not have been revisionism.
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That was the first flag raising of which no photo that we know of exists. The monument depicts the second flag raising. If the monument depicted someone who wasn’t actually there I would be all for changing it.
@ParrotWatcher I don’t think you can reasonably separate the moment the monument is capturing in the photo and the actual people who were in it. Again I’m just offering how I would feel if they did that with a monument I have a personal stake in as a contrast.
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This is not important but I urge you to check-fact this. There is a photo of the first flag raising - it was in Leatherneck Magazine but more importantly, the misidentification was with regards to the second photo which led to it being wrong on the monument. It was recently corrected
but in my mind the misidentification does not subtract from the honor paid to everyone for 50 years… and that is my point.
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I think you are talking about this:
And your right that John Bradley was not actually at the second raising but the first.
I think the difference is that they took the iconic photo at face value and tried to reproduce it as accurately as possible. And for all intents and purposes Harold Schultz is in the monument because they depicted the characteristic why he carries his M1 accurately.
I would hate to think that with the sensibilities of the time they went the other way with Ira Hays and said “We can’t have any Indians in this monument switch him out for a white guy!”
I feel like actually depicting the people present and at least trying to be true to the moment would stand the test of time much better anyway. It takes something away from the importance of the moment imo if we feel like we need to fix history to suit our sensibilities. There might be just as much to learn from the fact that all three officers were white in this moment then for posterity to feel falsely secure in the diversity of the NYC fire department of the day.
EDIT: you are also right about the Leatherneck magazine photo but the quibble is that the flag was already well up by the time that one was taken. Basically the cameras missed the drama of the raising, which is part of why they did a second one.
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They’re talking about this film in this article really and what is making a compelling Hollywood story and possibly by doing that not honoring the actual actions of the people that fought it. And the big just scissor using a real life person based on real life event. But they’re making like all the events that happened to different people in this unit happened to her. This will not be a huge deal and application of a book or a movie or film. But all these people are real living breathing people arguably getting robbed of the recognition for their actions
That being said she more decorated than most marine I know.
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I hate to break it to you, but this happens all the time. Historical achievements are stolen or erased to fit a “better narrative”, and usually (especially in Hollywood), it’s the actions of PoC, and non-Americans getting nicked for the edification of some kind of grand white, male, American narrative. - whether this be the lifting of the entire plot of U-571 (The actions of an RN crew replaced by an American one), the “Eagle Squadron” subplot of Pearl Harbor (American shown flying in a squadron that was famous for being recruited from exiled Polish fighter pilots), or even something as simple as taking away Katherine Johnson’s solution to the segregation of bathrooms in Hidden Figures and giving the role of agency to her white supervisor.
Make no mistake, Political Correctness, especially Political Correctness in media does happen, but it’s not what the sort of people who unironically use the term “Political Correctness” think it is.
Historiography in the West is heavily biased towards white cismale narratives, and that interpretation of history shapes a lot of the problems modern Western society has regarding gender and racial politics. Not only are the achievements of white men generally edified, even if they occurred at the expense of PoC and white women (I believe you’re already run afoul of this re: Andrew Jackson), but diversity of groups who achieved truly momentous things are likewise erased: the exploits of the British Indian Army in the World Wars, the contributions of Thomas-Alexandre Dumas to the cause of the French Revolution, the role of enslaved black labour in the creation of the United States as a country - it’s a longass list.
On top of that, you have an overarching idea of what’s history and what’s not, based on who did the lion’s share of it. In Western history, men did the bulk of the fighting and ruling and exploring - so that’s “history”. Meanwhile, the development of brewing, the establishment of modern literary forms like the romantic poem and the long-form novel, and the low-paid scut-labour which working class women did to fuel the Industrial Revolution are all shoved into specialist fields at best and “not real history” at worst (I know a few fashion historians who come up against that all the time).
So yes, there is a “Politically Correct” history, but it’s not the one most people think. It’s the one that gets taught in compulsory education. It’s the one that shitty dudebros on the internet cite when they claim that “white men did everything.” It’s the toxic fuel of the undertone of white supremacy which still underpins a lot of Western institutions.
It deserves to be corrected, refuted, smashed, if necessary.
Yet the way to do so isn’t to smash all the old monuments. Statues to Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee, and John C. Calhoun do, of course - men who accepted treason and fratricide and tyranny (recall that the CSA was, in effect, a military dictatorship) to keep millions of human beings in bondage aren’t figures to emulate. However, that does not apply to the firefighters at Ground Zero, or the men on top of Mount Suribachi. Those are stories worth telling.
The key is to encourage new stories, the stories that haven’t been told. Monuments and histories do not exist in isolation, and the narrative that exists in our heads are not made up of single stories in isolation, but a collage of what we have learned and experienced. Let there be stories of the the Heian novelists, and the two-spirit folk of the First Nations; of Hildegard of Bingen, and the Rani of Jhansi; of the Japanese-American troops at Anzio, of Lady Montagu and her “Bluestockings”.
They are as much a part of history as any other. Do they deserve any less than the consideration that we have already given to the exemplars of a relative minority of humanity?
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Is it me or did this argument start when people couldn’t agree on what art should be…?
No I’m not claiming White men did everything and the example you set are stories I would love to see, just from the social historical angle alone to add a richness to perspective. Attributing the experience of entire unit through her. I’m not going to disrespect her service she is a badass by any standard. What most likely happened here she told a story her story and producers and directors wanted to make it “Sexy” so they did research on different peoples experience or maybe not at all and a filtered water spotting information through and check on the collective experience to her. No specially the military because it’s competitive environment can you work for everything you earn specially oversea if your experience is being attributed somebody else especially if it’s personal it would be incredibly infuriating if not frustrated. The thing is to with the especially everything is special in this meticulously document. So there’s no reason to fluff up the storyline when they have all the research material they need. And they could show up the honest telling of her story from my experience overseas to dealing with her time back home and her entire other deployment.
Simultaneously I do agree with you there needs to be more perspective of different people all throughout the media to to show the greater role they played In history then some passive actors.
This is exactly what I’m talking about.
In a lot of cases, writers and historians, and media make a piece of history “sexy”, by portraying it through the lens of its white male participants, with the intent of pandering to a white male audience. A lot of the frustration that comes with being a man of colour working in this field is that this distortion goes on to shape how people view the past, including the idea of who “deserves” to be considered the builders, defenders, and maintainers of a society - a concept which holds an enormous amount of weight because it also factors into who “deserves” consideration, reparation, and preference in public policy and civic discourse.
The public sphere is a competitive environment, especially for groups who have it really badly off: there are marginalised groups who have to fight to get what others receive as their due for simply breathing. If you think it’s frustrating having your experiences being attributed to someone else, think how utterly furious you’d be to know that you were considered a lesser person by both other individuals and institutions because a group you were born in had all of their contributions to the society you lived in appropriated or erased.
There is no reason to “fluff up the storyline”, as you put it, but the thing you have to remember is that history (at least Western historical narratives) are already heavily “fluffed up” in favour of a specific group of people, so if we want to make history the story of humanity as a whole, our study, portrayal, and commemoration of the past has to be undertaken with that basic understanding.
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Totally agree but I just hope the solution we arrive at collectively is less bullshit not equal opportunity bullshit.
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Naturally: Media made to serve a false post-colonialist historical narrative is just as annoying as media made to serve a false colonialist historical narrative.
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(waits for @Cataphrak to run for public office…)
(eats more popcorn in the meanwhile…)
They can make that into a paying job, whoa! 
On the other hand today’s fashion world is mainly interested in and focused on female fashions, which barely interest me while the men’s side is still very conservative and comparatively dull despite its rich history and the fact that historically the men’s side used to be the pioneering one.
On the other hand Bollywood and Hong Kong (Taiwan too) and of course Japan have their own male and cis biases too.
I already tried to guess Canadian electoral politics as my try when guessing that big forthcoming announcement and it can’t be Chinese electoral politics, because well China hasn’t done the “fifth modernisation” yet.
Maybe Cata’s wife is the one who will try for electoral politics instead. 
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agree with you with your hundred percent and the rest you written.
The same way I’m technically a military historian really. They have formal training and jobs which make knowledge of fashion history very useful, but not necessary.
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I think I’ll keep men’s fashion and its history as one of my hobbies for now then.
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You know about the history of men’s fashion please do go on! 
As a hobby, unlike Cata I never had formal training in history beyond highschool and one non-fashion elective in college.
Anything I know can be found in a library or on the interwebs.
Though for what it’s worth it all began with Napoleonic era military uniforms (or “bling of war”) for me. 
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Honestly speaking, if you tried to sell this as a commercial product, you might run into some trouble reaching a very wide audience. There are plenty of people who might give it pass simply because of the subject matter. Sad but true.
As for the writing though, I recommend setting the story where such lifestyles are common. LGBT is commonly estimated at only about 5% of the population so having every character the player meets be someone of the community can be jarring if placed in a setting where this is unlikely. It is less verisimilitude than suspension of disbelief. California? A commune? A fictional society? Sure, go ahead. The Bible belt? Victorian England? Not so much. Writing about life as a closeted homosexual during the Third Reich is less a LGBT story and more psychological thriller.
A good place to start would be to look at your characters and write down quick descriptions about their defining characteristics. If they wind up with race, culture and sexuality with little else, time to consider a rethink. Characters should be people first, labels last. They must engage us, thrill us and make us love or hate them. Everything else is window dressing. Create good characters and you will find a readership.
Another approach is to own it. If you worry people are going to accuse you of something, might as well carry the flag high. Make it a story about a person reconnecting with their estranged sibling, learning about alternative lifestyles through that lens. Or if you want something more melancholy, the friends that show up to that estranged sibling’s funeral. Their more conservative parents might want no truck with the people their child associated with in their final years but the MC does. They want to hear everything about their sibling at the wake from the people who spent time with them.
I think it is not that farfetched a story about someone growing up in a very conservative state moving far away to somewhere they could be accepted for themselves. Yes their sibling still loves them dearly but does not partake of the lifestyle. When the MC learns that their sibling has passed away, the wake can be a good framing device to introduce all the characters as well as a means to tell an anthology style story.
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Please don’t refer to being LGBT as a lifestyle. It makes it sound like a fad or a fashion statement. I’m not blaming you for phrasing it this way, but you should be aware how it sounds. It also has unfortunate associations in that a lot of homophobes like to talk about the “gay lifestyle”; not that you’re doing this, but it has those connotations nonetheless.
The other thing is that there really is no LGBT lifestyle. We’re all very different from each other… just as varied (probably more so) as everyone else. There’s no common way of life to refer to, here. This goes hand in hand with what you’re saying about not letting labels define characters; being LGBTQ doesn’t define how someone lives, so characters need to be fully developed beyond their labels. (But note that heterosexual and cisgender are labels too, and the advice to flesh characters out applies exactly equally across the board. Remember, it’s just as much of a decision to create a heterosexual cisgender character as it is to create an LGBTQ one.)
On the point about percentages… it is worth noting that this data is really hard to get, because people aren’t necessarily going to report accurately. Significantly, polls of millenials tend to give rather higher rates… so either millenials for some reason are way more LGBT, or the frequencies are similar, but millenials are more likely to acknowledge it. So… this is context-dependent, but there are a lot of contexts in which the statistics will vary. And groups of people who know each other aren’t ever representative samples, anyway… it’s not surprising if the main cast of a story have certain unusual things in common when it comes to interests, so LGBTness shouldn’t be anything different.
I would agree that it can be very interesting to tell stories, as you mention, that deal with the social issues that exist around LGBTQ people. I would like to see more of them, sure. However, it’s also nice to see more stories where LGBTQ people get to have the same kinds of narratives that other people do, without revolving around their LGBTQ-ness. It shows that we can have just the same things going on in our lives as everyone else… because, as you noted, our labels most certainly do not define us. I don’t know which directions @anon86661845 intends to take, but whichever way, I commend him.
I’d also as a general caution like to point out that the story examples you give largely revolve around people who aren’t LGBT looking in, and learning, rather than telling a story from an LGBT perspective itself. It’s not that the former is bad… you can make plenty of interesting stories that way… but it is something that’s a bit more common, and creates more distance. More stories through the eyes of LGBTQ people themselves would be wonderful… that conveys the experience more directly, and gives us our own voice, rather than always having to speak through others, as happens all too frequently.
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