It always cracks me up when people get all worked up about "knowing" that Bligh was a great guy and Christian a horrible traitor, or the other way around. It happened 200 years ago folks. We'll never know what really went on aboard that ship. What makes people think they're SURE they know what did?
shareWell it's pretty much established that Bligh wasn't really any more harsh than any other captain in the 18th century and that Christian was just too young and inexperienced to be given second-in-command, but either way this is a great movie.
shareBritish naval historian Richard Hough published "Mr. Crhistian and Captain Bligh" in the 1970s as a nonfiction analysis of the mutiny. Much of what he rights is nonsense. For example, he hypothesizes that one sourse of tension between Christian and Bligh was the former's termination of a gay love affair with the latter (to his credit, Hough admits he has no evidence of any such affair). But Hough also presents highly plausible character sketches of Christian as an overly sensitive and immature young man, and Bligh as an anal-retentive nag. The film version of Hough's book, "The Bounty," starring Mel Gibson as Christian and Anthony Hopkins as Bligh, offers good portrayals of the main characters (while omitting the love affair angle).
shareWe can certainly make educated guesses based on contemporary evidence. For example, disciplinary records show Captain Bligh to have been more lenient than commonly supposed. Letters from crew members reported little harshness. The fact Captain Bligh was able to navigate the launch with his followers 3600 miles from the mutiny to a port of call reflects his skill as a navigator and his courage as a seaman. Most of his followers returned to England and died of natural causes. Most of Christian's followers murdered each other or were murdered by Polynesians whom they attacked and tried to enslave. Events can reflect for good or ill on those who lived through them.
shareWe can't know for sure but historians have been able to make some very sound surmises, and this film is nothing like those. Nor was it intended to be.
From the very outset, Louis B. Mayer conceived of the picture as propaganda for the British Navy.
As for the characters of Christian and Byam, what mattered to Mayer was not the truth, but the use of these characters to soften the image of British imperialism. That is why they are unfailingly kind to the crew and to the natives.
"Louis B. Mayer conceived of the picture as propaganda for the British Navy."
By making a British captain a villainous tyrant?
I would have thought that if this was his object, he would have made Bligh the hero and Christian the villain.
*by the way, I think Irving Thalberg actually supervised this film and was the guiding force behind it, not Mayer.
lastmidnite2
"It always cracks me up when people get all worked up about 'knowing' that Bligh was a great guy and Christian a horrible traitor"
I agree. It seems to me that there is not enough disinterested factual testimony to draw such set-in-concrete opinions of the character of these men.
"SURE"
I agree with you here. I think the primary sources I am familiar with leave open conflicting interpretations.
History is either a science or propaganda.
As a science, all knowledge of history beyond human recall is only theory. For many years these theories of history were based upon surviving artifacts, contemporary accounts (diaries, journals, newspapers), and through the analysis of data from surviving records.
Recently, new scientific tools, as basic as carbon dating or as specific as DNA analysis, has become available, which in some instances have reinforced the previously held theory, while in others overturn previous thought, pointing historians toward a more accurate theory in a different direction.
However, mere conjecture, as a basis for accepting a new theory, or for rejecting an old theory, is not scientific. While accepting or rejecting, without enumerating one's reasons, isn't even good propaganda.
What it is, is an activity for which little boys are often chastised.