What parts of the US or aspects of American culture/history would you like to see more in films or TV?

17 comments

  1. Early American history, post founding. 1790 to 1825. It’s such a rich period, and it is rarely covered.

  2. Tbh I wish there was more material on the first American interventions like XYZ affairs or First and Second Barbary War. There’s so many interventions that they could make films.

    Also the Banana War interventions like how we occupied countries like Haiti for awhile. Before FDR we were more than willing to occupy a Caribbean or Central American state to stabilize them.

    XYZ affairs was a disagreement between France and the US and we had a naval conflict with them because they were harassing us.

    They would probably be boring but like a Movie Biography of Major General Smedly Butler make it entertaining and cover a good portion of those conflicts and have an anti war message like the pamphlet he made.

  3. The Korean War, the lead up to the Civil War, Bleeding Kansas, the French and Indian War.

    I’d like to see a big blockbuster about Civil Rights and maybe a law drama about Thurgood Marshall.

    A Harriet Tubman drama or just the Underground Railroad in general.

    A biopic about early US punk bands. Basically make “This Band Could Be Your Life” into a movie.

  4. Why not have a biography of Theodore Roosevelt? That guy had a super interesting life, and would be a great role model. Also, I learned about the us army’s secret plans to hold off the soviets if they invaded during a nuclear war. That would be a pretty wild movie. Also, as sci fi film with all of the insane weapon ideas the us had in the 50s

  5. US involvement in Latin America post WW2….I feel like that most Americans have no idea of the US influence/occupation in countries like Cuba, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Panama which led to civil war and revolution. These actions also help explain why there is so much animosity from those the people/governments of those countries towards the American government.

    I didn’t learn about such US involvement until I took a course specifically on Central and Latin American history in college. Even now, there aren’t many documentaries that cover the histories of this countries

  6. I feel like WWII is often covered a lot, but not much on the home front.

    My grandparents graduated high school during WWII and both lived in mill towns here in New England. They both have stories of how the mills changed to make things for the war effort. The town where my grandmother grew up made a *lot* of uniforms. My hometown is where my grandfather grew up, and the big mill there was a lightbulb factory by WWII. They made bomb fuses, including the ones for the atomic bomb.

    There’s so much of our industrial infrastructure that is a direct result of WWII, and has made the US into the advanced industrial powerhouse it is today. But very few people are aware of the scale of American logistics and production during WWII.

  8. I’ve always been fascinated by the labor organizing during the labor movements of the mid to late 19th/early 20th century. It’s always generally depicted as coal miners or factory workers spontaneously rebelling against greedy Anglo business owners. But it’s a very beautiful time period in American history that is much more.

  9. Hmmm… this is honestly a very catch-22 question for me. I want several periods to receive more attention such as the Mexican-American war, or the early navy, or American intervention in nineteenth century Asia.

    But that said, the bulk of films and TV shows seem almost allergic to portraying history accurately. So I don’t really want a miniseries about the Mexican-American war showing Santa Anna as a Mexican Hitler even though that’s what I suspect it would turn into.

  10. Reconstruction. The heros are always loudly praised for fighting or winning wars, but the period of reconstruction is when communities, cities, and governments are reformed. It is messy, difficult, and thankless task, but probably more important than many of the stories we are all familiar with.

  11. Reconstruction is often considered one of the most misunderstood and under studied eras in US history.

  12. I’d like to see more media made by and about Indigenous Americans. I’m Tsalagi (Cherokee) and think that many of the cultural stories I grew up hearing would make awesome animated content for kids, and there’s no shortage of epic stories from throughout Indigenous history that would make stunning dramas.

  13. Honestly, the years leading up to the Civil Ware are pretty interesting and I’m surprised there aren’t too many movies about that era… same goes for Reconstruction.

    Also, I think Tarantino could do well with an Inglorious Basterds style movie surrounding the Pig War of 1859.

  14. I want a John Brown biopic depicting him as the American hero he was.

    One time, when living in Kansas, a posse of other white men came to him to ask him to help terrorize a family of Native Americans living in the community with the intention of running them off their land. John Brown shot at the posse and said something to the effect of, “I’d rather run you out of town.” Fucking legend.

  15. More movies about the US and native massacres/battles of the 19th century. Also more stuff about the shady CIA operations during the Cold War.

  16. I really find movies about the immigrant experience to be beautiful and thought provoking.

  17. There’s probably a good movie to be made out of the Peralta Claim in the 1800s, where a forger and con-man named James Addison Reavis almost made off with ownership of the territory of Arizona and parts of New Mexico. (The sheer audacity of the guy, and how many people he got to go along with it!)

    I’m reading a good history of ballooning in the Civil War era, the adventures early pre-Wright aviators had would be pretty easily translated.

    I think I’d like to see more multi- generational immigrant-family stories, of all kinds. Like, the history of an Irish-American, Greek-American , Chinese-American, Brazilian-American, etc family over a few generations would be cool. There are tons of stories that never get told along these lines.

    Sadly (due to the way contracts work), we don’t really have solo inventor stories, the way we might have about earlier eras. ( Instead, we’d have stories about corporations.) It would be cool to see it, though.

    I used to do a lot of reading into the history of vaudeville, and there’s meat for a good show or movie there. ( If there wasn’t such a thing as vaudeville, pop culture would be basically unrecognizable now.)

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