A lot of hype has come up over the past ten days in Germany, over the Karl May books (written in the mid to late 1800s) on cowboy-Indian stories set in the American west. So the general 'woke' end of this.....is that they are totally inaccurate, and need to be halted.
I paused over this, and pondered.
To be honest, with the Winnetou movies (all eleven), I've probably watched all of them at least twice. With 'The Treasure in Silver Lake'? I've probably seen it at least eight times.
My description of the movies? The Indians are always portrayed as wonderful people....the settlers are generally protrayed as nice folks....then you have the third element of the story (in each movie)....bad evil folks (half are Americans....half Mexicans).
Each movie uses the landscape of Yugoslavia (from 1962 to 1968) as the background, and to be honest....about a third of the reason why I'm entertained by the movies relates to the that. It looks like Colorado in a way.
If you asked me about authenticity of the original script (books)....I'd give it a marginal grade. In real life, you had various good-Indians around bad-Indians.....innocent settlers around bad settlers....the railroad people, politicization, and the US Army used in abusive ways. Yeah, it's complicated. Karl May simply choose a particular theme that made for enjoyable reading. I doubt if he'd ever met an Indian in his life.
Forcing the movies off the air? Well....then you open up this big door. I can think of a hundred-odd movies that are historically inaccurate in detail....would you go and disappear them as well?
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