Ken Taylor, Legendary Canadian Diplomat, Dies at 81 | Hacker News Reader

Ken Taylor, Legendary Canadian Diplomat, Dies at 81

theatlantic.com

29 pointsthehoff20 comments

> The 2012 film Argo, directed by Ben Affleck, played up the U.S. spy agency’s role in the escape at the Canadians’ expense, omitting Sheardown’s role in the caper and falsely implying that the Canadian government was willing to leave the six Americans behind after closing the embassy.

THAT. Argo really was a horrible belittlement of a predominantly Canadian operation. Artistic license is one thing, but re-writing history simply to appeal to certain demographics (ie American film audiences) is cowardly. Any number of films do this, but it is always wrong.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Caper

Movies that have done the same to appeal to American audiances:

U-571 - "Ayer told BBC Radio 4's The Film Programme that he "did not feel good" about suggesting Americans, rather than the British, captured the naval Enigma cipher:"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U-571_%28film%29#Controversies...

Master And Commander: The Far Side of the World - "...as the producers wished to avoid offending American audiences [...] the fictional opponent was changed from the USS Norfolk to the French privateer frigate Acheron" (Original book was only loosely historical, but my point remains.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_and_Commander:_The_Far_...

Such re-making of history for a particular audience is actually quite common, here is a nice example from a non-military genre:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1675434/

Speaking of history that tends to get buried, how many people know that the Canadians burned down the White House during the War of 1812?

I don't think that's correct. British Regulars redeployed from the Napoleonic Wars burned down the White House. But if you're referring to the fact that it it was largely in retaliation for the sack of York (now Tornoto) by the Americans, then you'd be correct.

That's not to diminish Canadian achievements in the war; they seriously mauled American attempts at invasion and held Detroit at once point. Canada was very much a British colony at this time, and was just beginning to form a sense of national identity (of which the was would play a large part.)

Glad all that mess is behind us. =)

> and held Detroit at once point

Too late to give it back? :)

Canadians? Or the British?

Yes.

There is a story that the white house was actually burnt by some of the many former slaves who fought with the brits/canadians. It sounds too fanciful to be true, but freed slaves were there and would have participated in the burning/looting of DC.

Anyone who has spent more than 5 minutes in the company of Canadians.

There's a song about that...

In America, pernicious, thin-skinned, militant P.C. is widespread. Seinfeld no longer plays American colleges because of it and Bill Mahar opines often as well.

In too many "retail" universities, there needs to be more fracturing of groupthink and expanding of thought and expression, not bikeshedding on edge-case, perceived "offense" to shout down a well-meaning and -intentioned joke.

And at the end of it they had real passport photos of those involved alongside the actor's faces, to be like "hey, we worked really hard to make this historically accurate!"

It's really a shame, because that's ultimately a richer and (IMO) better story. But movies need a single protagonist, and switching energy ( from the CIA protagonist to (a) Canadian one(s) ) in the middle of a film like that is risky. The point that America was more constrained than Canada would, I think, have been very entertaining.

Ken Taylor is portrayed as having a great deal of ... courage. You KNEW it was a team effort and that it went all the way up to the Prime Minister, and that Ken Taylor was a proxy for all of the Canadian effort.

Filmmakers who trust the audience are usually rewarded but the process of development leads to teams of risk-averse people who are incented to exaggerate risk. Big movies have the economics of extractive technologies ( mining - you want the big gusher, not a series of modest ones - that in itself is covered by Scorcese's "Personal Journey") and you'd think that would be changing but...

They did make a point of an apology reel during the closing credits - they at least showed Taylor getting the Order of Canada award.

Ignorant me was glad to read that part. I saw Argo and with my very limited knowledge of what happened assumed that what I saw was pretty much what happened. Glad to read that and am now curious to learn more.

There was a lot I liked about Argo but they downplayed Canada's enormous contribution while also whitewashing the main character (who was hispanic in real life). It's one of those things that doesn't seem too bad in isolation but it's just so omnipresent it's hard not to get annoyed by it.

> whitewashing the main character (who was hispanic in real life).

Tony Mendez is (not "was" -- he's a living person, and Argo was not only based on his life, but on his own writing about it, and he was a consultant on the project and actively participated in its promotion as well as its production) but also a white American (he and at least his parents, on both sides, were born in the US) of Mexican descent on his fathers side and mixed European descent, not via any Hispanic culture, on his mother's side.

To say that having him -- not a character based on him but rewritten to be a different ethnicity, but a character which is explicitly the same Tony Mendez -- played by a white who didn't have exactly the same ancestry is "whitewashing" is reducing "whitewashing" to meaninglessness.

Ben Affleck could easily pass for Hispanic.

The sad part is that in this circumstance, I don't think Americans would have cared if the movie showed the Canadians as the prime mover. We knew the US didn't have clue given our rescue attempt and the utter chaos around Perot's actions in Iran.

Sad loss, one of the good ones.

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