Unfortunately, we have a tendency to see figures from the past as caricatures - either all good or all bad - when the truth is always much more complex.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
If we look too closely at many historical figures, we won't like what we see.
We live in such a gullible world. Anything that's written, anything that's posted, anything picture that is interpreted one way is taken as truth.
Seeing is no longer believing. The very notion of truth has been put into crisis. In a world bloated with images, we are finally learning that photographs do indeed lie.
I think a lot of times on TV we see caricatures - that's what's funny.
We grow up being told about great figures in our society, and as you get older you have to question the stories you've been told and decide if these great figures are indeed as great as you've been told.
Words have great cumulative power, but in the 21st century, a single image is much stronger. An image suggests the unvarnished truth. That is its power and its fiction.
I believe it's worth observing terrible things people have done as clearly and rationally as we can to show that our monsters are not caricatures.
We demand that people should be true to the pictures we have of them, no matter how repulsive those pictures may be: we prefer the true portrait in all its homogeneity, to one with a detail added which refuses to fit in.
As a general truth, it is safe to say that any picture that produces a moral impression is a bad picture.
It's too bad for us 'literary' enthusiasts, but it's the truth nevertheless - pictures tell any story more effectively than words.