Every historical film must contend with the possibility that its viewers will be scandalized by its mixture of fact and fiction, but no recent historical film has faced such pressure to justify its hybrid nature as Selma has, in large part because no recent film has taken on so momentous and controversial a historical subject: the civil rights marches from Selma to Montgomery that led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. The renewed urgency of the issues Selma dramatizes, along with the film’s own commitment to the “moral certainty” of the civil rights movement, helps explain why Selma wavers in a self-defense that links the fictionality of its historical reenactments to the purposely theatrical element of the marches themselves. But politics are not the only problem for fiction in Selma , and to show why, this essay compares Selma to an earlier historical film, The Westerner (1940), that openly flaunts the commercial nature of its fictionality.

中文翻译：

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塞尔玛与历史电影中的小说

每部历史电影都必须应对观众将其事实与小说混为一谈的丑闻，但最近的历史电影都没有像塞尔玛那样面临证明其混合性的压力，这在很大程度上是因为最近的电影都没有如此重大而又具争议性的历史主题：公民权利从塞尔玛进军蒙哥马利，并于1965年通过了《投票权法》。塞尔玛戏剧化问题的新紧迫性，以及电影对“道德确定性”的承诺。公民权运动的故事，有助于解释塞尔玛为何动摇自我防御，将其历史重演的虚构性与游行本身的有目的戏剧元素联系起来。但是政治不是塞尔玛小说的唯一问题，并且要说明原因，