  urlLink Guardian Unlimited Film | Features | Forget the Alamo : "'Remember the Alamo! ' is an odd phrase to connect with an event that has been as comprehensively misremembered as any in the blood-soaked history of a nation. Facts get lost in the mythomaniacal fog that surrounds the 1836 siege of the Texan fort-cum-mission by a 7,000-strong Mexican army. If you listen to the guardians of the official version, you never learn that the 200 brave souls who died at the Alamo were defending the right of white settlers to steal land that was officially Mexican sovereign territory, and resisting the Mexican government's prohibition of human slavery. Or that Jim Bowie, he of the famous knife, was a proud slaveholder, or that Davy Crockett, reputed Indian-fighter, bear-slayer, former Tennessee congressman and all-round king of the wild frontier, never wore one of those stupid raccoon hats. But in Texas, you can get in all sorts of trouble if you disrespect the myths. Look at Ozzy Osbourne: he once took a whizz on the Alamo and was lucky not to find himself strung up on the mission's bellrope.
The Alamo story always seems to be disinterred whenever America lurches into one of its military adventures. John Wayne made The Alamo in 1960 at the height of the Cold War, just as Washington was gearing up for the 'noble cause' of destroying a small rice-and-fish based economy in Southeast Asia. The new version, directed by John Lee Hancock, arrives at an unpropitious moment for the American mission in Iraq.
The trouble is that our age of political correctness means that the crude mythmaking of The Duke cannot be revived without massive protest, even while the Daughters of the Republic must be partially appeased. The result is a conflicted, semi-revisionist version, probably made more confusing by the constant interference of its equally besieged backers, Disney. As for 'Remember the Alamo! ' - six hours after I saw it, it was vanishing from my memory..." 
