Brigadoon, Braveheart, and the Scots

"Hollywood's 1954 musical extravaganza Brigadoon and, more recently, Mel Gibson's epic Braveheart, continue to have enormous resonance for Scots at home and throughout the world. For the wider international audience, often with no direct knowledge of Scotland, such films provide general impressions of 'Scottishness'. This provocative book questions the ways in which these films represent Scotland and the Scots and looks closely at that peculiar cluster of images and stories whereby Scotland is (mis)recognised and 'known'. Colin McArthur follows Brigadoon through the worlds of 1940s Broadway theatre and 1950s Hollywood, and documents the contempt the film has elicited, particularly from the Scots intelligentsia. Recognising its problematic representation of 'Scotland', he nevertheless succumbs to Brigadoon's charm and artistry, but finds no such mitigating features in Braveheart. Tracing that film's appropriation by political, touristic and sporting figures, he argues that, far from being 'about' Scottish history, it is primarily 'about' Hollywood and its cinematic traditions. He looks at the way the film, given its narrative antecedents, necessarily distorts history, even providing