Well, readers, looks like the assignment that prompted me to start this blog has been completed. I’ve reviewed a commercial, a movie, a documentary, a monument, and a virtual exhibit, all pertaining to history and its treatment by popular culture. With all that said and done, I like this blog and I like writing it. It’s given me an ideal outlet to think about and explore many of my interests: history, popular culture, and writing. Putting this project together was really stimulating and the list of topics I could write about is overwhelming! So with that in mind, I intend to continue this blog. However, a few changes are in order.
First, I’m expanding the list of topics. To the ones already included I will add:
Songs
TV shows and miniseries
News and magazine articles (no academic journal articles. Sorry, P.A. Brunt)
Novels and short stories
Second, as my time is rather limited due to school and work, I’m going to try to post at least once a month. Ideally, however, I’m going to shoot for twice a month, with a new post every two weeks.
My intent with this blog is that hopefully it will become a fun and stimulating hobby that will sharpen my writing skills and get people thinking about how our remembrance of the past is shaped by our culture. I look forward to what lies ahead!
Finally, to close this post, I wanted to take some time to plug some of the classmates blogs:
http://misshazen.wordpress.com/ A thoughtful look at some of the topics from our assignment and how they tie to the themes from our Public History class.
http://thelostplatypus.wix.com/blog A fresh perspective from someone outside of the history field who knows a thing or two about the importance of audiences.
Desperate times have proven to often bring out the worst and the best in people. It is difficult to conceive of a more horrifying period in history than the Holocaust. From 1933-1945, Eastern Europe’s Jewish population lived in an ever escalating state of stark terror as the Nazi machine sought their eradication. In the end, six million were murdered while the survivors bore the physical and emotional scars of this crime against humanity. The Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. is dedicated to educating the public on the realities of this event in the hopes that its history, evil as it is, is never forgotten. Their virtual exhibit, “Some Were Neighbors: Collaboration and Complicity in the Holocaust” continues this mission by examining the roles of everyday people who either became accomplices to murder by aiding the Nazis or became heroes by defying their authority and rescuing their Jewish neighbors.
This exhibit presents a combination of photographs and oral histories containing testimonials of Holocaust survivors and individuals complicit in aiding the Nazis. This content is divided into seven thematic sections: Neighbors, Workers, Teenagers, Policemen, Religious Leaders, Teachers, and Friends. In each section, one is treated to stark examples of some of the best and worst of humanity. There are stories of neighbors looting the houses of neighbors, classmates cheering as a Jewish student’s family is led away to be boarded on trains destined for the camps, crowds of onlookers standing by seemingly amused as a Jewish man has his beard forcibly cut off by Nazi troops, and a Catholic priest who personally executed Jews who refused to convert to Catholicism. These accounts, however, are tempered with stories of bravery and heroism in the face of utter darkness. There is the paper mill foreman who hid his teenage Jewish employee in his own home, the policeman who secretly fed a young Jewish boy condemned to prison, the Dutch Protestant Pastor who delivered a Christmas sermon urging his congregants to hide Jews in their homes, and a Belgian schoolteacher who bravely placed 2,000 Jewish children with families willing to hide them.
This exhibit, as all things pertaining to this topic, is gut wrenching and one must be prepared to view it knowing that the content will be unnerving. As part of the Holocaust Museum, it falls neatly in line with the vision for this institution as documented in Edward Linenthal’s Preserving Memory: The Struggle to Create America’s Holocaust Museum. In this book, Linenthal explores the ever changing mission of this institution and the efforts to present this history without overwhelming the visitor with horror or whitewashing its inhumanity. By presenting a balanced narrative, one sees many of the dimensions of this experience and how it affected all its participants psychologically. One cannot help but wonder how one would have behaved if faced with the ethical circumstances some of these neighbors, friends, and teachers faced when confronted with Nazi evil? And that is the real power of this exhibit.
Source:
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Some Were Neighbors: Collaboration and Complicity in the Holocaust,” accessed February 26, 2014. http://somewereneighbors.ushmm.org/
Linenthal, Edward T. Preserving Memory: The Struggle to Create America’s Holocaust Museum. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995, 2001.
About two blocks from my job lies Downtown Orlando’s majestic Lake Eola Park. Strolling down its colorful and lush walkways, taking in its sparkling blue lake and tall shade trees draped with Spanish moss, one begins to notice a particular sight spread throughout the park’s grounds. Swans. Lots of them. Big swans, too. Some of them may even be possible descendents of Orlando’s legendary “Billy the Swan” transplanted here from Lake Lucerne, but his is a tale for another day. Diverting one’s gaze away from the swans, the trees, and the lake, one would become aware of another item in great abundance on these grounds: historical monuments. There are many ranging from a bust of Mahatma Gandhi to a lifesized statue of a soldier from the Battle of the Bulge. Among these monuments, the tallest and most impressive is the Confederate soldier memorial.
That a memorial dedicated to the memory of the Confederate soldier would dwarf the size of all other monuments at this site is a telling detail. Built in 1911 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, it was originally displayed in the middle of Downtown Orlando. In 1917, it was moved to its present location due to its frequent disruptions in traffic. Gazing upon it, one is immediately struck by its height. The monument is shaped as a large column. Atop of its capital stands a uniformed Confederate soldier proudly at attention. Along the column’s four corners are engravings honoring the unknown soldier of the confederacy and the lost cause he fought for. The most striking one for me is this one:
“The cause for which he suffered was lost; the people for whom he fought were crushed; the hopes in which he trusted were shattered; but his fame, consigned to the keeping of time, which happily is not so much the tomb of virtue as its shrine, shall in the years to come, fire modest worth to noble ends.”
In the above engraving we have encapsulated one of the central themes of the Southern narrative regarding the loss of the Civil War: the Confederacy is a lost cause whose fall ushered in an era of oppression for its conquered people. Not all Southerners view the fall of the Confederacy in this same manner. However, as is evident by such other Civil War memorials such as New Orleans’ Monument of the Battle of Liberty Place, Texas’ Memorial to the Confederate Dead, and the statues lining Virginia’s Monument Avenue there is a sense in many corners of the South that the Civil War was not a conflict over the freedom of slaves but over the freedom of the states. In this vein, Confederate soldiers are seen as freedom fighters not far removed from Washington’s colonial army in the American Revolution. This memorial falls neatly within this narrative.
The contentiousness between how the Civil War is viewed between the North and South is an issue I find fascinating. Now, though I live in the South, I am not what one would call a Southerner. In my estimation, one cannot downplay the role of slavery to the Civil War. It was central to the conflict and permeated every economic, political, and cultural dimension of this war. Yet, to people such as the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the narrative of a society fighting to preserve a way of life built on an immoral system that dehumanized an entire class of people is not as heroic as that of freedom fighters unselfishly pledging their lives to safeguard their land against the tyranny of Northern invaders. The Confederate Memorial of Lake Eola stands as a bold example of how monuments can be used to reinforce the perceived reality of the culture that produced it.
Special thanks to Kendra Hazen for the photos.
Sources:
Commissioned by the United Daughters of the Confederacy. “To the Soldiers, Sailors, and Statesmen of the Confederacy.” Orlando, FL: Lake Eola Park, 1911.
Getting people interested in history is hard. As someone entering the field of Public History who also works as a museum educator, this is a problem I wrestle with almost daily. Historians have the daunting task of gathering large piles of sources—facts, artifacts, dates, names, etc.—interpreting them, and then somehow creating a compelling a story out of it all. Presentation is key in successfully implementing this process. Such is the case with the History Channel documentary Da Vinci and the Code He Lived By.
Released in 2005, I first recall seeing this documentary from my dorm room at FIU, during a brief tenure there before transferring to UCF. The title always struck me: Da Vinci and the Code He Lived By??? Obviously, it is a play Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, which was all the rage in the mid-2000’s with its highly anticipated film adaptation expected that following summer. At the time, I thought it was a slick little attention-grabbing maneuver on the part of the History Channel to lure fans of the book in to watching a straightforward historical doc about Da Vinci.
So just what was this “code” the film posits Da Vinci allegedly lived by? According to the film, Leonardo Da Vinci was guided throughout his life by a series of values and ideals that inspired him to strive for artistic and scientific excellence. The documentary’s narrative establishes very early on that Da Vinci was a child born out of wedlock. In 16th century Italian society, this meant that his future prospects were profoundly dim as most trades were closed to one of his station. It was his perseverance, guided by his “code”, that allowed him rise above his lot and establish himself as one of the great minds of the European Renaissance. It is a good story, one well-tailored for an American audience that values individual initiative and hard work as the key to success despite the circumstances of one’s birth. As one who has studied Da Vinci repeatedly as an undergrad, however, this was the first instance I ever heard of him having such a “code.” The evidence the film draws upon to support this angle are select quotes from Da Vinci’s notebooks recording several observations made throughout his life. Such quotes as,
“If circumstances hold you back, always find another way to achieve your goals.”
“The painter must develop all his skills for there is no sense in doing one thing well and another badly.”
“Never be limited by what has been done before or what others might think.”
“Obstacles cannot crush me. All obstacles must yield to stern resolve. He whose gaze is fixed on a distant star will not falter.”
They sound like the type of life-affirming quotes you’d expect to find in memes scattered throughout your Facebook newsfeed (in between the cat photos). Nevertheless, they are from Da Vinci’s notebooks and do represent some of the wisdom acquired in a long life tempered by periods of profound and restless creativity and crushingly frustrating setbacks. But do they legitimately constitute a “code” or is this an invention of the filmmakers to create an engaging story (and play in to the Da Vinci Code hype)? The latter seems more likely.
Apart from “Da Vinci’s Code,” this documentary employs other narrative means to keep its audience engaged. The film relies heavily on reenactments giving it an engaging cinematic feel. Interspersed with this footage are commentaries by historians employed both in the academic and museum fields. Violence is a theme that is heavily utilized in its story (in fact, the documentary opens with a battle depicting capture of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks in 1453). Florence, center of the Italian Renaissance, is depicted as a city divided by rival merchant families the Medici and the Pazzi’s. Assassinations were commonplace and, as the film teaches us, Italian nobles often walked the streets with body armor hidden under their clothes. There’s more than one scene here that evoke something out of The Sopranos. Likewise, Da Vinci’s slew of militaristic designs—including an armored chariot resembling a modern day tank and a giant crossbow—form a major crux of the film’s content, while his art is pushed to the side.
It is clear that Da Vinci and the Code He Lived By is a historical documentary focused as much on attracting and entertaining its audience as it is on presenting its history. Its title, drawing upon a popular bestseller, is a major attention grabber sure to lure in fans of the book. Its depiction of a Da Vinci as a man guided by a set of virtues inspiring him to rise above adversity and achieve greatness is a compelling story sure win over its target American audience. Finally, its use of reenactments and suspenseful action imbues its content with a cinematic feel. As history, it raises a couple of questions about some of the claims it puts forth. As a story, it works.
Source:
Da Vinci and the Code He Lived By. Documentary Film. Directed by Robert H. Gardner. New Video, 2006. DVD.
Steven Spielberg’s work has always had an interesting dichotomy. Perhaps more than any other American filmmaker, Spielberg’s name is indelibly associated with some of the biggest blockbusters of the last 40 years. This is the director who gave us Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, the Indiana Jones series, and the Jurassic Park series. Then there’s the other Spielberg. This is the director known for giving us serious and poignant films dealing with weighty subject matter incorporating historical themes. This is the Spielberg that has given us The Color Purple, Schindler’s List, Amistad, Saving Private Ryan, and Munich. His latest contribution to this series is 2012’s Lincoln, starring Daniel Day-Lewis in the title role.
Despite the film’s name, Lincoln is not a straightforward biopic. We see nothing of his youth, his years as an attorney, his fiery debates with Stephen Douglas, or his efforts to hold the country together as the Civil War tore it to pieces. Instead, the film focuses chiefly on the passage of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which fully abolished slavery in the United States. This is a curious detail. The film could easily have been called The Thirteenth Amendment but instead it is called Lincoln. This creative decision on Spielberg’s part falls neatly in line in reinforcing Lincoln’s stature as “The Great Emancipator,” the revered and irreproachable vanquisher of slavery.
Yet, despite Lincoln’s moral opposition to slavery, his efforts to eliminate the institution were not always as adamant as they are depicted on screen. As noted by historian Eric Foner in Give Me Liberty: An American History, Lincoln’s initial concern at the onset of the Civil War was ensuring that the border slave states—Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri—remained part of the Union. This entailed delaying any overt action against slavery that would push these states into the confederacy and also stir the sympathies of conservative Northerners toward the Southern cause. Even the Emancipation Proclamation exempted these border slave states from liberating those held in bondage as a calculated political concession for insuring their continued loyalty. It was thus near the war’s end that the push for full emancipation, guaranteed by the 13th Amendment, became politically feasible.
These facts, ignored by Spielberg, are not damning, however. Rather they reveal the complexity of the time and of the man who, like many of today’s politicians, had to compromise to achieve his aims. The slow road towards progress is often paved with concessions. And in this film’s dramatization of the passage of the 13th Amendment, it is evident that its passage required much maneuvering and backroom deals. In a coordinate effort orchestrated by Secretary of State William Seward (David Strathairn), a team of political lobbyists is unleashed to court dozens of lame duck Democrats whose votes were necessary to ensure passage of the amendment. Much of the film is devoted to their often times humorous efforts to secure these votes with promises of federal jobs once the Democrats complete their terms. This honest depiction of the political process is one of Lincoln’s greatest strengths.
In addition to this, there is much to be said of Daniel Day-Lewis’ Oscar-winning performance. Abraham Lincoln is an iconic figure that has been portrayed and parodied countless times, often as a solemn and commanding figure. Day-Lewis’ portrayal humanizes this figure in almost every detail. A detail that is immediately striking is his voice. His Lincoln is not the deep voiced and authoritative animatronic found in Disney’s Hall of Presidents, but a soft-spoken and gentle orator known for short speeches, brief quotes, and often rambling anecdotes. While a respectable figure, he is not above sharing a laugh or two with the boys at the telegraph office with his story of Ethan Allen’s colorful comment to an English Lord regarding the placement of George Washington’s portrait in his host’s “water closet.” In some of the film’s most poignant scenes, we are made privy to the tensions within the Lincoln family including his complex relationship with First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln (Sally Field) and his eldest son Robert Todd Lincoln (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), with a central conflict being Robert’s steadfast decision to join the Union Army. These domestic scenes reveal an often little represented side to Lincoln showing that even icons are not free of family discord.
To conclude, Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln eschews some of the title character’s complex and evolving views on slavery to reinforce the narrative of “the Great Emancipator.” Yet, the film does not turn a blind eye to the ethical complexities of the political process, a process that has changed little since that time. Furthermore, aided by an inspired performance by Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln humanizes its subject through an authentic portrayal that does not shy away from the man’s more lighthearted moments or his difficult relationships at home. Lincoln is a film that will hopefully inspire a more complex understanding among audiences of the man and of the time he lived in.
Source:
Lincoln. Film. Directed by Steven Spielberg. Burbank, CA: Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Inc., 2013. DVD.
Foner, Eric. Give Me Liberty: An American History Volume 1. New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006.
Starting in 2009, Jameson’s Irish Whiskey launched a series of ads starring their founder, John Jameson, in the role of a brave, if reckless, action hero. The ads are presented in the mode of an Irish tall tale and are set in varying years between the 1780s and early 1800s. Each commercial follows a similar plot structure. They open with the occurrence of some catastrophe. It could the Great Storm of 1781, the Great Fire of 1789, or attacks by the mythical Hawk of Achill. When the catastrophe threatens John Jameson’s whiskey barrels, Jameson springs into action! Through a combination of cunning and dumb luck, he confronts the threat, saves his whiskey, and, in a most fortunate turn of events, saves all of Ireland in the process.
These ads stand out for their wit, cinematic production values, and incorporation of history and folklore. But just how do these ads use history? For starters, let’s look at the hero of these adventures. John Jameson was an actual person. Though famous for his Irish whiskey, Jameson was actually born in Scotland in 1740, and began distilling whiskey in 1780. While it is doubtful that he battled giant octopus’s or single-handedly saved Ireland from the Prussian Incursion of 1807, these commercials do cleverly draw inspiration from many of the staples of late 18th/early 19th century life. One example is in the ad featured above where he rescues his whiskey from a runaway train, in which we see both the emergence of a new technology (the train or “iron horse”) along with the dangers posed by this new technology. That the “new” so-called “iron horse” would run wild so quickly after its introduction no doubt drew on the perils posed by the growing industrialization that was transforming Western society. The twist ending (SPOILER ALERT) wherein the iron horse runs over a cliff and into a Prussian vessel pokes fun at the militarism of Prussia, which had one of the largest armies in Europe at the time (200,000 men) and was famous for its victories in the War of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years War.
In the ad titled “The Hawk of Achill”, we see the incorporation of Irish folklore. The Hawk of Achill was an actual figure of Celtic mythology that had at least one poem devoted to it, The Colloquy of Fintan and the Hawk of Achill. According to the myth, the Hawk is said to be one of the oldest and wisest animals in the world. In the commercial, the Hawk is portrayed as a greedy thief terrorizing a small village on the island of Achill only to meet its match when it steals one of John Jameson’s whiskey barrels.
So how do these ads shape our understanding of history? Obviously, they play upon the common stereotype that Irish people love to drink. So much in fact that one of them is willing to recklessly risk his life time and time again to save just one whiskey barrel. Though a negative stereotype, the ads embrace it and poke obvious fun at it with the absurdities of Jameson’s adventures. It also draws on the modern perception of the past as a time of myths and heroic deeds. The ads are heavily stylized with Jameson’s rugged, bearded appearance and his rescuing of ever attractive damsels-in-distress. Add to that the use of string quartets and classical compositions to evoke a sense of time and place as well as an atmosphere of class and sophistication from a modern day standpoint. Jameson’s Irish Whiskey’s ad campaign stands as an elegant example of modern myth making.
Other ads in the series:
Source:
Jameson Irish Whiskey. “The Iron Horse.” Television Advertisement. TBWA\Chiat\Day. 2013.
Jameson Irish Whiskey. “The Hawk of Achill.” Television Advertisement. TBWA\Chiat\Day. 2011.
Jameson Irish Whiskey. “Fire.” Television Advertisement. TBWA\Chiat\Day. 2011.
Jameson Irish Whiskey. “Storm.” Television Advertisement. TBWA\Chiat\Day. 2009.
I am a first-year graduate student at the History M.A. Program at the University of Central Florida. I also work as a Museum Educator at the Orange County Regional History Center located at the heart of Downtown Orlando. It’s a sweet little job where I help to get kids excited about history. Definitely worth the forty-to-fifty minute morning commute.
It’s hard to say when exactly my passion for history got started. I know that in middle-school, history lessons were my favorite part of social studies class, mainly because they were stories based on real events. Growing up, I had a particular penchant for movies containing some kind of historical theme. I remember how thrilled I was at the realization that the events I was seeing actually happened only to be followed by the crushing disappointment when, upon researching the topic, I realized it didn’t happen like that at all! Ah, but isn’t that just how it so often goes in history’s rocky relationship with popular culture? Details get embellished, events become mythic, and complex individuals become larger than life legends.
Which leads to this blog! In the next few weeks, I’m going to be examining this process. Just how does pop culture remember the past? How does pop culture shape how WE remember the past? To answer these and other questions we’re going to be looking closely at some of the usual culprits: movies, TV documentaries, and commercials. But I’m also going to examine more unsuspecting figures such as public monuments and the newest trend to hit the multimedia scene: virtual historical exhibits. I bid thee welcome on this journey through Pop History!
Pop History 