There are many Dukies who cite history as "not worth studying" (or even knowing) as it's not applicable to their"career." That's fine and dandy - just doodle all over your notes and curse Curriculum 2000.
But for all the resistance to studying history, people love watching movies about it. Popular culture is always trying to reproduce "the most authentic" renditions of World War II, The Civil War...even the epics of Rome and Scotland.
History is an ever-present and malleable force - it dictates our lives, beliefs and even our heritage. Malleable because it's biased, biased because the reality is often lost. An accurate historical record is more than just war, politics and the actions of men - the history which we see in the cinema.
That's what Hollywood tries to do for us. The formula is simple: take an "interesting" story, add in some "cool details," fill in the gaps with the narrative of a historical character and wrap it up into a $200 million, Oscar-burping epic.
In a society that doesn't stress history in schools, we end up relying on film as an educational medium. Even in an academic setting, I was presented Braveheart in a high school European history class and Gettysburg in a Duke History class.
I love Randall Wallace, but Braveheart is so historically inaccurate it would be akin to Batman chasing Indians. Besides the fact that it was set 200 years before the first uniformed army, that the bagpipe had yet to be imported from Ireland, that it took place outside of the "highlands," that plaid kilts were not worn at the time, that the Scots never got anywhere near York and that the legend of "jus primae noctis" (the lord getting to sleep with all his vassal's brides) is one of the biggest farces in all of human history - the movie, yeah it's pretty entertaining. You probably didn't know anything about Scottish history anyway.
The Civil War is an entirely different matter. It's central to the heritage of many American families, and the political consequences of slavery and Reconstruction still produce the most bitter of repercussions.
Gods and Generals, which opened last Friday, is the account of Bull Run through Chancellorsville - yes, when the South OWNED the North.
Ronald Maxwell, the director and screenwriter of Generals and Gettysburg, said he set out to make the most authentic representation of the Civil War possible. He focuses on perfecting the "details" and "facts" that we end up taking home and recite in class.
The story centers around the most "well known" of characters - the legendary Stonewall Jackson. Maxwell, and the book's author Jeff Shaara, turn him into a figure of almost mythic proportions: God-fearing, poet-speaking, brilliant, child-loving, emotional, kind, reflective - he's Mother Teresa. Never mind that many historians consider him mentally ill, never mind the fact that his brigade was known as the "Foot Calvary" because he executed all stragglers. His character in the film even preaches against the evils of slavery, treating black slaves as his equals.
This isn't the glorification of the South, it's the glorification of history. We romanticize so much within history - whether it's the swords of the Middle Ages or America's obsession with reenacting the Civil War. The problem doesn't lie within the inaccuracies of these movies - they're entertaining, just as film should be. The problem is that our society is so generally ignorant of history that audiences are gullible enough to take them at face value. They never even think to question.
Cinema is what you want to see.
- Tom Roller
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