—Has Hollywood Stolen Our History?
—The Small Screen and the Big Past

History and the Media Conference,
Institute of Historical Research,
London, 16-18 December 2002

James Gledhill

The conference grappled with a question that lies at the heart of history's relation to the media - how to reconcile the need for engaging narrative or argumentative drive with a respect for historical complexity and the demands of the historical method.

From Birth of a Nation to Braveheart, filmmakers have always taken liberties with history, playing fast and loose with historical fact in pursuit of their own agendas. With the provocative title Has Hollywood Stolen our History? the first session of day three of the conference promised much, but threatened not to deliver. It began in promising fashion with an address by notable filmmaker David Putnam, who now as Lord Putnam is an important political player currently involved in drafting the government's Communications Bill. The delivery was low key, but the message was powerful, even inspirational - film is a transformative medium, as figures from Lenin to Churchill have recognised, a conduit for the transmission of ideas and with the power to inspire dreams. Putnam's childhood visit to see his first film Pinocchio obviously cast an enduring spell.

Most fundamentally, films, through their shaping of attitudes and behaviour, exert an important influence on the values of a society. The ideal to which cinema should aspire is to offer us dreams, while holding fast to the values of knowledge and understanding. Indeed the job of the filmmaker carries with it the moral responsibility to engage with the ambiguity and complexity of the world, to encourage empathy among those who inhabit it and compromise between those with conflicting viewpoints. Now more than ever in an age when the feeling of powerlessness is widespread, when belief in individuals' ability to shape their own destiny is being eroded, and when actions are divorced from their consequences, film can defend the value of the individual and promote the notion of personal responsibility.

Hollywood was condemned for simplifying history out of existence, reducing reality to a neatly dichotomised clash between good and evil. Its stifling approach to human relationships neglects a whole world of authentic and rich human experience, while its weakness for stereotypes risks leaving it disconnected from life as most people experience it. As a result the full possibilities of a medium that has the potential to be the most powerful ever employed remain unfulfilled. Ever more ambitious special effects cannot conceal the emptiness that lies at the centre of Hollywood's soul.

A partial view perhaps, as cinema will always have a role providing sheer escapism. Film goers around the world lapped up the unapologetic melodrama of Titanic, while an Asian attempt to reproduce The Matrix scene-by-scene testifies to the universal appeal of simple visceral thrills. But Putnam is surely right to argue that Hollywood in particular suffers from a real poverty of ambition. This speech was stirring stuff, a clarion call for intelligence and integrity in filmmaking.

All the more disappointing, therefore, to see the following speaker, the academic and broadcaster Ian Christie, blanching at the ambition of the question at hand. He proceeded to ignore his own advice on the need for a careful analysis of the terms in which it was posed, in favour of simply ignoring it all altogether. Instead he used this as an opportunity for an albeit diverting meander through the story of British cinema's engagement with history, a story in which the hegemonic presence of Hollywood tended to leave Britain in a minor supporting role. An opportunity for some diverting film clips perhaps, but surely it was Hollywood, and more broadly the issue of the responsibilities and dilemmas facing a director in dealing with historical subject-matter, that was crying out for attention.

The ensuing discussion dwelt profitably on the subject of censorship, but was similarly inclined towards digression. One particularly exasperating and tangential contribution berated modern filmmakers for their use of excessively loud music. At another time a discussion of the role of music in the aesthetic experience could have been interesting, but it was disappointing to find Putnam taking this as a cue for an excursus on how preferences concerning the ideal volume for music vary amongst different age-groups.

A generally engaging session ended on a more interesting note. Ian Christie nearly redeemed himself when he raised the question of the partiality of historical narrative. He alluded to Hayden White, the postmodernist American historian, who contends that all historical interpretations are equally valid since history, in all its various guises, comprises works of imagination rather than objective reconstructions of past reality. However this thought remained tantalisingly unelaborated. Following this the question was raised of how one can recruit radical history for polemical purposes, while at the same time accepting the duty imposed by the historical method to show proper respect for evidence and recognise the existence of divergent perspectives.

Similar themes emerged in the next session, a lecture given by Laurence Rees, the writer and producer of The Nazis: A warning from history and currently the Creative Director for BBC history programmes. Rees offered a thoughtful and lively guide to the strengths of television as a medium for presenting history, as well as drawing attention to some of the pitfalls to which it is prone. These points were illustrated with a selection of television clips, a number of them of programmes for which Rees had been responsible.

The most powerful clip consisted of an interview with a Lithuanian member of the Einsatz Group openly discussing his role in the extermination of Jewish women and children. Asked if he could justify these actions, his response included the chilling phrase 'it's a kind of curiosity'. As Rees argued, this was a stark illustration of the power of oral history and the significant contribution that television archives will make for generations of future historians.

Rees too made reference to a formative childhood experience, in his case an interview he saw with Martin Luther King. A clip from this interview was presented as further evidence of the insight into human psychology that television can offer, which in many instances leaves the written word as a poor substitute. Simon Schama in full flow complete with strong non-literal visual accompaniments showed to good effect the medium's ability to convey a powerful narrative. But the corollary of this was identified as the difficulty television has in communicating arguments over historical interpretation, something which lies at the heart of the discipline. A clip from an abortive attempt to inject just this element of argument illustrated how elusive this goal can be. When a discussion degenerates into bickering amongst academics the level of knowledge required to follow the discussion threatens to exclude the audience.

Rees referred to a remark made by Goebbels - that the best propaganda contains no propaganda at all - to bring home the big danger inherent in television, that one is seduced by the power of the medium to transfix through entertainment and jettison historical rigour in exploiting this potential. The strictures that a respect for history impose limit the degree to which simplification is acceptable and means that there is a point at which one must draw the line. If one of Rees's latest forays into unashamedly populist history, Pyramid, laid itself open to this charge, he did at least offer the defence that the programme itself was only one part of a larger enterprise designed to inspire an interest in Egyptology. And if at times Rees seemed overly sceptical about the ability of the audience to respond to conflicting opinions, it was reassuring to hear him echoing Putnam in arguing that the best television history embraces historical complexity. In the end one can feel reassured that BBC history is in pretty good hands when its Creative Director quotes approvingly Esther Rantzen, with whom he used to work, that one should assume of the audience minimum information but maximum intelligence.

This thought-provoking morning emphasised the need for a balance to be struck in the presentation of history on film or TV. Engagement with history surely imposes a duty of veracity, but if this shades over into an obsession with historical minutiae it threatens to leave a work hidebound and mired in bewildering complexity. A criticism of the film Michael Collins that it failed to show that some of the main protagonists had worn suits with labels saying 'not made with Jewish labour', reported in the first session, showed the fatuousness of the latter approach, whilst some of the more egregious offering of Hollywood amply illustrate the former.

The inevitably of selection which leaves every perspective partial does not imply a relativism in which history is demoted to the role of providing other forms of entertaining narrative. The very thing which allows history to serve as the basis for compelling claims is undercut by this approach. In our headlong rush to exploit historical material we should not forget that this is an arena in which the truth matters.

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