In the last month we have been asked more about the film Napoleon than for any other issue. Most historians share a mixture of envy, because of the expectations that great productions like this are capable of generating, and frustration, because people are only interested in knowing if the film has “rigor.” Generally, we react badly and show our rejection when faced with this question. And in doing so we are moving away from the demand for greater historical knowledge, the most general and informative. This is not a minor issue, it shows why we are not able to reach a broader audience, interested in History, but far from the academic format.
There is no point in tearing oneself apart because a film, a novel or a play makes historical errors. It is not History, it is fiction. We historians are not obliged to take hemlock because on the big screen Bonaparte leads a cavalry charge, the hero of Troy Whether platinum blonde or a Nazi concentration camp prisoner sporting abs.
Fiction says much more about our present than about the past it reinterprets; We forget that it moves within the canons of the leisure and entertainment industry, that it is a global product, aimed at all audiences. The angry criticism (nonsense, anachronistic, colonial…) that this and other recent historical films have received are also retrospective and speak more about today than yesterday. They show the struggle for control of the conventional, more traditional story, for which history is reduced to a succession of dates and events. By drawing a continuous line from Atapuerca to the present, they try to maintain the key to explaining the origin of our world and our position in it. Although the exact reproduction of the past does not exist, the label of historical legitimation involved in the search for truth, which seemed displaced by that of scientific knowledge, resurfaces strongly today as in other times of crisis and uncertainty.
There are many uses of the past tense in our daily lives. Itineraries, adaptations or historical recreations linked to heritage and the tourism industry are a great example. Our digital age incorporates the past as a multiple screen. From the sets of video games and mobile applications, to educational platforms that should attract more of our attention because they offer unverified historical content, which threatens to displace textbooks. Teaching requires not only a careful selection of content but also of sources. Elements of visual culture have been incorporated into the teaching of History for some time. Classes are no longer understood without images, without painting, photography or cartography.
explain the world
Probably, the coronation of Isabel II was not exactly as Casado del Alisal painted it, but, in the midst of the crisis at the end of her reign, it was essential that it be represented that way. Our duty is to explain how Victorian England drew the world, not to be irritated like today's French or Spaniards because there is a lot of Sedan and not a lot of Bailén. In reality, works of fiction do not make mistakes, they reintroduce timeless figures, such as Caesar or Cleopatra, others closer to home such as Kennedy or Thatcher, and they transfer, without paying attention to jumps or anachronisms, the dynastic values between one era and another, of the Tudors. to The Crown.
If historians can contribute anything in this facet, it is to understand if the work captures the meaning, the experience of a time and a society that no longer exist. In cinema, in novels, there are sequences that could not happen with the moral or legal codes of the time, in any possible way, but that are common and habitual in ours. This is the most difficult operation because the general public prefers this adaptation to maintaining the original meaning. It is also a difficult degree to achieve in a properly historical work, with archival sources, since these only reproduce a part of the past. Ridley Scott himself in The last duel (2021) offered an excellent example of kaleidoscopic looking. Set in 14th century France, the film reproduces a judicial process that served as the basis for the adaptation of the work. The plot begins again, over and over again, depending on the perspective of each narrator involved. Technique that allows the common people or women to be made visible, as the recently deceased historian Natalie Zenon Davies did, in The return of Martin Guerre. The historical research methodology, very long and heavy because it requires contrasting all the evidence, depends on this same fundamental operation.
It is as important to verify, to demonstrate what is and what is not in the files, as it is to investigate, follow all the clues until we detect the false ones. Umberto Eco defined it as the search for the Holy Grail in How to write a thesis: study techniques and procedures, research and writing. Because in History, after accumulating all the evidence, finally, let's not forget it, you have to write. Naming, designating, using the original terms and words implies transforming a language that no longer exists into our own. Fiction, on the other hand, begins by naming the world with words and objects that are recognizable to everyone. Start from the end. That is why there are novels and films that deal with time better than many history books, because their characters offer a choral portrait of an entire era. Perfume, by Patrick Süskind, is one of them. The film may not reflect rural France at the end of the Ancien Regime like the book, but there are few recreations of that collective and hierarchical life like the film. Not to go into the soundtracks, forever associated with their own time and theme. Lawrence of Arabia, The mission, Platoon or so many others are already part of our own recent history and memory.
Showing our discomfort that works of fiction are not rigorous is useless; The requirement must be maintained in those that are properly historical or in those that are announced as such. Documentaries or miniseries for entertainment do not have to handle historiographical debates. Nor are theme parks obliged to do so, many of which serve as a political stage for revisionism. It is enough to apply the same question about the “historical rigor” of the Napoleon from Scott to these places that are not properly educational either. Historians must participate in all formats and conversations that talk about the past; Being attentive to the changes that occur in our time is also part of our work. Only by contributing, adding value and criticizing, why not, these and other productions, can we ensure that society incorporates and recognizes the results of our own scientific research. In the meantime, as Ridley Scott himself advised us, we should find a life of our own.
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