Once More, With New Feelings | Historical Distortion

○ In a recent column, the president of the American Historical Association

warns historians against the lure of presentism—that is, focusing too much
on the 20th and 21st centuries—and against sifting selectively though the
past to find support for their current social agendas. For that, there are
sociologists (and the current Supreme Court). Some critics responded that
he was discounting the voices of marginalized peoples, others that historians
have always had agendas and points of view. Discuss with your team:
should historians spend less time on periods in which injustice was
widespread, and more on those in which people were striving to overcome
it? Is it possible to look at the past without interpreting it through a modern
lens? If we could, would we want to?
○ The invention of the camera in the 1800s changed how we've pictured
history ever since; now we know what things looked like. Where we once
had myth, now we have newspaper clippings. This abundance of images
presents a challenge for those producing stories set in photographed times:
to build realistic sets, and to cast actors who look enough like their historical
counterparts to be believable in those roles. Consider the actors who have
played individuals such as Princess Diana, Nelson Mandela, and Abraham
Lincoln, then discuss with your team: how important is it that those who play
historical figures resemble them physically? Would it have been all right for a
short obese man to play Lincoln in a movie, as long he grew a beard and
wore a hat? What if it were in a play instead, or a musical? And, once
technology permits, will it be better to reconstruct historical figures with CGI
than to try to find human lookalikes?
○ The musical Hamilton defied the expectation of what actors in historical
dramas should look like (and sound like!) by explicitly casting Black actors as
famous American political leaders and then telling their story in
hip-hop-inspired song and dance numbers. Some have celebrated the way it
gives a traditionally marginalized group control of the narrative; history is
being reinvented as their story, too, and shared with millions of people in a
way that casts them as founding heroes. Others have argued that, while it
may seem to empower them, it actually forces Black actors to play-act as
their own oppressors, exalting the very history that undermined them, and
that it may even make modern Americans feel better about people often
assumed to be heroes who actually owned slaves—such as George
 Washington. Others worry that the musical distorts American history into a
simple tale of heroes and villains; put another way, we shouldn't hate so
much on Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, and maybe we're overthinking
what happened in the room. Explore these and other debates about the
musical, then discuss with your team: does "color-conscious casting" open
doors to new stories and help move society in a progressive direction, or
does it lead to harmful disinformation and the perpetuation of existing
barriers? Can we learn helpful truths from an invented past?
○ In a sort of inverse of the situation around Hamilton, the director of a play
(The Mountaintop) about the Black civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.
triggered a controversy in 2015 when he cast a white actor in the title role.
His hope, he said, had been to explore issues of identity and authenticity,
especially in light of King's own words about not judging people by their skin
color. The original author of the play objected, calling it a disrespectful
distortion of history and of her intentions. Discuss with your team: should
there be limits to how much one should be allowed to reimagine the past, or
an author's intent, in a historical production? Is there a difference between
casting a person from a privileged group as a historically oppressed person
and casting a person from a historically oppressed group as a privileged
person? And should stories set in the past come with warning labels about
inaccurate content and/or non-traditional casting—or would no one ever be
able to agree on what to write on the labels?
○ Because early cameras only took black-and-white photos, and serious
photojournalists eschewed color until as late as the 1980s, it is easy to think
of the early decades of camera usage as a bleak and colorless time. Even
the Dark Ages had color—no one speaks of Robin Hood and the
Monochromatic Men—but most of us remember the Great Depression as a
gray Depression. It means those recreating scenes from the late 19th and
early 20th centuries must navigate expectations of a black-and-white world.
While there were some real color photographs taken back then, mainly using
potato dye, AI and other tools now allow easy colorizing of old black-white
photos. The results may not be perfect, but they could help people see the
past as people saw it then. Discuss with your team: should colorized photos
be shared with students instead of or beside the originals? Or would doing
so be to present something reimagined as something real?
○ You can't just look the part; you have to sound it, too. No one knows for sure
whether Abraham Lincoln could have had a post-presidential podcasting
 career—accounts suggest his voice was uncommonly shrill and
high-pitched—but the invention of the phonograph soon after his death
means we can now fall asleep to recordings of nearly everyone who came
after him. An actress playing Margaret Thatcher is expected to study her
voice diligently, to match not just her pitch but her every pause. Impressive
voice acting can even spawn viral YouTube videos, as the young actor
Austin Butler did here after playing the role of the country music star
Elvis—and supposedly continuing to sound like him afterward. Research the
steps that actors undertake to mimic voices, then discuss with your team:
should people playing historical figures try as much as possible to sound like
they did, or does doing so risk caricaturing their voices and accents—and
distracting from what really mattered about them?
○ Along the same lines, one of the most famous actors to play Gandhi, Ben
Kingsley, earned widespread acclaim for his performance, but some have
criticized the choice to cast someone of only partial Indian descent as such
an iconic Indian hero—in particular, someone British, when the British were
the very people from whom Gandhi's movement sought independence.
Research the debate about his performance, and then discuss with your
team: was it more acceptable for this kind of casting to take place in the
early 1980s than it would be today? Should the actor's use of darkening
makeup for the role make viewers uncomfortable—and, if so, would it be
better if CGI were used to restore his actual skin color in future airings of the
movie?
○ As for historical figures who were never photographed, artists have long tried
to capture their essence in portraits and sculptures—but now, AI is
increasingly allowing artists like Bas Uterwijk to update those old works with
photorealistic results. Even individuals from a time before art, like the Iceman
Otzi, can now look us in the eye. Discuss with your team: is it valuable to see
the faces of people so far back in the past? Or is it wrong to reconstruct their
likenesses without their permission? Would it be better for our understanding
of history if we were never shown the appearances of people in the past?
○ American president Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) was almost never
photographed using a wheelchair, despite being paralyzed from the waist
down by polio. Journalists of the era honored his wishes; so did the original
designers of the FDR Memorial in Washington. Only in 2001 did they add a
statue of him in a wheelchair. Discuss with your team: what do you think he
would say about the statue? Should modern portrayals of FDR honor his
 preferences and continue to hide his disability? Or, to better capture his
experience, should only actors who are experiencing a similar kind of
paralysis play him?
○ The television series For All Mankind combines archival and original footage
to construct an alternate history of the world, one in which the Soviet Union
landed the first person on the moon. Afterwards nothing was quite the
same—but also not totally different. Consider this newsreel from the show,
recapping the late 1970s and early 1980s. Discuss with your team: does it
have the quality known as verisimilitude—that is, does it feel real? If so, what
makes it that way? Watch carefully to identify at least five events that took
place differently than in our own timeline, then discuss with your team: does
it seem better or worse than what actually happened, or just different? Would
there be value in constructing "living alternate history" museums for people
to visit, perhaps to help them better evaluate the actual world? And are there
times when reconstructions of actual history feel less real than they
could—or should?
○ A number of types of sources can be used to decide how to portray a past
person accurately. Work with your team to identify the differences between
those listed below. What are the advantages and disadvantages of each? Do
these kinds of sources reflect an innate bias in favor of certain kinds of
individuals in certain sorts of cultures?
■ Biography | Autobiography | Memoir | Journal | Diary
■ Letters | Newspaper Accounts | Contemporary Footage
■ Government records | Interviews | Transcripts
○ The Woman King tells the tale of an East African kingdom, Dahomey, which
battled a rival kingdom that collaborated with white colonizers on the slave
trade. The movie was a welcome post-pandemic hit, but critics noted that
Dahomey, too, had profited from enslaving people and selling them across
the Atlantic. The plot dropped this complexity in favor of clearer lines
between good versus evil. Research other movies that have sparked similar
controversies—Braveheart, Pocahontas, and 300—then discuss with your
team: is real history too complicated ever to reconstruct it for popular
audiences without taking misleading shortcuts? Should we think of all
historical fiction less as true stories and more as alternate histories?
○ Biography, autobiography, memoir, journal, and diary are all personal
accounts of someone's life or experiences, but they differ in their level of
subjectivity and the degree to which they are edited or polished. Biographies
are usually written by someone else and attempt to provide a comprehensive
account of a person's life, while autobiographies are written by the individual
and provide a first-person account of their own life. Memoirs are a type of
autobiography that focuses on a specific period or aspect of the author's life,
while journals and diaries are personal accounts of daily experiences,
thoughts, and feelings.
○ The advantage of personal accounts is that they provide a unique
perspective on historical events and can offer insights into the motivations,
attitudes, and beliefs of individuals. They can also help to humanize
historical figures and provide a more nuanced understanding of their actions.
However, personal accounts are inherently subjective, and they may contain
biases, inaccuracies, or intentional distortions. Personal accounts may also
reflect the biases of the culture in which they were produced, as certain
individuals or groups may have been excluded from the ability to document
their own experiences or perspectives.
○ Letters, newspaper accounts, and contemporary footage are all types of
media that document events as they happen, and they can provide a
valuable window into the past. Letters can offer personal insights into events
and provide a snapshot of the attitudes and opinions of individuals at a
specific point in time. Newspaper accounts can provide a more objective and
comprehensive record of events, and they can be useful for understanding
how events were reported and interpreted at the time. Contemporary
footage, such as photographs, videos, or audio recordings, can provide a
direct visual or auditory record of events.
○ The advantage of these sources is that they provide a more objective and
verifiable record of events than personal accounts, and they can be used to
corroborate or challenge other sources of information. However, they may
also reflect biases in the media or in the culture in which they were
produced, and they may not capture the full range of experiences or
perspectives of individuals involved in the events.
○ Government records, interviews, and transcripts are all sources of
information that can provide insights into the workings of institutions or
organizations, as well as the experiences and perspectives of individuals
within those organizations. Government records can offer insights into policy
 decisions, administrative practices, and other aspects of government
operations. Interviews and transcripts can provide firsthand accounts of
events or experiences, and they can be particularly useful for understanding
the perspectives of individuals who may have been excluded from other
sources of information.
○ The advantage of these sources is that they can provide detailed and
comprehensive information about specific events or processes. However,
they may also reflect biases within the government or organization in
question, and they may not capture the full range of perspectives or
experiences of individuals involved. In addition, transcripts may be edited or
redacted, which can limit their usefulness as a source of information.