Reel History 5: 1776: A Musical!

I've been reading a lot about the Founding Fathers and the American Revolution, and am currently in the middle of David McCullough's 1776 (of absolutely no relation to the musical). What I find so interesting s is that these books reveal so much about the humanity of the men who crafted the United States. It sounds silly, seeing as they are essentially human beings (except for John Dickinson, who was actually an Illuminati lizardman), but the way people talk about them, it's like they were divine beings sent from above to make a holy republic for the people. Look at how George Washington was portrayed in The Patriot, or how people talk about the Founding Fathers (heck, look at how I capitalize Founding Fathers)- refrains of "it's not what they intended" or "they're spinning in their grave" or some such nonsense whenever there are debates about what the Constitution says.

Reading biographies of the Founding Fathers paints a far more interesting picture than what's summarized in textbooks because it reveals the Founding Fathers had lives, not just brains in the service of creating the world's greatest democracy. Some of it was sad- John Adams' daughter Nabby underwent a mastectomy before the age of pain killers. Some of it was silly- Thomas Jefferson broke his wrist trying to impress his French mistress. Some of it was really cool and kind of perverted- Ben Franklin was an unofficial member of the Hellfire Club, though he could have attended as a spy. But the more you read about it all, the more context is formed around their intellect. And this is what I like about 1776: it's a summary of not just the debate surrounding the Declaration of Independence, but of the lives of those who debated it.

And yes, I generally liked 1776 for the songs too, even though it's a supremely silly and slightly inaccurate depiction of the ratification of the Declaration of Independence; the characters, those people now immortalized on money and with statues and large memorials and all that, are fallible, crass, loud, annoying- they are, in a word, people.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Iiiy8GnBNI

1776 is a 1972 movie version of a 1969 Tony Award winning Broadway show, focusing on the battle within the Continental Congress in Philadelphia to formally declare independence from Britain, an act of treason. John Adams, the main character and chief supporter of this treason, is played by William Daniels, aka Mr. Feeny, and along the way- the three hour long way- he and the rest sing some songs, get into fights, the delegate from Rhode Island drinks himself stupid, and finally they come together and unanimously sign the Declaration of Independence. It's essentially a microcosmic tale of all the circumstances surrounding the debate; because there are no known records of what transpired in the debate, it had to make due with guesses based on the participants' known stances.

Of course, in the service of story, someone has to take the fall. The 'villain' is John Dickinson, a representative of Pennsylvania who lobbies vehemently against John Adams and his crusade to declare independence from Britain. In real life, just like at the movie, Dickinson did not sign the Declaration, but 1776 makes him seem like he wants to stay under the King's thumb. Dickinson actually just abstained altogether because he thought the Declaration would make peaceful resolution and reconciliation impossible; when he 'lost', he still fought for the Continental Army. Thomas Jefferson said he was "among the first of the advocates for the rights of his country when assailed by Great Britain", hardly the bad guy the movie makes him out to be.

The version on Netflix Canada is nearly three hours long, longer than the theatrical version because the movie is intact. When it was about to be released, it was screened for Richard Nixon by his friend, producer Jack L. Warner. Nixon apparently took issue with a song sung by the villains in which they extol themselves as 'cool, cool, conservative men' and go on about going 'always to the right'; Nixon saw it as an insult that these villainous characters within a completely different political context sang about being conservatives. Warner chopped it out and wanted it shredded, but the editors preserved it and it was put back in decades later. It's a pretty catchy song, though it sounds like it's trying too hard to be catchy (if that makes any sense).

Ben Franklin sums up the whole ordeal towards the end of the movie: "What will posterity think we were, demigods? We're men, no more, no less, trying to get a nation started against greater odds than a more generous god would have allowed." Unlike much of the film's dialogue, there is no evidence that he said this; it's a quote that benefits from hindsight and the actual knowledge of what posterity truly thinks, as true today as it was in the 1970's.

Also, Franklin had some interesting thoughts about birds (and he really thought this about the turkey):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ds4dv4IS0PM

NEXT TIME: The Devil versus one of the greatest orators in American history, and a man of a different political era than today.

Reel History 4: Man's Man Edition: The Patriot

Look into those steely blue eyes. The eyes of... The Patriot

It's a little odd how the most revered, celebrated time in American history is the one represented by The Patriot, a very stupid movie. There are few contemporary blockbusters about the American Revolution, and compared to other wars, few movies in general - I could only find the 1939 movie Drums Along the Mohawk and the 1972 musical 1776 (more on that later), and if we're feeling generous, the miniseries John Adams. The last motion picture to be made (one I couldn't get my hands on) was 2003's Benedict Arnold: A Question of Honor with Kelsey Grammar in the juicy role of George Washington. No movie is as ubiquitous when it comes to the American Revolution as The Patriot, and that's kind of a shame  A smart, contemporary epic could be made about the American Revolution, just not the one Roland Emmerich decided to make.

The Patriot is, above all else, a ridiculous movie, and for those who couldn't glean the whole plot from the poster, here's a little summary: it's 1776, the violence of the American Revolution going on for little over a year now, but it hasn't reached Benjamin Martin (Mel Gibson) at his South Carolina plantation (tended to by a workforce of completely free black people. Our noble hero, a man of his times in South Carolina, would never own slaves). But it does eventually, of course, and when the peacenik Martin has his farm burned and son killed by British soldiers (led by the ruthless Colonel William Tavington) he goes into a beserker rage, killing his enemies with brutal efficiency and a certain je ne sais quoi that can only be found in a Roland Emmerich movie. He and his son (played by Heath Ledger) gather a ragtag militia together, and they go on to help win the war for independence. Hurray!

Well, history isn't that simple, and neither's The Patriot to be honest, but it's really a movie that, when the action starts, has no interest in what actually happened during the war. But because the events and characters are broadly based on real life, it does get a lot right while not having to be exact: the debate between pro and anti-war Americans; the French Major Jean Villeneuave, who teaches Martin's militia how to fight, is clearly based on Marquis de Lafayette, arguably one of the most important figures in the American Revolution and whose help and guidance was indispensable when things were at their bleakest; and the swamp hideout of Martin and his men is directly based on how Frances 'the Swamp Fox' Marion fought his battles. Marion is one of the four men Mel Gibson's character is based on, all of whom were militia leaders steeped in guerrilla warfare.

But when it's wrong, it gets crazy, and boy howdy does it get crazy. The insanity begins with Gibson's wild man invincible warrior shtick and ends with the character of Colonel William Tavington, who is based on General Banastre Tarleton, a man known as 'the Butcher' or 'Bloody Ban'. Those are some nasty nicknames, sure, and he may have earned them after the Battle of Waxhaws in 1780, which took place in our main character's state of South Carolina: Tarleton (apparently) refused to take prisoners and slaughtered many Continental soldiers who were either surrendering or not resisting. Now, whether he did this on purpose or not is up for debate, but the slaughter really isn't, so it gained traction as American propaganda. But what Tarleton did not do was round up a town full of non-soldiering American citizens and burn them alive in a church, as the villain Tavington does. This was an aspect borrowed by the screenwriters from real life Nazi war crimes, and events like this never took place in the American Revolution. In fact, if they did, there is no freakin' way Americans would ever have forgotten it, and as American Heritage editor Richard Snow says, "It could have kept us out of World War I."

But that's what this movie is all about: ennobling the American cause, actual noble history be damned. Turning the British into the equivalent of Nazis makes cause for American independence a battle of good versus unremitting evil, and allows the director to eschew any conversation on the context of the war. Taxation without representation, the British Port Act, or the Quartering Act? Those are just part of a conversation on the rights of self determination in government and the true meaning of liberty. And that's booooring! The British are BURNING OUR HOMES AND LOVED ONES. They are monsters! Let's have Mel Gibson hatchet one of 'em to smithereens!

And that's the problem Hollywood runs into with the Founding Fathers- they are intellectuals, and therefore, they are dull. These men- John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Ben Franklin- were some of the smartest, most interesting men of the age, but they spent too much time learning and talking, and not enough time hacking British soldiers to bits and pieces. This is why they exist as deities in the American mythology, and why we see so few movies about them- they were great men who loomed over the actions of the Continental Army, writing the great American saga while the men they inspired (like the fictional Benjamin Martin) watered the tree of freedom with their own blood. The Patriot does this with George Washington; in one scene, when Heath Ledger first enlists, he sees the larger-than-life Commander-in-Chief float through the camp on his mighty steed, his majesty and godliness compounded by the morning mist. George Washington the man isn't so exciting for an action flick, but George Washington the idea is perfect- what he stands for is what The Patriot intends to stand for, even though just using his image doesn't save the movie from being stupendously silly.

But for many people, that's simply what the Founding Fathers are all about. They were divinely inspired to fight the evil at their doorstep and craft a perfect nation, or as perfect a nation as man can achieve. This sort of ideology took mortal men and turned them into demigods, and casts their cause and the American cause of today as the righteous one. The Patriot says that there are two basic types of American heroes- those who are divinely inspired to a cause, and those who are charged with carrying out that inspiration. And if one isn't divinely inspired or doesn't heed the warnings (ol' Ben Martin was opposed to the war in the beginning) the evil they failed to see and stop will draw them into the cause. This thinking can be used to cast any undertaking into an us v. them, good v. evil conflict, be they actual worthy fights like the American Revolution or World War II, or otherwise (Vietnam, Iraq, etc.).

It also can inspire stupid, blasphemous paintings like this one. Notice the unwed mother and cellphone guy who do not agree with the Constitution. Also notice Jefferson, who didn't believe in the divinity of Christ.

Here's what The Patriot needed:

Roland Emmerich knows what America wants to be; whether or not he knows what it is remains to be seen.

NEXT TIME: 1776, a musical tribute to the Founding Fathers (and a movie that swings the other way when talking about them). 

Reel History 3.5: Daniel Day-Lewis, American hero (also something about taxes)

 The Patriot (more to come Thursday or Friday), but I also watched The Last of the Mohicans to fill the oh-so-large gap between The Crucible and the American Revolution. I don't want to talk too much about the events of Mohicans, though it is an excellent movie and I daresay much better than The Patriot. But some of the events of Mohicans, or at least the larger context of the movie and the book by James Fenimore Cooper (which I didn't read but I've heard it's no good anyway), serve as a pretext for the events of the American Revolution, so here's a quick rundown:
So I watched

The Seven Years' War (also known as the French and Indian War to them Yanks, or the Anglo-French Rivalry if you're so inclined), the war featured in Mohicans, was all finished in 1763, and most Canadians know it as the last hurrah for the French Empire in North America and the start of a beautiful friendship between Quebec and English-speaking Canada for years to come (or something). But following the defeat of the French, the British found themselves in a tight spot. The war has nearly doubled their national debt, as wars are wont to do, and the decided solution was to tax the heck out of the Thirteen Colonies. This was, of course, met with resistance (no taxation without representation and all that) and the military was called to enforce such laws, and this enforcement culminates with the American Revolution.

The Seven Years' War was where military leaders like George Washington cut their wooden teeth* leading militias in battle. It's also where the hero of The Patriot, Benjamin Martin (Mel Gibson), learned to fight like some sort of crazy invincible warrior man. Maybe him and Nathaniel Hawkeye from The Last of the Mohicans (played by Daniel Day-Lewis, a true American hero**) fought side by side. Probably not, but I think that would make a good movie.


*George Washington did not have wooden teeth, they were made of hippo bone and ivory.

**Daniel Day-Lewis, while playing many Americans over the years and showing up many times in this blog series, is an English actor, one of the greatest of all time. But hey, Mel Gibson is Australian and he got to be called the Patriot.

Reel History 3: The Crucible: Witchcraft and Puritan America

Always screaming. Screaming at nothing.

It's often said that the Pilgrims came to North America to escape religious persecution, but North America wasn't even their first choice- in 1593, the members of the English Separatist Church went to the Netherlands to find an opportunity in a Protestant country. Some say it was the economic situation in the Netherlands, others say it was to flee the lax attitudes of the Dutch and their ideas of 'too much religious freedom'. Either way, they hopped out of there as soon as they could, found financial backers in England, and 102 people made their way in the Mayflower to Massachusetts, where they would reach Cape Cod in 1620 and go on to found the second successful English settlement after Jamestown. And though they would be indispensable to American self-governance, their tolerance of religious freedom was surprisingly low, considering why they left, and the new settlers created a society as inflexible as the one they escaped.

The terms 'blue' and 'red' states in American culture come surprisingly late in the storied 230+ years of political partisanship. They were coined in 2000 by Tim Russert of MSNBC to differentiate liberal and conservative states in the Bush v. Gore election, and have been used as shorthand for two competing versions of the true America ever since. And though, from the news, it seems like politics in the United States has never been worse in terms of mudslinging and bickering and declarations of immorality, there has always really been two competing ideals struggling for control: from the Federalists versus Democrat-Republicans in the 18th century to the 'real' Midwest Americans versus East Coast Liberals today, competition for political (and moral) superiority has been around since the beginning. People can complain all they want, but it's just how it's always been.

Heck, it's even been like that since before the Constitution. Arthur Miller's 1953 play The Crucible, and the 1996 movie based upon that work (screenplay also written by Arthur Miller) draws a comparison between the Salem witch hunts of 1692 and the Communist witch hunts of the 1950's, and tells a story of the two competing societies in the process. After his friend, the director Elia Kazan, had been called to defend himself to the House Un-American Activities Committee, Miller researched the events of the Salem, Massachusetts witch trials and wrote The Crucible. He himself was eventually dragged in front of McCarthy and after he refused to give anyone up as a Communist, Miller was denied a passport to travel to Great Britain and attend the play's London opening. Miller made a pretty important case then- as Jon Meacham says in his (vastly unrelated) book Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power: "History mattered enormously, for it could repeat itself at any time in any generation. And if that history brought tyranny, it was to be fought at all costs." Many generations after Salem, innocent people were being brought forward to defend themselves from accusations that would ruin their lives, and Miller found the parallel.

Miller didn't have to look hard, really. Early America, much like Europe, has a history of persecuting people accused of witchcraft- the first incident, a hanging in Connecticut, occurring in 1647. Various other accusations and trials took place in the following decades, with more hangings taking place in 1662. Because religion was so tied with every aspect of society, the political leaders of Puritan America were often religious leaders too, and with the news of many trials in native Europe, as well as books like Cotton Mather's Memorable Providences Relating to Witchcraft and Possessions and Wonders of the Invisible World, made witchcraft a tangible fear. It's this fear that created the Salem Witch Trials.

With The Crucible, Miller got a lot of the names right- of the accusers, the accused, and the judges- but changed some of the character traits to strengthen the reasons for the girls to lie. The lead accuser, Abigail Williams (played with just pure malice by Winona Ryder), was not 17 as portrayed in the movie; she was actually 11, but her age was changed to make a relationship with John Proctor (played by Daniel Day-Lewis) possible. But it's quite close to the true events, which transpired as follows: Abigail Williams and a cousin were playing witchcraft in the woods, and when the two felt they might have gone too far began freaking out, they exhibited signs that Abigail's uncle, the Reverend Samuel Parris, could only diagnose as witchcraft. The girls took the story from there, accusing anyone in sight for their condition.

Despite the trials bearing the name Salem, making it seem like there was one location where these accusations occurred, there were actually two Salems- Salem Village and Salem Town. The rural village blamed their urban kinsmen for the evil demons among them because there was so much strife between them- property lines, church privileges, etc., etc.- and the Town was seen as one of your usual den of vices, as big cities are wont to be. It's this kind of relationship that begot many of the early accusations- Ann Puntnam Jr., one of the first girls to go along with her friends and feign possession (she later recanted and apologized), is now seen to have been motivated by her parents to accuse family enemies of witchcraft. And of the first three women accused, all were different from the Puritan norm- Sarah Good, a homeless beggar; Sarah Osbourne, a woman rarely seen in church and the re-married wife of an indentured servant; and Tituba, a slave belonging to the the Reverend Parris who was accused of corrupting them in the first place. All in all, 19 were hanged, one man was pressed to death, and at least five more died in prison (oddly enough, Tituba escaped death, despite being the first to 'confess'). Many more were accused and imprisoned, without any evidence other than screaming girls and confessions under torture.

So say what you will about today's climate of accusation and partisanship, but the United States has come a long way in creating a system of due process that prevented more of these incidences from happening again, even if it lapses now and again (as Arthur Miller experienced first hand). But the Salem Witch Trials dug Puritan governorship its own grave, in a way; says US historian George Lincoln Burr, "more than once it has been said, too, that the Salem witchcraft was the rock on which the theocracy shattered." At least today, being accused of immorality won't get you hanged or pressed.

The European witch-trials are often exaggerated to demonize religion, like when Bertrand Russell said that millions were killed in his Why I Am Not a Christian; in reality, the most common estimates are between forty and sixty thousand between 1480 and 1750 (forty and sixty thousand too many, of course). But the Salem witch trials are still a shameful period, a dreadful case of mass hysteria in an isolated theocracy, and that's a fact Americans never really forgot. An example to go along with Miller's: there was one judge of the 1692 trials who never showed any remorse for his part in what transpired, and one of his ancestors altered his name to hide the relation.

The judge's name was John Hathorne, and his much more famous ancestor added a 'w' to become Nathaniel Hawthorne.

NEXT WEEK: Some true American propaganda, Roland Emmerich's The Patriot, directed by a German and starring two Australians.

Also: Ann Putnam, Jr. (called Ruth in the movie to avoid confusion with her mother) delivered this confession post-hangings:

I desire to be humbled before God for that sad and humbling providence that befell my father's family in the year about ninety-two; that I, then being in my childhood, should, by such a providence of God, be made an instrument for the accusing of several people for grievous crimes, whereby their lives was taken away from them, whom, now I have just grounds and good reason to believe they were innocent persons; and that it was a great delusion of Satan that deceived me in that sad time, whereby I justly fear I have been instrumental, with others, though ignorantly and unwittingly, to bring upon myself and this land the guilt of innocent blood; though, what was said or done by me against any person, I can truly and uprightly say, before God and man, I did it not out of any anger, malice, or ill will to any person, for I had no such thing against one of them; but what I did was ignorantly, being deluded by Satan.

And particularly, as I was a chief instrument of accusing Goodwife Nurse and her two sisters, I desire to lie in the dust, and to be humble for it, in that I was a cause, with others, of so sad a calamity to them and their families; for which cause I desire to lie in the dust, and earnestly beg forgiveness of God, and from all those unto whom I have given just cause of sorrow and offense, whose relations were taken away or accused.

I should add my views on the movie: it was good. A good movie. Look for Daniel Day-Lewis in, by my counts, three more movies in this series, as well as more information about the McCarthy Trials of the 1950's- I think I didn't discuss that as much as I should have.