Television
TV History
By RAYMOND A. SCHROTH
Our failure to teach history to the
next generation is almost too obvious to mention again.
Walter Cronkite, in a recent interview on National Public Radio,
said he is devoting his second career as a public citizen to improving the
teaching of history. History, as Cronkite sees it, is the ongoing clash between
the strong personalities on the world’s stage who seek to impose their
vision on us all.
Are we with Henry VIII or the pope in Rome, with Karl Marx or Adam
Smith? With Winston Churchill or “that guttersnipe” Adolf (Hitler)
Schickelgruber?
Christian catechists in the 1960s and ’70s saw history as a
linear narrative recounting the story of salvation. The Old and New Testaments
traced God’s plan -- leading from Eden to Bethlehem to Calvary to Rome to
our parish churches and college classrooms.
When Roger Mudd lost out to Dan Rather in the choice for
Cronkite’s successor as the “CBS Evening News” anchorman, he
gave his presence to The History Channel, a member of the Arts and
Entertainment Network, which now fills our screens with its own version of
history 24 hours a day.
What is the channel’s notion of history?
Well, no surprise, it’s entertain-ment. After all, we’ve
all read those stories about “great” teachers who get teaching awards
for dressing up like Julius Caesar or George Washington to make their classes
“real” and “relevant” to sleepy sophomores.
But, after watching it in big gulps in late December and early
January, and on-and-off for several years, The History Channel’s angle
appears special: History is mystery. It’s not what you expect. You have
heard there was an island Atlantis that sunk without a trace; but what really
happened? Ships and planes sinking in the Bermuda Triangle? What’s the
real story?
In an analysis of its prime-time schedule from late December to
mid-February, the words secrets, marvels, mysteries, untold story, true
story, total story (implying the story you have now is neither true nor
total) leap off the page. Watch this show and be let in on a secret -- perhaps
one that ordinary -- non-History-Channel -- history has covered up.
No one just dies. He dies mysteriously: “Mysterious Death of
Joe Kennedy,” “Mysterious Death of Admiral Yamamoto.”
Among its critics The History Channel is sometimes referred to as
The Hitler Channel, because it seemed that whenever you turned it on there was
Adolf, foaming at the mouth as the robotic ranks of his troops goose-stepped
out of the screen into your living room.
But today’s analysis doesn’t back that up. World War II
is up there (“Secret Japanese Aircraft of WWII”), but the big topics
seem to be sex, Saddam Hussein, sacred scripture and UFOs. And ideally one show
combines as many of the main elements as possible: “Love and Sex in the
Bible,” “Sex in the Vietnam War” and “UFOs in the
Bible.”
One way to encourage the study of history is to make it relevant,
to apply its “lessons” to today’s crises. Thus its three-part
biography of Henry VIII, “the offbeat Henry we never knew about,” is
interlaced with footage of modern armies, Winston Churchill, and the mixed-up
Windsors, today’s “dysfunctional royal family.” We see Henry
dance at his wedding, then Prince Charles and Diana dance at theirs. How did
this “nice little boy” become a monster? Answer: no happy family
life.
Also, big blocks of the schedule are built around late-breaking
news -- like the seven days in mid-January dedicated to Desert Storm, with a
special hour on “Why Can’t They Kill Saddam?” -- timed to
coincide with our probable invasion of Iraq. And, for some reason, the offering
all day Dec. 31 was on the history of sex. While, perhaps in repentance for the
night before, New Year’s Day went to God, with hours of “Bible
Secrets,” including the “The Violent God,” an Old Testament
survey that asks some provocative questions like: “Does God really justify
killing?”
A theologian points out that the more powerful Israel becomes, the
more it moves away from God. Maybe, the theologian says, the scripture is
trying to tell us that Israel should not be a military power at all.
The History Channel works theologians fairly hard, and there are
moments when it could almost be called The Theology Channel, especially during
Christmas week, when we unraveled the mysteries of the Shroud of Turin
(“Secrets of the Ancient World”), the birth of Jesus, the conflict
between different schools of archeologists on the historicity of the Old
Testament, and an all-day showing of the Franco Zeffirelli/Anthony Burgess
made-for-TV epic film, “Jesus of Nazareth.”
Despite the hype and sensationalism inherent in popularizing
history, the History Channel is remarkable for its thoroughness and almost
excessive even-handedness in its religious documentaries.
The Zeffirelli film, for example, depicted Mary giving birth to
Jesus in pain; The History Channel interrupts the film for a roundtable
discussion of her cries. Was it disrespectful to imply that the New Eve, free
of Original Sin, suffered the pangs of childbirth, when Genesis clearly says
that these pangs are the consequence of Eve’s sin?
The New Oxford Bible suggests that “toils” is an
alternate translation to “pangs.” The History Channel commentators
say that exaggerated stories about Mary’s not suffering in childbirth
became so common that by the second century the church suppressed them. Then
the film beautifully reintroduces the crying motif at Jesus’circumcision.
Old Simeon, magnificently portrayed by Ralph Richardson, hears the baby Jesus
cry in pain and comes forth to tell Mary, “Your own soul a sword shall
pierce ...” And we the viewers understand how the destiny of suffering was
woven into the family’s life from their first moments.
When popular media history works well it does not satisfy us with
what we used to call in the army the “school solution” to a question
but prods us into the library to look up things for ourselves. The History
Channel does this well, but sometimes its insistence on balance and perhaps its
fear of offending a segment of its audience is maddening.
“In Search of Christmas,” promises “controversial
new theories that shed light on Mary and Joseph” and describes Mary as a
“revolutionary woman with political savvy,” which is how a standard
feminist or liberation theologian might describe her today. The virgin birth,
however, might be described as a mystery of faith, or as John P. Meier suggests
in A Marginal Jew, his multi-volume study of Jesus, a theologoume-non
(a theological affirmation in narrative form). The History Channel,
however, rath-er than rest with a theological idea, calls upon science. Perhaps
it was parthenogenesis, a process by which some insects singly reproduce.
For another example, I would consider the 1988 carbon dating of
the Shroud of Turin -- which contains the image of a crucified man whose face
resembles paintings of Jesus -- conclusive evidence that the garment and image
come from the 13th century and thus the image is not the actual face of Jesus.
But the program goes on to give credence to a string of defensive
theories. Did a modern fire, which damaged part of the garment, radically
change the substance so carbon dating wouldn’t be valid? Was the image
caused miraculously by a zap of radiation shooting out of the resurrecting
body? While religion and science are now closer than ever, are we asking too
much of science to solve this question? The History Channel concludes:
“It’s all up to our own hearts.”
That’s not a historian’s answer.
Meanwhile, the London Tablet reports that the custodians of
the shroud have sent the object to the professional cleaners, thus rendering it
virtually impossible to conduct further scientific studies of the original
material.
Finally, the Christmas Day documentary on contemporary
archeologists, known as minimalists, who deny the historicity of nearly all the
Old Testament prior to the Assyrian conquest of Northern Israel in the 7th
century B.C., is a challenging opportunity for both Jews and Christians to
rethink a number of the ideas on which their faith may be based (for more
details, see Daniel Lazare, “False Testament,” Harper’s,
March 2002).
During the post-World War I “golden age” of biblical
archeology, under the leadership of William Foxwell Albright, the diggings
tended to support the historicity of Old Testament stories, like Joshua’s
conquest of Jericho. But, as an example, a 1952 carbon dating placed
Jericho’s destruction 200 years before Joshua’s lifetime. And, alas,
historical evidence of Moses’ life and exodus from Egypt does not seem to
exist. Nor of the Jews’ conquest of Palestine. Rather, the Israelites were
Canaanites who evolved from the local population.
Nor was David, if there was a David, a great king; he may have
been a mere tribal chief. Yet The History Channel reports every evidence -- an
inscription here, a stone there, ancient water tunnels under Jerusalem, which
David might have used in capturing the city -- that might validate
Israel’s historic claim to the Holy Land, which modern science now seems
to wipe away.
Fair enough. In the long run a strong faith -- in either our
nation or our God -- must not rest on myth but on historical truth and the
daily human experience of our nation’s justice and of God’s presence
in our lives and the lives of others.
If TV history and journalism can do their business honestly and
keep us honest at the same time, they are a true Christmas gift.
Jesuit Fr. Raymond A. Schroth is the Jesuit community professor
of humanities at St. Peter’s College, Jersey City, N.J., and author of
Fordham: A History and Memoir (Loyola Press).
National Catholic Reporter, January 24,
2003
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