Most people are aware of the letter of the law/spirit of the law conflict, but a similar struggle exists in art. When creating a work of literature, music, or art, the creator must decide which is more important; the technical details of the art or the meaning of the art. Very few artists in history have been able to get both right at the same time, so creators usually end up concentrating on one or the other. The choice is reflective of not only that artist’s values, but his/her culture’s values.
From the Dark Ages up until the 20th century, the choice was obvious. Artists emphasized the spirit of the art, ignoring the letter. The writings of William Shakespeare are a perfect example. The Bard set his plays in various settings according to various histories, but in many cases, he played fast and loose with the facts. Macbeth is based on a true story, but almost nothing about it is factual – Shakespeare made up most of it. The same goes for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which transplants the values and customs of Elizabethan England into ancient Greece. The Arthurian legends are another example, moving Arthur, a warrior who lived in the 5th century, into the medieval period. The unknown medieval monk who transcribed Beowulf onto paper had no qualms about introducing Christian themes and elements into what was a purely pagan epic. Every history written during the Middle Ages, such as the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, has to be taken with a block’s worth of salt. Historical and technical details were unimportant to these writers – what mattered to them was conveying the meaning of the story.
Our modern culture obsesses over getting technical details right. Everything has to be meticulously researched, and every date, name, and costume has to be correct. In the process, however, the spirit of the art is neglected. Lacking any conception as to how people in prior epochs thought or felt, or what values they had, our modern artists and writers transplant their own prejudices and beliefs into their characters and stories. The difference between modern art’s depiction of the past and how the past actually was is the difference between a perfectly sculpted and dressed mannequin and a living, breathing human being. The spark just isn’t there.
Take AMC’s Mad Men as an example. As far as technical accuracy goes, Mad Men is unparalled. Its actors and actresses replicate the fashions and styles of early 1960′s America, and even small details (such as how drinking used to be prevalent in corporate offices) are faithfully reproduced. However, Mad Men‘s depiction of life in that time period has no historical accuracy whatsoever. According to the show’s version of history, the pre-1965 U.S. was a time in which all women were perpetually pregnant kitchen slaves with no rights, and all men were uncivilized, chauvinistic cavemen. Mad Men doesn’t present the world of the early 1960′s – it presents a leftist, feminist fabrication of what that world was like.
Another example of this phenomenon is King Arthur, the 2004 film starring Clive Owen and Keira Knightley. King Arthur‘s claim to uniqueness was that it was a thoroughly researched, historically accurate version of the Arthurian myths. The movie may be accurate on a surface level, but the plot is pure 21st century bollocks. Chief among this is transformation of Guinevere, a beautiful, graceful, feminine woman in the myths, into a bow-wielding, ass-kicking, third-wave feminist badgrrl. Not only that, but Guinevere is depicted as having bigger balls then the men in the movie – during one scene in which the heroes must face down a horde of approaching Saxons, Lancelot remarks that the warriors are “a large number of lonely men,” to which Guinevere replies, “Don’t worry, I won’t let them rape you.” King Arthur‘s depiction of Christianity is similarly bogus, depicting Roman priests as sadistic perverts. The facts of the film may be accurate, but the gestalt is completely wrong.
This pervasive inability to hold to the spirit of the art is a conceit of the modern world, a symptom of a dying culture. I recently saw Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, a film that is fun to look at, but manages to completely fail in its stated mission. Inglourious Basterds was pitched as a “revenge film,” one in which the long-suffering Jews get some payback against the Third Reich, but it suffers from the moral ambiguity that pervades modern art. World War II films from the Golden Age of Hollywood depicted the war in moral absolutes – the Allies were good, the Axis was bad, and never the twain shall meet. In Inglourious Basterds, however, there’s barely a moral difference between the good guys and bad guys. The “Basterds,” the unit of Jewish-American soldiers who run around killing Nazis (or, as Brad Pitt says in his faux-Appalachian accent, Nat-zis), are depicted as savage, inhumane murderers, while the Nazis themselves barely live up to their genocidal pedigree. The most evil thing we see Nazis doing in the film is shooting up an unarmed Jewish family at the beginning of the movie – a bad deed, to be sure, but that’s it. The concept that the Nazis are bad people and deserve to be killed and scalped is never effectively conveyed by the film, which makes the acts of the “Basterds” look like unnecessary barbarism. While modern audiences believe that the Nazis are indeed evil (lending Inglourious Basterds some moral effect), as time progresses, this knowledge will fade from everyday consciousness. For example, 1959 moviegoers regarded Hitchcock’s North by Northwest as a tale about Cold War espionage, despite the fact that the Cold War was only referenced once in the dialogue and Russia, America’s enemy at the time, was never mentioned at all. As a result, North by Northwest is read differently in a post-Cold War world. Tarantino should have gone for the moral tone of something like Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips instead of Saving Private Ryan, another modern WWII film that manages to hold to the letter of the art but neglect the spirit.
Of all of the writers, directors, and artists working today, I can think of just one who can convey the spirit of the art effectively – director Zack Snyder. His 300 had little in the way of historical verity, but as a depiction of the values and attitudes of ancient Sparta, it was a roaring success. Snyder depicted the Spartans the way they’d want to be shown: bare-chested, boorish, defiant, and dying with glory. Who cares about the fact that they didn’t run around half-naked? People who critiqued the movie on its technical inaccuracies were missing the point. The fact that a boneheaded nihilist like Zack Snyder is the only artist alive today who can accurately depict the spirit of past eras and peoples is demonstrative of Western civilization’s advanced state of decay. We may be able to replicate how people in the past dressed and behaved, and even the nitty-gritty details of history, but in the process, we’ve given up something important, something that made our art whole.
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There can be no “historically accurate” retelling of the Arthurian myths because there is no single agreed upon telling of it. There are several different versions, passed along from one bard to another, each changing the telling to make it his own. No one really knows the historical authenticity or “true story” of Arthur or if there ever was a real King Arthur. That is why it is a myth. It is literature, not history.
Mad men does seem like a diabolical approach to re-writing the history of the mid-20th century in a radical feminist way. It’ quite telling that most of the show’s writers are women, as Whiskey has pointed out. Clearly this is the feminist take on the era, which is simply revisionist history.
The rather deliciously ironic thing, though, is how women are gaga for the adulterous, womanizing, drunk Don Draper character. True colors can sometimes show through even an exercise in revisionist history.
Generally agree, but I did like Saving Private Ryan. I thought it was respectful and is overall, except for ET Spielberg’s best movie.
I also enjoyed Saving Private Ryan, but the whole Cpl. Upham story line was pure modern proselytizing.
Oh, and I loved 300 regardless of the liberties taken. It’s such a small, sparsely detailed part of Herodotus’ histories that the story lends itself to greater themes.
How is Shakespeare transplanting Elizabethan values and customs into ancient greece, any different than the feminist transplanting their values into the 60′s or king arthur?
Same could be said of Beowolf with the christian themes planted in the pagan story.
This seems common.
I agree that content is more important than detail and detail is king right now. The problem is really the nature of the content which instead of speaking to human truth, is speaking to human lies.
“How is Shakespeare transplanting Elizabethan values and customs into ancient greece, any different than the feminist transplanting their values into the 60’s or king arthur?”
It’s different because Shakespeare didn’t mutilate the themes of the stories he used in the process. The difference between what he did with “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and what the feminists did with “King Arthur” is the difference between giving a old car a new paint job and tearing out the engine and replacing it with a piece of scrap metal.
Good points! But I’m not so sure that 300 is any less guilty than the other pics you mentioned. It’s quite likely that ancient Sparta has fewer sources of accurate cultural description. By default the film has a broader license and more readily escapes critique. In contrast, there’s a much greater historical record WW2 and 1960′s America to levy hemeneutical judgement. So many are yet alive who lived through both.
Is E.T. Spielberg related to Steven Spielberg?
The work of the artist from the beginning has been to represent the world or elements within the world in the terms the ruling class desires. Even the “successful” artists of today are serving an elite. In the coming socialist utopia under Obama, those who would be favored, who will get the grant patronage, will be those artists who promote the party line.
The work of the artist from the beginning has been to represent the world or elements within the world in the terms the ruling class desires.
Naw, some artists are suckups to the ruling class’ views, but plenty more. Look at how someone like Houellebecq can be the number one writer in France despite the repugnance of his views to the ruling class in France. I suspect that Roissy, for example, will be regarded as one of the greatest writers of the early 21st century and he certainly isn’t parrotting the views of the chattering classes.
Should read “. . . plenty more are not.”
BTW everyone should read the War Nerd’s take on 300. The movie was a gross misrepresentation of ancient Sparta.
When I see historical movies, I imagine what it would be like to go back in time and show them to the people who were involved in the actual historical events. Would I get my ass kicked?
300 was awesome, one of the few successful non-liberal movies. But it don’t know if it passes the “Leonidas wouldn’t spear me” test. The portrayal of the Ephors (priests) was straight up Ayn Rand (even the word choice of “mystic” to describe them). It also made Leonidas too subservient and to his wife, like when he looked to her for permission to throw the diplomat down the well. In real life, Frank MIller (author of the comic book) was getting divorced at the time.
Worst of all was its portrayal of the queen fucking some guy who wasn’t her husband. Yeah, I know she was blackmailed. I still wouldn’t dare show it to Leonidas.
I don’t mean to complain too much. It could have been a lot worse. Leonidas could have wrung his hands worrying about whether the Spartans were just as bad as the Persians, or he could have had an anachronistic magical Negro sidekick like Morgan Freeman in “Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves.” It would have hardly been surprising coming from Hollywood.
Zach Snyder does extremely faithful adaptations. Credit and blame mostly goes to neocon Objectivist Frank Miller.
Historical fiction reflecting contemporary mores is nothing new. Look at MacBeth, for example – he’s the bad guy because he resisted an Anglicized royal family (he himself was the last Scottish king without English descent), not because the historical MacBeth was particularly bad by the standards of medieval kings. But contemporary mores were never quite as dumb as they are now.
coldequation: “When I see historical movies, I imagine what it would be like to go back in time and show them to the people who were involved in the actual historical events. Would I get my ass kicked?”
A good test, except that hardly any movies pass it.
I certainly would not want to show any version of Oliver Stone’s Alexander (2004) to Alexander. It might not be good for my health, and morally, the Macedonian super-killer would have the right of it. He was nothing like the Nancy boy on screen, who spent his life running away from his mother and apparently trampling over armies by accident as he fled.
I would not want to show The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999) to Joan of Arc. That pious, single-minded, optimistic, stubborn and very deadly woman would not have liked the obviously guilty and scatter-brained hysteric on the screen – or the invented background for her, with the grotesque invented rape and the irrelevant “magic” sword.
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