Steven Fielding: The Problem With Biopics
[Steven Fielding is Professor of Political History and Director of the Centre for British Politics in the School of Politics and International Relations, University of Nottingham. He is writing a book for Bloomsbury on fiction and British politics from An Ideal Husband to In the Loop. He is also a member of the History & Policy Network.]
If journalism is the first draft of history the biopic is now a close second, having become the staple output of many television drama departments. Recently figures as diverse as the Queen, Margaret Thatcher and Winnie Mandela have been given the treatment.
Historians undoubtedly ground their teeth as these accounts gave the protagonist undue importance and distorted events for dramatic effect. For their mantra has long been that history is made through the interaction of structure and agency, a process in which the individual, however famous, plays but a part. However recent US research [Andrew Butler et al, 'Using popular films to enhance class room learning', Psychological Science, 20:9 (2009)] shows that even amongst Ivy League students, film versions of the past can exert more influence on perceptions of the past than do academic texts. The power of the moving image compared to the immobile word has long been suspected. As Gore Vidal wrote of the Hollywood historical romances of his youth: 'we are both defined and manipulated by [cinematic] fictions of such potency that they are able to replace our own experience, often becoming our sole experience of reality'. From what we know of media effects, this process of confusing fiction for reality is made more certain if the same kind of fiction is transmitted over a prolonged period....
The biopic genre is not new - George Arliss won an Oscar for Disraeli (1929) - and is an obvious offshoot of the publishers' venerable stand-by, the biography. Yet at the present moment... it poses potential dangers. It reinforces the journalistic desire to personalise politics, casting politicians as minor celebrities: politics is thereby presented as a process in which the majority play no part, except in the crowd scenes. While in earlier biopics, the likes of Disraeli were treated like heroes - in the 1929 film he outsmarts a Russian spy - in contemporary biopics the subjects are all people of questionable character....
The current crop of political biopics is not only inaccurate historically but potentially harmful to our civic culture. Political scientists have tried to find ways of 'reengaging' the people with politics. Gordon Brown appears to think that a new electoral system for Westminster might do the trick. So far little consideration has been given to whether the way in which most people gain an understanding of our political past might effect how they think about current politics. Historians could help by taking such versions of the past seriously and recognizing that historiography now exists as much on the screen as on the page. They might encourage their own students to critically engage with how political history has been represented - and ask for example why Disraeli was depicted as a lion in 1929 but by the time Mrs. Brown (1997) was released he had become preoccupied only with spin. Outside the seminar room they should ask those responsible for producing these representations - commissioning editors, producers and writers - to discuss why they depict our recent political history in the ways they do. If even politicians are now expected to be more accountable then why not those who represent them on the screen?
Read entire article at History and Policy (UK)
If journalism is the first draft of history the biopic is now a close second, having become the staple output of many television drama departments. Recently figures as diverse as the Queen, Margaret Thatcher and Winnie Mandela have been given the treatment.
Historians undoubtedly ground their teeth as these accounts gave the protagonist undue importance and distorted events for dramatic effect. For their mantra has long been that history is made through the interaction of structure and agency, a process in which the individual, however famous, plays but a part. However recent US research [Andrew Butler et al, 'Using popular films to enhance class room learning', Psychological Science, 20:9 (2009)] shows that even amongst Ivy League students, film versions of the past can exert more influence on perceptions of the past than do academic texts. The power of the moving image compared to the immobile word has long been suspected. As Gore Vidal wrote of the Hollywood historical romances of his youth: 'we are both defined and manipulated by [cinematic] fictions of such potency that they are able to replace our own experience, often becoming our sole experience of reality'. From what we know of media effects, this process of confusing fiction for reality is made more certain if the same kind of fiction is transmitted over a prolonged period....
The biopic genre is not new - George Arliss won an Oscar for Disraeli (1929) - and is an obvious offshoot of the publishers' venerable stand-by, the biography. Yet at the present moment... it poses potential dangers. It reinforces the journalistic desire to personalise politics, casting politicians as minor celebrities: politics is thereby presented as a process in which the majority play no part, except in the crowd scenes. While in earlier biopics, the likes of Disraeli were treated like heroes - in the 1929 film he outsmarts a Russian spy - in contemporary biopics the subjects are all people of questionable character....
The current crop of political biopics is not only inaccurate historically but potentially harmful to our civic culture. Political scientists have tried to find ways of 'reengaging' the people with politics. Gordon Brown appears to think that a new electoral system for Westminster might do the trick. So far little consideration has been given to whether the way in which most people gain an understanding of our political past might effect how they think about current politics. Historians could help by taking such versions of the past seriously and recognizing that historiography now exists as much on the screen as on the page. They might encourage their own students to critically engage with how political history has been represented - and ask for example why Disraeli was depicted as a lion in 1929 but by the time Mrs. Brown (1997) was released he had become preoccupied only with spin. Outside the seminar room they should ask those responsible for producing these representations - commissioning editors, producers and writers - to discuss why they depict our recent political history in the ways they do. If even politicians are now expected to be more accountable then why not those who represent them on the screen?