>Date: Wed, 28 Jun 1995 07:18:06 -0500 (CDT) >From: Tibor R Machan >Subject: Braveheart The movie BRAVEHEART, starring and directed by Mel Gibson, is pretty good and unusual for its forthright use of moral and political concepts such as liberty, courage, integrity. It is refreshing, especially for academicians, to get away a bit from the mud and grayness of the post-modernist intellectual atmosphere to experience, at least in fictional form, some straightforward and confident affirmation of sound values, a commitment to them that withstands all kinds of pragmatic indeterminacy and resulting hesitancy. And the film does not avoid the challenge of some complexities, e.g., among the Scot nobles. Best, Tibor Machan ======================================================================= >Date: Wed, 28 Jun 1995 16:52:08 -0600 (MDT) >From: Ronald Hamowy >Subject: Re: Braveheart Hi Tibor, I'm appalled by your recommendation of Braveheart, which strikes me as having no cimematic merit and whose plot was clearly composed by a imbecile, without knowledge or concern for even the minimum level of historical accuracy (the film reflects actual historical events no better than a depiction of Hitler as a soul-searching, shy young man roused to fury by a Jew raping and butchering his mother). If you enjoy a film in which a mediocre actor jumps around screaming and mouthing half-witted takeoffs on speeches from Henry V and enters into adventures that are manufactured out of whole cloth, then perhaps Braveheart is good escapism, but as an attempted presentation of the William Wallace and what actually went on in Scotland at the close of the thirteenth century, it shits. Not the least offensive was Gibson's virulent gaybaiting is his depiction of King Edward's son (later Edward II) as a simpering loathesome fag whose lover is defenestrated by the King to the delight of the movie audience. Frankly, this movie has about as much merit, historically and artistically, as one of the countless dubbed Italian films about Hercules battling the "tyrants" who have deprived the people of Thebes of their mouthly social security payments and their right to vote! Ronald Hamowy | "The freedom of the press is one Department of History | of the great bulwarks of liberty University of Alberta | and can never be restrained but Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2H4 | by despotic governments." G. Mason rhamowy@gpu.srv.ualberta.ca =========================================================================== >Date: Wed, 28 Jun 1995 23:31:47 -0400 >From: nskinsella@shsl.com >Subject: Re[2]: Braveheart Mr. Hamowy, Haven't seen Braveheart, but just saw Legends of the Fall, which is a fairly amateurish Western soap opera with a dab of pointless mysticism thrown in for good measure. However, in Legends, Anthony Hopkins's character has very anti-government lines and sentiments which are a pleasure to see in a modern movie. His character actually seems very libertarian. If the movie had pursued more of this aspect of his character it might have been more interesting. --Stephan Kinsella (nskinsella@shsl.com) =========================================================================== >Date: Sun, 2 Jul 1995 16:31:14 -0400 (EDT) >From: James Taggart Tibor, Ronald Hamowy, and anyone else who might be interested: I saw Braveheart several weeks ago and found it quite enjoyable. Whether it is as good as Tibor alleges is debatable, but it strikes me as somewhat misguided to get all worked up about its lack of historical accuracy. Such movies are morality plays and not historical documentaries, and I don't think many people are going to confuse Braveheart as one of the latter as opposed to the former. That being said, Braveheart does suggest some interesting issues, perhaps unintentionally, which make it worth seeing. Like the other historical epic recently released, Rob Roy, Braveheart involves clashes between what are represented as being two very different cultures: the stubborn, more principled and relatively impoverished Scotch and the more wealthy, less principled English. Generally, I wondered whether there might be some causal relationship between cultures with these different kinds of attitudes - i.e., more traditional cultures with an emphasis on honor and integrity versus more modern cultures in which bargaining and negotiating play a greater role - and the material prosperity of such cultures? =========================================================================== >Date: Mon, 3 Jul 1995 12:18:30 -0500 (CDT) >From: Tibor R Machan Jim: One thing for sure: writers, pundits, philosophers, historians, novelists, etc., all, nearly invariably, represent wealthier bargaining, commercial cultures as morally inferior to those that are poorer, more ascetic. This, as I discuss in my current (but not yet accepted) MS, BUSINESS BASHING, WHY COMMERCE IS MALIGNED, is probably a function of self-pleading by the intellectual-spiritual class, representing itself as championing morality versus material wealth. This is partly the legacy of the Greek and Christian dualistic philosophies wherein poverty was a good payment for spiritual (even everlasting) bliss. The weak or poor will inherit the kingdom of heaven, while the rich will have a very, very hard time doing so. I don't think the correlation is historical, although because of the bias of history's recorders and fictionalizers, it is difficult to establish exactly what happened. (Also, the term "virtue" tends to be applied to self-sacrificial folk, not to prudent, attentive, courageous seekers after wordly happiness - except, perhaps, in BOON TOWN and a few other works of fiction, e.g., my recent discovery, Christopher Morley, in his novel HUMAN BEING, honors a book salesman with great humanity.) Best, Tibor =========================================================================== >Date: Wed, 5 Jul 1995 19:12:12 -0600 (MDT) >From: Ronald Hamowy >Subject: Braveheart: A Final Word Several people posting to this group have recently offered the view that whether and how a film (or any work of art, for that matter) that deals with historical characters or events is not relevant to questions of whether the film is good or bad or whether or not it conveys admirable moral qualities. This position can only be regarded as breathtakingly naive. It should be obvious that the choice of real historical characters carries with it the requirement that the events portrayed in some important way correspond to the truth. The whole point of using real characters and events is because viewers (or readers, or whatever) are to a greater extent moved by the fact that real, and not imaginary, men are prepared to sacrifice their honor and estates or have confronted and overcome obstacles in situations that have actually challenged them. What is morally unlifting about such accounts is that they recount the stories of real men in real conditions. In addition, accounts that falsify history color our image of what has actually occurred and help fix our impressions of people and events. These false images are part of the baggage we carry in assessing these and similar events and may (and, unfortunately, often do) have a profound impact on the way we see the world. That is, after all, the whole point of propaganda, to which we are all more or less vulnerable. Clearly this fact is what lies behind the outrage of so many critics with "JFK" (which, even they would admit, was, if taken purely as an adventure film, quite good) and why we are repelled by Goebbels' particularly virulent anti-Semitic "documentaries," even though they might carry the perfectly acceptable moral message that one should keep oneself clean and should not cheat and lie but rather condemn those people who do. If you will allow me an aside, I find it abhorrent that more and more younger people (I speak especially of my "students") have abandoned any attempt to distinguish fact from fiction as too trying a mental task and to view historical and fictional accounts in an identical light, simply as stories. They tend to judge each account solely on the basis of whether they found it "amusing" or "relevant." It strikes me that critics who enthused over "Amadeus" shared the same view. How else to explain the warmth with which they embraced a film that depicted Mozart as a giggling halfwit and Salieri as a crazed murderer. Doubtless the attitude that the accuracy of an historical account is really irrelevant to whether it's a "fun story" can in part be credited to the current appalling state of education and to the mental self-indulgence of most young men and women, But, in that case, why on earth use real historical characters? I would urge philosophers to be on guard against a similar lapse, lest they regard the "moral message" of a work of art (narrowly conceived) that poses as an historical account as the only factor in assessing its value. With respect to Braveheart, the insurrection led by Wallace and his supporters against the English had not a whit to do with "freedom" but rather with which group of barons should control Scotland. The number of historical inaccuracies in this film (from characters to the nature of battles, to the events that led William Wallace to turn against the English king) are far too numerous and too central to the film to list. For those who are interested, I would recommend any good history of Scotland or, barring that, the relevant entries in the Encylopedia Britannica. But it is the more general historical idiocies that particularly annoyed me. What I found totally insufferable was Gibson's long-winded mumbling takeoff on Henry V's St. Crispin's Day. (this, from an "actor" who reached his acme in "Mad Max"), Patrick McGoohan's embarrassing "Scottish" accent and endless stream of fatuous comments (Edward I, indeed!). the occasional exclamations of"Excellent" from the Scottish lairds ("Willy and Ed's Excellent Adventure"), and Gibson's intolerably preposterous affair with Princess Isabella, the wife of the future Edward II, and his putative fatherhood of the future Edward III (Could it be that Winston Churchill Jr. is really the son of Mme Churchill and Rudolf Hess?). And finally and most loathesome (probably because of Gibson's own pathological homophobia) the depiction of Edward II as a mincing queen whose queerness acts as the film's comic relief and a counterpoint to Gibson's strong, macho image, his rough, weathered hands clutching the weak, simpering Isabella as she swoons from the touch of his manhood. Ugh! Those of you familiar with Gibson's history of virulent, Helms-like, hatred of anything having to do with homosexuality will know of the interviews that he has given in which he has indicated that he finds such acts disgusting and those who practice them meriting the worst kinds of punishment. His previous "directorial" experience with "The Man Without a Face" eviscerated that story by completely excising the homosexual relationship, central to the novel, between the protagonist and his young friend. I would assume that this is excusable in a work of fiction, which can be altered at the whim of the author and film director. But to distort history to bring it in line with his own crotchets and private hatreds is simply not tolerable. Ronald Hamowy | "The freedom of the press is one Department of History | of the great bulwarks of liberty University of Alberta | and can never be restrained but Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2H4 | by despotic governments." G. Mason rhamowy@gpu.srv.ualberta.ca =========================================================================== >Date: Thu, 6 Jul 1995 06:35:26 -0500 (CDT) >From: "D. McCloskey" >Subject: Re: Braveheart: A Final Word Ronald, Nice to hear from you. I went right from Braveheart to the Britannica's articles (11th ed) on Wallace and Scottish history, a subject I know nothing about, and discovered what you knew already about the wild inaccuracy of the history. But I would not draw the wider conclusions you wish to draw. That Gibson is homophobic would be a fault in a story told by him that satisfied every factual standard of historical scholarship. That is, he could get every ascertainable fact right and yet "impose" a homophobic moral on the tale. Likewise, he could be strictly accurate about the jealousies among the barons and yet still impose a theme of freedom-loving onto the history--after all, the Scots themselves (not the least that Scot of diaspora, Tom Macaulay) did this in song and in story: "Scots wha' ha' wi' Wallace bled, / Scots wham Bruce has often led, / Welcome to your gory bed / Or to victory. / Now's the day and now's the hour: / See the front of battle lower, / See approach proud Edward's power, / Chains of slavery." In other words, I don't think--and I don't think you think, really--that facticity suffices to ward off bad history. Nor even is it necessary. What would you make of a masterful history that got every single date wrong by one day? Flawed but still masterful, I suppose. So I don't think you can so easily dismiss the notion you attribute to your students that history is a story told. One doesn't have to abandon scholarly standards to realize that the standards themselves are matters of scholarly history, not timeless, and that any history needs implotment. As to the poet's license, has someone put forward the example of Shakespeare's "history" plays? Or for that matter, Aeschylus and House of Pelops? Yes, of course: I knew Shakespeare, and Mel Gibson is no Shakespeare. But isn't that analogous to defining legally proscribable pornography as INCOMPETENT speech about sex? Regards, Don McCloskey =========================================================================== >From: sdcox@ucsd.edu >Date: Thu, 6 Jul 1995 10:10:00 -0700 >Subject: Hamowy's Braveheart As a literary critic, I was very interested in Ronald Hamowy's argument--arising from the egregious historical errors in "Braveheart"-- about the relevance of historical accuracy to aesthetic judgment. Ever since Aristotle's "Poetics," literary criticism and theory have tended to side with the artist's independence from historical accuracy, narrowly conceived. Who cares if Richard II is accurately represented in the play of that name, if the play be well-made in a technical sense? But Hamowy has an interesting argument (on which I hope the following is an accurate gloss:) When a writer includes historical figures in a play or film, the choice of those figures is itself an aesthetic choice: much of the aesthetic impact of the piece will result from the audience's feeling that it will learn something important about important historical events. The choice is supposed to produce an aesthetic heightening of the experience: there's more potential aesthetic interest in a play about FDR than there is in a play about somebody who also had weird political ideas, a craving for power, and an inane spouse, but who only campaigned for some post in the local Moose Lodge. Although WE don't care if Oedipus was ever a king, or ever existed (in other words, although WE have lost some of the original aesthetic impact of Sophocles' play about Oedipus), the Greeks who originally saw that play probably got a heightened effect from thinking that they were watching some version of history. Now, if you'd come out and revealed to them that Sophocles just made all that up about Oedipus sleeping with his mother, there would have been an aesthetic disappointment. So, by the same token, it's pretty rough on an audience that thinks it's paying to watch the great drama of Scottish history and finds that it's really watching the little drama of Hollywood Babel. (Perhaps the aesthetic effect could be preserved, however, if we didn't have people like RH around to tell everyone how phony the history was!) What I would add to RH's argument is simply the observation that aesthetic judgment does not reduce to a single sum: one doesn't just say, That movie was a C-; one can say, The history was phony, but the lighting and directing were impressive. Granted, it's easier to separate these various judgments in cases where the work itself is not an organic whole. It seems, however, that there might not be much of anything to praise about "Braveheart." Stephen Cox Professor, Literature University of California, San Diego sdcox@ucsd.edu ======================================================================== >Date: Thu, 6 Jul 1995 13:21:41 -0700 >From: Sara Baase >Subject: Re: Hamowy's Braveheart In his reply to Ronald Hamowy, Stephen Cox described the selection of historical characters as contributing to the aesthetic effect of a work of art (play, movie, etc.), and the discovery that the facts have been distorted as diminishing the aesthetic effect. If only aesthetics were at stake, I doubt that Ronald would have written as passionately about the issue. It seems to me the issue is deception. We are told that the story is about a real person or event, but it is not. Yes, we adults know better than to expect a movie to be completely accurate, but to accept large scale distortion in such works encourages a blurring of what is true and what is not. That is a critical distinction. We act based on our knowledge of the world. As a general principle, that which confuses truth and falsity undercuts our ability to make good decisions. I think the issue in movies like Braveheart and Amadeus is more ethical than aesthetic. (Not to mention the unfairness to the actual characters. Yes, they are long dead, but most of us would not like the idea of a very distorted movie being made about us after we die.) Sara ============================================================================ Sara Baase Computer Science Division Professor of Computer Science Mathematical Sciences Dept. San Diego State University baase@cs.sdsu.edu San Diego, CA 92182-7720 ============================================================================ >From: sdcox@ucsd.edu >Date: Thu, 6 Jul 1995 17:44:00 -0700 >Subject: Re[2]: Hamowy's Braveheart I agree with Sara that deception is an issue--perhaps the most important issue (though the importance of historical deception fades as the object of the deception becomes more remote in time or effect on us: we care--and should care--much more about Kennedy's assassination being represented accurately than we care about the representation of some Sumerian leader's misfortunes). And of course, Ronald's letter about "Braveheart" is written out of moral, not just aesthetic passion. But the aesthetic issue is interesting. It's interesting partly because the aesthetic defense of untruth is one of the oldest, commonest, and most plausible. And it's interesting because there ARE good and acceptable reasons for distorting the truth in art. A novelist commonly uses real, historically-existing people as models for his or her characters, then adds and subtracts qualities from these real people, writing not with regard to historical fidelity but with regard to the representation of what might be called a higher truth, the general impression of reality as the author knows it. So there is "lying" in art. The important distinction that Ronald seems to be making is between untruths of type 1 (Hemingway distorts the deeds of the literal Lady Duff Twysden so as to create a character called Brett Ashley, who more persuasively represents a certain truth that Hemingway sees about people) and type 2 (somebody writes a play that purports to explain the assassination of the real John Kennedy, but invents or distorts facts about that real historical individual). Steve Stephen Cox Professor, Literature University of California, San Diego sdcox@ucsd.edu ============================================================================ >Date: Fri, 7 Jul 1995 08:35:35 -0700 >From: John McCarthy >Subject: Braveheart I attended the movie with someone who expected Wallaace to be saved from execution aat the last minute, not realizing that he was a historical figure who really was cruelly executed. Here is what the movie got right. 1. William Wallace led the Scots against in the English in the successful battle of Stirling and in the unsuccessful battle of Falkirk. 2. Robert Bruce was reluctant at the time, but later led the Scots successfully. 3. Wallace was captured later, brought to London and executed for treason in spite of the fact that he had never decalared loyalty to Edward I. Edward I was fierce, but Edward II was ineffeetual and perhaps homosexual. 4. Many subsidary events were more or less correctly presented. Most of the errors wwere caused by movie values. 1. Women and love have to be given a larger role than history records. 2. Time has to be compressed. The years between Falkirk and Wallace's capture are of no interest. 3. Contrasts have to be sharpened. The English are depicted with 18th century institutions and manners. The English probably spoke Norman French and maybe Wallace and Bruce also spoke it. Commpared to a real lie such as _Mission to Moscow_, Braveheart was extremely honest. That one, which is still shown, depicts the Moscow trials as fair. Taking a bit of the sentimental shine off Bruce may have been reasonable, but showing him with Edward at Falkirk is going too far. In the 1790s they didn't have movies, so we have Bannockburn (Robert Bruce's address to his army) Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled! Scots, wham Bruce has aften led! Welcome to your gory bed, Or to victorie! Now's the day, and now's the hour; See the front o' battle lower! See approach proud Edward's power - Edward! chains and slaverie! Wha will be a traitor knave? Wha can fill a coward's grave? Wha sae base as be a slave? Traitor! coward! turn and flee! Wha for Scotland's king and law Freedom's sword will strongly draw Free-man stand, or free-man fa' Caledonian! on wi' me! By oppression's woes and pains! By your sons in servile chains! We will drain our dearest veins, But they shall - they shall be free! Lay the proud usurpers low! Tyrants fall in every foe! Liberty's in every blow! Forward! Let us do, or die! - Burns, poetical works - p.376 The careful reader may have noted some decorations, presumably made to improve the dramatic recitations of Scottish schoolchildren. My copy was given as a prize in Portobello to one Nelly Brown for music in 1892-93. It found its way to an Edinburgh second hand bookstore. ========================================================================== >Date: Sat, 8 Jul 1995 20:35:23 -0600 (MDT) >From: Ronald Hamowy >Subject: Braveheart: Yet Another Final Word Allow me once again to respond to some of the postings regarding Braveheart and to the debate that seems to have taken shape around this film. I suspect that Mel Gibson would be alarmed to learn that this mediocre film would have occasioned such an interesting scholarly debate. With respect to the points raised by Maury McCrillis: 1. You are certainly correct in claiming that Gibson's account of William Wallace was in part based on the minstrel Blind Harry, who attempted to elevate Wallace into a Scottish national hero. But Harry, a who lived some two hundred years after Wallace's death, is known to be notoriously unreliable and his recounting of the events surrounding Wallace's insurrection against the English have no more basis in fact than does Parson Weems' biographical account of George Washington. Yet Gibson does not even choose to stop there but goes on to fashion a tale in which he has added events central to his plot that are purely fictional and contravene all we know about the period. 2 When Aristotle write that "poetry is a higher thing than history because it tells us not what has been but what may be" he is not claiming that we may freely falsify history (as opposed to being selective in what we choose to emphasize) if our purpose is to morally elevate. This might well be Plato's position, but I don't believe it is Aristotle's. In any case, invoking him begs the question under discussion. Let me turn to the issues raised by my friend Donald McCloskey: 1. I agree that even should Gibson have attempted to present a factually accurate account of the events surrounding William Wallace's life his homophobia could have still emerged in the manner in which he chose to characterize the various participants in the film. However, what Gibson has done is not taken an historical account and recast it in a manner that reflects his contempt for homosexuals. There is no historical warrant whatever for his depiction of Edward II as a simpering faggot sunk in his own degeneracy, nor is there any support for the preposterous view that Edward was incapable of fathering an heir to the throne but was forced to rely on a Gibson-like stud impregnating his wife to insure an heir. This "historical event," like Gibson's portrayal of Edward and his odious lover, are purely a product of his own personal loathing of homosexuality and his witless psychological conclusions regarding how homosexuals behave. 2. I am not sure that I would agree with you that facticity is not sufficient to ward off bad history. It seems to me that possibly the most important attribute of a good historian is a scrupulous devotion to the relevant data. Of course the data cannot be offered in its raw form but must be coupled with the proper application of the interpretative rules that the other social sciences provide (i.e., good economic history requires not only a fastidious attention to the facts pertinent to one's study, but a thorough mastery of technical economics, which allows the historian to determine which data are relevant and how to properly interpret them. Mises once remarked that the historian had the hardest job since he had to master not only raw data but all the social sciences as well, psychology, sociology, economics, anthropology, and so on (besides, he added, being a linguist!). And I confess I concur that the raw data, coupled with the rules garnered from the social sciences of how to interpret them, are the basic stuff of good history. Donald, I would be most reluctant to accept your view that standards themselves are matters of scholarly history, but I suspect our differences on the relativity of such standards are fairly fundamental. 3. The problem of Shakespeare's plays, and especially his histories, is, I admit, a thorny one. The history plays, were, of course, almost all written during the reign of Elizabeth with not only a dramatic but also a propagandistic purpose, to secure the English throne to Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, as the representative of the House of Lancaster. This purpose was regarded as no less important under Henry VII's granddaughter, Elizabeth (whom Parliament, at the urging of Henry VIII, had proclaimed illegitimate following the execution of her mother, Anne Boleyn, on a charge of adultery). In addition, we should keep in mind the oppressive censorship under which Shakespeare was operating. In fact we do not even know whether any of the portraits of the "Virgin" Queen reflect her likeness since they all were required to meet certain guidelines under threat of severe punishment. Finally, there is the point you yourself suggest I might make, that Mel Gibson is not Shakespeare, whom we exempt from a rigid adherence to rules that apply to mere mortals and whose greatness so far transcends that of the ordinary artist that such lapses pale. With respect to Tibor's question regarding the myriad number of Hollywood films that romanticize an historical character, I can only take refuge in the usual argument that most of these films are schlock. They are drivel of the same sort as the filmic versions of the novels of Danielle Steele or Barbara Cartland, designed to divert but devoid of any real artistic merit. One need only consider films such as "Desiree," which purports to recount Napoleon's affair with a seamstress (with Brando as a perplexed Napoleon torn between Merle Oberon as the kindly Empress Josephine and the shy and suitably proletarian Jean Simmons) or "Song Without End," ostensibly a account of Franz Lizst's affair with the Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein, played by an elegant, demure Capucine. (Sayn-Wittgenstein, was, in reality, an ugly harridan absorbed by the occult, who despised fresh air and sported the butt of Lizst's cheroot in her lapel every day between his death and hers.) Then there is the mother of all historical biographies, "The Conqueror," in which John Wayne mumbles and screeches his way through two painful hours as Ghengiz Khan! But what are we to make of such movies as Paul Muni's "The Story of Louis Pasteur" or "The Life or Emile Zola"? Or Edward G. Robinson's "Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet" (which recounts the work of Dr. Paul Ehrich and his eventual discovery of arsphenamine as a specific for syphilis) or Spencer Tracy's "Edison, the Man"? There is no denying that these films are both entertaining and in some ways inspiring. And I concede that they all, in some way or another, contain historical inaccuracies. But, interestingly, the inaccuracies (at least in films of this sort that I find admirable) are inaccuracies of omission and not of commission. They simplify rather than distort and misrepresent, and what none of these films does is to invent new characters and situations having no basis in historical fact simply to advance some conviction extraneous to the subject of the film. Films such as these are, as were Plutarch's "Lives" moral exempla, presently, as Sir Philip Sidney observed, "notable images of virtue and vice." But to do this fairly, the author or director has some obligation not to falsify his subject. If the biographical data that forms the subject-matter of a film simply cannot accommodate the moral message that the director hopes to convey, he and the screenwriter are free to fictionalize, without the pretence that they are offering history. Certainly "All the King's Men" (loosely based on the career of Huey Long) and "Citizen Kane" are excellent examples of works of fiction that do exactly that. Finally, let me thank Stephen Cox and Sara Baase for underscoring the question of historical deception in determining the merit of a play, movie, novel, or such like. You have both put much more clearly than I the crux of my criticism of Braveheart and other films of this ilk. Lord Acton is reputed to have said that the god of history is Rhadamanthus, the god of retribution. I have always understood this to mean that when we each of us act as an historian, we stand as a judge of those who came before us, sorting out the good guys from the bastards. And as judges, we must at least try to be fair to the evidence. Films like Braveheart pervert our sense of history and of other people and distort our view of reality. I cannot believe that this can ever serve a moral purpose. Ronald Hamowy | "The freedom of the press is one Department of History | of the great bulwarks of liberty University of Alberta | and can never be restrained but Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2H4 | by despotic governments." G. Mason rhamowy@gpu.srv.ualberta.ca =========================================================================== >Date: Sun, 9 Jul 1995 12:12:31 -0400 >From: jnarveso@watarts.uwaterloo.ca (Jan Narveson) >Subject: Re: Hamowy's Braveheart > In his reply to Ronald Hamowy, Stephen Cox described the selection of >historical characters as contributing to the aesthetic effect of a work >of art (play, movie, etc.), and the discovery that the facts have been >distorted as diminishing the aesthetic effect. If only aesthetics were >at stake, I doubt that Ronald would have written as passionately about >the issue. It seems to me the issue is deception. We are told that >the story is about a real person or event, but it is not. Yes, we adults >know better than to expect a movie to be completely accurate, but to >accept large scale distortion in such works encourages a blurring of >what is true and what is not. That is a critical distinction. >We act based on our knowledge of the world. As a general principle, >that which confuses truth and falsity undercuts our ability to make good >decisions. I think the issue in movies like Braveheart and Amadeus is more >ethical than aesthetic. (Not to mention the unfairness to the actual >characters. Yes, they are long dead, but most of us would not like the idea >of a very distorted movie being made about us after we die.) > > Sara I'm impressed by the above, which seems to me sensible and well-taken. Perhaps it would be worth someone's while to try to figure out an algorithm for determining when one should *call* the movie character something else. (Mind you, I haven't seen the movie, which was panned by many reviewers for reasons totally unrelated to this issue...) Jan Narveson Dept. of Philosophy University of Waterloo Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1 fax 519 746 3097 =========================================================================== >Date: Sun, 9 Jul 1995 22:30:16 -0500 (CDT) >From: Maury Mccrillis On Sat, 8 Jul 1995, Ronald Hamowy wrote: > I suspect that Mel Gibson would be alarmed to learn > that this mediocre film would have occasioned such an interesting > scholarly debate. I am surprised to learn that such an interesting movie has occasioned such a mediocre critique. > But Harry, a who lived some two hundred years after > Wallace's death, is known to be notoriously unreliable and his > recounting of the events surrounding Wallace's insurrection against > the English have no more basis in fact than does Parson Weems' > biographical account of George Washington. Whether or not the Wallace or Parson Weem's account of Washington's life has a greater "basis in fact" is irrelevant. Both Blind Hary's poem and Gibson's movie have some basis in fact. That Braveheart does not have the requisite amount of factual historical information needed for it to merit being called a good biography is the basis of your criticism. I argue that Braveheart does not purport to be a biography and, thus, that your criticism is founded on a confusion over the movie's genre. > Yet Gibson does not > even choose to stop there but goes on to fashion a tale in which he > has added events central to his plot that are purely fictional and > contravene all we know about the period. That there are events in the movie that are fictional strikes me as obvious and, well, uninteresting. What is interesting is why you view that fact with such shock and outrage. Clearly the fact that fictional details exist and are even central to the plot do not "contravene everything we know about the period." It may contravene some things--the most obvious being the paternity of Edward's grandson--but surely not everything that we know about medieval history or even just the Scottish wars of independence has been sacrificed to Gibson's poetic license. Even the bit about Wallace's affair with the Princess of Wales, while it could get some people with a layman's knowledge of the succession of English kings to knead their brows, is probably not going to have medieval historians running to the bookshelves to revise their royal genealogical tables. Another thing to consider is that, while there are certainly many things we do know with a good bit of certainty about the period, we should not presume that everything we know about the period constitutes everything there is to know about it. Many of the details in the movie are purely fictional, but let's not pretend that Wallace had personal biographers following him around from battle to battle. > 2 When Aristotle writes that "poetry is a higher thing than > history because it tells us not what has been but what may be" he > is not claiming that we may freely falsify history (as opposed to > being selective in what we choose to emphasize) if our purpose is > to morally elevate. This might well be Plato's position, but I > don't believe it is Aristotle's. I agree that the view you are thrusting at me here is something like Socrates' position (although Socrates would not endorse " 'freely' falsifying history" any more than Aristotle would), but you're going to have to leave this brainchild of yours at someone else's door; I'm not interesting in adopting it. I never said that Aristotle advocated falsifying history, only that Aristotle could draw a clear distinction between history and poetry. > However, what Gibson has done is not taken an > historical account and recast it in a manner that reflects his > contempt for homosexuals. There is no historical warrant whatever > for his depiction of Edward II as a simpering faggot sunk in his > own degeneracy.... Oh for heaven's sake, now it's you who's playing fast and loose with history. Piers Gaveston, to whom he granted the Earldom of Cornwall, was regarded by enough members of his own court to be Edward's lover for the rumor about his homosexuality to be debated up to the present day. Moreover, the move to grant Gaveston the title was so unpopular that his own barons drafted the Ordinances calling for Gaveston's banishment. Not only that but the Gibson-like stud that you heterophobically refer to was Roger Mortimer, who with Edward's own Queen Isabella, invaded England in 1326 and deposed Edward. Edward was incompetent through and through. The only distinction he bears is the dubious distinction of having gotten his ass kicked by The Bruce at Bannockburn. > This "historical event," like Gibson's portrayal > of Edward and his odious lover, are purely a product of his own > personal loathing of homosexuality and his witless psychological > conclusions regarding how homosexuals behave. Pshaw. Put it in verse and recite it at the coffee shop. -------------------- Maury McCrillis Department of English (Reformed) Auburn University =========================================================================== >Date: Tue, 11 Jul 1995 01:00:31 -0600 (MDT) >From: Ronald Hamowy I am surprised that you would bother to engage in any exchange with academics whom you regard as so far beneath you. But I suppose that discourtesy passes for being knowledgeable among your crowd. Alas, the effect is that you simply come off as a sententious fool. =========================================================================== >Date: Tue, 11 Jul 1995 10:24:02 -0500 (CDT) >From: Maury Mccrillis > Alas, the effect is that you simply come off as a sententious fool. Alas? Don't take it so hard, old boy. The argumentum ad hominem is too facile for someone with your knowledge and adroit reasoning skills. Don't just take your football and go home now. Give me something more substantial. What leads you to believe that we should view Braveheart as a documentary? Richard II is not entirely historically accurate either, but no one thinks of it as a substitute for Holinshed's Chronicles. Head over heels I've fit in before Now I don't want to do it no more I've held it all in with blood on my face Built it up man so bad you can taste I don't slag no one I don't even judge Don't give a shit cause I'm not gonna budge I just want to be who I want to be Guess that's hard for others to see... --Offspring =========================================================================== >Date: Tue, 11 Jul 1995 23:40:38 -0500 (CDT) >From: Maury Mccrillis [...] I am somewhat disappointed that the only conclusions that have been reached in this discussion are that: 1. Braveheart contains scenes that are not rooted in historical fact; 2. Mel Gibson is a homophobe with second rate acting skills, and; 3. "invoking Aristotle begs the question [raised in point 1] under discussion" That the first has become an issue is intriguing to me. Mr. Hamowy seems to be content to fall back on a petit principio on this matter, devising a maxim that goes somthing like this: Any work that contains characters and events that are based to any degree on historically factual persons or events is required to depict those characters in a historically accurate and verifiable way or the integrity of the work is compromised. This requirement, it seems, would tend to question the integrity of a vast amount of works of western literature. Homer's Iliad, for example, would have to bear Platonic scrutiny all over again for notorious historical inaccuracies and inconsistencies. The Odyssey would be laughable if judged on the basis of historical accuracy. The Aeneid would be a collosal joke too. The Alliterative Morte Arthur? Nope. Forget Malory's Morte Darthur too. Chretien de Troyes? Nope. With him goes the whole Vulgate Prose cycle, too. Layamon's Brut? Nope. Shakespeare's history plays? Nope. Marlowe's history plays? Nix the hack. And that only scratches the surface. Now, I'm not suggesting that the historical accuracy in art is questionable because it would entail re-evaluating the Western canon. It just seems to me that these works are wonderful despite their historical lacunae. Because they're wonderful, I need some reason as to why historical accuracy ought to be the prime consideration--no, even just a consideration--in determining their value. I've gotten a lot of expletives from Mr. Hamowy--and I really do respect his candor--but no explanations from him. I've heard the bit about Gibson's alleged homophobia, but that, even if true, strikes me as irrelevant to the question of historical accuracy and the usefulness of that criteria for judging fiction. [...] =========================================================================== [[Um, what shall I say? Hamowy emailed Mccrillis using somewhat colorful language, and telling Mccrillis to stop emailing him. Mccrillis then posted the juicier parts of that private email and included them in the above post (which I've snipped out). Two subscribers voiced apparent support for Mccrillis (who isn't a subscriber) and Hamowy then unsubbed from the list.]]