Post-script: 'historians' and 'truth.'

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

A post-script to my previous post - some of you might like this - it's from the last U.S. election night coverage on the BBC - it's the wee small hours of the morning (Obama's big victory speech was on at 5am here) and methinks someone has been enjoying the BBC's 'hospitality' room a bit...but I love Dimbleby's little comment right at the end here...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3v-wmqc27U&feature=related and there' this, too... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCQrnSQ4rTo&feature=SeriesPlayList&p=D638E3BA48901241&index=21 (that should be the Dead Ringers / Simon Schama's fee sketch: the woman who is now head of BBC2 factual programming - and salaries - thinks the man is a towering genius whose book 'Citizens' changed her life. Blimey. Explains a lot about BBC history programmes, though: the pro-English Revolution 1640's set drama the Devil's Whore was dropped by the BBC (I'm guessing when they realised Charles 1 wasn't going to be the 'hero') and made instead by the independent Channel4).

P.P.S. For a taste of BBC things to come, the entire episode of Schama's last televisual rant against the French Revolution has been posted on Youtube. Dig the spotty teenage Robespierre, and the even spottier Danton (who looks like a wino), scabby Marat, not to mention the hideously deformed David himself - the old 'French Revolution as Zoo' approach....it's not pleasant, but anyone out there who wants more stuff for essays etc. on right-wing/revisionist/reactionary/pop cultural 'takes' on the revolution can use this as a good example of the genre. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDi6jyifhY4

Comments

[maelicia.livejournal.com]

I still have to load (with my very slow internet) the first vids, but: yay (irony) for Schama's nonsense on Youtube. I've been wanting to traumatize myself with his frothing hatred of David and the Revolution in a while. Also, his intro with the taffeta spheroid makes no sense. I know he's trying to fit in context. But... IT JUST DOESN'T MAKE SENSE. Randomest thing ever. Such as the fake French accent with the Figaro actor. It's just hilarious. With his close-up, his make-up and his weird face. It's just... wow, great comedy. He frighteningly reminds me Stephen Rea's Santiago in Interview with the Vampire too... sorry, but he DOES. Including the fake accent.

And I'm not even speaking of the sweating Danton. It's not even worth mentionning. Stuff for nightmares.

[maelicia.livejournal.com]

And lol, David is shown having half of a Glasgow smile. It's soooo not what my books say or how they say the tumor happened. Damn, 'historians' and 'truth', indeed.

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_mVRXEky_0&feature=related

I've just found this online as well - this was broadcast last year, Channel 4, aimed at a young-ish audience, on David and Goya. The presenter is an art critic better known as the champion of 1990's 'Brit Art' (pickled sharks etc.), and political history clearly isn't his strong point. I think the best answer to this sort of thing is to get into a position to write/make a programme that treats the subject properly.

[misatheredpanda.livejournal.com]

- "strange line-dance of death", "David's contribution to the decapitation campaign", "orgies of public hugging"

- the little aristocrat extras and their silly expressions (especially the 'fear' for the animals at the very beginning)..... I just want to take them home!

- the whole bit about the king's death

- gratuitous close-ups of Corday dressing herself

- Schama's variable pronunciations of 'Robespierre'

- Danton using his 'inside voice' to deliver speeches

- apparently the Oath of the Horatii sparked the revolution?

- and my favourite part: Schama telling us what we think. IT'S ALL CLEAR TO ME NOW. IT WASN'T ART, IT WAS WITCHCRAFT!!!

[maelicia.livejournal.com]

gratuitous close-ups of Corday dressing herself

First: I really want to know how her stockings hold. Second: ...is putting a gigantic butcher's knife right there, between the fragile skin of your thigh and the fragile linen of your stockings, really safe, Charlotte? Third: same question as the first, but with the gigantic butcher's knife involved.

[misatheredpanda.livejournal.com]

I was just wondering about Marat's reaction to her pulling the knife out from there.

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

Considering how Schama kills my soul, I'm not sure it's a good idea if I watch that... >.>

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

Yes, it is very, very annoying. And every household in Britain with a colour TV has to pay a compulsory £142.50 annual TV licence so he can get £3,000,000 from the BBC and HarperCollins. And that means, to get their money's worth, he's on all the bloody time. He was wittering about baseball the other day, for half an hour! And we don't even play baseball here!

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

My condolences. Though having him talk about baseball isn't really as bad as having him talk about the Revolution--he probably knows more about the former than the latter!

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

I don't know what possessed me but I watched the first section. I had to stop though; there were too many completely untenable assertions. (I see it now; David's soul was irrevocably damaged as a child, leaving him to be "painfully earnest" in his desire to do evil things like painting the evil Marat. Who knew?)

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

I think this is typical of Schama's failure to grasp (or convenient/lazy refusal to be bothered with) the big picture: this was an era of high mortality and when something like 70% of the population had smallpox at some point in their life (hence the layers of make-up evident in every portrait from the Tudor period until Jenner's Smallpox innoculation was invented - i'd have thought someone who reckons he's an 'art historian' might have noticed that in the course of his 'work'), but he thinks not having post-plastic-surgery-Hollywood standards of physical 'perfection' would be abnormal and single you out and traumatise you - David as The Elephant Man. Ditto stuff like dead siblings, dead parents and so on (though - again, typical Schama - in 'Citizens' he seems to be the only historian not to mention Robespierre's parents - and that's one of the cases where I do think this fact had a bearing on the subject's life. I presume he feared that mentioning that he was an orphan might make his readers think 'aww, poor kid!' and he couldn't have that! Oh, here it is, p 577, US edition, Schama's sole mention of the powdered monster's childhood: "these lessons in moral earnestness he learned from his lawyer father" - which is, to put it mildly, a 'take' on Robespierre's father unique amongst historians! A page letter he says the letter from Saint-Just was sent in August 1789 (that's quick work)and then goes on to describe Robespierre's 'long nose', which may fit in with Schama's general portrayal of him as slinking around like the Child-Catcher, but no relationship to reality whatsoever...

What I find utterly extraordinary is that Schama apparently lectured on the French Revolution at Brasenose: it's not an Oxford college with a great academic reputation, but he can't even get basic, basic facts right! Dates, for christ's sake! And in a period where events are as concentrated as this, when weeks are like years, to get something as simple as dates wrong is like saying the Romans came to Britain on Concorde. It's not just Schama's politics that I loathe, the way he lathers every noun with a dozen negative adjectives, the way he sneers about people whose bravery and achievements he could never come close to, the way he says 'objectivity' isn't his job - it's his total inability to write basic facts. I've just read an interview with him where he calls Michelet 'Michelin' throughout...jesus wept!

[misatheredpanda.livejournal.com]

I've just read an interview with him where he calls Michelet 'Michelin' throughout...jesus wept!

I loled. I would find it more amusing if I didn't believe you, though.

I've only read bits of Citizens - in particular (what else?) looking at how he treated the Desmoulins - and couldn't help noticing that he gives Camille two different ages at different points in the book. And both of them are wrong.

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

Here's the interview - 'Citizens' is discussed halfway-and-a-bit down the page. It confirms what I'd heard and long suspected - that it was written as a speedy commission, to cash in on the bicentennary, and not born out of any burning desire on Schama's part to write about the period (David Starkey, another right-wing, highly paid TV historian, is absolutely steeped in and adores 'his' period). Even more bizarre, he says (for his 'research') he didn't just want to read books writen in the last 10 years (!!),but had the amazing idea of reading stuff written in 19thc histories, too (!!!!!!). And there was I, thinking a historian's first point of research would be primary documents from the archives, letters and memoirs...http://www.barnesandnoble.com/bn-review/note.asp?note=22343680

[(Anonymous)]

Oh my goodness, how medieval and cheaply psychoanalytical at the same time. The wounds of the body and childhood traumas = bloodthirsty Jacobin painter...Indeed another proof of the fact that progress is an illusion :-)

[trf-chan.livejournal.com]

Ugh, I had a long running commentary here and LJ erased it. Fkfgjksfjdsl. From what I remember:

-Not only did David draw the "strange line dance of death," it was viewed by none other than the "sweaty, growling public." :o

-I'm glad you can tell Robespierre apart from all of the other Third Estate deputies by his refusal to wear black and his direct, hostile stare forward. Might as well have made him green while they were at it. Also, he looks about 14.

-"You can always feel David imagining whole families looking at it." Um. Really? I can?

-And then he later goes on to explain that, luckily, my mind also discerns that The Death of Marat is WITCHCRAFT!!!!!!111 I'm so glad he knows what I think. I would have never guessed otherwise!

-So David was a "monster" who contributed to the Terror. Later, when he "slavishly" went to Napoleon's side, he was his "official glamorizer." Thank God for Schama's unbiased hosting! We can't just have him tell us the facts and let them speak for themselves, now can we? (Of course, this wouldn't work, I suppose, since Schama doesn't know the facts either)

-I'm so glad that the Terror was guillotined when Robespierre was! White Terror? What's that?

-David was absolutely FORBIDDEN!!!!!11 due to his HEINOUS CRIMES!!!!11 from ever returning to France after the Restoration. It's not like they offered him amnesty and he refused out of principle or anything.

Dear God. This man needs to be stopped.

[(Anonymous)]

Moreover, Schama's only justification for any revolutionary activity of the French people is that THEY WERE HUNGRY. Had they been well-fed, there would be no reason to protest (even when they were hungry, their protests are not considered justifiable, only understandable). Had they had enough bread and cakes, they would have -AND SHOULD HAVE- continued living in happily in permanent minority of age, patronized by good-hearted aristocracy and clergy and, some decades later, peacefully trasform to the exploited working-class...Beautiful just to imagine it!

[missweirdness.livejournal.com]

Maxime did look young.It was weird..O.o i didn't think he looked that young.but hell he was young. I just didn't understand anything at all what Simon Schama was saying. It seemed like nonsense. Though making fun of him makes me feel better =)

I didn't even believe David could be that bloodthirsty..O.o I don't believe it.

Yeah. I think we all need to ban together and stop Simon Schama as he's making a mockery of everything in the revolution. It's appalling..and stupid really.