By: Ricardo A. Serrano Denis
History
has often been accused of being footnoted fiction. It has been the subject of
cross-disciplinary name calling that ends in inconsequential academic ramblings
that do not further serious debates on the nature, meaning, and consequence of
studying the past. One is easily jaded by such accusations in that they keep
with a narrow frame of thought that restrains knowledge from evolving into an
agent of human understanding. Instead, they make the production of knowledge a
process of exclusive infighting amongst professional thinkers (meaning men and
women trained for the academic world) that deviate from the original purpose of
knowledge creation, making sense out of humanity. And this brings up questions.
If
History is fiction, then why is it not consistently studied in Literature
courses as legitimate works of fiction? Why reduce the impact of its findings
by relegating such works to the space of interpretation (a dirty word in the
world of classic academia)? When did cataloguing something as fiction demean
the subject matter of any kind of study? It is here that the whole point of
pedagogical research collapses. History is nothing more than one of many outlets
that produce information, in league with Sociology, Anthropology, Biology,
Physics, Psychology, and many other disciplines tasked with the same thing.
History produces information on a debatable platform (and I mean this in the
most pedagogically productive of ways), subject to any and all kinds of
discussion so long as its purpose stays within the sphere of understanding what
it means, and has meant, to be human. Now, if anything, if we are to consider
History fiction, then it should be feared as an academic phenomenon, and here’s
why: History can be the most dangerous kind of fiction in the written world.
The
year 2012 saw America threatened by two atomic bombings, a violent middle-class
revolution, and a foreign invasion dooming the city of New York to a repeat of
9/11-like destruction. These threats have two very distinctive things in
common. First, they are conceptually configured in a language very much rooted
in historical discourse. Revolution screams 19th century French
history and Cold War fears of Soviet dominion on a global scale; foreign
invasion jettisons the sounds of revolution with a clash of ideologies and ways
of life again rooted in Cold War bursts of paranoia; and atom bombs cloud
reason by ringing the bells of past fears not lost but rescued for further
political terror. And secondly, they were all represented as legitimate 21st
century dangers through superhero films.
In The Dark Knight Rises, Batman faces his toughest challenge yet: a popular uprising of Gotham City’s people against the city of Gotham itself. This, of course, set upon the imminent danger of atomic destruction through an unstable reactor politically infused with meaning by Bane, the 99% personified in a man with a scary mask. Revolution, here, is framed as stable as history permits it to be, which means it is pretty unstable. Its disorganized structure resonates with mid-20th century stereotypes of revolution painted Soviet red. The Dark Knight Rises updates said stereotype with contemporary imagery, positing the now infamous Occupy movement as a ‘natural’ continuation of an historic tradition (see Soviet Communism) already vanquished in what is slowly being considered ‘a long ago’ (back when history ended in 1991, according to Francis Fukuyama. The Free World had won and, hence, history reached its apex). This gives ‘Recent History’ a whole new meaning. The contemporary merges with the past in an attempt to establish continuity in humanity’s political struggle.
Marvel’s The Avengers, on the other
hand, rescues recent despair in an attempt at redeeming the past through
current American foreign policy. As a race of space aliens threaten New York
with their own brand of 9/11, Captain America (a World War II vet) leads a unit
of heavily militarized superheroes ever watchful for enemy infiltrations
inherently bent on disrupting the American way of life first, and later the
world by consequence of the first objective. The Avengers rescues the ‘sleeping giant’ metaphor made famous by
the Pearl Harbor incident of 1941 and inserts it into the American military
experience of the 21st century (this metaphor supposes the argument
that the United State fell asleep on the war intelligence job and that it could
have intercepted the Japanese surprise attack). The Avengers fend of the alien
invasion but with heavy casualties. New York City, the film’s set piece
battleground, is forcefully thrust into the still fresh echo of 9/11 in
spectacular glory. In a sudden twist of fate, America’s heroes avert the
invasion by saving the city from a prematurely launched atomic missile diverted
by Iron Man into the alien ship that coordinates the original invasion, avenging heavy
loss and giving America military triumph. The atom bomb, a Cold War symbol of
fear, is revived as a supporting character in a grander narrative looking to
make war make sense in the 21st century. It evidently needs the past
for that.
And
so, we are subjected to a revival of History through an effort rooted in
fiction. A negotiation of past meanings is taking place in that the present
looks to acquire new meaning in old symbols of fear and action. Popular culture
is rapidly becoming a primary supplier of informational authority in all things
considered political and historical. As a result, the validation of information is
exponentially relying on its exposure on silver screens, video games, and comic
books. Alan Moore (the author of Watchmen,
and V for Vendetta) once wrote:
History,
unendingly revised and reinterpreted, is seen upon examination as merely a different class of fiction; becomes
hazardous if viewed as having any innate truth beyond this. Still, it is a fiction we must inhabit. Lacking any
territory that is not subjective, we can
only live upon the map. All that remains in question is whose map we choose, whether we live within the world’s
insistent texts or else replace them with a strong language of our own. (After
the Fire, 1996)
In
calling History the most dangerous kind of fiction, we must acknowledge that it
is dangerous precisely because it wears the cowl of ‘truth’, one which historians
insist on wearing forevermore. We must remember that what historians consider
secondary sources can quickly become primary sources for the general public.
This is why I comment on superhero narratives, because the history that travels
through them can end up teaching audiences more about the past than history
books in general. A serious attempt at lighting History under continued debate
can help by lessening the weight authority bears upon the discipline. It may
lead researchers and thinkers to the realization that classifications only dampen
the labor of information production, to the point of keeping knowledge bound to
the chains of exclusivity. In the end, it doesn’t really matter if History is
fiction or not. Either way, History continues to walk down the path of a
regulator, trying to keep facts in check, even if fiction ends being more
convincing in doing so.
No comments:
Post a Comment