Writing History With Lightning

[L Verge]

While doing something else besides arguing here, I stumbled on a new book entitled Writing History with Lightning. It is a series of essays from people who are interested in how cinema has portrayed 19th-century America over the years. As soon as I saw that one essay was about Mudd and Surratt -- i.e. The Prisoner of Shark Islandfrom 1936 and The Conspirator from 2010, I had to get it. Of course, it came yesterday, so I have only read that one chapter.

However, that piece is dead-on, I believe. In 1936, John Ford was producing Dr. Mudd's story for a national audience that was heavily into white supremacy and racism (sorry, i'm learning to hate those terms). Dr. Mudd is portrayed as the innocent country doctor who receives the wrath of the federal government for setting a stranger's leg and is sent to Ft. Jefferson to repent of his sins.

However, Dr. Mudd is still "white and supreme" and manages to take control of the situation even from prison, even to the point of threatening his black guards in order to get them to obey orders during the yellow fever epidemic, etc. The film's dialogue takes advantage of the opportunity to rant against the abolitionists, the central government that won, and the inadequacies of the Negro race. And, it ranked right up there in popularity with the earlier Birth of a Nation. At a time when lynchings were way high on the scale in the U.S., Ford's efforts appealed to the general public.

Fast forward to 2010 and Robert Redford's take on The Conspirator Mary Surratt. Again, the temper of the times contributes to the Americans' perception of history. The Middle East, terrorism, Guantanamo Bay, whether or not to use military courts were all topics of discussion ten years ago, so the 19th-century history being portrayed on screen tends to reflect these concerns. Redford may even have attempted to slightly show the strength of women during the 1800s via Mary Surratt. We know that's a current topic in society.

There are many other films reviewed in this book from the standpoint of how they portrayed historical topics of the 1800s -- and quite a few on the Civil War. Glory is one that I'm going to aim at next. My problem is that I'm reading two books at one time. Lincoln's Spies is in bed with me, and Lightning is on the kitchen table. I guess I eat and sleep history.