a history buff navel-gazes

Recently I was privileged to have dinner with two history professors. One was scathing, and rightly so, about how movies with historical themes tend to go for uplift, and prettify the facts, thereby distorting history for the purpose of making an appealing product. He tends to avoid using movies in his courses because part of his goal as a teacher is to try to counteract the prevailing view of history as a series of happy endings.

I asked him if he felt that Ken Burns also tended to distort history in this way, and he said he did. Having seen much of the Civil War series, I would be inclined to agree. Mainly, I think the enormous human cost of that war has been allowed to escape from our mental landscapes. We tend to think in terms of noble sacrifice, the preservation of the union, and the emancipation of the slaves. The hundreds of thousands of dead and maimed, and their gravely afflicted families, remain to the back or the side of the stage as the curtain comes down.

But now I ask myself, am I guilty of the same malpractice as an amateur historian? My most favorite historical subjects are the woman suffrage movement and the civil rights movement, both of which had "happy endings". Or more accurately--as both movements are part of larger stories that remain unfinished--both movements have come down to us with hopeful legacies for a completion, at some point, of their ultimate goals.

I think maybe I should cop a plea to "second degree prettification" and hope to be sentenced to community service. Both truthfulness and optimism are human obligations, but when one is playing the historian's part, the truth has a first claim on one's honor.