The History Channel. Well, yes. If you love the apocalypse and Nazis, then you probably watch it a lot. Oh, and there’s also Pawn Stars [1]. This weekend however they did something which had nothing to do with Nostradamus or death camps: they broadcast a weird, Beatnik-y concert performance entitled ‘The People Speak’ [2], based on readings from Howard Zinn’s book A People’s History of the United States [3].
I’ve never read Zinn’s book although I hear it’s sold a lot of copies. Apparently it’s a history of America that gives voice to the voiceless, chronicling the struggle of the common man against the oppressor, allowing him to speak in his own voice. Theoretically that’s a very interesting project, the sort of thing I might enjoy. And yet I have to say, the film was utter crap — embarrassing even.
Let us count the strands of crapnis:
CRAPNIS #1: It was MC’d by a mumbling old duffer. Gradually I realized that this was actually the legendary Zinn himself. Of course, this means that he is directly implicated in the film and can’t make the usual excuse that his work was distorted.
CRAPNIS #2: Zinn’s thesis was essentially a crude Marxoid conspiracist reworking of the ancient myth of the Golden Age. In the beginning were the noble democratic ideals of the Declaration of Independence, and all God’s children were happy in the Garden of America. Then came the Fall, when the property owning elite drafted the constitution to keep the common man in his place (i.e. under the heel of the elite). Cast out from the Garden all history since then has been a saga of the noble oppressed classes’ struggle to attain the lost, true democracy represented by the Declaration of Independence.
Thus, as Tuco [4] doesn’t say in the Good, the Bad and the Ugly (he’s much more sophisticated a thinker): “There are two kinds of people in the world, my friend. Those who oppress and those who fight oppression.”
CRAPNIS #3: To ‘prove’ his thesis Zinn would set up straw men — ‘Schools/films don’t tell you this!’ Before telling us something we all learned in school or saw in a film.
Of course a Manichaean interpretation of history which reduces the complex and chaotic mess of reality to a simple morality play has obvious appeal; which leads us to:
CRAPNIS#4: The participation of sundry Hollywood simpletons who performed the words of ‘the People’. I saw Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, a totally f*cked looking Danny Glover, Marisa Tomei (keeping her tits in this time), the dude who does Time Warner Cable ads, and lots of people I didn’t recognize, all emoting the words of ‘the People’ at the camera. I don’t think we need to dwell long on the heavy irony of a film dedicated to ‘the People’ turning out to be an example of naked celebrity worship, or indeed of individuals who usually encounter ‘the People’ as hookers, cooks, gardeners and indentured serfs suddenly getting down with the plebs, indulging in a spot of the old moral exhibitionism. You could see them enjoying it, that sense of moral weight and heft. Good for them, I hope they had a nice time.
CRAPNIS#5: There were also some terrible MTV unplugged style interpretations of old songs, which I wrote about here [5].
Thus far the show (and I do mean show) was tedious but mostly harmless. Armchair radical Zinn was clearly digging the company of his celeb pals, and they felt all big and serious next to him, so the film was essentially a giant wankathon, that is to say an orgy of onanistic self-congratulation. Nothing to get worked up about, just switch over if you don’t like it. I wouldn’t even have taken the time to write about it were it not for one detail.
Let us assume for a minute that Zinn is correct and that history really can be reduced to a moral fable of oppressed vs. oppressors. If that is the case, and you are telling the history of America then which oppressed people do you think you should include in your film? Slaves? Check. Women? Check. Factory workers? Check. OK, but isn’t there somebody else in there, another group we’ve forgotten, damn, who can it be?…. ah wait… I’ve got it: American Indians!
Last year I was out in West Texas and I got chatting with a chap whose neck was of the deepest crimson hue. He kindly listed for me the many minorities he wasn’t very keen on, but when it came to the Indians he held fire. Even he felt a bit guilty. But Zinn and his Hollywood pals? Apparently they don’t give a shit. They flashed a photograph of a dude in a headdress on screen for five seconds, and then moved swiftly on. No mention of broken treaties, of the Indian wars, or the massacre at Wounded Knee, or Crazy Horse or Sitting Bull or Tecumseh or any of it. Apparently some of that is in Zinn’s book, but when it came to the big screen adaptation — well, I guess that shit just had to go.
Well OK — I suppose they did have to leave enough room for the ads. I mean you’ve got to sell the Swiffer WetJet [6], don’t you? Sorry Indians, maybe next time. Hell, they don’t even have TVs on the reservations do they?
I think if you made a film about injustice in America and skipped slavery, questions could rightly be raised about the sincerity of your commitment to giving voice to the voiceless. And it is a dark irony indeed that by this editorial (or commercial?) decision Zinn and his celebrity buddies erased an entire people from the historical record. In doing so, they echoed the acts of the very oppressors they affect to despise.
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Daniel Kalder [9]
Latest posts by Daniel Kalder (Posts [10])
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