(electronic music)
- (Michael) What’s up, Wisecrack, Michael here.
Whether you stan or hate Hamilton, you’ve probably heard about a little controversy:
The founding-father-themed rap musical is full of hideous LIES. For example, Hamilton’s
on-stage love interest, Angelica Schuyler very clearly raps that she had no brothers:
- (Angelica) My father has no sons so I’m the one who has to social climb for one
- (Michael) And YET … she had at least one.
- (Michael) Ok, who cares, right? But it got me thinking: in every piece of historical
fiction, there’s gotta be some line between actual fact and necessary fabrication. And
despite the collective eye rolls we all may get when someone chimes in, “uh, actually,
Schuyler was also married when she met Hamilton!” this problem raises a pretty important question:
does watching historical fiction, ironically, make us dumber about history? Or is a musical
like Hamilton an important tool to get people to care about colonial fiscal policy?
- (Jefferson) But Hamilton forgets - his plan would have the government assume states' debts.
- (Michael) From Hamilton to Bohemian rhapsody, to Vice to even a game like Assassin’s Creed
- historical fiction is either a great learning tool that your hungover substitute teacher
can put on with the lights out. Or, it’s… well, a horrible crutch used by said hungover
teacher who really would like to just close their eyes.
So what’s the deal? Let’s find out in this Wisecrack edition on Historical Fiction. And
spoilers ahead for… true historical events and also stuff people made up about them.
- (Michael) Alright, let’s be clear: Any writer who wants to condense someone’s entire
life story into a few hours of screen or stage time has to make some hard choices. For example,
in many biopics it’s common for the writer to combine several real life people into a
single character, or to invent a new character altogether to further the plot or make a point.
If Bombshell invents a generic ambitious news anchor who’s a stand-in for the many real
women she represents, that’s not that bad, right?
Hamilton, based on Ron Chernow’s 2004 biography of the man, also has to use some artistic
license in dealing with history. The musical chronicles the political career of the American
Founding Father and dope lyricist in his journey from immigrant-orphan
- (Singer) Moved in with a cousin, the cousin committed suicide, left him with nothin' but
ruined pride, something new inside-
- (Michael) To Secretary of the Treasury. Along the way, it features an American Revolution,
a juicy sex-scandal, and a cast of Hamilton’s friends, lovers and enemies.
Maybe because of it’s nearly 3-hour runtime, the play manages to avoid many shortcuts that
other biopics have to take. Also, they rap kind of fast, which makes it easy to jam a
lot of information in a short amount of time.
- (Mulligan) A tailor spyin’ on the British government! I take their measurements, information
and then I smuggle it! To my brother's revolutionary covenant, I’m runnin’ with the Sons of
Liberty and I am lovin’ it!
- (Michael) The play is also full of ahistorical moments like this, when John Laurens and pals
introduce themselves as if they’re a troupe of subway performers:
- (Group) Showtime! - (Laurens) I’m John Laurens in the place
to be! Two pints o’ Sam Adams, but I’m workin’ on three!
- (Michael) Before Marquis De Lafayette spits a verse about the revolution.
- (Lafayette) Oui oui, mon ami, je m’appelle Lafayette! The Lancelot of the revolutionary
set!
- (Michael) And yet, despite a lack of primary sources on Lafayette’s relationship to showtime,
Hamilton is frequently lauded for its adherence to historical fact.
But when people do quibble, it’s generally when Hamilton’s inventions meet historical
fact at this weird zone of “wait, is this actually true?” And that intersection and
the resulting confusion about what is, and isn’t true, may very well end up making
us less, rather than more, informed.
For instance, historians David Waldstreicher and Jeffrey Pasley argue that the play is
part of a genre of ‘Founders Chic’, painting Hamilton and the other founders in an overly patriotic
and positive light. The storytelling, they argue, is fueled by made-up character and
personality traits rather than by the facts. In real life, there’s a lot of nuance on
Hamilton’s relation to racial or class issues in colonial America. But the playwright, probably
for clarity’s sake, chose to skip past that nuance. Instead, Miranda uses a lot of creative
license when diving into Hamilton’s views on slavery. In the play, John Laurens claims
that he and Hamilton -
- (Laurens) Wrote essays against slavery
- (Michael) And, earlier in Yorktown, the men insist that:
- (Laurens & Hamilton) We'll never be free until we end slavery.
- (Michael) Waldstreicher and Pasley see this as an exaggerated, fantasy portrait of Hamilton
as a staunch abolitionist, when in reality, Hamilton wasn’t an antislavery activist.
In fact, he bought and sold slaves for his in-laws. Now, this all may be very intentional,
since Miranda very clearly opted to tell a story about the very white and very slave-owning
founders through a predominantly black musical tradition with a multicultural cast.
But these likely-deliberate mischaracterizations are really important, and can help us understand
a bigger phenomenon -- something I’m going to call the uncanny valley of truth in historical
fiction.
You probably know of the uncanny valley -- it’s basically a graph showing how cute things
get as they take on human characteristics until they get TOO human-like and become absolutely
horrifying. But then they get even MORE human-like and it’s totally fine again. That “uncomfortably
close to human” part of the graph is the uncanny valley. It’s unsettling. So Sonic
the Hedgehog is kinda cute because he’s a hedgehog with a few human elements like
walking upright, talking, and wearing gloves. But give Sonic some too-realistic baby teeth
and holy hell you’re in the uncanny valley. Now put some Steve Buschemi eyes on him and
we can see how deep this abyss really is.
While no one is getting nightmares about Lin-Manuel’s rap battle, we can see a similar kind of graph
in “the truth in fiction.” If I were to tell you a story of a time-traveling Scott
Bakula who gets stuck in a wrestler’s body, you’d be like - cool, that’s not real
history. On the other hand, if I were instead to show you ESPN’s “The Last Dance”
with Bakula deep-faked onto the body of Toni Kukoc you might say: what the ****? Is this
real? Did Scott Bakula play for the Chicago Bulls?
That’s because the latter example lands somewhere in the uncanny valley of the truth,
the part of the scale between fiction and reality where something looks close enough
to reality to bewilder an unsuspecting audience. In the case of people complaining about historical
fiction, it’s the moment where the line between fake rap battles and real beliefs
between Hamilton blur and become unsettling for anyone who is paying attention.
The real danger, of course, is that instead of becoming more informed about historical
events through some light embellishments, people become more ignorant as they fill their
brains with fiction consumed as “truth.”. You, as a casual viewer of Hamilton might
have assumed some details to be rooted in historical fact, because, why would they make
up the assertion, for instance, that Thomas Jefferson was absent during most of the war?
Our guess? Probably because it made for a very charming opening song to act 2.
- (Jefferson) So what did I miss? What did I miss?
- (Michael) Now, before we start sounding too curmudgeonly -- a quick caveat. Compared
to most historical fiction, Miranda’s fact-checking is actually pretty buttoned up. There are
far more egregious examples of writers convincingly changing history, and thereby very much misleading
their audience.
- Don't go in there.
- (Michael) Still, the fact that within Miranda’s well-researched story, so many facts are just
plain WRONG can feel a little bit alarming. It speaks to the potential risks of trusting
historical fiction without spending hours fact-checking it afterwards. At the very least,
it might make you embarrass yourself on trivia night.
- (Announcer) It looks like everyone gets a point for Albert Einstein. Oh wait... except
for the Einsteins.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in writer/director Adam McKay’s absurdist biopic “Vice”,
which claims to be based on the real history of Dick Cheney’s tenure as vice president
under George W. Bush.
As such, McKay seems pretty self-aware about the problems of turning history into a blockbuster
film. As such, he goes to great lengths to signpost the fictionalized parts of the
movie. At one point, Dick and Lynne Cheney have an entire conversation in Shakespearean
verse,
- (Lynne) Thou hast honored thy vows to wife and crown-
- (Michael) As if to really drive home the fact that “we made this whole thing up.”
Uncanny valley averted.
But as journalist Jenn Willams put it, the film as a whole is “about as accurate about
Cheney and the Iraq War as Sharknado is about sharks and the weather.” Williams argues
that the exclusive focus on Cheney reduces the roles of everyone else who made decisions
in the Bush administration. Also, the film just makes a lot of things up.
One pivotal scene in Vice, set in the 1970s, depicts a conversation between Dick Cheney
and Antonin Scalia that seems true to history. Only problem? It’s entirely a work of fiction.
In the scene, Scalia introduces Cheney to the concept of unitary executive theory.
- (Scalia) Are you familiar with the theory of the unitary executive?
- (Michael) The concept of unitary executive theory wasn’t even around until the 1980s,
and according to legal scholars the film butchers the term, interpreting it to mean that ‘everything
the president does is legal’, which is simply not true. In his apparent determination to
paint Cheney as a mastermind who was building a case for unlimited executive power early
in his career, Adam McKay dreamed up a fake conversation. This may be compelling when
creating a cogent character arc - Vice’s “Cheney” finally got the unlimited power
he had wanted for so long. But it’s simply not based in fact. It’s also implied that
Dick Cheney received intelligence briefings before the president did-
- (Cheney) We will also be receiving the daily intelligence briefing before the president.
That gets us inside the decision curve.
- (Michael) This is a magnificent detail showing Cheney’s apparent capacity to manipulate
his presidential boss, George Bush. Unfortunately, it seems to be entirely invented. But there’s
no Shakespeare or absurdism to indicate this is part of the movie’s “fiction.”
By sometimes, but not always, signposting what was fake McKay had inadvertently made
the uncanny valley of truth so much worse.
Combined with an uncanny makeup job on Christian Bale, the presentation had audiences leaving
theaters thinking ‘wow, I can’t believe Dick Cheney did all those things!’. And
maybe that’s exactly what Adam McKay wanted-- to influence public opinion with a compelling
story. But it had journalists like James Mann sounding the alarm for it being lazy and irresponsible
-- even as Mann argued that the real-life actions of Cheney were far worse.
Filmmakers venture into this uncanny valley of truth a lot, especially in biopics and
period pieces based on true events and also whatever the hell this is.
So, can historical fiction ever avoid this trap? The way information is communicated
and the expectations of the audience seem to make all the difference. It seems like
some works of historical fiction can get by without much scrutiny because it’s clear
that they’re works of art and not real--
- Are you not entertained?
- (Michael) They never venture into that uncanny valley of truth. Or if they do, the stakes
are pretty low.
- This is Sparta!
- (Michael) Take, for e xample, The Favourite. Yorgos Lanthimos’ dark comedy is so obviously
a satire that it would be hard to mistake it as historically accurate. Even though the
characters are loosely based on real people, a melodramatic plot and rapid dialogue,
- Madame Touvenay, you may have the tapestry budget you asked for. Spend one penny more
and I will take your fingernails and you.
- (Michael) Along with physical comedy, unconventional camera angles and cross dissolves on bunnies
make it very clear that this stuff shouldn’t be taken as fact.
It also helps that there wasn’t a block of text at the top of the film claiming that
it was based on a true story.
Of course, you could claim not to be based in any fact, and actually smuggle in real
history. Some historical fiction centers around completely fake premises and characters,
from period horror like HBO’s Lovecraft Country, to video game series like Assassin’s
Creed. In these works, the central characters are completely made up and things like monsters
and genetic memory exist, but there’s still knowledge to be gleaned from them about how
things were. Historical accuracy comes through in things like costume design, world building,
and general depictions of past customs.
Assassin’s Creed Unity is a helpful example. Set during the French Revolution, the game’s
design was heavily influenced by archival research, and recruited the help of multiple
academic historians. Dr. Jean Clement Martin consulted on the script, and scholar Laurent
Turcot assisted with the look and feel of 18th-century Paris. The resulting virtual
model of the city was so detailed that Ubisoft offered to use the game’s digital version
of the Notre Dame Cathedral to help rebuild the real one after it burned down in 2019.
So while the whole traveling into your ancestor’s brains and characters are quite obviously
fiction, the experience of France during the revolution might have some historical value
for players.
In HBO’s Watchmen, there was a kind-of reverse uncanny valley, where the very real Tulsa
Race Massacre was dramatized in a story featuring a blue dude who hangs dong. Many viewers,
instead of being caught off guard by a historical fabrication a la Hamilton, were instead caught
off guard by a historical truth.
Similarly in Lovecraft Country, the characters and story are entirely a work of fiction,
especially the horrifying monsters. Still, many of the scenarios the characters experience
mirror very real experiences of Black Americans during Jim Crow. So hearing this sheriff
explain what a sundown town is might get people asking: is this true?
- Any of y'all know what a Sundown town is? - Yes sir we do.
- Well this is a Sundown county.
- (Michael) And then they might google it and now you have someone who learned something
through the power of fiction.
This is all to say, just because something is a fictionalized account of history doesn’t
mean we should knock it as being “all lies”. It just kind of depends what the lessons are
and how they’re communicated. It also matters how we, as an audience, approach the material.
But to get back to more cut-and-dry historical fiction like Hamilton or Vice, their problems
aren’t unique to biopics or...biomusicals? Waldstreicher and Pasley acknowledge a lot
of their problems with Miranda’s portrait of Hamilton actually came from Chernow’s
characterization of Hamilton in the biography the musical is based on. It simply dropped
the ‘latest version of Founders Chic to a faster beat’.
- (Hamilton) Let’s take a stand with the stamina God has granted us
Hamilton won’t abandon ship. Yo, let’s steal their cannons—
- (Ensemble) Kaboom!
- (Michael) The point is, if Hamilton the play can lose some of the nuance, so can actual
written texts of history.
The editors of the book Historians on Hamilton admit that “history is not simply a matter
of facts, but is an interpretation of the existing archival record actively constructed
by whoever is serving as the historian. The musical acknowledges that there are certain
things we simply cannot know—indeed, there is a whole song about how we don’t really
know what went down between Hamilton, Jefferson, and Madison in the “Room Where It Happens”...”
- (Burr) No one else was in the room where it happened, the room where it happened, the
room where it happened.
- (Michael) This suggests a healthy amount of self-awareness. In another Historians
on Hamilton essay, Joseph Adelman stresses that Hamilton “makes absolutely no claim
to being a work of scholarly history” and that it resembles a tradition of historical
fiction that’s been around almost as long as the United States. He writes that, “Almost
as soon as the Revolutionary War ended in 1783, Americans began to discuss, hypothesize,
and conjecture about what the new nation would be, in part by arguing over how it was born.”
To Adelman, Hamilton is something that’s not entirely credible historically, but IS
incredibly accessible to a wide audience as a piece of historical fiction, which makes
it valuable.
While it’s important for scholars to engage with it and call out its factual errors, there’s
no denying that Hamilton, at the very least, teaches us about how history is communicated
and canonized, and, at most, gets us excited about history. And I think that has to be
worth something.
All I know is that when I die the answer to
- (Ensemble) Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?
- (Michael) Better not be Adam McKay.
So what do you think? Is historical fiction a useful tool to get us jazzed about the story
of America’s founding and the exhilarating history of constitutional law? Or is it just
going to confuse everyone on their AP history exam? Let us know what you think in the comments.
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