Television histories : shaping collective memory in the media age

371 Pages·16.676 MB·English

by  edited by Gary R. Edgerton and Peter C. Rollins.

Television Histories

Television
Histories
Shaping
Collective Memory
in the Media Age
Edited by
Gary R. Edgerton and Peter C. Rollins
THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KENTUCKY
Publication of this volume was made possible in part
by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Copyright © 2001 by The University Press of Kentucky
Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth,
serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre
College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University,
The Filson Club Historical Society, Georgetown College,
Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University,
Morehead State University, Murray State University,
Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University,
University of Kentucky, University of Louisville,
and Western Kentucky University.
All rights reserved.
Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky
663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008
05 04 03 02 01 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Television histories : shaping collective memory in the media age /
Gary R. Edgerton and Peter C. Rollins, editors.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8131-2190-6
1. Television and history. 2. Historical television programs—
History and criticism. 3. Television broadcasting of news. I.
Edgerton, Gary R. (Gary Richard), 1952– . II. Rollins, Peter C.
PN1992.56 .T45 2001 00–012272
791.45'658—dc21
This book is printed on acid-free recycled paper meeting
the requirements of the American National Standard
for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials.
Manufactured in the United States of America.
Contents
Introduction: Television as Historian: A Different Kind of History
Altogether Gary R. Edgerton 1
Part I: Prime-Time Entertainment Programming as Historian
1. History TV and Popular Memory Steve Anderson 19
2. Masculinity and Femininity in Television’s Historical Fictions:
Young Indiana Jones Chronicles and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman
Mimi White 37
3. Quantum Leap: The Postmodern Challenge of Television as History
Robert Hanke 59
4. Profiles in Courage: Televisual History on the New Frontier
Daniel Marcus 79
Part II: The Television Documentary as Historian
5. Victory at Sea: Cold War Epic Peter C. Rollins 103
6. Breaking the Mirror: Dutch Television and the History of the
Second World War Chris Vos 123
7. Contested Public Memories: Hawaiian History as Hawaiian or
American Experience Carolyn Anderson 143
8. Mediating Thomas Jefferson: Ken Burns as Popular Historian
Gary R. Edgerton 169
Part III: TV News and Public Affairs Programming as Historian
9. Pixies: Homosexuality, Anti-Communism, and the Army–
McCarthy Hearings Thomas Doherty 193
10. Images of History in Israel Television News: The Territorial
Dimension of Collective Memories, 1987–1990
Netta Ha-Ilan 207
11. Memories of 1945 and 1963: American Television Coverage
of the End of the Berlin Wall, November 9, 1989
David Culbert 230
12. Television: The First Flawed Rough Drafts of History
Philip M. Taylor 244
Part IV: Television Production, Reception, and History
13. The History Channel and the Challenge of Historical
Programming Brian Taves 261
14. Rethinking Television History Douglas Gomery 282
15. Nice Guys Last Fifteen Seasons: Jack Benny on Television,
1950–1965 James L. Baughman 309
16. Organizing Difference on Global TV: Television History and
Cultural Geography Michael Curtin 335
Selected Bibliography: Additional Sources for Researching Television
as Historian Kathryn Helgesen Fuller-Seeley 357
Contributors 366
Television and Film Index 370
General Index 376
Introduction | 1
n
o
i
t Television as Historian
c
u
d A Different Kind of
o
History Altogether
r
t
n
I
Gary R. Edgerton
History on television is a vast enterprise, spanning commercial and public
networks, corporate and independent producers. As we rapidly enter the
twenty-first century, a significant increase in historical programming exists
on television screens throughout the United States, mostly in the form of
biographies and quasi-biographical documentaries, which coincides with a
marked rise of interest in history among the general population. This intro-
duction will explore some of the parameters and implications of “television
as historian,” propose seven general assumptions about the nature of this
widespread phenomenon, and end with some concluding observations con-
cerning the enduring relationship between professional history and popular
history as well as the challenges and opportunities this linkage poses for “tele-
vision and history” scholarship in the future.
My first and most basic assumption is that television is the principal means by
which most people learn about history today. Television must be understood
(and seldom is) as the primary way that children and adults form their un-
derstanding of the past. Just as television has profoundly affected and altered
every aspect of contemporary life—from the family to education, govern-
ment, business, and religion—the medium’s nonfictional and fictional por-
trayals have similarly transformed the way tens of millions of viewers think
about historical figures and events. Most people, for example, recall the Gulf
War and the major individuals associated with that conflict through the lens
of television, just as their frame of reference regarding slavery has been deeply
influenced by TV miniseries such as Roots (1977) and Africans in America
2 | Gary R. Edgerton
(1998), along with theatrical films such as Amistad (1997), which character-
istically has been seen by more people on TV than in theaters.1
Second, history on television is now big business. There are over one hundred
broadcast and cable networks in America alone, and roughly 90 percent of
these services resulted from the dramatic rise of cable and satellite TV over
the last twenty-five years. Scores of cable networks have become closely iden-
tified with documentaries in general and historical documentaries in par-
ticular for two main reasons: (1) Nonfiction is relatively cost-effective to
produce when compared to fictional programming (i.e., according to the
latest estimates, per-hour budgets for a dramatic TV episode approximate
$1 million, while documentaries average $500,000 and reality-based pro-
grams $300,000); and, (2) even more importantly, many of these shows that
have some historical dimension are just as popular with audiences as sitcoms,
hour-long dramas, and movie reruns in syndication.2
Fifteen biographical programs are currently thriving on U.S. television,
for example, with a half-dozen more already in preparation.3 Most of these
existing series are also among the most watched shows on their respective
networks. The forerunner and acknowledged prototype is A&E’s (The Arts
and Entertainment Network) Biography, which averages a nightly viewership
of nearly three million, spawning videotapes, CDs, a magazine called Biog-
raphy with two million readers, and a newly launched all-biography channel.
The index of historical (and contemporary) individuals and couples featured
on Biography—from Thomas Jefferson to Jackie Robinson to Pocahontas
and John Smith to Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln—is sweeping and
diverse. At the same time, this series typically relies on highly derivative
stylistics, which are a pastiche of techniques borrowed from TV news, prime-
time dramatic storytelling, and PBS nonfiction à la Ken Burns. All told,
A&E’s Biography is a representative example of how history is often framed
in highly conventional and melodramatic ways on TV, mainly to be mar-
keted and sold directly to American consumers as a commodity.
Third, the technical and stylistic features of television as a medium strongly
influence the kinds of historical representations that are produced. History on TV
tends to stress the twin dictates of narrative and biography, which ideally
expresses television’s inveterate tendency towards personalizing all social,
cultural, and (for our purposes) historical matters within the highly con-
trolled and viewer-involving confines of a well-constructed plot structure.
The scholarly literature on television has established intimacy and immediacy
(among other aesthetics) as inherent properties of the medium.4 In the case
of intimacy, for instance, the limitations of the relatively smaller TV screen
that is typically watched within the privacy of the home environment have
Introduction | 3
long ago resulted in an evident preference for intimate shot types (i.e., pri-
marily close-ups and medium shots), fashioning most fictional and nonfic-
tional historical portrayals in the style of personal dramas or melodramas
played out between a manageable number of protagonists and antagonists.
When successful, audiences closely identify with the historical “actors” and
stories being presented, and, likewise, respond in intimate ways in the pri-
vacy of their own homes.
Television’s immediacy usually works in tandem with this tendency to-
ward intimacy. Both TV and film are incapable of rendering temporal di-
mensions with much precision. They have no grammatical analogues for the
past and future tenses of written language and, thus, amplify the present
sense of immediacy out of proportion. The illusion created in television watch-
ing is often suggested by the cliché “being there,” which is exactly what David
Grubin, celebrated producer of such historical documentaries as LBJ (1992),
FDR (1994), TR, The Story of Theodore Roosevelt (1996), and Truman (1997)
is talking about when he says, “You are not learning about history when you
are watching . . . you feel like you’re experiencing it.”5 “Television as histo-
rian,” in this regard, is best understood as personifying Marshall McLuhan’s
eminently useful—though often misunderstood—metaphor, “the medium
is the message.”
Fourth, the improbable rise and immense popularity of history on TV is also the
result of its affinity and ability to embody current concerns and priorities within
the stories it telecasts about the past. Television’s unwavering allegiance to the
present tense is not only one of the medium’s grammatical imperatives, it is
also an implicit challenge to one of the traditional touchstones of academic
history. Professional historians have customarily employed the rigors of their
craft to avoid presentism as much as possible, which is the assumption that
the past is being judged largely by the standards of the present. The revision-
ist work of postmodernist historians like Hayden White have lately chal-
lenged this principle in academic circles.6 White and others have argued that
historiography is much more about telling stories inspired by contemporary
perspectives than recapturing and conveying any kind of objective truth about
the past.7 This alternative scholarly outlook has gained increased momen-
tum in some quarters over the last generation, even calling into question
whether or not there is an authentic, knowable history at all beyond the
subjectivity of the present. Most popular historians for their part, such as
television producers and filmmakers, take this postmodernist viewpoint one
step further. They tacitly embrace presentism through the back door by con-
centrating only on those people, events, and issues that are most relevant to
themselves and their target audiences.