There seems to be an innate subtle and ambiguous relationship between film and history. Today, it seems natural for us to restore and even recreate the luster of history with film, and the characters in history can't wait for the film to re-examine, defend and even redress their past. The film not only brings us two hours of audiovisual enjoyment, but also subtly shapes our collective memory and subconscious of history. History is moving forward at an accelerated pace, and so is cinema. When history is no longer deep, it is often movies that complete its shocking and enlightening role. The 1920 version of "No War on the Western Front" and the 2022 Netflix version of "No God of War on the Western Front" are adapted from Remarque's novels, but today we only have a curious cruelty to the machine guns and barbed wire of World War I. However, forgetful we easily push away the weight of history and memory, but are captured by a kind of historical reproduction in the cinema.
"Slaves in Movies", by Natalie Zemun Davis, translated by Jiang Jin, Shanghai Education Press, September 2022.
Cinema, on the other hand, is the resurrection of historical consciousness. The debate over the film is also the process of different memories and crowds. Movies can recreate the hidden collective memories of a generation, or they can transform our perceptions of the past. When we are immersed in the love between Hao Sijia and Brad in "Gone with the Wind", we deliberately forget the history of cruel racism in the United States inside and outside the movie. The movie "Farewell My Concubine" allows us to experience the ups and downs of ordinary Chinese life in the long river of history in two and a half hours. Cinema subtly connects us to the past, reproducing details that have been overlooked by grand narratives, or allowing characters who have been brushed aside by a single interpretation of history to re-endow them with humanity and courage.
Historian Natalie Zemun Davis (hereinafter referred to as Davis's) book "Slaves in Movies" conducts an ideological experiment from the perspective of film, exploring how movies face the dark side of American history, the history of slavery. The historian, who is interested in cinema and is the producer of his own adaptation of Martin Gale's Return, breaks down the truth and fiction of five films about slavery, and restores the collective mentality and perception behind the production team. In the face of brutal slavery and the dark side of history, historians seem helpless but to convey the suffering itself, but filmmakers can achieve justice that is absent in fiction. This seems to be a kind of compensation for the cruel years of history. More importantly, however, the stories of these slaves, who are now quite distant, do not only bring the audience a sense of hypocritical pity and "hindsight" superiority. Davis reminded the Western public that the soil of slavery still exists in modern life. For filmmakers, while restoring history, we should not forget the rough touch of history itself, and the continuous action and intellectual price that progress requires. For historians, no matter where their moral sense and critical passion come from, before pouring into the object of history, it must be noted that "it can be judged, but it must first be understood." ”
Like the history of the twentieth century, full of ups and downs, twists and turns, the development of history in the twentieth century resonated to some extent with the context behind it. Historians who wrote history in the nineteenth century were concerned with civilization and the laws of its conception and evolution, and in the era of the rise of the nation-state, history was a unified "science", concerned with the characteristics of human phenomena and, as far as possible, the soul of a nation. In the twentieth century, however, with the process of democratization and decolonization, and the development of social sciences and subject classifications, history changed dramatically: it no longer recorded history written by political elites, but the Annals School, led by Braudell, sought to establish a "general history" covering all areas of human life.
Also from the perspective of leftist historiography, historiography begins to reflect on the tone of previous discourses and intervene more in social reality, so we find that historians begin to think about hegemony and resistance in discourse, and examine their own long-standing definitions of center and periphery. In addition to the usual reconstruction of facts through historical sources, historians have begun to enter the realm of mentality, ideology, and discourse. However, what remains unchanged in history is its background as a humanities, and Thucydides and Le Goff face the same topic after all: how can history, which has experienced the precipitation of time and human emotions, extract the tragicomedy repeatedly staged by human beings through abstract deduction and individual experience? In the face of the humanistic characteristics of history gradually challenged by social science and social theory, historians try to use their own writing and thinking to give their research objects a deeper value care.
Natalie Zemon Davis, a famous contemporary historian and representative of new cultural history, specializes in the study of early modern European history, and is known as "one of the most creative people in historical writing today". He is the author of "The Return of Martin Gale", "Fiction in the Archives", "Slaves in the Movie" and so on.
Since the seventies of the twentieth century, the "cultural turn" in Western historiography can be seen as a reappraisal of the value of past history by historians. According to historian Kaye Eriksson, whereas in the past historiography overlooked social life from "twelve floors," the new historians switched from telescopes to microscopes. Bidding farewell to the obsession of historians of social history such as Braudel with structure and trends, as well as charts and data, the new generation of historians is more based on the methods and vision of legal anthropologists. They tried to carefully observe a drop of water with a microscope and refract the panorama of the ocean and the rich ecology behind it. They poured out humane care and affection for the traditional historiography as scraps and vassals of the political elite, and the customs, manners, and language attached to this group of people are not trivial and boring in the eyes of cultural historians, but on the contrary, they have no less value than political, economic, and social historical sources. Because it is through these that a network of all people is woven into it.
According to the summary of cultural scholar Suzanne Buharz: "Various schools of history and anthropology seem to have a common point, that is, their interest lies in understanding and studying people, people's experiences and perceptions in the evolution of the times", cultural history based on anthropology and even literary theory not only redefines the historical vision and judgment of historical materials, but also makes us in the torrent of history think, after "saving history from the nation-state", how should we think about the protagonists of history and the units that write history. Writing the history of ordinary people may not be due to his judgments and choices at a certain moment to change the turn of history, but more importantly, this microscopic perspective represents a certain historical daily and normal. It is also the reality of this normality of ordinary people's lives, with the eyes of historians and ethnographic "deep descriptions", stripping away the whitewashing of power and the monopoly of discourse. Historians no longer have the ambition of generalizing and generalizing human experience, they are about differentiation, especially the irreplaceable experience of each population.
Stills from the movie "The Return of Martin Gale".
Natalie Zeman Davis is a name that cannot be bypassed or ignored in the writing of new cultural history and microhistory. Whether it is the study of social relations, religious rituals and the labor movement in early modern France, or the return of Martin Gale, as well as Fiction in the Archives and Women on the Edge, which is a classic of new cultural history. We can see the trajectory of a historian constantly questioning, challenging and advancing. In the legendary story of Martin Gale, we see the social structure, judicial system and spiritual world of southern French society in the 16th century. And in his wanderings with Hassan Vassan, we follow the brilliant but ill-fated diplomat how Christendom and Muslims crossed cultural and political divides in the Middle Ages. In "Fiction in the Archives", Davis relies on historians' intuition about historical sources, challenging the boundaries between historical texts and fictional texts, and those medieval love letters and pardon documents are actually like a code, from which Davis discovers the skills of ordinary people to "make up stories", and behind these skills are common psychological and cultural symbols that transcend class and language.
It is also because of these great and avant-garde attempts that Davis has succeeded in making the new cultural history a model for a new generation of historians, or rather, Davis' attempts have completely reversed our path and psychology into history. People are accustomed to the grandeur and singularity of history, which tries to shape our collective psychology and identity. Davis, on the other hand, tries to turn history into plural, noisy, endless. In Davis' history, she tries to get us, as readers, to find joy in exploring history with her. We are also fortunate to accompany Davis' guidance to appreciate the ups and downs of ordinary people's fortunes and individual historical scenes under the grand narrative, which actually have different choices and possibilities at any time.
However, when we look at Davis' writing and thinking as an ordinary person, we may not understand her passion as a historian. The historian had a strong public enthusiasm before his academic career began. For her, writing and research should not be just an intellectual and ostentatious game, but akin to a job rescuing the "marginalized"—bringing workers, women, Jews, and African Americans back into view. And this historian, in reality, has repeatedly reminded people with his actions that history and reality are not completely divided. Her social and political conscience lies not only in McCarthyist resistance, in the signatures of the collective against the Iraq War, and in helping Palestinians rebuild their homeland, but also in her almost devout faith and writing in history—in the search for diversity and strife in history, and in giving irreplaceable voices to those forgotten.
A field of memories created by movies
Beijing News: Historians and their works often shape the public's collective memory of history. However, the artist's reflection of realpolitik and history has a similar effect. The role of film artists may be more prominent, because the visual impact and experience of the film is more shocking. Just as we think of the Civil War, we will naturally think of the movie "Gone with the Wind", and when we think of concentration camps, we will think of the movie "Schindler's List". In your opinion, do historians and directors play a similar role in terms of popular memory?
Davis: The popular perception of history can be formed through many channels, such as books about history, historical research in the classroom, monuments to historical figures, oral stories about the past, and historical films and plays. So historians and directors can indeed play a similar role in shaping popular memory.
Stills from the movie "Breaking the Tide of the Angry Sea".
The question is how they play that role. I want directors to take historians' standards seriously when designing films: they will look for historical evidence to help them shape the narrative of the film, such as consulting professional historians to reflect historical evidence of the past as realistically as possible. A gifted and responsible director should be able to do this without undermining the possibility of a vivid film narrative.
Beijing News: Different from the grand scene, historical films that focus on important events in history. In Slaves in Movies, most of the cases you focus on are about the irreplaceable life experience of individuals in historical situations. This actually reminds the reader of the concept of "deep drawing" in anthropology. Maybe movies can't completely restore historical scenes, but can we let readers "reproduce" the experience of people in history emotionally through movies?
Davis: Yes, cinema fits into this form of narrative and representation. It focuses on expressions, movements, and intimate interactions that may be harder to capture in historical texts. Second, directors and actors are expected to prepare themselves through historical reading and inquiry: for example, through the use of images from the past as well as serious fictional material from the past. Movies have some of the advantages of microhistory, being able to show concrete details, and it forces you to imagine how the truth happened.
Beijing News: There may not be a clear boundary between history and fiction. As you have shown in "Fiction in the Archives", people of different identities and classes will also "make up" in the book of forgiveness according to their own needs. The same is true for movies. Perhaps today we will involuntarily bring contemporary moral concepts and ethical torture into the historical scenes in the film, and we will even expect the historical figures in the film to become part of "us". (Just like the people in the movie "The Tide of the Furious Sea" achieved justice that they did not get in reality.) As you say, "History should make the past a thing of the past." But how do we view the present as reflected in history?
Davis: Contemporaneous attention can be brought into historical cinema in two different ways. If the contemporary concerns are the same as the concerns of the people of the era we portray in historical films, then cinema is allowed to be shown that way. If it is a special period that historians focus on and has some connection with the theme of the film, then it can be introduced through the special design of a film: for example, a time period that suddenly breaks the narrative, showing images that have some connection with the filmmaker or, for example, with the actors in the film. Then go back to the time frame of the movie itself.
Fiction in the Archives, by Natalie Davis, translated by Rao Jiarong and Chen Yao, Peking University Press, June 2015.
Another possibility is to insert subtitles and images at the end of the movie, thus adding information about today. In fact, in the last scene of the film, even after the subtitles, some updates to the story of the film can often be seen. Another possibility is to insert text and images at the end of the film, thus adding information about today. In fact, today, the last scene of many movies, even after the end of the subtitles, can often see some updates to the movie's backstory.
Beijing News: In June 2022, HBO Max, a well-known film and television streaming platform in the United States, announced the removal of the Oscar classic "Gone with the Wind". The platform said the film, released in 1939, was a "product of the times" and portrayed "racial discrimination" in the film, which was "wrong then, and is wrong now." Perhaps we have to admit that many classics are unconsciously racial, the product of a specific era. They ignore the cruelty of slavery and entrench prejudices against people of color. How should we look at these works today. When we confront these stains, do they help us understand this complex history?
Vivien Leigh and Hattee Medaniel both won Oscars for their outstanding performances in Gone with the Wind.
Davis: Films like Gone with the Wind are a product of their time, or one of them, because there were already people like W· E· Black scholars like B. Dubois took a very different historical approach to the Civil War and the Reconstruction period. The key to watching such films is to give them an appropriate historical framework. Historians need to study them and assess their importance in the history of filmmaking and in shaping Americans' perception of history and making people aware of the existence of racism throughout history. People can study films like Gone with the Wind after understanding the historical background.
The morality and responsibility of film
Beijing News: In "Slaves in the Movie", you focus on gladiators in ancient Rome, escaped black slaves, and rebellious black leaders. As in your previous work, you continue to focus on marginalized groups outside Western civilization. Perhaps their stories are rarely mentioned in the mainstream narrative of history with political economy as the main axis. Is your long-standing interest in marginalized populations also trying to compensate for the lack of historical narratives from their perspective? For today's historians, in the face of historically neglected and forgotten groups, do they also need to rethink the coordinates of their narratives?
Davis: I don't know if I'd use the word "marginalized" to describe the people I follow as a historian. In my early research on European history, I focused on those who did not belong to the upper class, the so-called "lower classes", that is, working people, including artisans and peasants. In the 1950s and '60s, their stories were rarely told by historians, and I certainly turned to them for that. In the 1970s, I began to study the history of women in greater detail, especially those at the bottom, such as women in handicrafts, women as farmers, and their families. Here, too, I work with other academics to fill a gap.
A still from the film Spartacus (1960).
In my research on European women in colonial settings, I turned to regions outside Europe, such as colonies in North America or the Caribbean. I wanted to see the world from a perspective outside Europe and integrate them and their voices into a European perspective. When I turn to the study of the Islamic world, it is through a figure, Hassan Vasan of the 16th century. Because he himself was "between two different worlds", that is, he experienced first-hand European and North African life and culture. My choice here is based in part on the linguistic tools at my disposal, where I hope to integrate the history of medieval/early modern Islam into the grand narrative of the early modern – expanding it from a narrative focused on the West.
Should today's historians also look for groups that are overlooked in all historical narratives? Of course it should be! The work of restoring and searching for the history of indigenous peoples seems to be particularly important today. However, the question now is, to whom does this history belong? Some Indigenous communities claim that they should tell their stories themselves, and understandably resent reformulations by non-Indigenous scholars, who have often ignored and misrepresented their stories in the past. In my own opinion, we should take this warning seriously, but we should not limit historical research and writing to writing only about ourselves and our communities. Every community has the right to tell its own story, and no one has an innate monopoly. We should study the history of our ethnic groups and communities, but we should also study the history of others. Let us share history with each other, and of course scholars with different positions can debate each other if necessary.
Beijing News: Slavery is a part of American history that has to face, and with the rise of the civil rights movement since the 60s of the 20th century, more and more historians have begun to focus on the history of black people, not only the history of black suffering, but also the resistance they made. However, slavery was an important part of America's early founding history, and at the time of America's founding, slavery was a topic of insolved and long-standing controversy. Perhaps historical figures who were once historical myths (whether Thomas Jefferson or Robert E. Lee) are bound to be reevaluated. Many historians believe that these icons must be broken in order for the public to understand the structural inequalities that exist in American society. In your opinion, how should historians deal with the disgraceful history of the United States, and how should the public view a past such as slavery and apartheid?
Davis: Slavery was a broad institution and social relationship in the 18th and 19th centuries, practiced in many parts of the world, including Africa itself. Slavery in the Americas was particularly brutal in that it began with kidnappings within Africa and brutal and high-mortality long-distance transport across the Atlantic. Slavery and politics in the United States should be narrated by historians in light of the practices and understandings of the time. This means speaking the voices of the slaves themselves: their own experiences of enslavement, their different attitudes towards slavery, their resistance to slavery. Historians do not need to replace the voices of criticism from the past with their own voices from the present. Researchers need to carefully and broadly select these voices to let victims tell their stories.
The movie "Jefferson's Love" tells the underground love affair between Jefferson, the founding father of the United States, and Sally Hemings, a black woman. This love affair also led Jefferson to actively engage in the abolitionist movement in his later years.
As for revealing the attitude of Jefferson and other founding fathers to slavery—indeed, their own practices of slavery—is the responsibility of historians. However, the truth is that the justification for slavery was made at the same time as the idea of equality in the Enlightenment of the 18th and early 19th centuries, and the key to understanding this is racism. The racist attitudes that were widespread among the white population allowed them to divide humans into hierarchical categories. In this context, the impressive development was the emergence of the abolitionist movement, which, although slow, finally had an impact. This kind of work is still needed in today's world, because the roots of slavery remain.
How does history change reality?
Beijing News: You have long been an intellectual involved in public life, whether it was the protests against McCarthyism in middle school, the participation in the American civil rights movement in the 70s of the 20th century, and the protests against the Iraq War. In your opinion, does historical writing also have a certain public character, reminding us of the injustices and deliberately ignored groups that exist in history? And how can this political consciousness be combined with the objective and scientific position of historiography?
Davis: The question of injustice arises in all historical investigations, but the primary role of historians is to discover and describe how justice and lack of justice were viewed in the period and place they write about – and to describe it clearly in their own texts, and to provide evidence.
In such historical writing, historians do not need to take a formal position (although they can do so elsewhere, such as in well-opinionated proposals, or in the preface and conclusion of their own works). I usually leave critical social thought to my historical objects: let them critique in their own time, and I can naturally quote their views.
Beijing News: Your most well-known works by Chinese readers are "The Return of Martin Gale" and "The Trickster of the Walker", which are also regarded as models of micro-history writing. However, how to choose the object of study of microhistory is actually very controversial. Martin Gale's personal experience has a strong story and can be supported by rich historical sources. But some historians believe that this legendary experience is not universal. What should really be chosen is those ordinary beings, using them as cases to understand the entire era. What do you think of both views, and why is microhistory important to historians?
Davis: There's no single right way to get deeper into history. If a person wants to write a broad social, economic, and cultural history with many cases, if he can find the information he needs, then he will do more with less. But the people one describes are mostly illiterate and have no written records, such as medieval peasants, which can be very difficult. So when historians encounter subjects like Martin Gale and his family, and there is unusual evidence about himself and his village and family, historians use it. We can find out what makes his case different from what is representative of his life and family. That's what archival research is all about! In order to document Martin Gale's life around him and see what is "typical", you need to examine the historical sources a little further.
In 2013, Obama awarded Natalie Zeman Davis the National Humanities Medal.
As for a character like Hassan Vassan, I did not choose him because he is a typical or characteristic character. On the contrary, there are many unusual things about his life. What interests me is that he is a person "between two worlds", a person who has experienced two very different cultural environments, and he has also written on this subject, he has left his own narrative for us today, and we have a lot of work to be warned about these historical sources.
Beijing News: In "The Way of the Walker" and "Borderline Woman" you have a deep interest in people who straddle different civilizations and beliefs. Perhaps for your previous study of European social history, entering a completely new field meant not only historical challenges and interpretations, but also a shift in thinking about the world and its surroundings. In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges in understanding marginalized groups in different eras? And does understanding this marginality help us understand today's world?
Davis: Entering a new area of research and exploring the history of a seldom-studied population — or at least a group of people that is foreign to me — is a double challenge for me. The first is the language used during that time period and location. Here, when I didn't have these languages myself, I chose only people and places with enough translated materials. In special cases, I will consult the translator. Getting information from source sources in some way has always been at the core of my job.
Beijing News: The core of history is narrative, but it is this diversity and ambiguity that makes history oscillate between art and science. The postmodern historian Hayden White even radically claimed that history can only be imagined, never experienced. In The Revival of Narrative, history pursues more of an interpretation from a cultural and linguistic perspective than a complete narrative. What do you think of Hayden White's judgment, should we expect some kind of renaissance of narrative history?
Davis: Hayden White, a pioneer of his time, calls our attention to the literary form given to historical writings and how it affects historical narratives—in addition to the sources used or the historian's mode of analysis. I think his work had an impact on the character of historical writing. Hayden White and others have taught us much in pointing out some of the literary characteristics of historical writing that influence our narratives.
The Tricky Way of the Walker, by Natalie Zemun Davis, translated by Zhou Bing, Peking University Press, November 2018.
However, as a general view of the significance of historical writings, his position has its limitations, because he ignores the efforts of historians and the rules of evidence they follow in making arguments for their arguments. Hayden White focuses on the question of literary genres adopted by historians, without taking into account the conventions of written writing that have developed in historical writing. For example, when historians are making judgments, when they are analyzing and laying out historical materials, and when they are developing pluralistic views. In my opinion, these two things are working at the same time. As for narrative history, it has never died and remains as strong as ever.
Beijing News: You have always been a representative of the radical school of American history, and you have used your feminist perspective, attention to marginalized groups, and methodology for culture and identity as symbols of your distinctive style. If in your time, what you criticized and rebelled against was Rankian empirical historiography and the military and diplomatic focus on historical writing. So where do you hope young historians can break through than they used to?
Davis: I want the younger generation of historians to go deeper into the field of global history and environmental history, and in fact, they already do. I hope they find good ways to combine the best features of microhistory with those that are written in a larger context.
Note: The cover image is a still from the movie "Twelve Years as a Slave".
Written by Zhu Tianyuan
Edited by Zhu Tianyuan
Proofread by Janin