Introduction to project
What is history? How do we recognize it when we see it? Think, for example, about one particular historical moment that most of us luckily did not experience first-hand—the invasion of Normandy. What images come to mind from that event? What sights, sounds, and characters, I mean, people come to mind? I would bet that most students of media, having seen Saving Private Ryan, might recall the opening scene when thinking about the historical event. A well-researched yet fictional account of the event, on film, rewrites any prior historical retellings.
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Now think about your favorite book, perhaps Harry Potter or—dare I say it--Twilight. Having read the book, you formed a fairly detailed composite sketch of every character based on the words of the author. However, once rights are sold and actors cast, the book covers become replaced with gold-foiled starbursts exclaiming “Now a MAJOR motion picture” and the once illustrated or artistically vague cover features the actor’s face as the character. Instantly, your cultural identification of this character shifts. Everything you once imagined to be true is now skewed and morphed into the media’s visual portrayal of the characters and events. It happens all the time, even with media portrayals of non-fiction books . Media is funny in that way.
Media is especially heavy-handed with its approach to representations of history on television. Characters, settings, costumes, accents, cultural and racial backgrounds are all fragmented and layered by producers, actors, writers, directors, costume designers, researchers and studio heads that ultimately intend to give an accurate and truthful depiction of a historical event when really all they’re displaying is a narrative “make believe” that is loosely based on history.
Media is especially heavy-handed with its approach to representations of history on television. Characters, settings, costumes, accents, cultural and racial backgrounds are all fragmented and layered by producers, actors, writers, directors, costume designers, researchers and studio heads that ultimately intend to give an accurate and truthful depiction of a historical event when really all they’re displaying is a narrative “make believe” that is loosely based on history.
Having one foot grounded in history ensures that the other foot is almost guaranteed to find itself accepting the “best” award for set design, costuming, writing, producing, and acting. History does half the work, but is considered boring in its most natural form.
That’s why docudramas, like Boardwalk Empire, have recently found insurmountable success.
It’s so clear to point out and “nerd out” over historical inaccuracies in docudramas like Boardwalk Empire, because the creator Terence Winter is open about his tight rope walk between fact and fiction. It’s no secret that most of the show is simply made up. However, it’s less obvious to spot how documentaries, through form and distribution, can toy with our understanding of history. Ken Burns’ PBS Prohibition is one particular documentary that is interesting to study, because it advertises itself as being absolutely true, yet uses many of the same narrative devices and liberties as Boardwalk Empire, its docudrama time-slot competitor on HBO. This project attempts to put both Boardwalk Empire and Prohibition into a conversation that, through investigating production, distribution, form, genre and content, can highlight how modern television media is a radical proponent of the post-modern theory of history.
It’s so clear to point out and “nerd out” over historical inaccuracies in docudramas like Boardwalk Empire, because the creator Terence Winter is open about his tight rope walk between fact and fiction. It’s no secret that most of the show is simply made up. However, it’s less obvious to spot how documentaries, through form and distribution, can toy with our understanding of history. Ken Burns’ PBS Prohibition is one particular documentary that is interesting to study, because it advertises itself as being absolutely true, yet uses many of the same narrative devices and liberties as Boardwalk Empire, its docudrama time-slot competitor on HBO. This project attempts to put both Boardwalk Empire and Prohibition into a conversation that, through investigating production, distribution, form, genre and content, can highlight how modern television media is a radical proponent of the post-modern theory of history.
Click through onto the "Project" tab, where you will find the different sections to explore. This web site is a host for the text of my essay of the same title, but with supplementary materials to add to the existing analysis. Be sure to watch the YouTube videos in the section about Ken Burns and the one at the top of the "Project" tab to get a better understanding of this project as a whole. Any other YouTube videos are simply additional material to better understand the style and format of HBO shows and PBS documentaries. Weebly was chosen as a host site for its visual layout capabilities and affordance to input videos and images directly onto a page. When discussing and analyzing two television shows, I believe that being able to see clips and interviews from the shows themselves is of vital importance for contextual understanding. Additionally, you will find plenty of images in this project that are not from Boardwalk Empire or Prohibition, but instead help to relate the analysis to concepts and ideas that you might already be familiar with. An example would be the image of the Ten Commandments movie poster in the “Medium is the Message” tab, which relates the idea of Hollywood’s fascination with historical fiction.
The first two tabs discuss the business of HBO and PBS, and how their seemingly different models and modes of production are actually quite similar. Then the project is pushed to analysis by using scholarly definitions and understanding of the “docudrama” as a television form. The “Medium is the Message” tab prefaces the two sections about Boardwalk Empire and Prohibition, where the meat of the project lies. After thoroughly vetting the ways in which the two shows manipulate history, I pose some questions and further ideas about the topic in the conclusion. Be sure to refer to the “Works Cited” tab for any source material you might wish to locate.