Alpha Centauri 2

Community => Recreation Commons => Topic started by: Elok on July 23, 2018, 08:46:25 PM

Title: Contemporary values in historical fiction
Post by: Elok on July 23, 2018, 08:46:25 PM

At the beginning of The Magnificent Seven, there's a scene where Yul Brynner takes up arms to ensure that a Native American's corpse can be buried in a graveyard over the objections of the town's white inhabitants.  Yul argues for his actions in terms that make sense to a person living in the time when the film was made, or today for that matter, but which would be very unlikely for anyone actually living in the Wild West.  Similarly, I recall an episode of Upstairs Downstairs my parents were watching where a character was bold and forthright about having sex with her boyfriend.  Very reflective of the values of the sixties progressive set who made it; perhaps less plausible for people in the WWI era.  This is a pretty common hitch in historical fiction; modern values get superimposed, sometimes without thinking, on people living long ago and far away.

On the other hand, if we avoided this entirely, it would be very hard to have historical fiction with realistic and sympathetic characters.  Much as I hated the Troy movie from the aughts, it would be wicked hard to sell a character who sulks in his tent because his commander confiscated a captive woman he'd planned on raping himself.  But that kind of behavior was entirely expected and unexceptional; even in peacetime, a man had a right to use his property sexually.  Likewise I can't recall a medieval or early modern era film where soldiers, good and bad alike, "live off the land" by looting the peasants closest to wherever they happen to be.
Where do you strike the balance?

Title: Re: Contemporary values in historical fiction
Post by: E_T on July 23, 2018, 11:44:02 PM

Thing is, WHAT exactly was people's motivations and such in those times.  More than likely, fairly similar (not the same, but along the same lines) as they are today.  But without going back in time and seeing things first hand (as well as getting to know the persons involved), it is impossible to say exactly what motivated them.  The only thing you can do is try to keep that people are essentially the same and thus have (mostly) the same drives and desires as we do today.  And just because it was a "simpler" time, does not mean that those things can be grossly simplified as well.  In many cares, the opposite holds true.

But things do slowly change (arguably, for the better or not) and these things do evolve. 

But then, when trying to present it to where it is of interest to someone to pick up, read until it is finished an maybe even recommend to someone else, is not easy, especially when dealing with dry historical events.

So, is it as much as "Artistic License" or knowing how to take the similarities and properly express them to where, we today (and tomorrow) would possibly understand them?

Title: Re: Contemporary values in historical fiction
Post by: Rusty Edge on July 23, 2018, 11:57:11 PM

This is an important issue for me as a consumer of historical fiction. Napoleon was a ruthless war criminal by modern standards, and a national hero in his day. There were frequent attempts on his life, but it was because of his revolutionary reforms, rather than his sins.


Closer to home is my kinswoman Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, another reformer. I'd say her ideas were a century ahead of her time. So much so that I could easily imagine her as a time traveler, but she's an historical figure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Edwards_Walker

The short answer is that I'm okay if a fictional character questions or bucks the historical norms, but I expect them to pay the price for it. Career and employment issues. Social shunning, unhappiness, marital problems, those sorts of things. Perhaps conflict with the church and the law, or physical violence. It should be a cause of conflict, which is a dramatic element after all.


Well, the movie "The Last Valley" comes to mind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Valley_(1971_film) , but it was an expensive failure.

Title: Re: Contemporary values in historical fiction
Post by: Elok on July 24, 2018, 06:40:03 PM

E_T, I agree that sometimes the past can be rather more like the present than expected.  I once read correspondence between the late-Medieval feminist Christine de Pizan and a pair of clergymen over the Roman de la Rose.  Her argument was "it's a book about a twenty-year-old man seducing a barely-pubescent girl.  Of course it's immoral!  How can you tolerate or defend it?"  Their counterargument was that she was a woman, both of the book's authors were priests, and she needed to shut her trap.  It felt surprisingly modern.

On the other hand, in the Byzantine Empire dinner party entertainment mostly involved the various guests quoting long excerpts from The Iliad at each other.  Over and over again.  Very different from any kind of entertainment we have.  Okay, except for nerds quoting Monty Python at each other at length, but that's niche.  This was the social norm; you have a dinner party, you show off how much of the classics you've memorized.  That's how you dinner party, baby.

I was thinking of C.S. Lewis's observation that every age has its characteristic moral successes and failures, and the value of reading old books is to expose yourself to a way of thinking with radically different biases from your own, and of anyone you're likely to know.  One of the attractive things about the past, for me, is sticking yourself in somebody else's worldview for a while (this also holds true for Star Trek, or Tom Clancy novels; vacationing in an alien perspective is fun for me).  It kind of defeats the point, I feel, of putting a novel in the past, if all the characters are going to be purely modern in their perspective.

Title: Re: Contemporary values in historical fiction
Post by: Lorizael on July 25, 2018, 12:53:29 AM

Quote from: Elok on July 24, 2018, 06:40:03 PM

One of the attractive things about the past, for me, is sticking yourself in somebody else's worldview for a while (this also holds true for Star Trek, or Tom Clancy novels; vacationing in an alien perspective is fun for me).

Definitely agree. But I think there's also the risk that you portray other cultures as being too alien. You see this a lot with supposed linguistic determinism where, for example, the Japanese "didn't even have a word for surrender."

Quote from: Rusty Edge on July 23, 2018, 11:57:11 PM

Closer to home is my kinswoman Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, another reformer. I'd say her ideas were a century ahead of her time. So much so that I could easily imagine her as a time traveler, but she's an historical figure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Edwards_Walker

Wow. Never heard of her before. Badass.

Title: Re: Contemporary values in historical fiction
Post by: Rusty Edge on July 25, 2018, 05:18:15 AM

Quote from: Lorizael on July 25, 2018, 12:53:29 AM

Quote from: Rusty Edge on July 23, 2018, 11:57:11 PM

Closer to home is my kinswoman Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, another reformer. I'd say her ideas were a century ahead of her time. So much so that I could easily imagine her as a time traveler, but she's an historical figure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Edwards_Walker

Wow. Never heard of her before. Badass.

She sure was. Or maybe crazy. She deliberately got herself captured as part of a spy mission and sent to a Confederate prison. A third of the prisoners normally died, mostly from scurvy, dysentary, and parasites. While there she browbeat the commandant into providing cabbage rations to prevent and treat scurvy, saving thousands of lives in the Richmond system.

They don't talk about her much because she was so controversial. The various causes distanced themselves from her because her multitude of reform issues and argumetative nature made enemies and hurt the reform issues she was associated with. She wanted divorce to be easy, tobacco and alcohol prohibited, women allowed to dress like men so that they could do a man's job, etc. In time she apparently became a lesbian. Husbands and Dads didn't like their women  associating with her and getting ideas. The Suffragettes parted ways with her, even though she was the first woman to vote as best I can determine. (1864 )
 
She clashed with the medical establishment, too. She called them quacks, and they her. They believed in amputation, blood letting, medicating with mercury internally, and caustic mustard plasters as treatments. She believed in cleanliness, drinking plenty of fluids, eating fresh vegetables and herbal medicines. She was a failure in private practice because all she could get was mid-wife work, but rather popular with the troops in the hospitals.

Title: Re: Contemporary values in historical fiction
Post by: Elok on July 25, 2018, 01:20:55 PM

Quote from: Lorizael on July 25, 2018, 12:53:29 AM

Quote from: Elok on July 24, 2018, 06:40:03 PM

One of the attractive things about the past, for me, is sticking yourself in somebody else's worldview for a while (this also holds true for Star Trek, or Tom Clancy novels; vacationing in an alien perspective is fun for me).

Definitely agree. But I think there's also the risk that you portray other cultures as being too alien. You see this a lot with supposed linguistic determinism where, for example, the Japanese "didn't even have a word for surrender."

Counterexample: Of COURSE the Iraqis want to be free and have a secular democracy.  What are you, racist?

Title: Re: Contemporary values in historical fiction
Post by: Unorthodox on July 25, 2018, 10:02:25 PM

Quote from: Elok on July 23, 2018, 08:46:25 PM

At the beginning of The Magnificent Seven, there's a scene where Yul Brynner takes up arms to ensure that a Native American's corpse can be buried in a graveyard over the objections of the town's white inhabitants.  Yul argues for his actions in terms that make sense to a person living in the time when the film was made, or today for that matter, but which would be very unlikely for anyone actually living in the Wild West.  Similarly, I recall an episode of Upstairs Downstairs my parents were watching where a character was bold and forthright about having sex with her boyfriend.  Very reflective of the values of the sixties progressive set who made it; perhaps less plausible for people in the WWI era.  This is a pretty common hitch in historical fiction; modern values get superimposed, sometimes without thinking, on people living long ago and far away.

Upstairs/Downstairs is set in the 30s, yes? 

The roaring 20s were a thing that gets very downplayed for whatever reason today.  They'd give the 60s a run for their money EASILY on the sexual front.  And that's just my grandma.  So, I don't think your example there holds. 

Westerns of that era were as much a commentary of society as Star Trek was, not TRYING to be historically accurate so I don't know that THAT example holds. 

Title: Re: Contemporary values in historical fiction
Post by: Elok on July 26, 2018, 06:56:11 AM

Wiki says UD was set from 1903 to 1930, so we're sort of both right-ish.

Title: Re: Contemporary values in historical fiction
Post by: Rusty Edge on August 05, 2018, 11:01:00 PM

I was reading a re-release of a 1953 book about a British submarine in the Indian Ocean and East Indies during WWII. It has a bunch of disclaimers about language and attitudes from the publisher, and more from the author about it being fiction, but I have the sense that it was more of a memoir than historical fiction. Here's a transcript from "SURFACE!" by Alexander Fullerton-


[ Twenty is the number of rounds it took to sink the coaster and kill 4 [Japanese] who would rather have died than lived, which they could have done by jumping with their captain when they knew their ship was done for Davy Jones. Thinking around their preferences for dying it was almost understandable that they often killed prisoners instead of marching them into cages, because they seemed to have the impression that a prisoner was a deader man on his feet than he was when stiff. It did not cover their habit of twisting bayonets round in a man's stomach when he lay with rope round his ankles, though, and it was knowing of such habits as these that made it easy to kill [Japanese] without considering them as being anything more than monkeys with a blood-lust.]

Title: Re: Contemporary values in historical fiction
Post by: Lorizael on August 06, 2018, 01:28:22 PM

I don't know how un-modern that is. Sure, we wouldn't do that with the Japanese nowadays, but I could easily imagine replacing a Japanese slur with an Arab one. Dehumanizing an enemy to make it easier to kill them is a pretty constant human thing.