Whose View?

THE NEW YORK TIMES today has an interesting article on the new documentary on the Chicago 10, made by the Director of The Kid Stays In the Picture, Brett Morgen.

It starts out as basically another article on a historical documentary about the trial of the activists that grew out of the chaos of the 1968 Democratic Convention. And then, intriguingly, it starts to be about something else:

“Chicago 10” has met with mixed reactions from the dwindling number of people who saw the trial firsthand, and its reception at the Sundance Film Festival last year was lukewarm. (“The pic opened the fest,” Variety reported, “but by the next day its buzz was all but dead.”) Enthusiasm from younger leftists eager for inspiration, on the other hand, seems high.

In addition to the trial sequences, the film presents raw archival footage of the Chicago police department’s savage response to the protests. Brett Morgen, the film’s writer and director, married that footage with throbbing music from Rage Against the Machine, Black Sabbath and the Beastie Boys, forgoing the usual ’60s soundtrack.

Mr. Morgen, who co-directed “The Kid Stays in the Picture,” about the film producer Robert Evans, was born two months after the convention. In an interview in his office in Rockaway, Queens, a block from the beach and above a store that sells sneakers, he said he had aimed to avoid treating a turning point in the history of the counterculture as sacred ground.

“The world simply did not need another movie about the ’60s made by someone from the ’60s,” said Mr. Morgen, who is scruffy and longhaired but not especially mellow. “We weren’t making a movie about 1968 per se. I don’t want to smell patchouli. I don’t want to see bell-bottoms.”

Who gets to tell history is always a fun little topic, but having read a bit up on the Chicago 10 trial, I have to say that I'd probably have given the film a pass if not for the intriguing nature of Morgen's approach.

By untethering the trial and its legacy from what's become pretty moldy baby-boomer mythmaking, Morgen is actually fomenting a fascinating social dance right in front of our eyes.

All history is reinterpreted. There's a natural process that happens as first hand accounts fade, and people pass from the scene, and it's left to others with more distance to decide what it all meant, really.

Usually this process starts well before "those who were there" move on. And it's subject to interesting historical eddies and reversals -- especially when politics is involved.

Right after Richard Nixon's death, and in the years leading up to it, there was a pretty full-throated reaction by conservative quarters to try to rehabilitate him. That seems not to have taken or gained too much traction in the years since, as Nixon fades further and further from the public view. The overreaching of Bush and Co. have sort of underlined the feeling that, you know, maybe we got it right the first time.

We're probably only about two or three years away from the first people who'll try to "Reconsider" G.W. Bush. It'll be interesting to see how that sells.

But the reason why that article piqued my interest so much is because of the clear generational divide that seems to underly it. There's a palpable unease by many of the Baby Boomers quoted in the audience that now, a Baby Boomer story is being recontextualizeed.

It was the baby boomers, of course, who shaped the "Generation X" narrative: the slacker, how reframed through their own experiences, and now they're getting a taste of where they sit in the demographic firmament: finally outnumbered by generations younger and older than them who just don't necessarily see the sixties in the same hagiographic light. It's gonna be an interesting ride.

The reinterpretation of history in artistic or fictionalized terms is a particularly thorny brew in Canada, because the libel laws and their reverse onus positions make for a perilous landscape for anyone who cares to put a non-tradional interpretation spin on past events. (In practical terms: you wanna make a movie about something that happened that might paint the people in it in an unflattering light? Better wait til they're dead. Of course, that means by the time you're making it, it's probably not something that's too current, that could really educate or reframe debates. But there you go.)

Examples of what happens when you step outside the historically conservative box? Veterans, reacting en masse to The Valour and the Horror, which challenged the traditional "heroic" cant of Allied Bombing in WWII, mounted a big campaign to get that program pulled.

A couple of years ago, Prairie Giant, the CBC telepic of the Sask. Premier who introduced Universal Health Care, was similarly withdrawn because a relative of one of Douglas' rivals raised a minor quibble about a small, sidebar element of the portrayal of their ancestor. (In right wing noise machine terms, it was an "outrage!" But really, it was pretty small beer.)

This moves through right to the present day -- it's tough in Canada to do things that are "ripped from the headlines" because you can't afford to ever, ever get sued. Combine that with a natural play-it-safe, risk-averse, don't-offend-anybody approach to Canadian history and it's no wonder that historical movies and programs don't do too well here.

I guess that's one reason why the History Channel runs JAG.

Anyway, all that B.G. is why I'm fascinated, and pleased, and surprised when anything like Mayerthorpe actually gets made.

History is meant to be diced and rethought. One generation's orthodoxies fade with radical new thoughts and ideals, and the march of interpretation and history goes on.

The relatives of those long-dead English kings or Italian nobles probably would have been some pissed at old William Shakes. And Boomers should get used to movies like The Chicago 10. Cause more are coming, baby.

At least south of the 49th parallel...