Controlling the Past*

I recently saw two different productions looking to bring new insights to well-known historical narratives. One was a revival of the 1969 musical “1776”, with a racially diverse cast of women, nonbinary and trans actors playing the founding fathers. The other was the movie “Elvis”, which focused primarily on the singer’s relationship with his manager, Colonel Tom Parker. Both highlighted the never-ending attempts to reinterpret events, and the difficulty in doing so.  

1776 deals with the debate among Continental Congress delegates in the months leading up to the issuance of the Declaration of Independence. There is no verbatim record of that debate, so the writers were free to shape the arguments, as well the relationships between the various representatives. The play’s goal is to highlight the issues that separated the states, including the elephant in the room, slavery, while having Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, et al., croon largely forgettable tunes.

The Director behind this revival said that she decided to stage the play with this diverse cast “to hold history as a predicament, rather than an affirming myth”. I take that to mean that she wants the audience to appreciate the compromises the Philadelphia delegates had to make to unify around a Declaration. There is also no doubt that she wanted to stress the irony of white men seeking freedom and equality, while at the same time reaffirming their commitment to holding many in bondage and excluding those represented by this cast.

The problem is that the casting ends up undermining the irony. It is the fact that it is a bunch of white men, many of them slaveholders, spouting these high ideals, that makes you cringe. Watching others express those views somehow makes them more acceptable, though I am sure was not the intent. The only part of the play where the alternate casting did add was at the beginning and end when the actors slip into, or out of, the colonial accoutrements they wear through most of the show. That was a subtle and effective reminder that the outcome of the debates in 1776 still resonate with us today. 

That being said, it is hard to imagine the play being presented with traditional casting. The dilemmas being dramatized, and the aftermath of the decisions made, are too well known to enjoy watching white men alternate between rousing speech making and clever show tunes. The excellent mixed cast made that palatable, if not enlightening.

The stakes in Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis are not near as weighty, but it is still the depiction of a story that may be better known than that of the Continental Congress. How do you bring fresh insights into the rags to riches tale of the boy that made rock and roll the dominant musical genre? Can you make the audience understand what the pressures must have been must in the eye of that hurricane?

Luhrmann takes the odd tack of telling the story through the lens of Colonel Parker. It keeps us at a distance from the main character, the only one we care a whit about. We sense the push and pull of Elvis’ devotion to his music and his love of family, but it as if we are viewing it from the rafters. We want to know how Elvis reacted to being revived so he could appear on stage, or be on board Elvis’ plane, the Lisa Marie, when he realizes that his career is, and has been, conscripted, but we’re not allowed those pleasures.

Even though neither of these historical retellings was satisfying, I appreciate the effort. It is essential that we constantly reexamine and reevaluate the historical record. It is naïve to assume that any version of historical events is sacrosanct, or that there is easy path of cause and effect that can explain why something occurred.

The signing of the Declaration of Independence is a great example. The official story may be that it was pushed through by a group of like-minded great men with high ideals, pushed to the brink by British perfidy. Or was it a move by aristocrats consumed with their own business interests, calculating that a break with the British empire would free them unwanted economic strictures? Or was the movement towards revolution more grassroots, with ordinary citizens from all walks of life willing to take up guns and fight the British? Does causation differ if we look at Boston merchants, firebrands like Thomas Paine or South Carolina slaveholders?

The Elvis story engenders its own perplexities. What was it that caused Elvis to be such a phenomenon, and what sparked the violent backlash against him? Was it the undoubted sexual vibe that Elvis projected? Was it the black music that he drew from? Was it tied to the conformity of the 1950’s? Was he shacked by the Colonel, or was it as much his own choice?

Part of the on-going response to “woke” culture is an attempt to put our history into a box, especially when it comes to teaching in schools. Following the examples of authoritarian regimes, history is to be viewed as a propaganda tool to instill patriotic fervor. Facts and interpretations that undermine that goal, especially if they are uncomfortable, are to be minimized, or weeded out.

Any such effort to propagandize history will certainly kill it, and maybe that’s the goal. Nothing is more boring than a straight recitation of historical events. History only comes alive when it can be debated. When you try and determine cause and effect. When events are not just facts, but gateways to a broader understanding of where we have been, and how it impacts what we are today.

I don’t remember much about my high school courses, but I do vividly recall Mr. Jay’s 11^th grade history class. He taught history as an on-going discussion to be consistently reevaluated. I recall one assignment in particular when he divided the class into groups and gave each a possible reason for American entry into WWI to support. A bunch of 16-year-olds screaming at each other about whether it was submarine warfare, the Zimmerman telegram or economic interests that led us into war sticks with you, and makes you want to dig deeper.

History is complex, both factually and emotionally. Arguments about what we humans did and why can get heated. Uncomfortable truths about what occurred years ago can lead to demands for action now.* But attempts to shove the past under the carpet are both wrong-headed and ineffectual. So, for all their flaws, bring on more in the spirit of “1776” and “Elvis”. We need it.             

*Shamelessly stolen from George Orwell’s 1984. “He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.”

*See Ta-Nehisi Coates incredible essay, “The Case for Reparations”.