Prologue:
I have recently been debating Trond Noren Isaksen, the
biographer of Princess Marthe of Norway, on the representation of
history in the television show Atlantic Crossing running on Masterpiece
on PBS, a television show that centres around the life of Princess
Marthe during World War II. Recently Herr Biographer Isaksen removed a
post filled with ad
hominems directed at me from the PBS Masterpiece Facebook website so let me respond to that now cleansed and disappeared
post. Before I do this, however, I should note that I can understand why Herr Isaksen wanted to cleanse his post from the Masterpiece Facebook site
given its schoolboy and head boy tone. Still, for Isaksen to cleanse
the post seems rather odd, at least to me, since he has repeatedly
condemned a self-proclaimed fictional and dramatic television show for tinkering
with history, something he now seems to be doing by removing his posts from the Facebook Masterpiece page.
Now on to the dramatic yet non-fictional acts...
Act 1. My response to Isaksen's claim that I have engaged in normative analysis...
Hmm,
I have not made a normative argument about Atlantic Crossing
whatsoever. I have never said whether I liked Atlantic Crossing,
didn't
care about it one way or the other about it, or hated it because I try
not to let
emotions, which really muck up empirical analysis, get in the way of
sound historical analysis. Since whether one likes, doesn't care about, or dislikes Atlantic Crossing is irrelevant to the issue under discussion, the relationship between history and television, what I have done is ground my arguments in
descriptive facts (economic, political, cultural, demographic,
geographic) and what I think are valid theoretical and methodological approaches.
Perhaps Herr Biographer mistakes my descriptive analysis for a normative
one because he seems to be stuck, at least in part and at times, in
normative gear. Let me quote Herr Biographer from the now disappeared
post to make this point. Isaksen's statement about Atlantic Crossing
being "this salacious soap opera", is a marvelously obvious normative
statement that demonises (now that is what I call a "historical" point)
an entire genre with the swipe of a normative wand.
Act 2. My response to Isaksen's use of ad hominems...
Well,
one of the wonderful things about Gore Vidal was that he managed to get
William F. Buckley to reveal his "real" or "true" self on ABC TV in
1968. Your ad hominems, Herr Biographer, seem to do for you what Vidal did for Buckley.
They seem to reveal that true, I would call it an almost seventh grade
schoolboy or head boy self, hiding beneath the "scholarly" facade.
Act
3. My response to Herr Isaksen saying I have made no counter argument
to his argument, of which there is only one, namely, that Atlantic Crossing is not a work of history...
Actually,
it is you, Herr Biographer, who has offered nothing in
counterpoint to my points. For example, I noted that a show that does not
claim to be historical is clearly not historical and so noting that a show that does not claim to be historical is not historical is obvious and redundant. Is this a case of an individual who has written a book on Marthe and FDR marking and protecting his territory? Nor have you, Herr Biographer, responded to my point that criticism of Atlantic Crossing as
non-historical is way off the critical mark because such a criticism is
not a valid approach to a show that does not claim to be historical. To berate a television show that does not claim to be historical for its
lack of historicity seems to me rather odd in an Alice in Wonderland
sort of way. Such an approach, of course, is intsead a
normative and ideologically correct approach to Atlantic Crossing and seems to be grounded in the notion that Herr Biographer Really Knows Best and that the show should have been made in the way he thinks it should been made. Note again that Herr Isaksen is engaging in a form
of normative "criticism", a form of "criticism", that I would argue, is simply not a
valid form of empiricism. It is a rather a type of "criticism" that is more dogmatic and theological--don't forget that nationalism is a form of religion--than empirical and historical. Needless to say, a lot of criticism of entertainment and artistic texts is grounded in the notion that the critic knows best, a form of "criticism" that seems to me to be fundamentally anti-historical, going at criticism backwards, and, I am sorry to say, pretentious.
The End:
I seem to waiting for valid historical analysis from Herr Isaksen...I have been waiting for what seems like forever and with Herr Biographer's posts disappearing from the Masterpiece Facebook page along with him it increasingly looks like I will be waiting for a response to my criticisms of his perspective for an eternity...Waiting, waiting, waiting.
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