There is a minor brouhaha brewing on the Facebook PBS Masterpiece website. Minor because not many people watch PBS. It is a brouhaha over the representation of history in the Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, and American TV show Atlantic Crossing. It has become such a brouhaha that the self-proclaimed biographer of Crown Princess Märtha and American president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Trond Norén Isaksen, has made several cameo appearances at the Masterpiece website to teach us all about the real history behind the tale of Märtha and the Prez and presumably to protect the honour of the Crown Princess. While some may find this boundary dispute between history and a fictional television show entertaining, others may wonder what all the hub bub is about, it is not like we are debating interpretations about say the history of Weimar, and still others may grow weary of the yet again quality of this debate over history and fictional television shows and of the paternalism of said biographer.
Atlantic Crossing, as was the case with Downton Abbey and Seaside Hotel, and I really should not have to say this since it is quite obvious, is not a historical documentary. Rather it, and others of its ilk, in some way, shape, or form, represent reality. What Atlantic Crossing, Downton Abbey and Seaside Hotel, really are, are historical costume dramas. All three shows engage historical events. There really were, for instance, manor houses. There really were servants. There really were landed elites. There really was a World War I and a World War II. People really did shoot their hands to get out of World War I, Danes really did spend summers by the seaside. The Norwegian royals really did flee the Nazis and Germans and a Norwegian royal really did interact with an American president during World War II.
Historical costume dramas like Atlantic Crossing, Downton Abbey, and Seaside Hotel have over the years become quite prominent particularly on British and American public television because such shows often carry with them the cultural capital of prestige because they derive from literary sources that are now considered classics, literary works by Jane Austen, the Bronte's, and Charles Dickens. Like all fictions these shows all play in fictional strategies. All three shows use a variety of narrative and plot strategies including drama, tragedy, comedy, and melodrama All three shows make use of camera angles, music, and editing to manipulate and play on and off of their narrative strategies.
That people mistake any of these TV shows for written, recorded, or retrieved history is quite odd because they are fictions, historical fictions, historical fictions inspired by real events. It shouldn't have to be said, but apparently it must, that if one wants history they should go read a book by a historian with credentials specialising in whatever one wants to learn more about. If you want to learn about the real Pocahontas, in other words, you might not really want to make the Disney film your first port of historical call. Or at least you should understand the obvious, namely, that Disney's Pocahontas, like the characters in Atlantic Crossing, Downton Abbey, and Seaside Hotel, contain fictional representations of historical characters or characters wrapped up in and enveloped in history.
There is, of course, a fundamental problem analysing Atlantic Crossing as history. The show states quite clearly at the beginning of each episode that it is "inspired by real events". The problem in applying the standards of empirical historical practise to a self-proclaimed fictional television programme, and here is where all those odd books and articles which mashup science, psychology, or philosophy with a TV show become relevant, is related to the issue of relevance. Fictional television programmes, unless they are claiming to be real history or documentaries about real history are simply not historical and applying historical standards to such shows is irrelevant and ultimately absurd because they don't make a claim to be histories. Welcome to the rabbit hole. Any attempt to apply the standards of historical practise to something that is not historical is simply missing the analytical mark. It is akin to expecting Bozo the Clown to become at will a walking talking Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. What is, of course, relevant, in analysing fictional TV shows is contextual analysis, plot analysis, mise-en-scene analysis, and an analysis of editing strategies.
Speaking of manipulative strategies, history itself uses narrative strategies. One can find irony, satire, modern theoretical perspectives, nationalist ideologies, and ethical and moral claims, too chose five examples, in many works by historians and social scientists. One can, and many postmodernists have, argued that all history, like all historical costume dramas, are second order representations of reality. They note that while historians utilise economic, political, cultural, demographic, and geographic perspectives to understand, for instance, the rise of Mormonism, Mormons themselves didn't see themselves as products of the same deep historical forces historians did and do. They write instead that they became Mormons because they believed Smith was a prophet because he was receiving revelations and that Mormonism made sense to them.
A lot of the posts at the PBS Masterpiece webpage don't, of course, ask the question of whether it is appropriate to use historical methodologies to analyse a show that admits quite clearly that it isn't historical. What one finds masquerading as criticism at the Masterpiece web page instead is something that passes for criticism among a lot of posters in these brave new world digital days, the I don't like it approach. In this approach normative standards become the standard by which to judge, in fetishisting and presentist fashion, a television show, a film, or a novel. Of course, whether one likes or dislikes a show or a narrative strategy in the show is ultimately in the socialised eyes of the beholder. There is a lot of formulaic criticism of the great evil other among the PBS watching classes these days, the soap opera, a "criticism" that doesn't seem to evidence any real understanding of the history or function of melodrama. I will simply note here the empirical fact that a lot of people seem to like melodrama, whether the melodrama of good and evil or the melodrama of romance, which is why it is in Atlantic Crossing, Downton Abbey, which is dripping with it, Seaside Hotel, Charles Dickens, and a host of other contemporary television shows, particularly American police shows with their all American superhero saintly comic book cops, documentaries, and films, both fictional and "factual". There is even a significant amount of the I don't like the way the show portrays FDR or Missy. This, however, is less a criticism than an expression of an emotional attachment to some character. Of course, in the end we all know the real reason there is so much obsession about the "real" "history" of the princess and the prez. Many in the PBS crowd are obsessed with "celebrities" and particularly "celebrity" aristocrats and royals, real or imagined (I give you the popularity of that mediocre soap Downton Abbey). Those obsessed with such "celebrities" seem to spend an inordinate amount of time obsessing about their imagined relationships with their "intimate strangers".
In the end I am left wondering about in relationship to all this huffing and puffing about historical representation on a TV show, a television show on a network watched by the a few million of the well heeled and/or well educated or want to be educated, is why it is so important and meaningful to some to come to a website to whinge and whine about a television show they apparently hate. Nothing better to do? Can't change the channel and watch another show? Can't distinguish between fiction and reality even when the show tells you it is not completely historically accurate? Offended in general by historical fiction? Shilling for the Norwegian royals? Protecting the "honour" of the poor poor royals? Bots?
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