I used to be a film critic for a local newspaper in a previous life. Like most film critics, I tackled the works of director Ridley Scott. His early works of The Duelists, Alien and especially Blade Runner remain classics. His later works are still interesting visually, but have often suffered in terms of script and story despite a few reasonably strong works that manage to percolate up in his career.
I have no doubt that his forthcoming Kingdom of Heaven will be just as visually spectacular as his previous Gladiator. However, if the advanced word is correct about this film, then it will confirm all of my worst fears since first hearing about this production - and I'm not talking about it's aesthetic qualities.
Fictional films have almost always been a poor medium to spur historical discussions. But with so much ignorance floating around about the origins of the Crusades, Kingdom of Heaven promises to do particularly acute damage.
At least in terms of
high school level academics (and even undergraduate college courses to some extent), history classes have proven to be of limited worth. The primary reason is that most instructors (like the public) either don't know, or are unable to explain, the very complex factors that create major historical events.
How well does our education system teach the real reasons behind the Great Depression? The start of World War I & II? The 7-Years War? The 100-Years War? The Cold War and the so-called "Red Scare"? Vietnam?
Most history instructors are unable to teach these subjects well because the actual reasons are far usually more complex than either class time or the educational level of the students (and instructors) actually allows.
The result is simplify and dumb down history to the point that it actually distorts it, rather than shedding light on it. History is dumbed down to television-style sound bytes, with certain actors or concepts being blown out of proportion in order to fill-in the gaps of ignorance.
This has certainly been the case regarding the reasons behind the Iraq War. Yet many aspects of the culture seem instant in describing the reason for this war as being "weapons of mass destruction". The bumb it down to: "Bush thought Iraq had WMD's, but it turns out they didn't, so the U.S. made a mistake that puts a black mark on the war and its place in history..."
Of course, the high school historians and left-leaning college professors don't want to teach about the larger context of 9/11, how it led to seismic shift in how foreign policy is conducted, the history of Middle Eastern diplomacy, the theory of how democratic processes can alter societies and how that can shape the future towards U.S. interests, Saddam's active support of terrorism outside of the Al-Qaeda faction and his tacit/indirect support of Al-Qaeda itself.
Even this list above vastly simplifies things, so you can see the challenge poised to teachers of history. A truly insightful teaching of history is probably beyond the ability of a high school curriculum, but high school history can still have some benefits provided that the instructors are aware of the inherent limitations of the textbooks and always tries to convey that fact to the students.
Despite all of the simplistic distortions over subjects such as the Great Depression and the current war against terrorism, there is probably no single subject that has been subjected to more distortions than the Crusades.
The conventional wisdom (even among the college educated) is that the Crusades were a product of Western/Christian prejudices wherein Christian fanatics spread out around the world to kill or convert anyone who wasn't Christian because all non-Christians were worthy of being killed simply because they didn't share Christian beliefs. The implicit argument in this line of thinking is that the Crusades were an aggressive war launched by Western civilization against non-aggressive cultures that lived outside of Western modes of thinking.
This of course is pure nonsense. But reason behind this flawed conventional wisdom is the utter failure of historical teaching.
And that is why the Kingdom of Heaven is poised to do a particularly virulent strain of damage to historical debate. As could easily be predicted, Hollywood has shied away from portraying Islamists as aggressive fanatics. That role is left to the Christians. Islamists are portrayed as "tolerant" while the Christians are ready to slay anyone who even dares question their beliefs.
Admittedly, I haven't seen Kingdom of Heaven yet, but I'm basing all of this analysis based on the advance word of the film.
But let's back up for a bit and try to give people a deeper and more nuanced understanding to what the Crusades were really about.
Of course to summarize an event marked by centuries in a single blog post risks being guilty of the same failings that I am now railing about. But these readings at least give a more accurate jumping off point towards a more accurate generalization of the events known as the Crusades and will hopefully be the catalyst for further inquiry undistorted by political correctness.
This current profile of the film demonstrates the problem with passages such as this:
From 638 AD, when Muslims first occupied Jerusalem, both Christians and Jews were permitted to visit their holy sites. Then, in 1095, responding to an appeal from the Byzantine Christian Church in Constantinople, Pope Urban II organized the First Crusade to liberate Jerusalem. Four years later, those crusaders seized the city, massacring almost all its inhabitants in a bloodbath invoked to this day.
Seven more crusades were waged, bringing European monarchs, lords, knights and their armies of devout followers to fight — and settle — in an area stretching between what is today Syria and Egypt. The Muslims responded with their own sporadic jihads until finally, by 1291, the Christians had been driven out.
Let's break this passage down. The Muslims apparently didn't first wage an offensive war in 638AD to take over Palestine, thereby killing untold number of non-Muslims in the process. According to the Telegraph newspaper, they merely "occupied Jerusalem" without any back-story necessary. (For instance, how did Muslims manage to "occupy" Jerusalem in the first place? Did they simply win converts by peaceful preaching? Or did they take over the holy city through religiously inspired wars?)
It's only when the Christians finally responded in defensive action that a "massacre" and "bloodbath" occurred. The Telegraph paper in India would have us believe that Muslims peacefully marched into Jerusalem with people no-doubt tossing flowers at them to greet the "liberators" of religious tolerance.
The second paragraph of India's Telegraph passage conveys the same lie - making it seem that the Christian armies struck first. The truth has always been that the Crusades were a defensive reaction to centuries of aggressive Islamic expansionism. (I suppose you could also describe the Crusades as a "counter-offensive" reaction rather than being purely "defensive" - but in the context of this debate, that is a distinction without a difference.)
Mohammed conquered by the sword. Any reasonable scholar will confirm this. But to the Telegraph (which no doubt represents the conventional thinking on this complex issue), it is the Christians who were the aggressors due to their inherent intolerance (thus not-so-subtly suggesting that the same dynamic exists today between "the religious right" and the more "tolerant" people who practice Islam).
The fact that the Crusades produced carnage and killing of many people (including Jews and other non-Christians) at the hands of Christian missionaries does nothing to wipe out the reality of forces that first motivated them. Others point to the historical fact that Jews were generally better off at the time under their (still oppressive) Islamic conquerors than either their previous Christian rulers or what followed during the Crusades. Fair enough. But that is ultimately a red herring to the bigger issues being discussed here.
The issue at hand isn’t about which minority groups suffered more at which time, or who can point to the most horrific instances of isolated killings in a game of one-upmanship for those trying to don the mantle of being the most historically oppressed. The issue is one of broader historical motivations. Were the Crusades started because Christianity was inherently less tolerant than any other religions and couldn’t bare the notion of any non-Christians existing on this Earth? Or was it a case of religious armies counter-attacking other religious armies after being pushed out of territories that they previously had hegemony over?
Historical truths cannot easily be dissected into artificially constructed "eras" that academics find necessary to construct in order to more efficiently organize thoughts and discussions on matters. History is like a river. You can never really analyze its contents without looking at what came before it. And the time before that. And the time before that, etc. History is in a sense one big causal chain. Any dissection of it into single parts will cause inherent distortions in its structure.
To begin a discussion of the history of the Crusades by starting with the Crusades themselves is to set yourself up for distorted ignorance from the start. You must ask, what are the forces and events that led up to them? These questions are answered in centuries, not days. It's not because of a single speech from a pope and it certainly can't be summed up as result of simple religious prejudices on the part of Christians.
Lest anyone misunderstand – I am not a historian. I am hardly an expert on The Crusades. I have never written any dissertation or taken higher education courses focusing on these events. I’m just a guy who reads a lot, sees a lot of films, and chooses to make what are (in my mind) obvious deductions from the knowledge that I have been exposed to. I don’t know enough to fully educate others on the Crusades. I just know enough to conclude that this upcoming film will largely be historical bunk.
But the reason that a truthful discussion about the Crusades is so crucial is because it has become a proxy for current debates regarding today’s Religious Right in America, militant Islam, the Middle East and the war on terror. And such crucial debates are now being guided by gross historical simplifications that ultimately amount to flat out lies.
When distortions become so vast that they become indistinguishable from lies, then any ensuing debate will be filled by charlatans looking to capitalize on ignorance. While I will reserve ultimate judgment until I see the film, it seems as though director Ridley Scott has now joined the ranks of the snake-oil salesmen.
The fact that a sue-happy, terror-apologist group like CAIR actually put its seal of approval on the film should be quite damning. (Do you suppose that the filmmakers bothered to show Christian/Catholic leaders an advance screening of the film to get their input and seal of approval? Not likely. That should speak volumes about the cynical nature of this film.)
Kingdom of Heaven will no doubt be visually spectacular in typical Ridley Scott fashion. But as a catalyst for debating history (and, by extension, current events) the Kingdom of Heaven will prove to be a disastrous moral outrage foisted upon us by the filmmakers.
They will take advantage in the public's gaps of historical knowledge, and use those gaps to market their film in order to create "buzz" and discussion about it.
Ridley Scott and the Hollywood PR-machine will be able to employ the usual industry double-speak on this issue. They will cynically use the pop-culture misunderstanding of the Crusades to help market Kingdom of Heaven – pointing out how its message is “relevant to today’s world” and should serve as a cautionary tale to promote tolerance. But if someone should be brave enough to point out that it whitewashes the bloodshed of Islam (both historically, and today through its metaphorical extensions), then the filmmakers will resort to the usual lines of “Well, it’s just a movie, not a history book,” or “It’s really not about the Crusades, it about people and individual dilemmas.” Oliver Stone used this two-step double-speak when pinned down on the factual errors of JFK. Look for the same dynamic to play out here.
Meanwhile, Scott silently will hope for controversy on this subject in order to boost the visibility of his flick (which in turn translates into more box office $). Utterly contemptible…
The writer of the film boasts Kingdom of Heaven as the first screenplay of his career. He has now gone on to write the script for Jurassic Park IV. While it may be unfair to put any direct blame on the shoulders of a film screenwriter, the fact of the matter is that the author of Jurassic Park IV will likely be setting the pace for historical discussion on the Crusades in the next year. (Ugh!)
You have been duly warned...Education and a willingness to speak up will be the only shield against this propagandist work of moral relativism.
Posted by Justin Levine at April 28, 2005 05:10 PM | TrackBack