History is a Thing of the Past

These past few weeks my English class has been dissecting Shakespeare's Hamlet using a variety of critical lenses, such as feminism and Marxism. One lens in particular, known as new historicism, really changed the way I look at historical works. New historicism dictates the impossibility of objective analysis. New historicists claim that we can only truly know the most basic facts of history, and the rest is left to interpretation. History is a thing of the past, and when we try to make it a thing of the present we almost always twist it in someway or another.

Think about it. When we look back to World War II, most of us see a bunch of cold-hearted Nazis mass murdering millions of Jews. We think of America as the winner, as the savior, as the hero. But what if we had lost? Historically speaking (no pun intended), winners write history. If the axis powers had won, we would be reading a very different account of Hitler's Germany and the war in general. A new historicist's goal is to separate personal interpretation from historical accounts and literary pieces. This essentially breaks down into a simple fact: we must consider all works and events to be products of a certain time and culture. Now, why does this apply to us?


Let's take a real example. Last night the Oscars were on, and I noticed that many of the films nominated for best picture centered around a momentous historical event or figure. Argo, Zero Dark Thirty, Lincoln - these critically acclaimed movies communicate ideas that have been covered countless times. They're really nothing new. However, the reason they gained so much recognition and distinction is that the personal interpretations of the producers of the works were innovative and unique.

I myself saw Argo and was impressed at how Ben Affleck and his co-producers included so much factual information in the film while keeping it entertaining. Nevertheless, I always like to do my research, and so I went home after the movie and looked up a "truer" account of the rescue of U.S. diplomats during the 1979 Iran hostage crisis. This article rants about some of the misleading aspects of the movie. The biggest flaw is that the rescue actually went smoother than described due to major assistance from the Canadian government, which did not get nearly enough credit in the film. Sure, the movie did not claim to be 100% accurate. But a new historicist considers the motives of the author and the culture in which a work is produced in order to partially eliminate bias. Affleck is a producer (and an actor) who wants to sell his movie. So he naturally would add in obstacles that make the narrative of events more exciting. Also, in the 21st century us Americans don't like to think of ourselves as weak or dependent. Maybe that's why Affleck left out the support from the Canadians. What other works or historical accounts do you think need to be revisited from a new historicist lens?