The new movie, Steve
Jobs, contains scenes describing events that didn’t happen, such as a
meeting Jobs had with John Sculley, the man who fired him from Apple. This imagined
encounter occurs years after the firing, and allows Jobs, who has now made it
big with his new company, to achieve what every audience insists on: closure.
The film’s writer, Aaron Sorkin, defends this and other purely
imagined scenes by saying the movie is “a
painting instead of a photograph.”
Unapologetic tinkering with history is something of a recent
trend in film. For example, Selma director
Ava Duvernay and Zero Dark Thirty director
Kathryn Bigelow recast the past in order to create more emotionally satisfying
cinema.
The folks in Hollywood know what they’re doing. The fact
that Jobs never got to personally thumb his nose at Sculley is frustrating, a
circle left unclosed. Audiences hate that.
By inventing a meeting, Sorkin certainly makes a better
story. And he asserts it’s actually a good thing if a film about the past isn’t
accurate.
This is
the difference between...journalism and art," Sorkin said.
Journalists "have an obligation to be objective. I have an obligation to
be subjective. There are stories there that should be written about.
In passing, I’ll observe that one event Mr. Sorkin will want
to creatively reimagine is how Jobs would have reacted to his film.
An “obligation to be subjective?” There’s a nice summary
thought for the modern age. Stand back and look at contemporary politics and
you can see it happening in real time. Put it to music and it could be the
theme song for the Republican presidential primaries.
As an historian, I’m afraid Sorkinism will be the end of my
discipline – actual history just isn’t interesting enough. Historians are
always saying one war leads to another. Where’s the closure in that? Talk about
alienating the audience!
This same point is made by the writer Kevin Carey, whose book,
The End of College, argues that
tuition is too high because colleges employ professors whose interest in
research inevitably makes them boring. Higher education would be much better --
not to mention vastly cheaper – Mr. Carey asserts, if we respected the audience
and replaced instructors with exciting videos.
Carey’s book is itself quintessentially Sorkinesque, a
true benchmark of subjectivity. He may know something about higher
education but, by contrast to those turgid professors out there in
universities, Carey has had the wit to hide any actual knowledge. Instead, his
approach to writing eschews boring balance and tediously contradictory data in
favor of lively language and great quotes. Through its own example, The End of College makes a very
effective argument for edutainment in place of education.
Carey has inspired me. Instead of fighting Sorkinism, I
should accept my obligation to be subjective. It’s time for fresh ideas about
teaching history.
I’ve already mapped out my first video for the brave new
world of edutainment. Here’s part of the trailer.
It’s early spring in 1945 and British commandos have
secretly captured Hitler and are holding him in Berlin, with Red Army forces just
a mile or so away.
The indomitable Winston Churchill parachutes into
the city and, preceded by commandos holding torchlights, reaches his nemesis’ subterranean
chamber. A door opens with the clanging of heavy iron keys. Churchill enters as
a snarling Hitler breaks free of his guards and rushes to attack. Suddenly, the
portly Prime Minister amazes us all with his proficiency in karate, quickly
staggering Der Fuhrer with a roundhouse kick, then driving him to the ground
with a flurry of punches to the face.
Churchill leaves the chamber, the flickering light showing
a smile of triumph on his impish face, while the camera pans back to reveal the
leader of Germany as a suddenly very old man, whimpering on the rough stone floor.
How’s that for closure?
A video like this will be expensive to make, but I’m hoping
that production of "Winston Churchill's Fists of Fury"
(tentative title) will be sponsored by the
Club for Growth. I’m confident they’ll be on board once I explain that the new
world of obligation-to-be-subjective edutainment foretold in The End of College will mean purging the
public payroll of not only professors but likely also teachers.
Student satisfaction up, taxes down! Win-win!
Next, I’ll move to ad-supported edutainment videos. What
sponsor wouldn’t want to reach tens of millions of young and impressionable
minds? I’ll bet I can get lots of takers for a thoughtful story on how big
banks saved the nation from financial peril during the Great Recession.
There are unlimited possibilities in new media edutainment.
Just remember: to save history we have
to change it.
