Well,
It seems that I have touched off a bit of a firestorm.
Unintentional, but I think that the debate has a lot of merit, so I
will continue in the spirit of exchange of ideas.
I will address some of the things that "onnagozen" said in reply to
Nate.
>
> Quote:Because film is inherently about entertainment, and
>> therefore ticket sales, not about accuracy
>
> Some films are, some film makers only care about the next buck. Not
> all films outside of Hollywood are made that cynically, or are you
> making a sweeping generalisation here? And what is wrong with
> entertainment if it gives you a stepping stone into learning more?
Nothing whatsoever is wrong with entertainment, and anything that makes
one curious is good in my book. It is only a problem when we take a
genre like samurai movies (or Westerns in the US) and assume that the
depictions are historically accurate and not filled with anachronisms
and misrepresentations of the time period in which they are set.
> And how does something that inspires an interest, like a good film
> does, automatically become suspect?
Because there is nothing stopping a film maker from including
inaccurate depictions in his/her film.
> And how do you know (and I mean
> KNOW, without any doubt) that the historical things you read are
> accurate and truthful and not slanted to suit the political agenda of
> the writer.
One never knows with a capital K. However, assuming that one can not
read primary materials, one has to rely on scholarship. Good
scholarship does not say, for example, "The sword was the soul of the
samurai" and leave it at that. There would be supporting data taken
from as many different sources as possible (eg. e-maki, diaries,
historical accounts, official administrative documents), the sources
would be subjected to scrutiny and placed in their historical contexts
(who wrote them, why, were they meant to be read by others, were they
part of some ongoing discourse of the day, etc.). Which doesn't give
the capital K know, but provides a level of certainty greater than that
of a movie or piece of fiction (historical fiction or otherwise).
> How many documentaries have you seen where they get the
> basic, fundamental things wrong and the narrator can't even pronounce
> simple things correctly?
Too many.
> How many books about a specific subject have
> you read, and then found another with an opposing view?
Very few. The books that I read on Japanese history (or any
history-related topics) always contain opposing viewpoints. To pretend
that opposing views don't exist and to fail to address them is not
scholarship.
> Does any of
> this really matter, unless you want to think of yourself as an
> "expert" or a definitive source of knowledge?
It matters because accuracy matters. As I said above, it is impossible
to know history with a capital K, but we should still strive after
accuracy. It is that thing that we can't reach in history, but the
pursuit of it makes the endeavor worthwhile. Since this is a history
forum, I suspect that people come to this group expecting that we take
historiography seriously and that our discussions (which may endure ad
infinitum on the web), while perhaps not 'expert', strive to be a
source of knowledge for those who visit here.
> And finally, since we
> are all capable of telling the difference between a film made for pure
> entertainment and one made with loftier ideals, isn't turning your
> nose up at all films a bit pointless?
We can? How?
>
> Whether Kurosawa used poetic licence or not in order to make a more
> entertaining film, who on earth cares?
Noone. But to assume that his depiction of anything samurai-related is
based on anything more than prevailing views of the samurai in popular
culture is speculation.
> I wasn't aware that he was a
> documentary maker who had sworn a blood oath to only depict all the
> truths that anyone ever wrote about the latter days of Takeda Shingen.
> I've seen any number of films about Shingen, all of them give you a
> different viewpoint, most are entertaining too. What's the bet that
> most books about him have just as many viewpoints but slightly less
> entertainment value. Why does it matter?
I don't bet. Also, it depends on what you mean by 'viewpoints'. Of
course authors (biographers and historians) insert their opinions and
speculations into their work and it goes without saying that every
human being has biases that they bring to their every endeavor.
However, the 'meat' of history is about what can be corroborated and
narrowed down to be a description of what likely occurred. From the
historical pursuit we are unlikely to find out what kind of person
Shingen was, but we can find out what campaigns he engaged in, what
documents he sent to others, what his rules for his men were, etc. The
reason that narrative histories have been supplanted in recent decades
is that their style leads the reader to believe that 'this is how it
was' and requires the writer to fit whatever data they have into a
coherent story adopting tropes that are familiar to the readers. While
easier to read, and very entertaining, this is where one tends to run
into vastly different 'viewpoints' among writers.
> Are you concerned that we
> are gullible enough to believe that a film is equal to the truth?
> If I couldn't tell the difference I'd need locking up. My point is
> this, just because films are not a reliable source, doesn't mean that
> every history book IS, and you can't know anyway, because you weren't
> there, and those that were there won't necessarily write everything as
> it happened if it doesn't suit their purpose. Saying, in effect, film
> =lies and half truths, history book = 100% correct is still daft.
> Assuming that I believe every film I see to be a documentary is
> insulting.
>
>
Films are a less reliable source than books written by historians, at
least those that are peer-reviewed. While anyone can write and get
published in a popular press a book on a topic from the past, academic
presses have experts review their monographs and check citations.
Conclusions that the writer chooses to make from the data are,
necessarily, his/her own, but data supporting as well as contradicting
his arguments must appear in order for the work to be considered
scholarly. That way, if the reader disagrees or is unconvinced, they
can go to the sources and see for themselves. It is not so much that
films are necessarily untrue as much as we have no reason to assume
that they are accurate. And the only way available to us to judge
their accuracy is to go either to primary or secondary sources (history
books).
-Shannon