Just One ... Thing After Another

from Jacqueline

If you’ve not seen the film The History Boys yet, it’s well worth the cost of renting the DVD. I’ve seen it twice, once on the way back from England (gotta love Virgin Atlantic’s film selection, it’s the best), and again last week. My husband is usually the one who nips out to the video store to grab a movie – and if you wonder why we don’t use Netflix or some other online resource, it’s because we like to support local businesses – but he can get rather frustrated when he gets home with a new movie only to find that I’ve seen it on a ’plane. But I was up for watching The History Boys a second time.



The story is a simple one, really, based on the award-winning play by Alan Bennett. A group of English sixth-formers, having just completed their “A” levels (the really hard exams that university entrance is based upon), remain at school to take their Oxbridge entrance exams. Yes, those hallowed halls of learning are so elite, you have to take a special exam if you want to go there. So, this film is about the relationships between the boys and their teachers – and a lot more besides. However, there’s one scene that has been rattling around in my mind ever since that first screening, at about 35,000ft halfway across the pond. In a mock interview – the boys are preparing for their interviews at Oxford – one of the boys is asked to talk about history. He’s the one who can best be described as not the sharpest knife in the drawer, however, if he had just managed to get enough “A’s” at “A” level to even take the exam, he’s not too shabby, either. His reply is simple, he just shrugs and says that, to be honest, history is “just one f*****g thing after another.”

I look at the newspaper sometimes, and I think the same thing, in fact, what the hell is happening in this world? Trying to keep up with all the wars, all the street killings, all the death and destruction is like being one of those circus performers who balance plates on bamboo sticks, with the goal to keep all the plates spinning. This world has spun right out of control, and there is no one person, no group, political party or country who seems to have the guts, power, statesmanship, ability – or humility, even – to say, “Enough!” This is where the people have to do something, and I wonder, what on earth we are going to do? How can I, or you, or anyone, as a private individual, no matter how many organizations we subscribe to, apply enough braking power to this runaway machine that is humanity gone mad in the 21st century? We have a major crisis of biblical proportions and we cannot stop it.



Has it ever been this bad? And what happened afterwards? In times past, we’ve had wars, conflagrations that engulfed almost every country on earth, but the war on the streets had not reached the same level of destruction – or had it? My mind starts to spin with history, with that one f*****g thing after another.



Between the two world wars there was the depression, and prohibition, and there were the years of the big underworld crimes on both sides of the Atlantic – remember The Untouchables? During Vietnam, here in the US there were race riots, and the Klan, and heaven knows what else. One of the reasons why the aftermath of WW2 in Britain was so bad, was not only the dreadful lack of food, but the numbers of trained killers who were demobilized from the military and were running the gangs and black markets (read Tony Broadbent’s excellent mystery novels, The Smoke and Spectres in the Smoke and you’ll get a sense of it).



Then there were the declining years of empires, of colonization, and look what went on then – in India, Kenya, Malaya, for example – as insurgents stepped forward to take back the lands, and the death and destruction visited upon the people in guerrilla warfare that followed. Just one thing after another.

I love history, I especially love social history, looking at what extraordinary times do to ordinary people. But I am increasingly incensed by our inability to learn from it.

One of my current favorite television shows (and I might add, I rarely watch television, and can count shows I am willing to watch on the fingers of one hand), is the new Robin Hood from the BBC. It’s a rather wacky romp through the Middle Ages, probably inspired by the success of Heath Ledger’s breakout film, The Knight’s Tale, plus a bit of Star Wars, and perhaps even a bit of Deadwood. The characters all have great teeth, Maid Marion’s skin sparkles, and the Sheriff of Nottingham is one of the most likeable rotters on the screen. We all know that Robin gets a kick out of giving to the poor and likes being a popular outlaw, and Little John is more like Harry Potter’s Hagrid. However, it’s interesting the subjects they touch upon, and the little ah-ha’s here and there.



The last show opened with a Crusades (Holy Wars) veteran losing his marbles in a marketplace, besieged by the devils of his mind, the memories of war, and the killing. And in the end it was a Saracen – a Muslim - who helped him, a prince who had come to England to seek a solution to the wars, to lobby for a peace that would end the killing of both Christians and Muslims. The Crusades were fought between 1095–1291, with more fighting in the centuries that followed. And look where we are today, just one fighting thing after another.



I have heard the same phrase twice just recently, with reference to George Bush and Tony Blair: “History will judge them differently.” I suppose that means, “differently to the way in which people are judging them now.” Or words to that effect. I wondered about that, especially during another scene in that film, where the young history teacher, with his class at a World War One memorial, said that the reason we commemorate war, the reason we make much of the fallen, is to draw attention away from the mistakes, the huge errors of judgment that led to the slaughter.



The words suggested that the collective judgment of the people is deflected by the very leaders who made those decisions, who sent our youth to their deaths, and in providing a means and a place for us to come together, they have encouraged us to join in grief, in remembrance, while those who lobbied for the crusade are let off the hook, allowed to go on their lecture tours, take up their lucrative board-memberships, build their libraries and live in relative comfort without the weight of loss suffered by so many in their name, and as a result of such hubris. On the other hand, you could say that enough books have been written about the Great War, and Vietnam, for example, that we know a fair bit about what went wrong in the past. And you don’t see too many memorials to those lost through lack of access to affordable healthcare, or because a government is not adequately prepared for a natural disaster. Or because we have a drug problem ... scroll back to Cornelia’s post of two days ago, it’s Naked Authors Required Reading.

But at the end of the day, do they care at all, these decision makers – with their post-presidential or prime-ministerial cushy retirements – how history might judge them? After all, the world news seems to be one big bad thing after another. Has been for centuries. And we’re still here to look back at it all.



Thank heavens for posts like Jim’s yesterday, we need all the wonder we can get.

Interesting note: In the news today, Robert DiNiro and Al Pacino will be on the screen again in a movie called, “Righteous Kill.” Said co-producer, Al Lerner, “It’s an event in world history.” They're both great actors, but please do not kid yourself!