"Experts"

[Major Duane]

Something we are having a hard time with in public schools these days is getting our students to understand what "reliable and authoritative" sources are...the internet IS the devil...trust me.

It seems that T.V. has begun stooping to the lowest level of expectation as well when it comes to their audience. Any sort of talking head will do when it comes to history...

For example...

I was watching the Military Channel the other night and they were showing a special on Alexander the Great and their authorative source was Dale Dye. Dale Dye? You're kidding right? I like Dale Dye and he's made some great contributions to historical authenticity in movies, but he is a Vietnam combat veteran cum technical advisor to movies. You're telling me there is no one out there more informed about the Ancient World than Dale Dye?

Or, how about the History Channel using Professor Robert McGrath for a special on Medieval Warfare? If you're familiar with Professor McGrath, he's an expert on the Old West and teaches at UCLA. He got his start on T.V. on the "Old West" series on HC about ten years ago. I guess they needed someone with Ph.D after his name.

Or, how about Aryeh Nussbaum. He's got a Ph.D...he's a professor (darn young one) at RMC Sandhurst in Britain (but he's an American). He's a specialist in Mechanized Warfare...but the Military Channel trots him out all the time...on everything from World War One to the Civil War.

I guess it's called marketing or having a good agent. My point being that books are ALWAYS a better option than T.V. and be circumspect of what you are watching. I hate watching some special on World War One and they trot out footage of the U.S. Army c.1935 on manuevers and present it as "combat footage" for no other reason than the type of helmets they are wearing. They stuck a picture like that in our new U.S. History textbooks for high school and I just about vomited...shows how well they are edited.

Be careful too with some of these Civil War "experts" that are featured. You might have as much qualification to be on T.V. as they do.

We're ignorant, fat, and happy...I think that's how Rome started downward...
John Adams
Huckleberry Mess

[Ross L. Lamoreaux]

I have been thinking almost the same thing as of late. I often scratch my head on several cable channels choices for authorities. Like you mentioned, several are authorities on certain areas, but are out of their league on other topics. A friend of mine in the television production business let me in on a process that the History Channel, Discovery, and A&E use, and that is they collect alot of stock "interview" footage on different topics from each expert, getting more "bang for their buck", so that they can use them on multiple shows.. M TV and VH1 are experts on this as well, because if you notice their use of stand-up comics and music artists talking about things they obviously have no idea of, but they will put together alot of interview time and use them for multiple shows.

[Frenchie]

Originally Posted by Major Duane

Something we are having a hard time with in public schools these days is getting our students to understand what "reliable and authoritative" sources are...the Internet IS the devil...trust me.

Not just our students. I know otherwise intelligent adults who swear and declare something is true because they read it in an e-mail or on a Web site.

Originally Posted by Major Duane

It seems that T.V. has begun stooping to the lowest level of expectation as well when it comes to their audience. Any sort of talking head will do when it comes to history...

Has begun? TV news started going downhill when some pointy-headed Harvard MBAs decided that the news needed to be more than a public service - it needed to generate revenue by selling ad time. This was soon after Huntley and Brinkley. That's when the news started becoming "infotainment" and we started hearing about how our underwear may be killing us... film at 11:00.

And Hollywood doesn't care a rip for history, as we're only too aware.

[Slickrick214]

Originally Posted by Major Duane

Or, how about Aryeh Nussbaum. He's got a Ph.D...he's a professor (darn young one) at RMC Sandhurst in Britain (but he's an American). He's a specialist in Mechanized Warfare...but the Military Channel trots him out all the time...on everything from World War One to the Civil War.

I can't stand that guy. When he's on I have to turn the channel. He is so annoying. I just want to get a rope and hang myself (or him) when he talks.

[Craig L Barry]

Remember "Gladiator" which I think won an Academy Award? The main character was called The Spaniard. After the movie ended I asked my son what he thought of it and he said, "Shouldn't Russel Crowe's character have been called "The Iberian?" Yes, Iberia was not formed under that name (Spain) for another 1,300 years or so but then nobody would have known why he was called that or what it meant. Our world history is taught even less well these days than US history.

Likewise, I was watching the two hour "300 Spartans" History Channel special or whatever it was called which is re-run now after being slapped together originally a year or so ago to pimp for the movie version of the graphic novel "300" about Thermoplyae, which I liked. They summarized the special by saying how the outcome of the battle unified Greece and thus made safe the concept of democracy which would have otherwise never survived to the modern age... Hmmmm...but if Thermoplyae unified Greece, it didn't last long. Weren't those newly unified "all for one and one for all" city states Athens and Sparta back at it beginning 20 yrs later in the Peloponnesian Wars I and II? And as I recall the Persians assisted Sparta in the Second against Athens, ironically enough. Maybe twenty years was longer back then.

So I guess maybe TV and the movies are a silly place to get your facts or your history, if you want to "get it right"?

[tpallas]

Never mind the fact that he killed Commodus in gladiatorial combat to return Rome to "freedom" (read: Senatorial aristocratic oligarchy). All too often history is perverted to fit modern morals, concepts, and even political debates. At least HBO's "Rome" series is moderately good, but I suppose any historical drama needs to be, well, dramatic. Showtime's "The Tudors" feels more like Beverely Hills 90210 than anything else.

[Craig L Barry]

This is why I don't watch much TV or take in that many movies. First, of course, I think every possible movie has been made and re-made a couple times, and second, as far as TV, I hate all the "...Hey, wait a second there" moments in the history based documentaries. If "Gladiator" was a little loose with the facts, let's not get started on "Troy", then.

My theory is TV and movies are intended for those who can't (or worse, can but don't) read.

[RWelker]

Originally Posted by Craig L Barry

My theory is TV and movies are intended for those who can't (or worse, can but don't) read.

There's something to that, certainly. My favorite experts are the people who were there. Even then, as I've been noticing in a memoir or two lately, people forget and get their memories mixed up. It's a headache and a half trying to sort that out.

[sbl]

Originally Posted by vesture_arpratigs

There's something to that, certainly. My favorite experts are the people who were there. Even then, as I've been noticing in a memoir or two lately, people forget and get their memories mixed up. It's a headache and a half trying to sort that out.

I've heard it said that it's half forgeting the bad things and half remembering how it should have been.

Events in my Mom's life story changed several times.

[Craig L Barry]

See Ebbinghaus "the exponential nature of forgetting". Memories are halved to the point of nearly nothing after about six days. Some of these "first party accounts" were written twenty years after the war. The exact date that you might have traded in your smoothbore for an Enfield might have eluded you by then...this is why the original source documents are so critical in determining such things as who had what and when, vs first party accounts.