Chopra-Gant, Mike. Cinema and History: The Telling of Stories.
Weiser, Frans
Chopra-Gant, Mike. Cinema and History: The Telling of Stories.
London: Wallflower Press, 2008. Print.
As Mike Chopra-Gant repeatedly reminds the reader in Cinema and
History, his slim volume is not intended to present an exhaustive
account of film history or the adaptation of history by filmmakers.
Instead, this accessible study is designed to introduce students to key
contemporary issues defining the critical analysis of films that invoke
the past. The book is organized around two main issues, the first of
which is how this type of cinema can be used as a form of evidence
regarding the social values and discourses predominant during the
historical moment in which it is produced, and which Chopra-Gant
examines within the context of reception studies. The second issue is
how films, in turn, use--rather than merely represent--the past in
creating narratives, which allows for an analysis of the effects of
postmodern shifts upon historiography.
While Chopra-Gant acknowledges that this focus ignores several
ongoing debates regarding the intersection of film studies,
historiography, and changing technologies within film production, he
maintains that these two issues "are those which are most clearly
implicated in the production and circulation of meanings," and more
so than other developments, they highlight meaning-making "in the
production of socially pervasive understandings of the past" (98).
His goal is to demonstrate that the representation of history is more
complicated than it might appear to casual filmgoers. While he concludes
that history has no endpoint, and must be understood as a continuous and
unending process of revision, he makes the case that viewers nonetheless
have a responsibility to recognize methods that can be used to analyze
film on an empirical rather than an aesthetic basis.
The book's four chapters highlight these principle debates
along the axes of theory and practice. After the introduction provides a
brief overview of film studies, Chapters One and Three supply a basic
history of each theoretical concern, while Chapters Two and Four in turn
provide illustrative applications of these approaches via case studies.
For example, Chapter One contextualizes reception studies by examining
how emerging film and literary theory in the 1960-70s analyzed texts in
isolation as self-contained forms of knowledge, conceiving of the viewer
as a passive being uninvolved in the process of signification. This
attitude shifted in literary studies "towards an understanding of
meaning-making as a process that occurs in the interaction between a
text and an (active) reader within a particular context" (15). In
order to discuss historical reception as an approach within film
studies, Chopra-Gant draws on Janet Staiger's pioneering work,
Perverse Spectators (2000), which demonstrates the different ways that
horizons of expectation are created to help determine a
historically-situated viewer's reading of individual films.
Resources for reception study include, among other sources, publicity
materials released by distributors, which serves the function of
marketing as well as providing an interpretive framework for audiences,
and contemporary newspaper reviews. Chopra-Gant complicates the use of
both materials as contextual data by pointing out socioeconomic gaps
between reviewers and intended audiences, but he stresses that the
benefits for understanding how film interpretation changes over time are
worth the potential risks.
Chapter Two seeks to provide an example of reception studies in
practice via a case study of Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954).
Although many analyses have focused on meta-cinematic and
psychoanalytical interpretations of the film, according to Chopra-Gant,
few have analyzed how the film reflects its historical milieu. Citing
several post-World War Two studies alleging the fragility of
masculinity, the critic suggests that these social discourses heavily
influenced the representation of virility and sexuality in the film. The
author does not draw upon the types of sources that he discusses in
detail in the Chapter One, such as reviews and prerelease marketing
materials, which somewhat lessens the effectiveness of the exercise;
nonetheless, his conclusion is convincing, namely that it is
"necessary to recognize the fact that the cinematic conventions of
meaning-making inscribed within the film 'text' operate within
a wider cultural context from which the film draws intertextual elements
into its representational repertoire, elements that would have been
readily recognizable to contemporary viewers" (48). Such an
approach provides the tools to begin to consider how different identity
groups would have interpreted the work in distinct ways, bringing
greater awareness to reception as part of a historical process.
Chapter Three shifts from film history to history on film in light
of postmodern challenges to epistemology and notions of truth. A primary
concern for scholars has become whether cinematic representations of
history should be accorded the status of history and valued alongside
scholarly production. Referring to D.W. Griffith's The Birth of the
Nation (1915), one of the earliest works to highlight the possibilities
of using film to tell history, Chopra-Gant is able to demonstrate that
the film's perceived authenticity upon its release, despite its
racist content, had much to do with its dramatization of prevailing
views about the Civil War, and that accepted history is always subject
to revision depending on shifts in social values. While he believes the
claim that scholarly work is inherently accurate or truthful is
misleading (53), he does not unequivocally praise films as being valid
modes of representing the past. Rather, he approaches the issue
pragmatically; for better or for worse, most people are introduced to
the past through films and television rather than scholarly texts, thus
the "disparity in popular influence between the two forms signals a
continuing need to engage seriously with the historical film and to
advance our understanding through constructive debate about the problems
associated with this mode of history-writing with film" (9).
Chapter Four, then, uses three case studies to examine some of
these problems. With surprising results, Chopra-Gant focuses films that
incorporated historical research to probe the limits of their basis in
fact. He examines how Lawrence of Arabia (1962) ultimately owes more to
literary and secondary accounts than historical scholarship, despite its
perception as an accurate portrayal of T.E. Lawrence. In a similar vein,
he argues that while filmmakers involved in the much-criticized Gangs of
New York (2001) have sought to defend themselves against claims of
inaccuracy by referencing dramatic goals, they did engage in a great
deal of historical research. Although they ignored the input of several
historians, what makes their inaccurate portrayals interesting is how
the movie takes its cues regarding the authenticity of sets, costumes,
and social conditions from previous Hollywood films. Finally, in order
to suggest why simply critiquing Hollywood conventions is not
constructive, the author examines how much of our visual media is
permeated by filmic codes. Focusing on the depiction of the events of
9/11, he suggests that the news coverage from the first day employed
filmic continuity editing to present iconic images. While the growing
number of films produced in the last decade attempting to make sense of
the tragic events may not yet constitute historical cinema, they all
"employ basically the same type of representational techniques that
were observed in the news coverage in order to construct a narrative
that is simultaneously both based on real historical events and yet also
a fictionalization" (92). In the final analysis, historical film
for Chopra-Gant is not an acceptable alternative to academic history,
though its influence is far more pervasive.
Discussions regarding the viability of cinema as history have
increasingly centered on two opposing camps: postmodern scholars, who
stress that historiography and fiction are equally human constructs, and
traditional historians, who worry that the postmodern collapse of
epistemological distinctions leads to relativism. Chopra-Gant's
intervention is both timely and valuable because he positions himself
between both extremes to suggest a middle ground of cautious analysis.
The claim that films reflect their moments of production has
traditionally been used to argue against film's ability to treat
historical content, yet the author's fusion of contextualism with
reception studies provides a refreshing means of reframing the issue
within a workable methodology. While the brevity of his monograph means
that his discussion of postmodern developments skims the surface,
Chopra-Gant's introduction to the topic ultimately makes a
compelling argument for taking seriously the role that feature films
play in our understanding of history, and it is therefore recommended
for students as well as scholars of both film and history.
Frans Weiser
University of Georgia
