November 16, 2007
Movies and History Posted by John Steele Gordon at 12:35 PM EST I imagine that doctors tend to dislike movies about doctors, and lawyers movies about lawyers, because they see the inaccuracies that pass unnoticed by those who are not in those professional fields. There are few movies about historians—not a profession, perhaps, that lends itself to drama—but there are plenty about history. I confess to being a sucker for them most of the time. I don’t mind the often necessary time shortening and the introduction of fictional characters. But I wonder why so many of them have quite unnecessary historical solecisms. For instance, last night I watched Amazing Grace about William Wilberforce and his long struggle to get the slave trade abolished in England. I enjoyed it for the most part. But one minor character was named the Duke of Clarence. He spends much time in the House of Commons and at one point in a card game with Wilberforce and out of ready money, he throws his black coachman into the pot (Wilberforce throws down his cards in disgust and storms off). I understand the dramatic needs the character serves. But why call him the Duke of Clarence? There was a real Duke of Clarence at the time. George III gave his third son that title in 1789 (in 1830, much to his surprise and delight, the Duke of Clarence became King William IV). And dukes, of course, don’t sit in the Commons. They sit in the Lords (or they did then; most got the boot in 1999). And in a very famous case in England in 1772, Lord Mansfield declared slavery to be contrary to the common law, making all slaves in England free. So the coachman, however little he might have been in charge of his own destiny, was not property to be wagered at cards. It would have been the work of a moment to give the character a fictional title. Since heirs to higher titles use one of their father’s lesser titles as a courtesy and could sit in the Commons until their father’s death, any title but duke would have done. It would have taken hardly longer to devise a dramatic means of conveying the common attitude of most of the aristocracy toward blacks at the start of Wilberforce’s campaign. I think producers should hire historians to clean up their scripts before shooting starts. It wouldn’t cost much, by Hollywood standards. I, for one, would be willing to work for a whole lot less than your average second-tier movie star. And I mean a WHOLE lot less.
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