July 7, 2007
The Questionably Quotable Quaker III Posted by Alexander Burns at 07:35 PM EST Like Fred Schwarz, I spent part of my Independence Day watching 1776. I confess that I found the movie charming, in a hokey way. It’s not West Side Story, but then, it’s also not Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and for a movie featuring Ben Franklin in a kickline it never reaches the heights of unpleasantness that it might. I appreciate John Steele Gordon’s point about the difference between film and stage musicals: the former seem strange when they’re stylized; the latter have to be stylized in order to be successful. My own reflection on the film, maybe a less profound one, concerns the fate of minor historical figures in movies like this one. I was surprised to see John Adams represented so favorably, given his reputation as something of a curmudgeon, but in the end I realized that shows such as 1776 have to please their audiences with upbeat portrayals of familiar figures. In a cast of characters that includes perhaps half a dozen recognizable names, it wouldn’t do to demonize or embarrass the few figures people know offhand. Instead, it’s the footnote-in-history types who end up as villains or clowns. In 1776, Virginia’s Richard Henry Lee comes off as a total buffoon, answering his fellow founders’ every query with supposedly hilarious puns on his last name: “Certain-LEE!” or something to that effect. I don’t know enough about Lee to assess his intelligence, but I think it’s safe to presume he wasn’t quite such an ass as this. Similar treatment befalls Delaware’s Thomas McKean, an apparently one-dimensional, hopelessly belligerent Scot, and Rhode Island’s Samuel Hopkins, depicted as a perpetually soused lowlife who frequently needs to use the bathroom. Obviously these are constraints of the genre: a two-hour musical or film cannot give nuanced and full portrayals of every second-tier member of the Continental Congress. But among the motivations for public figures to seek greatness, the hope of avoiding future humiliation on the stage might rank higher than it does.
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