“It’s not TV. It’s HBO.”
This was the tagline of Home Box Office (HBO) from 1996 to 2009. The declaration epitomized HBO’s marketing strategy to differentiate its programming, and especially its original content, from traditional broadcast fare, but the tagline’s validity continues to be a topic for debate by TV scholars and critics.1 The now iconic tagline (since changed several times, including to the abbreviated version “It’s HBO”) speaks not only to HBO’s branding strategy but also to the changing nature of television itself. Indeed, defining just what television is, beyond a piece of furniture, is becoming increasingly difficult. As media and television scholar Lynn Spigel points out, “Television—once the most familiar of everyday objects—is now transforming at such rapid speeds that we no longer really know what ‘TV’ is at all.”2 How we watch and what we watch is evolving at an accelerated rate, leading people to ask, “How is this still television?”3 The ambiguous state of TV makes the straightforward topic of “history on television” a more complicated prospect than it may at first seem. However, it is precisely the shifting and maturing nature of television and the TV industry that makes it a rich medium for crafting and telling historical stories.
No longer confined by rigid viewing schedules and large, boxy technology, watching TV has become a more flexible and accessible activity. People still gather in front of the traditional family TV and have sets switched on in kitchens, bedrooms, and home theater rooms, but many also carry laptops, tablets, and mobile phones that allow them to access the same content on these portable devices. “Platform mobility” gives viewers “mobile access to a wide range of entertainment choices.”4 For example, a viewer may start watching an episode of Westworld (HBO, 2016–) on a TV in the bedroom, fall asleep, and finish it the next day on a tablet on the way to work. That episode of Westworld originally aired on HBO at 9:00 p.m. on Sunday, but the viewer was busy at that time so elected to start watching it at 11:30 p.m. the next night, a practice known as “time-shifting.” After catching up on Westworld, the viewer decided to “binge-watch” all available seasons of Vikings (History [previously the History Channel], 2013–20) on Netflix, after the streaming service recommended the series based on prior viewing choices, watching the first three seasons, a total of twenty-nine episodes, over the space of two weeks. After Vikings, the viewer decided to revisit an old favorite on Blu-ray, True Blood (HBO, 2008–14), and engaged in “transmedia” storytelling by watching “minisodes” via the True Blood season three Facebook page. These viewing habits, and the new media buzzwords they exemplify, start to only scratch the surface of how the practice of watching TV has mutated.5 These changes do not signal the end (or death) of TV; “instead,” Amanda D. Lotz argues, “they are revolutionizing television.”6
The shows that viewers are watching via these new platforms are changing too. Rather than airing approximately twenty-two episodes per season (the typical length of TV series), the standard cable and streaming season generally runs only eight to sixteen episodes.7 Violence, profanity, and nudity often feature heavily, and storylines, especially in dramatic serials, are becoming increasingly complex, demanding viewers’ concentration to follow the complicated story threads. This is not to say that this is what all TV currently looks like; standard network procedurals and sitcoms are still on offer. What has changed is the variety of shows available. This is, as John Ellis has put it, the age of “plenty” in TV.8 American viewers are not limited to broadcast networks and their output; people also have access to basic and premium cable and streaming providers, as well as the internet, which offers an international assortment of TV shows to be downloaded.9 Rather than aiming to appeal to the widest possible audience by producing the least offensive programming, many shows target niche audiences without fear of alienating certain viewers. Narrowcasting rather than broadcasting is the name of the game in TV, especially for cable and streaming services. “Once the prime medium of mass communication,” Graeme Turner and Jinna Tay argue, television “can now also be discussed as a highly personal medium of individualized, privatized consumption.”10 Despite the effects of fragmentation, scholars such as Spigel, Lotz, Ethan Thompson, and Jason Mittell maintain that TV remains a vital and central aspect of everyday life, albeit in an altered form.11
Indeed, it is the ubiquity of TV and its function as a “cultural hearth” that warrant a closer examination of how it tells historical stories.12 Since its inception, television has drawn individuals, families, and nations to its brightly glowing screens to watch stories about people, places, and times that are both familiar and unknown. Much scholarship has been dedicated to analyzing and understanding historical feature and documentary films, but TV, and the long-form drama in particular, has received scant attention. This is unsurprising, perhaps, given that television has long been considered an inferior medium. TV is often denigrated as a rushed production line of cheaply produced passive entertainment, while film has, at least to an extent, been acknowledged as an artist’s medium.13
Long-form drama, though, which in my classification includes both TV miniseries (series with a limited number of episodes that tell a closed story) and TV serials (ongoing multiseason series), has unique capabilities and possibilities for engaging with history. This potential has been amplified by the intertwined technological, industrial, and cultural developments outlined above. The changes to viewing habits, content, and technology have shaped the kinds of historical stories that can be told on the small screen, as well as the way they are told. This book examines how these changes to the television industry, coupled with the longer running time and unique structure of long-form dramas, shape how historical stories are created and told on TV. The case studies chosen for this exploration of how TV “does” history are all HBO original content. While the premium cable channel claims to be “not TV,” HBO’s original programming has become a template for other broadcast and cable channels, as well as streaming services. Because HBO has been at the forefront of many television industry advances, it makes sense to study its historical programming as an entryway to examining how history is presented in “quality TV” dramas during the current “golden age” of television.
This is not the first golden age of TV; nor are HBO’s shows, and the many others they have inspired, the first to be called “quality TV.” The history of American television programming can be broken down into roughly three periods. TVI, or “the network era,” lasted from the early 1950s to the early to mid 1980s and was dominated by the Big Three networks, ABC, CBS, and NBC.14 TVII, the period from the early to mid 1980s through the late 1990s and early 2000s, is the era of “multi-channel transition.” The advent of remote controls, VCRs, and increased channel options changed the way the industry operated and the way viewers engaged with television. Finally, TVIII, or the “post-network era,” is characterized by “proliferating digital platforms.”15 Within each of these periods there has been a so-called golden age of television that is linked to “quality” programming. The live anthology dramas of the late 1940s and 1950s, which “carried the cachet of the ‘legitimate theatre,’” were the first to embody these concepts.16 Many of these teleplays were adaptations of classic theater and recent Broadway plays, before the networks themselves began commissioning original works from notable playwrights.17 The second golden age occurred during the multichannel transition, and it was during this period that critics and scholars began to explicitly discuss quality TV.18 Robert J. Thompson identifies quality TV of the TVII period as possessing “thoughtful dramatic treatments of contemporary issues, striking visual styles, complex literary dialogue, and sophisticated comedy.”19 However, he also notes that an exact definition is “elusive,” and that quality TV of this period was “best defined by what it was not . . . ‘regular’ TV.”20 While quality TV shows of the TVII period such as Hill Street Blues (NBC, 1981–87), St. Elsewhere (CBS, 1982–88), and Twin Peaks (ABC, 1990–91) were initially few and far between, in the 1990s quality TV shows proliferated and became commonplace on network TV.
The third golden age is again closely linked to quality TV serial dramas, although the characteristics of quality have evolved and the current crop is produced not by the Big Three networks but by cable (and, more recently, streaming) channels. The third golden age of TV began in 1999 at the start of the TVIII period, and whether or not it has ended is a constant issue of contention. John Caughie states that “Golden Ages only exist in retrospect” and it is through hindsight that they are constructed. In the current world of TV programming, the advent of every TV season and release of almost every new high-profile drama generates a discussion of whether or not it signals the end of the current golden age. Golden ages and quality TV are, as Caughie states, ideas that are perpetually cloaked in quotation marks.21 “There can never be a judgement of quality in an absolute sense,” Jane Feuer reminds us. Instead, “quality” means something different to every group, or what Feuer calls interpretive communities. For the TV industry quality is determined by demographics, for religious and activist groups quality TV promotes their own viewpoints, and “for academic television studies, ‘quality’ is a descriptive term that identifies a television genre called quality drama.”22 When I refer to quality TV, I do so in this final sense—not as a marker of value or as a judgment of quality, but as a descriptive term or category for drama serials of the postnetwork era that exhibit certain traits. As Dean DeFino outlines, postnetwork quality TV shares many characteristics with quality serials from the previous golden age, such as multiepisode story arcs and complex characterization. He also identifies new elements, including “verisimilitude, moral ambiguity, psychological realism, and narrative irresolution,” which were pioneered in HBO serial dramas.23
HBO has become synonymous with quality TV in the third golden age but has long been a leader in the TV industry, not only in terms of original content but in regard to technology and business model. HBO was launched in 1972 and in 1975 became the first pay TV channel to broadcast via satellite with the “Thrilla in Manila” boxing match. Eleven years later HBO led the way in guarding against unauthorized access to its channel by digitally encrypting its signal, thereby securing revenue. HBO was also one of the first to build up its services, adding Cinemax to its package in 1980, which was followed in subsequent years by the inclusion of many more channels, such as HBO Comedy, HBO Family, and HBO Latino.24 HBO continued to remain competitive by entering the streaming market, introducing HBO Go in 2010, a service allowing subscribers to access HBO’s current catalog and stream content on unlimited devices. This was followed by HBO Now in 2015, a standalone service that bypassed the need for viewers to have a traditional cable subscription. In 2020 both services were superseded by HBO Max, a streaming platform offering all of HBO’s original content, as well as access to WarnerMedia’s catalog. As Trisha Dunleavy argues, throughout its history HBO has proved itself to be a “first mover,” adeptly able to take advantage of new technologies and changes within the industry.25
HBO’s complex historical dramas are, in part, a result of the company tailoring content to attract and maintain educated and affluent audiences. As a pay-service provider, HBO relies on monthly subscription fees rather than revenue from advertisers. This means that HBO is “free of commercial interruption and uncontaminated by the demands of advertisers” but is consequently completely reliant on subscription fees and needs to work constantly to maintain and build its subscriber base.26 The audience that HBO actively targets is middle to upper class and educated, as they are the ones with the disposable income to spend on luxuries such as monthly subscription fees. HBO originally branded itself as a first-run movie and sporting event service, but it soon added in-house documentaries and stand-up comedy specials. HBO produced its first film, The Terry Fox Story, in 1983 and continued making films and miniseries before increasing its original programming output in force in the mid-1990s. Producing weekly original content that would require viewers to tune in regularly was a way to combat “churn,” the practice of viewers canceling their subscriptions.27 To engage its target audience, this original programming needed to distinguish itself from the more traditional broadcast fare, which HBO achieved by crafting smart, sophisticated, and risqué material. Viewers who now subscribe to HBO expect what its intense brand marketing promises: bold, innovative, and groundbreaking dramas, rather than the “comfort food” procedurals common to broadcast networks.28 As John Mack Faragher points out, understanding HBO’s audience is crucial to understanding the programming it produces.29 Subscribers expect and demand a level of sophistication and complexity in HBO’s original programming, not only in its contemporary dramas but in its historical dramas too. With viewers that are unlikely to be satisfied with cookie-cutter master narratives, HBO has an incentive to produce challenging historical series that will appeal to its core audience.
What initially set HBO apart from other networks (and still does, to an extent) was its risk-taking on unusual and unique projects, as well as its willingness to give creators creative freedom. The generous budgets HBO provides, along with authorial freedom and lack of network interference, continue to draw top creative personnel in the film and TV industry.30 David Chase, creator of The Sopranos (HBO, 1999–2007), is adamant that the show could not have been made for network TV and could have been made only at HBO.31 From the beginning, HBO decided to self-finance many of its shows, meaning there are no investors or advertisers to appease. Tom Fontana, a veteran TV writer and one of the showrunners behind Oz (1997–2003), HBO’s first original drama, remembers being surprised at the lack of notes from HBO and the encouragement to do what he wanted with the show.32 This hands-off approach with creative talent and the quest to rack up awards buzz, critical acclaim, and cultural capital have resulted in an environment that fosters diverse visions of history. There is no trademark HBO approach to history; instead it invests in individuals who craft unique and varied histories. This is the strength of history by HBO.
HBO’s approach to the long-form drama (and consequently to historical drama series) profoundly influenced the programming of other cable and broadcast networks and streaming services. Taking note of the critical and commercial success of The Sopranos, many other networks followed suit within the confines of their own budget constraints and content restrictions. “Other networks,” note Leverette et al., “have begun to imitate the HBO formula in terms of style and content, the ‘HBO effect’ if you will.”33 In fact, by the mid-2000s, HBO itself was seen to be flagging in the drama category, with other cable networks such as AMC, FX, and Showtime arguably outdoing HBO at producing HBO-style quality dramas. Mad Men (AMC, 2007–15), Hell on Wheels (AMC, 2011–16), Masters of Sex (Showtime, 2013–16), and Manhattan (WGN, 2014–15) are a few examples of historical TV series shaped by the HBO effect.
HBO’s impact on the long-format series makes it the perfect case study, and its vast array of historical programming exemplifies the possibilities of crafting history on-screen. The shows selected for consideration are set during different periods in US history and include one miniseries, Band of Brothers (HBO, 2001), and three serials: Deadwood (HBO, 2004–6), Boardwalk Empire (HBO, 2010–14), and Treme (HBO, 2010–13). These are by no means the only (or, indeed, the “best”) examples of history on television; series from other networks, cable companies, and streaming services, as well as those set in other historical periods, are equally worthy of similar analysis and, hopefully, will be explored in the future. However, given that this is the first study of how history is constructed in quality dramas of the current golden age, HBO series provide a useful, logical starting point.
Based on Stephen Ambrose’s book of the same name, Band of Brothers follows the men of Easy Company, 101st Airborne Division, from their basic training in the United States and then throughout their various campaigns across Europe during World War Two. Deadwood tells the story of a rough-and-tumble mining camp in the Dakota Black Hills in the 1870s and focuses on the schemes, machinations, and negotiations that preceded the territory’s entry into the United States. Boardwalk Empire, set largely in Atlantic City, charts the rise and fall of various bootleggers, both real and fictional, who sought power and money during the era of Prohibition. Finally, Treme engages with a much more recent period in US history, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, Louisiana. On the surface, each series is easily categorized; there is a war series, a western and gangster series, and a traditional drama. But no film or television series can be reduced to just one genre. All four are dramas. Treme could be classified under musical, and Band of Brothers under action. The more controversial question is, Are these historical series? Clearly, all four are set in the past, but are they historical in the sense that they seriously engage with history and have something meaningful to say about the past? Much like the word “television,” defining exactly what is meant by “history” in the study of “history on television” is less than straightforward.
The question of how to categorize different types of films and TV shows set in the past has long occupied scholars, with two broad categories often being employed: historical films and costume dramas. Sue Harper provides a clear-cut definition: “Historical films deal with real people or events: Henry VIII, the Battle of Waterloo, Lady Hamilton. Costume film uses the mythic and symbolic aspects of the past as a means of providing pleasure, rather than instruction.”34 This basic description, however, does not adequately cover the various approaches to history on-screen. If it were applied to the series under review, only Band of Brothers would be considered a historical TV series, as it focuses predominantly on real people and follows a documented timeline. Deadwood and Boardwalk Empire, with their blend of real and invented characters and incidents, are impossible to place in either category. Treme, which has a central cast of invented characters, would, strictly speaking, belong in the costume drama category, although it clearly provides instruction as well as pleasure. As James Chapman argues, history on film “is an imprecise genre,” and he points to the difficulty of classifying films and trying to assess the “relative balance of fictional and historical elements.”35
Other scholars have been more flexible in their attempts to define historical film and television. Natalie Zemon Davis describes historical films as “those having as their central plot documentable events, such as a person’s life or war or revolution, and those with a fictional plot but with a historical setting intrinsic to the action.”36 If Davis’s definition is used, Deadwood, Boardwalk Empire, and Treme could be categorized as historical series alongside Band of Brothers, as the historical settings are intrinsic to the action of each show. Alison Landsberg goes one step further, identifying a specific subset of historical TV series as “historically conscious dramas.” This subset arguably provides the best explanation and definition of shows like Deadwood and Boardwalk Empire, which are, at first glance, quite difficult to define. These series “do not aim first and foremost to re-create historical events. Rather, they aim to reconstruct the lived contours of a particular historical moment.”37 The focus is not on documenting major historical events (which may occur on the periphery) but instead on generating the mood, atmosphere, and mentality of a given period. The characters are not necessarily real historical figures in these shows but are “people who could have existed.”38 In his study of Hollywood historical films, David Eldridge considers any film with a setting predating the year of release by five years to be a historical film. “This label,” he explains, “is founded on the hypothesis that all films which utilise the past contain and reflect ideas about history, whether or not they are explicitly conceived of as ‘historical.’”39 While Eldridge’s interpretation of historical film is very inclusive, it is, perhaps, too open and not selective enough. For a TV series or a film to be considered historical—a form of history—it must be, as Landsberg puts it, historically conscious and must attempt to say something meaningful about the past. Band of Brothers, Deadwood, Boardwalk Empire, and Treme approach the past in a variety of ways and ultimately represent different types of TV history, but undoubtedly all contribute something meaningful about the past.
The histories HBO and other network, cable, and streaming channels produce are important because it is through television that many people encounter the past. From its inception, TV has mined historical records, both ancient and recent, for stories to attract and entertain audiences. Practically every TV format has told stories that are rooted in history. The live anthology dramas of the 1940s and 1950s regularly drew upon history with episodes like Playhouse 90’s “Bomber’s Moon” (CBS, 1958) and Studio One’s “The Trial of John Peter Zenger” (CBS, 1953). Short-format historical stories continued to be told in made-for-TV movies such as The Execution of Private Slovik (NBC, 1974) and Hiroshima: Out of the Ashes (NBC, 1990). Even sitcoms, a format not traditionally associated with history, have woven history into the settings and comedy of shows like Hogan’s Heroes (CBS, 1965–71) and Goodtime Girls (ABC, 1980). Miniseries, including Holocaust (NBC, 1978) and The Winds of War (ABC, 1983), have been a particularly high-profile vehicle for history on TV, drawing well-known talent, attracting huge audiences, and sweeping TV awards. Primetime dramas like Gunsmoke (CBS, 1955–75), as well as more unconventional series like the science fiction show Quantum Leap (NBC, 1989–93), have brought history into people’s homes week after week over the course of years.40 And this, of course, is without taking nonfiction and reality programming into consideration. Gary R. Edgerton surmises that films and TV shows provide the primary frame of reference for understanding historical events and periods.41 For example, what many people know about slavery in the US comes from watching the TV miniseries Roots (the original ABC 1977 version and/or the 2016 History remake), Underground (WGN, 2016–17), and the films Amistad (Spielberg, 1997) and 12 Years a Slave (McQueen, 2013), seen either in movie theaters or on TV.
Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen’s study from the 1990s supports Edgerton’s point by illuminating how often people engage with the past through film and TV.42 Although the nature of TV and how people watch it has changed greatly since the 1990s, the broad findings are still revealing. Of the approximately 1,500 Americans surveyed for the study, 81 percent had watched a TV show or movie about the past in the last twelve months (the second most popular activity to engage with the past, behind looking at photographs with friends and family), while only 53 percent had read any books about the past in the same time frame. Respondents were also asked to rank the “trustworthiness” of the sources under review: for this, film and TV received a mean score of 5.0, the lowest of all the categories, while nonfiction books generated a mean score of 6.4. When asked about why they viewed film and TV as the least trustworthy, many interviewees cited the economic imperatives of the entertainment industry. However, many also stressed that it was impossible to judge the trustworthiness of all films and TV shows. Instead, respondents said “they’d found ways to screen distortions introduced by commerce, entertainment, ideology and prejudice. They chose both individual texts and genres of sources to meet changing tastes and needs and then engaged those sources on their own terms.”43 They would seek opinions from family, friends, and coworkers and discuss and debate with those around them what they had watched. This finding dispenses with the notion that viewers are passive, showing that they actively seek out what kind of history they want to watch and continue to think about it after the fact. This ongoing engagement with historical texts is even easier today, as people do not have to physically find others who have watched the show; they can simply go online and join one of the thousands of online forums.
For people to understand who they are and where they come from and gain a sense of personal and family identity, they pursue family history; in order to gain a sense of national identity, however, people turn to sources like TV, films, books, and museums. As Rosenzweig and Thelen’s study shows, the survey respondents deemed history more trustworthy when coming directly from family members and other people they knew. This method of learning, of course, provides only limited access to the past. Television and movies (and books) “offered respondents the most accessible wide-ranging pasts to reach into.”44 Family history is personal and necessarily narrow, whereas film and TV offer a much larger scope. Indeed, many scholars have emphasized the role that film and TV play in shaping national identity.45 James Chapman argues that “the theme of identity is central” to the historical film and, by implication, TV. In fact, TV, even more so than film, is a medium that historically has been targeted at a national rather than an international audience.46 Chapman asserts that history on-screen “is not merely offering a representation of the past; in most instances it is offering a representation of a specifically national past.”47 Screen histories interpret key periods and events in a nation’s history, potentially influencing both individual and collective ideas of nationhood.48
However, history on-screen transcends and has influence beyond national borders, especially as content becomes more accessible beyond national boundaries. HBO original programming, for example, is sold in 155 countries and is available to illegally download almost anywhere across the globe. As Tessa Morris-Suzuki points out, the myths created by Hollywood movies, and likewise by HBO, “are important not just because they are national myths, but also because they are global myths.”49 Audiences these days have far greater access to televisual histories of other nations via downloading, purchasing DVDs, and streaming, and are limited only by the content that has been produced. The act of viewing history on-screen can produce a connection between viewers in the present and the historical narrative they witness on-screen—what Landsberg calls “prosthetic memory.” Prosthetic memory “emerges at the interface between a person and a historical narrative about the past, at an experiential site such as a movie theatre or a museum.” “The person does not simply apprehend a historical narrative,” she explains, “but takes on a more personal, deeply felt memory of a past event through which he or she did not live.” This means that historical memories are not confined to a single group or geographic location; memories of traumatic events such as the Holocaust and slavery can be shared by any person regardless of nationality, class, or ethnicity. This is significant because these prosthetic memories can “have a profound effect on our politics.”50 Film and TV, then, not only have the potential to shape and influence national identities; they can also inform and influence viewers’ attitudes toward other nations, international politics, and world affairs. History on-screen matters on a number of levels.
Clearly, HBO is not the first network to engage with history or to produce rich and complex televisual histories, but it does provide a snapshot of what is currently possible in the changing medium. For example, contemporary television shows may not have the cultural power to create “mythic” histories that dominate popular memory, but this is arguably an advantage of contemporary TV. A historical TV series aired today is unlikely to garner the ratings of an “event series” like Roots or Holocaust, the latter having been seen by an estimated 120 million viewers worldwide. These shows had a significant cultural impact, bringing attention to controversial and taboo historical topics. They are undoubtedly important histories because of the awareness they generated and public discussion they provoked.51 Today, due to audience fragmentation, it would be incredibly unusual if a television show had the same impact. Rather, what is exciting about history on TV at the moment is not the influence and dominance of one “event series” but the sheer variety of shows and the flexibility of the medium.
Fragmentation of the audience and the industry’s focus on narrowcasting resulted in a TV environment that is producing more challenging televisual histories and more history programming in general. Viewers have the opportunity to seek out lesser-known histories as well as multiple interpretations of the same event or period. Morris-Suzuki argues that written texts, being much cheaper to produce, are far more prolific and offer readers a variety of interpretations on the same historical event. Film, on the other hand, “creates a single, unforgettable, widely influential narrative.”52 Once a film is made on a subject, it is unlikely the film industry will revisit it again anytime soon (Morris-Suzuki’s example is the mutiny of the slave ship La Amistad and the film version Amistad). While Morris-Suzuki’s point is true to an extent, there are film and TV shows that cover similar ground, if not exactly the same, offering audiences a variety of interpretations on a given subject. Band of Brothers may be the only TV miniseries focusing on Easy Company, 101st Airborne Division, but it certainly can and should be viewed alongside other films, documentaries, and TV series that depict US involvement in the European Theater in World War Two. AMC’s Hell on Wheels presents a different approach to the post–Civil War American West than Deadwood, while English gangster series Peaky Blinders (BBC, 2013–) shares a focus with Boardwalk Empire on the traumas suffered by young men in the Great War. HBO alone has produced not only Treme but two Spike Lee documentary series on Hurricane Katrina: When the Levees Broke (2006) and If God Is Willing and da Creek Don’t Rise (2010). Fragmentation makes room for a wide spectrum of narratives and interpretations, of which dramatic TV series compose only one element. History on TV also consists of documentaries, telemovies, travelogues, reality shows, and feature films, which together provide vast and varied histories.
Over the past forty years an expansive scholarship concerning history on-screen has emerged. As already suggested, this scholarship seeks to understand the role that film and TV play in shaping popular memory and national identity, as well as how history on film influences the general public and their understanding of history more generally. Perhaps most significantly, scholars still struggle to come to terms with the legitimacy of history on-screen and debate where its value lies. Should film (because most of the scholarship focuses on film rather than on television) be regarded, first and foremost, as a primary document, valuable for what it can tell historians about the people, society, and culture that created it? Or is film a legitimate form of history, capable of conveying valid historical interpretations and engaging in historical discourse? If it is a legitimate form of history, where should the line be drawn between “serious” on-screen histories and costume dramas? While debates about the legitimacy of the medium as a valid object of study for historians may be considered settled, there is no emerging consensus regarding these other central questions, despite the volume of work that has been produced and continues to appear.53
The debates over history on-screen rose to prominence in the late 1970s and into the 1980s, just as many other academic disciplines began to seriously address visual media.54 Two French scholars, Marc Ferro and Pierre Sorlin, were among the first to produce book-length studies of history on-screen, both of which are still regarded as key texts in the field.55 Importantly, in the foreword to The Film in History: Restaging the Past, which was published in 1980, Sorlin asserted his intention to shift focus away from “fact” (documentary film), which had previously been the focus of British scholars, toward “fiction” (dramatic feature films), broadening the scope of studies into history on-screen. After examining films on a number of historical topics, including the American Civil War, the French and Russian Revolutions, the Italian Risorgimento, and Italian resistance during World War Two, Sorlin stated that films are most valuable not as works of history but as documents that reflect the time in which they were made. In summarizing his findings about their historical content, Sorlin concluded that “most of the films have revealed rather poor material . . . and we have realized that specialists and non-specialists have very different notions of history.”56 Ferro, although skeptical, acknowledged a different potential of history on film. In the final chapter of Cinema and History (published in French in 1977, translated and released in English in 1988), Ferro tentatively suggested that film can, in fact, make “an original contribution to the understanding of past phenomena and their relation to the present.”57 Many traditional historians have since accepted Sorlin’s claims and are willing to consider films as primary sources of the societies that created them. But, despite numerous scholars continuing to expand upon Ferro’s ideas, the idea that film can do history, particularly dramatic feature films, remains a far more controversial proposition.
The forum on history on film in the 1988 American Historical Review (AHR) brought together a range of Anglo-American scholars with differing views of the place of film in history. Of the five participants, David Herlihy, with his article, “Am I a Camera? Other Reflections on Films and History,” provided the most conservative argument, which is useful as a window into the mindset of more traditional historians. While Herlihy conceded that film can represent the “visual styles and textures of the past,” he fretted over what he saw as its limitations. Historical films, he argued, “make history seem too easy and our knowledge of the past too certain.” Film cannot incorporate footnotes, provide warnings to viewers, or convey doubt to audiences about the veracity of some aspect of the past; it cannot “easily explore beneath surfaces and illuminate the desires or motives that drive behaviour” or generate an understanding of the complex social, political, and cultural forces that shape society. Furthermore, as film requires thick description, filmmakers rely on their imaginations to construct a filmic world that may or may not be accurate. Ultimately, Herlihy considered historical films to be one-dimensional illusions that “cannot serve as independent statements regarding the past.”58
Robert Rosenstone, John E. O’Connor, Robert Brent Toplin, and Hayden White, on the other hand, all presented articles that were much more positive and open to viewing film as a legitimate form of history.59 To varying degrees, these scholars stressed the fact that film must be read, evaluated, and judged as a work of history in a way that is very different from what is required for written history. “The representation of historical events, agents and processes in visual images,” White argued, “presupposes the mastery of a lexicon, grammar, and syntax—in other words a language and a discursive mode—quite different from that conventionally used for their representation in verbal discourse alone.”60 Rosenstone, O’Connor, Toplin, and White collectively lamented that in 1988 historians were ill-prepared to read and analyze historical films in a productive way. White coined the term “historiophoty,” meaning “the representation of history and our thought about it in visual images and filmic discourse,” and in doing so proposed a new category that liberated the visual from confines of traditional historiography.61 Across these articles, a wide selection of films were discussed, although the scholars identified documentary and experimental films as offering the greatest possibilities for presenting history on-screen.
Although not part of the AHR forum, Natalie Zemon Davis’s article “‘Any Resemblance to Persons Living or Dead’: Film and the Challenge of Authenticity,” published the same year, also made a strong contribution to the history-on-film debate. Using the disclaimers that often appear at the beginning and end of historical films as a jumping-off point, Davis explored the concept of authenticity in historical films and concluded that dramatic features can render a “good telling” of the past. She highlighted what she considered to be crucial elements of a historical film capable of warding off common critiques by historians: suggesting multiple historical interpretations, incorporating ways of showing where knowledge of the past comes from, and maintaining distance between the audience in the present and the narrative in the past.62 In 2000, Davis followed up her article with the book Slaves on Screen: Film and Historical Vision, focusing on five feature films from Hollywood and beyond over a span of forty years.63 Once again Davis argued for the place of the historical film alongside written history, seeing it as “a source of valuable and even innovative historical vision. . . . Rather than being poachers on the historian’s preserve, filmmakers can be artists for whom history matters.”64
Of all the contributors to the AHR forum and early scholars of history on film, Robert Rosenstone emerged as the most vocal and persistent champion. William Guynn credits Rosenstone for “much of the impetus for the reconsideration of the history film,” and describes Rosenstone’s 1988 article for the AHR as “the first attempt by an American historian to construct a positive theoretical position from which to consider the legitimacy of historical film.”65 As well as editing two collections on the topic—Revisioning History: Film and the Construction of a New Past (1995) and A Companion to the Historical Film (with Constantin Parvulescu, 2012)—Rosenstone has contributed to a number of journals and collections on the subject and produced two book-length studies, Visions of the Past: The Challenge of Film to Our Idea of History (1995) and History on Film / Film on History (2006).66 Of course, Rosenstone’s ideas have evolved, as he has written on the topic for over thirty-five years. In a 2012 essay, Rosenstone returned to a 1982 essay he published on Reds (Beatty, 1981), a film he worked on as a historical consultant.67 Rosenstone in 2012 expressed frustration at the Rosenstone of 1982 for dwelling too much on data and facts and on how the film version of the American socialist John Reed differed from his own biography of the man. In the years between 1981 and 2012, Rosenstone came to appreciate that Reds, and film more generally, can be a work of history, albeit “with its own rules of engagement with the past.”68
Across his body of work, Rosenstone attempts to break down what he perceives as the artificial differences between traditional written history and history on film. He acknowledges that history on film and written history have very different strengths and capabilities, but he also stresses that both are shaped by their creators and influenced by the present, and that neither has the ability to mirror reality. In particular, Rosenstone takes issue with scholars like Sorlin who see historical films as being not about the past at all but about the present. He accepts that this view is true to an extent, but points out that exactly the same is true for academic historians: they, too, write “inevitably looking toward both the past and the present.” Rosenstone suggests written history and historical films should be treated the same way: “looking for what they say both about the past they describe and about the present in which that past has been created.”69 Perhaps most importantly, Rosenstone suggests concepts for thinking about and analyzing historical film, such as the necessity and ability of film to condense, compress, alter, and invent.
Rosenstone’s approach to history on-screen continues to influence scholars from a wide range of disciplines, including film, history, literary studies, and cultural studies, who have expanded and continue to build upon his core ideas.70 Although a number of books continue to be published that focus primarily on “historical accuracy” and righting the perceived wrongs of history portrayed in film, history-on-film scholarship has diversified and offers a rich array of approaches to understanding how history on film operates.71 Furthermore, the proliferation of studies has resulted in greater attention being paid to a wide variety of dramatic feature films, such as Hollywood blockbusters, independent films, experimental cinema, and foreign films spanning the course of cinema history. J. E. Smyth’s Reconstructing American Historical Cinema is a particularly persuasive and innovative contribution to the field. Smyth focuses on historical films from the classic Hollywood period, examining films from The Public Enemy (Wellman, 1931) to Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941). Drawing upon close readings of the films, as well as memos, reviews, research notes, and scripts, Smyth argues that writers and producers of these Hollywood films consciously sought to reinterpret American history, and that they placed this imperative above considerations of box office success. Such films, she contends, are evidence that a filmic writing of history exists.72 Approaching the topic from a completely different angle is film and English scholar Marcia Landy, who, rather than questioning the legitimacy of history presented on-screen, pushes the boundary of what constitutes history. In Cinema and Counter-History, focusing on European, Asian, and African films, Landy uses cinema “to think counter-historically,” examining texts that “offer versions of the past and future that run counter to received views about historicity.”73 Marnie Hughes-Warrington, in both History Goes to the Movies and her edited collection, The History on Film Reader, pays particular attention to reception, the role of the viewer, and the possibility of multiple readings.74 And, in a recent study, Julia Erhart explores the distinctive, but often disparaged, contributions of female filmmakers in crafting historical films.75 These scholars—and many more—explore how film meaningfully engages with the past, often utilizing both exemplary and flawed examples to provide a rounded inquiry.
Another related area that has generated significant scholarship, although it is rarely discussed in conjunction with historical film, is British heritage cinema, also commonly referred to as period film and costume drama. Scholars working in the field, such as Andrew Higson, Belén Vidal, Claire Monk, and Julianne Pidduck, explore similar and interconnected concerns to those working in the field of history and film.76 While Higson is often critical of heritage film, with its overwhelming visual sumptuousness, which he sees as generating nostalgia and commodification, Vidal offers a very different perspective. In Heritage Film, Vidal considers both British and European heritage film, exploring how the conditions of production have shaped representations of the past, as well as acknowledging the evolution of the genre which has resulted in historically complex narratives that challenge the viewer. Alongside British heritage film, there are countless subgenres focusing on particular geographic regions, events, and periods that have expanded the broader field of history-on-film studies.77
Many of the arguments made and conclusions drawn in studying the legitimacy and possibility of putting history into film apply to television, and a few ambitious works address both, or history in the media more generally.78 The edited collections History and the Media, The Historical Film, Americanization of History, The Persistence of History, and Histories on Screen provide a variety of approaches to the study of history on-screen from established and up-and-coming scholars. Quite often, however, TV continues to take a back seat to film in these collections.79 The study that makes the most cohesive and persuasive argument for the place of history on-screen is Alison Landsberg’s Engaging the Past. Building on concepts from her previous work, Prosthetic Memories, Landsberg considers interactive history websites, feature films, reality TV shows, and dramatic TV serials. She tackles common criticisms of history on-screen, namely that these types of history foster facile identification and rely heavily upon emotion. Over the course of the book Landsberg contends that audiovisual history should not be so easily dismissed and argues that affective engagement can lead to cognitive thinking on the part of the audience and provides a framework for evaluating new and popular forms of history.80 Landsberg is not the only scholar working in this area; the affective element of history in popular media is a topic that is currently generating exciting new scholarship.81
The majority of the literature dedicated to history on television focuses on documentaries aired on networks such as PBS and BBC or basic cable channels like History. Ann Gray and Erin Bell’s History on Television and their edited collection Televising History examine what they see as a boom in history programming in Britain and Europe since the mid to late 1990s.82 Both books stress the importance of history on television and the role it plays for the public, but they focus primarily on nonfiction or “factual” shows, rather than dramatic series. A key concern driving the texts is the production context, how and why history programs are produced and who has the power to shape the history presented on-screen. Likewise, Television Histories, edited by Gary R. Edgerton and Peter C. Rollins, shares similar approaches and concerns while providing more US-based examples.83
Within these edited collections, individual essays on fiction programming can be found, but they tend to focus on how TV informs collective memory and privilege the role of the present in shaping the past, rather than exploring how shows seriously engage with history. For example, in his study of Flemish period serials, Alexander Dhoest states that Wij, Heren van Zichem (1969–72) “does not offer much in terms of ‘proper’ history,” although he does concede that the show makes an effort to get the surface details right. What Dhoest does start to identify are the advantages of presenting history on TV. He notes that TV has room for “digressions and elaborations” and the time to create a truly fleshed-out world that can linger on the seemingly inconsequential aspects of everyday life.84 Steve Anderson’s article “History TV and Popular Memory” considers series that “raise questions of historical representation in unexpected ways.”85 Refreshingly, rather than dwelling on historical accuracy, Anderson looks at shows such as You Are There (CBS, 1953–57), Meeting of Minds (PBS, 1977–81), and Quantum Leap, which engage with history in creative and experimental ways.
Ultimately, only one thing is for certain: there is no one way of analyzing and engaging with history on-screen. Despite the vast number of books, articles, and essays that continue to be published on the subject (only a comparatively small selection of which has been discussed here), there is no consensus on the best way of approaching and evaluating history on-screen. Scholars continue to disagree on what is of central importance, be it production context, reception, or close reading. Even the definition of history itself has been challenged and contested in history-on-screen studies to the point where postmodern historians are uncomfortable.86 Postmodern historians recognize that there is no absolute historical truth, that the past as it actually was can never be recovered, and that history can never be objective, as it is always shaped by the historian who creates it. Rather than reconstructing the past, historical interpretation is understood as “an act of linguistic and literary creation.”87 Such postmodern views helped open the door to exploring new forms of history, such as film and TV, but the advent of postmodern history does not mean that the core concepts of traditional empiricist history—fact, truth, and objectivity—have been completely abandoned. Far from being a shortcoming of the existing literature, these ongoing debates over the nature of history, and history on-screen, are one of its strengths, as scholars from a range of disciplines with differing central concerns challenge others to constantly reevaluate their own understanding of history on-screen.
This study attempts to add to this ongoing discussion, not to provide any concrete or definitive answers. Besides, screen texts and technology are evolving far too rapidly for any decisive conclusions to be reached. Recently, Rosenstone stressed the need to properly “understand the historying done by the history film.” To do this, he argues, “the history film cannot be judged through the current canons either of written history or of the genre analysis of film studies, but by combining the two.”88 This is precisely what I will be doing in each of the chapters, using concepts and methods of analysis from history and film and television studies and examining TV industry contexts to explore how history in HBO’s serials is constructed and why it is constructed that way. The focus is not on identifying or judging the historical arguments and interpretations presented in each of the shows or on how social and political contexts influenced the interpretations and their reception. These are valid ways of approaching and assessing history on-screen but are outside the scope and aims of History by HBO.
While some of the arguments I proffer are relevant to both TV and feature film, the book focuses on exploring the unique capabilities of the long-form series as a vehicle for history, as well as identifying its limitations. It considers how changing production practices and developments in technology have shaped and affected modern historical series and engages in close reading of scenes, characters, mise-en-scène, and sound. For the historical periods depicted in the series, I draw upon the historiography—not because written history should be privileged above the audiovisual, but because no work of history can, or should, be judged in isolation. While I firmly believe that TV has great potential to tell historical stories and is not inferior to the written word—simply different—I also maintain a belief in the discipline of history as it has evolved over the centuries. The question “What is history?” needs to be expanded, rather than abandoned completely.
Central to this book is the role invention plays in the creation of historical television. Invention is difficult for many historians to come to terms with, because on the surface it upends the traditional empirical approach to history. “To take history on film seriously,” Rosenstone muses, “is to accept the notion that the empirical is but one way of thinking about the meaning of the past.”89 Rosenstone has spent considerable time identifying the different types of fiction that history on-screen necessarily engages in. As he sees it, invention is a strength of the medium rather than a weakness, as without it history on-screen “would not be dramatic, but a loose, sprawling form far less able to make the past interesting, comprehensible, and meaningful.”90 “Fictional moves” he identifies include compression, condensation, alteration, and metaphor. These fictions compress and condense time, space, and characters to fit within the demands of the medium, alter historical facts in order to express larger historical truths, and engage in metaphors to convey historical ideas. “Filmic literalism is impossible,” he reminds us. “The camera’s need to fill out the specifics of a particular historical scene, or to create a coherent (and moving) visual sequence, will always ensure large doses of invention in the historical film.”91 Inventions do not render history on-screen unhistorical or invalid; instead, they are precisely what make history on-screen possible.
Rosenstone’s concept of invention does not, however, allow for carte blanche creation of historical people, events, and arguments. Of central importance is that the inventions crafted for the screen are inventions of truth. This means they should engage the discourse of history and not ignore it. “Like any work of history,” he argues, “a film must be judged in terms of the knowledge of the past that we already possess. Like any work of history, it must situate itself within a body of other works.”92 Bruno Ramirez, a historian who has worked as a screenwriter on several historical films, makes a similar argument to Rosenstone’s, suggesting that “fiction can be put to the service of history” but that the inventions need to be “historically plausible.” Central to achieving this, according to Ramirez, is serious research on the part of all filmmaking personnel involved. When historically truthful inventions are crafted, they can “exploit the narrative potential of filmic language to the utmost and thus enhance the understanding of the story that is being recounted.”93 Of course, historical inventions do not always fit into the category of truthful inventions. Rosenstone offers Mississippi Burning (Parker, 1988) as an example of a film that engages in false invention—that is, its focus on two white FBI agents as champions of the civil rights movement goes against the discourse of history. Davis, too, is leery of unnecessary inventions that add nothing to the historical narrative and those that are tailored to create a link between past and present.94 Historical invention, then, comes in many shapes and forms, and it is difficult to make sweeping generalizations about how it is employed across film and TV.
The HBO series chosen for this study all engage with invention in unique ways and to varying extents, shaped by the vision of the showrunners and the stories they wished to tell. Trevor McCrisken and Andrew Pepper pose a pertinent question in the introduction to their work on history on film: “Do any distortions or uses of fiction . . . actually strengthen the argument being made and add to the viewer’s ability to learn something about the historical period in question?”95 The answer that this book presents is yes: invention in history on TV is more effective at conveying historical truths than is “fact.” Each of the chapters explores why and how each of the shows engage in invention and judges the appropriateness of the inventions and the consequences for the story being told. The study goes beyond typical considerations of invention in character and incident by also exploring the many types of invention practiced in the more technical areas of TV production, such as sound, production design, and costume design.
The following chapters focus on one HBO series and one element of televisual language, as well as related historical concepts. Chapter 1 addresses an often cited yet underexplored aspect of history on-screen: its ability to create the “look and feel” of the past. Like most historical shows, Deadwood’s “look and feel” is generated primarily through the mise-en-scène: the sets, costumes, props, lighting, staging, and performances captured and framed by the camera. HBO’s generous budgets and willingness to expend a large amount of cash per episode results in mise-en-scène with relatively few limitations, meaning that mise-en-scène enriches, rather than hampers, the creation of the historical narrative. Indeed, this has been a core facet of HBO’s business model: investing more money per episode but reducing the number of episodes in a season overall. Quality, rather than quantity, is the name of the game in HBO serials, and this is reflected in the mise-en-scène. Focusing on Deadwood’s sets and costumes reveals that these overlooked practicalities convey considerable historical information that adds to the historical narrative and plays a significant role in engaging viewers. Moreover, by recognizing the individuals and production teams responsible for researching and creating the physical historical world, this chapter highlights the complex and collaborative nature of history on-screen. Often, in history-on-screen studies, scant attention is paid to the issue of authorship, which this chapter seeks to redress.
The extended running time of the serial creates significant implications for the creation of complex historical characters, which is the subject of the second chapter, on Boardwalk Empire. Showrunner Terence Winter sought to maintain mystery and drama in his story of Prohibition by constructing and inventing some characters that did not exist in the history books. The result is three clear character types: real historical figures, like Al Capone; characters inspired by historical figures, such as Nucky Thompson (who is based on the real-life figure Nucky Johnson); and completely invented characters, like Jimmy Darmody. Capone, Thompson, and Darmody are all “difficult” characters—complicated, flawed, and tempestuous.96 Without the need to satisfy advertisers, HBO was an early pioneer of the difficult character, which has become a celebrated staple of postnetwork quality TV. The chapter provides an in-depth case study of each of the three characters in order to assess the possibilities and limitations of each character type for transmitting history.
Treme is the focus of chapter 3, which considers how TV narratives are constructed at the level of the episode, the season, and the box set series as a whole. It is not only the longer running time of the TV serial that sets it apart from film; developments in style and technology, coupled with changes in industry and audience expectations, have resulted in intriguing new ways of telling stories, including historical ones, on the small screen. Treme is an example of what media scholar Jason Mittell calls narratively complex TV—television shows that employ elaborate storytelling techniques and balance serial and episodic storytelling. Indeed, Mittell sees HBO as having “built its reputation on narratively complex shows” like Treme, a series that demands audiences’ full attention to follow the myriad of storylines and puzzle out the references to New Orleans culture.97 Many of the criticisms leveled at history on-screen—the closed, linear narrative that presents a single interpretation, its inability to footnote and reference—are challenged in the analysis of Treme’s three and a half seasons.
The final chapter, on Band of Brothers, brings to light an area that has received scant attention in history-on-screen studies: sound. Just as the scripts and mise-en-scène for historical TV series are meticulously researched and crafted, so too is the sound. Imagine attempting to watch a historical TV show without the sound on: the narrative would likely become incomprehensible and its historical value greatly diminished. The value of sound, though, goes beyond dialogue, which is often employed to provide context, assign meaning, and explain complex plot points. The music in Band of Brothers, for example, reflects and reinforces the series’ overarching historical argument, while the sound effects form their own kind of history, an aural interpretation of the past. This chapter breaks down the three elements of screen sound—music, sound effects, and voice—and explores what each contributes to history on-screen. The ability of sound to add to the history-on-screen experience has been bolstered by developments in home theater technology that allow for increasingly complex and multilayered soundscapes that engage viewers, thus linking back to the “feel” of the past discussed in chapter 1.
Almost any pairing of show and topic would have been possible and would have resulted in similar (but not identical) findings. All of the series, for example, are narratively complex and feature a wide array of characters and in-depth storylines. However, certain shows do lend themselves to particular topics. The different character types on Boardwalk Empire are more clearly defined and easily categorized than are the real and invented characters in Deadwood, and offered more precise examples through which to explore the issue of character in historical television. The intense and at times almost overwhelming soundtrack of Band of Brothers, especially in the battle sequences, made it an obvious choice for the study of sound, although Treme, with its rich use of music, would have also been a strong case study.
Each of the body chapters remains tightly focused on the topic at hand: mise-en-scène, character, narrative, and sound. The conclusion, however, will attempt to briefly judge the historical value of the shows, returning to the central question of what makes a historical TV series. Here, at the outset, it is fair to state that I do not believe all historical TV series are created equal (as is true for written histories). But all these shows do have historical value if only we open our minds and expand our horizons to see what TV, with all of its sights and sounds and moving parts, is truly capable of.