tag:theconversation.com,2011:/id/topics/ridley-scott-14292/articlesRidley Scott – The Conversation2024-01-11T21:05:09Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2197622024-01-11T21:05:09Z2024-01-11T21:05:09ZNapoleon the lawmaker: What Ridley Scott’s film leaves out<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568089/original/file-20240105-27-wtm75j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=177%2C262%2C3633%2C2662&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Joaquin Phoenix in Ridley Scott’s ‘Napoleon.’ Napoleon was a prolific legislator who sponsored the Civil Code, later known as the Napoleonic Code.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Apple TV+)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/napoleon-the-lawmaker-what-ridley-scotts-film-leaves-out" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>Ridley Scott’s biopic <em>Napoleon</em> veers from battlefield to boudoir, portraying Bonaparte <a href="https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/film/napoleon-review-ridley-scott-joaquin-phoenix-france-bonaparte-vanessa-kirby-c9547205">as a caricature</a> of masculine excess. </p>
<p>Such <a href="https://deadline.com/2023/12/napoleon-global-box-office-milestone-ridley-scott-sony-apple-1235682382">sensationalism might sell</a>, but critics maintain it comes at the cost of <a href="https://www.kcl.ac.uk/disjointed-rushed-inaccurate-historian-reviews-ridley-scotts-napoleon">narrative coherence</a> and <a href="https://variety.com/2023/film/news/napoleon-inaccuracies-french-historians-pyramids-1235823975">historical accuracy</a>.</p>
<p>As a historian who <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780367808471-31/fugitives-france-kelly-summers?context=ubx&refId=f0b06c28-a29a-49b5-a5ba-d37bee069054">specializes</a> in the <a href="https://ageofrevolutions.com/2021/01/25/a-cross-channel-marriage-in-limbo-alexandre-darblay-frances-burney-and-the-risks-of-revolutionary-migration/">French Revolution</a>, my main reservation about the film is not what it makes up, but what it leaves out. </p>
<p>Scott’s focus on Napoleon’s tactical triumphs, reckless miscalculations and sexual entanglements neglects his most paradoxical legacy: as a visionary, albeit self-serving, lawmaker. </p>
<p>A product of the Revolution’s decade-long experiment with “<a href="https://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/en/coming-to-france/france-facts/symbols-of-the-republic/article/liberty-equality-fraternity#:%7E:text=A%20legacy%20of%20the%20Age,of%20the%20French%20national%20heritage.">liberty, equality and fraternity</a>,” Napoleon enacted egalitarian reforms that eroded the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/ancien-regime">social</a>, <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/napoleon-bonaparte">religious</a> and feudal hierarchies that pervaded Europe at the turn of the 19th century. </p>
<p>Yet at home and across France’s <a href="https://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/digital/collection/Civilization/id/591/">continental empire</a> and overseas colonies, he proved willing to sacrifice core revolutionary principles whenever they conflicted with his insatiable ambitions. </p>
<h2>Completing the French Revolution in law</h2>
<p>To its credit, the film’s moments of unexpected levity challenge both the hagiographic and anti-Bonapartist strands of Napoleonic mythology. In Joaquin Phoenix’s guttural rendering, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.4000/chrhc.5133">Little Boney</a>” comes off less Corsican ogre than oaf. </p>
<p>But this portrait of a socially awkward warrior neglects Napoleon’s greatest accomplishments and failures as a prolific legislator.</p>
<p>Just as impactful as the dramatic <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-napoleonic-wars-9780199951062?cc=ca&lang=en&">military</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27435-1_11">political</a> feats that fuelled Bonaparte’s meteoric rise were the sweeping civil reforms he undertook after seizing power in 1799. </p>
<p>The young soldier-turned-statesman made an indelible mark as the energetic sponsor of new institutions and procedures. </p>
<p>These included a <a href="https://www.napoleon-series.org/research/society/c_education.html">secular education system</a> to staff his growing bureaucracy, ambitious <a href="https://www.napoleon.org/en/history-of-the-two-empires/articles/bullet-point-30-did-napoleon-transform-paris/">public-works</a> projects, and above all, a uniform system of laws.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/OAZWXUkrjPc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A trailer for Ridley Scott’s film ‘Napoleon.’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Converting feudal assets into property</h2>
<p>Back in the euphoric summer of 1789, deputies pledged to abolish the medieval land management system known as feudalism. They quickly swept away the mandatory fees, labour obligations and tithes that had, for centuries, bound peasants to their lords and priests. </p>
<p>But as historian Rafe Blaufarb has shown, successive governments would struggle with a thornier problem: <a href="https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230236738_8">converting feudal assets into modern property</a>. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Napoleonic-Code">1804 Civil Code</a> (soon dubbed the Napoleonic Code) aided the process by instituting a transparent system of <a href="https://www.crf-usa.org/bill-of-rights-in-action/bria-15-2-a-the-code-napoleon">property</a> and family law. </p>
<p>Napoleon did not stop there, however. His tireless <a href="https://archive.org/details/napoleonhiscolla0000wolo">collaborators</a> churned out complementary commercial, criminal, rural and <a href="https://www.napoleon-series.org/military-info/organization/France/Miscellaneous/c_FrenchMilitaryCode.html">military</a> codes. Together, they supplanted the Old Regime’s morass of feudal privileges and royal ordinances, as well as Roman, customary <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/canon-law">and canonical laws</a>.</p>
<h2>New law had didactic purpose</h2>
<p>Napoleon cast the Civil Code as an Enlightenment project par excellence: both a practical necessity and a tool to solidify revolutionary reforms. </p>
<p>Its straightforward prose and rational organization also served a didactic purpose, informing each citizen of the “<a href="https://www.napoleon-series.org/research/government/code/c_code2.html">principles of his conduct</a>” and reconciling France’s fractured populace as equal citizens before the law. </p>
<p>As his Empire grew, Napoleon’s zeal for standardisation anticipated many of the <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/enlightened-elitist-undemocratic/">political and economic aims</a> of the <a href="https://www.cairn.info/revue-napoleonica-la-revue-2021-1-page-35.htm">European Union</a>. He envisioned a continent bound by a “<a href="https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k109845d/f279.image.r=216">supreme court, a single currency, the same [metric] weights and measures,” and, most importantly, “the same laws</a>.”</p>
<h2>Entrenched, exported, betrayed Napoleonic law</h2>
<p>If Napoleon exported an egalitarian legal framework across Europe, however, it was often imposed at gunpoint. </p>
<p>The man who transformed France’s hard-won First Republic into an imperial “<a href="https://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/3424/">security state</a>” did not deliver “Enlightenment on horseback,” whatever his <a href="https://www.napoleon.org/en/history-of-the-two-empires/articles/napoleon-hegelian-hero/">admirers</a> <a href="https://www.andrew-roberts.net/books/napoleon-a-life/">contend</a>. </p>
<p>While championing <a href="https://revolution.chnm.org/exhibits/show/liberty--equality--fraternity/item/277">freedom of conscience</a>, national sovereignty and representative government, Napoleon imprisoned a pope, rigged <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/plebiscite">plebiscites</a>, re-established hereditary monarchy and enlarged his empire through endless wars.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A man wearing a bicorne hat and a single-breasted blue coat with gold detailing in front of a desert landscape" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568736/original/file-20240110-15-9uvact.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568736/original/file-20240110-15-9uvact.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568736/original/file-20240110-15-9uvact.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568736/original/file-20240110-15-9uvact.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568736/original/file-20240110-15-9uvact.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568736/original/file-20240110-15-9uvact.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568736/original/file-20240110-15-9uvact.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Joaquin Phoenix in Ridley Scott’s ‘Napoleon.’ Napoleon and his collaborators replaced the Old Regime with new commercial, criminal, rural and military codes.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Apple TV+)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Whatever its merits, the Civil Code reversed the revolutionary gains of workers and women — especially adulterous wives, who risked “<a href="https://archive.org/details/frenchrevolution00phil/page/156/mode/2up?q=civil+code">confinement in a house of correction</a>.” A cheating husband, on the other hand, was merely barred from receiving his “concubine” in the marital home. </p>
<p>The code’s free-speech provisions were compromised by its namesake’s paradoxical belief that, “<a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/enlightened-elitist-undemocratic/">controlled by the government, a free press may become a strong ally</a>.” Napoleon’s agents increasingly turned to preventive detention, <a href="https://revolution.chnm.org/d/530">exile</a> and censorship to suppress dissent. </p>
<p>In Scott’s rendering, major figures associated with these policies flit across the screen without uttering a word. These include Joseph Fouché, Napoleon’s wily Minister of Police who oversaw his vast surveillance operations, and Jean-Jacques-Régis de Cambacérès, the “<a href="https://archive.org/details/napoleonhiscolla0000wolo/mode/2up">second most important man in Napoleonic France</a>,” whose portfolio included drafting the Civil Code.</p>
<h2>Attempted to restore slavery</h2>
<p>As noted by <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-napoleon-that-ridley-scott-and-hollywood-wont-let-you-see-218878">historian Marlene Daut</a>, the film is also silent on Napoleon’s most egregious violation of revolutionary values: his attempt to restore “order,” and with it slavery, in France’s plantation colonies in 1802.</p>
<p>This included Napoleon’s <a href="https://www.historytoday.com/archive/feature/wrongful-death-toussaint-louverture">dastardly betrayal of Toussaint Louverture</a>, the Saint-Dominguan leader every bit as <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250800053/blackspartacus">complex, consequential and worthy</a> of a Hollywood blockbuster as his captor. </p>
<p>Coupled with <a href="https://doi.org/10.1353/fch.2005.0007">yellow fever</a>, the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00313220500106196">genocidal</a> violence in Saint-Domingue claimed <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/20/world/americas/haiti-aristide-reparations-france.html">more French soldiers than Waterloo</a>.</p>
<p>Along with its most profitable colony, the quagmire cost France its moral standing as the first European empire to abolish slavery. With the <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-the-louisiana-purchase-changed-the-world-79715124/">sale of Louisiana</a>, France’s dreams of a North American empire were quashed.</p>
<h2>Legacy of global legal code</h2>
<p>On remote <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/journey-st-helen-home-napoleon-last-days-180971638/">Saint Helena</a>, Scott captures the angst of an authoritarian deprived of authority, hobbled by hubris but still incapable of accepting responsibility for his errors and crimes.</p>
<p>What the movie does not show, however, is Napoleon’s clear-sighted appraisal of his most enduring legacy.</p>
<p>While in captivity, he told his entourage that his “real glory” was attained off the battlefield. If his final defeat would “destroy the memory” of his forty military victories, he took solace in the belief that “<a href="https://lasc.libguides.com/c.php?g=259216&p=1741864">nothing will destroy…my Civil Code</a>.” </p>
<p>This has proven true not only in countries that were occupied or colonized by France, but as far afield as Meiji-era Japan and pre-revolutionary Iran, which used the Napoleonic template for their own codification projects. Versions of the code are still in effect in <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Napoleonic-Code">multiple countries today</a>.</p>
<p>If Napoleonic tactics faltered at <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-Trafalgar-European-history">Trafalgar</a>, <a href="https://ageofrevolution.org/200-object/the-battle-of-vertieres">Vertières</a> and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-Waterloo">Waterloo</a>, the precedent set by the Civil Code has proven unconquerable. </p>
<p>Michael Broers, the <a href="https://www.napoleon.org/en/magazine/publications/napoleon-soldier-of-destiny-volume-i/">accomplished</a> <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/ca/europe-under-napoleon-9781350157675/">scholar</a> who advised Scott, has said legal intricacies “<a href="https://bigthink.com/high-culture/napoleon-ridley-scott/">don’t make for good cinema</a>.” </p>
<p>It has been <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0472027/">done</a>, <a href="https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2020/november/unleasing-hamilton-financial-revolution">however</a>. Perhaps Scott’s much-anticipated <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/obsessed/ridley-scotts-4-hour-napoleon-cut-why-i-cant-wait-to-see-it">director’s cut</a> will defy expectations by exploring some of these conundrums when it streams this spring.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219762/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kelly Summers does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Ridley Scott’s focus on Napoleon’s tactical triumphs, reckless miscalculations and sexual entanglements neglects his paradoxical legacy as a lawmaker.Kelly Summers, Assistant Professor of History, Department of Humanities, MacEwan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2188782023-12-11T13:13:40Z2023-12-11T13:13:40ZThe Napoléon that Ridley Scott and Hollywood won’t let you see<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564552/original/file-20231208-29-g15j8g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C6%2C1388%2C1023&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The 1802 Battle of Crête-à-Pierrot was part of Napoléon's effort to retake Haiti − then known as Saint-Domingue − and reestablish slavery in the colony.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/Haitian_Revolution.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Critics have been raking Ridley Scott’s new movie about Napoléon Bonaparte over the coals for its many <a href="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/us/heres-why-historians-are-not-a-fan-of-ridley-scotts-napoleon/articleshow/105540885.cms">historical inaccuracies</a>.</p>
<p>As a scholar of French colonialism and slavery who studies <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/tropics-of-haiti-9781781381854">historical fiction</a>, or the fictionalization of real events, I was much less bothered by most of the liberties taken in “Napoleon” – although shooting cannons at the pyramids <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/22/science/napoleon-movie-ridley-scott-egypt-pyramid.html">did seem like one indulgence too far</a>. </p>
<p>I have <a href="https://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/5292/">argued elsewhere</a> that historical fictions need not necessarily be judged by adherence to facts. Instead, inventiveness, creativity, ideology and, ultimately, storytelling power are what matter most.</p>
<p>But in lieu of offering a fresh and imaginative take on Napoléon, Scott’s film rehearsed the well-known <a href="https://www.euronews.com/culture/2023/12/04/battle-of-austerlitz-reenactment-draws-record-numbers-of-participants">battles of Austerlitz</a>, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-Wagram">Wagram</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/24/world/europe/200-years-after-battle-some-hard-feelings-remain.html">Waterloo</a>, while erasing perhaps the most momentous – and consequential – of Bonaparte’s military campaigns. </p>
<p>As with <a href="https://collider.com/great-napoleon-movies/#39-love-and-death-39-1975">every other Napoléon movie</a>, Scott’s version will leave viewers with no understanding of the <a href="https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/all-devils-are-here">genocidal war to restore slavery</a> that Bonaparte waged against Black revolutionaries in the French colony of Saint-Domingue – what’s known as Haiti today. </p>
<p>To me, leaving out this history is akin to making a movie about Hitler without mentioning the Holocaust. </p>
<h2>‘I am for the whites, because I am white’</h2>
<p>France’s seemingly eternal on-again, off-again war with Great Britain did not change the immediate boundaries of either country. These wars were often fought over land in the American hemisphere and included a historic contest over Martinique, a small island in the Caribbean, whose fate had far-reaching repercussions for slavery.</p>
<p>In 1794, following three years of slave rebellions in Saint-Domingue – events now known as <a href="https://theconversation.com/inside-the-kingdom-of-haiti-the-wakanda-of-the-western-hemisphere-108250">the Haitian Revolution</a> – the French government <a href="https://revolution.chnm.org/d/291">abolished slavery</a> in all French overseas territories. </p>
<p>Martinique, however, was not included: The French had recently lost the island to the British <a href="https://www.historytoday.com/archive/martinique-british-occupation-1794-1802">in battle</a>.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/L_Europe_pendant_le_consulat_et_l_empire/9MROAQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=RA1-PA234&printsec=frontcover">a 1799 speech to the French government</a>, Bonaparte explained that if he had been in Martinique at the time the French lost the colony, he would have been on the side of the British – because they never dared to abolish slavery. </p>
<p>“I am for the whites, because I am white,” Bonaparte said. “I have no other reason, and this is the right one. How could anyone have granted freedom to Africans, to men who had no civilization.” </p>
<p>Once he rose to power, Bonaparte signed the 1802 <a href="https://www.historytoday.com/archive/months-past/treaty-amiens">Treaty of Amiens</a> with the British, which returned Martinique to French rule. Afterward, he passed a law permitting slavery to continue in Martinique. And in <a href="https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A9tablissement_de_l%27esclavage_par_Napol%C3%A9on_Bonaparte">July 1802</a>, Bonaparte formally reinstated slavery on Guadeloupe, another French colony in the Caribbean. Slavery then persisted in France’s overseas empire until 1848, long after his death in 1821.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, in Saint-Domingue, Bonaparte <a href="https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k62963447/f210.item">authorized</a> his <a href="https://unsansculotte.files.wordpress.com/2019/11/repression_revolt_and_racial_politics_ma.pdf">generals</a> to <a href="http://www.manioc.org/gsdl/collect/patrimon/tmp/NAN13043.html">eliminate the majority</a> of the adult Black population, and he signed a law to <a href="https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k62963462/f457.image">reinstate the slave trade</a> to the island.</p>
<h2>A Black general’s rise</h2>
<p>For the mission to succeed, Bonaparte’s troops would have to contend with a formerly enslaved man called <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/loverture-toussaint-1743-1803/">Toussaint Louverture</a>, who had become a prominent leader during the early years of the Haitian Revolution. </p>
<p>After general emancipation, when the Black population had become citizens – rather than slaves – of France, Louverture joined the French army. He went on to play a key role in helping France combat and eventually defeat Spanish and British forces, who had since invaded the colony in an attempt to take it over.</p>
<p>Recognizing his military prowess, the French consistently promoted Louverture until he became the second Black general in a French army – after <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/people-global-african-history/dumas-thomas-alexandre-1762-1806/">General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas</a>, father of the famous French novelist Alexandre Dumas. (Thomas-Alexandre Dumas incidentally appears in the film as a character with a nonspeaking part.) </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564546/original/file-20231208-18-oomc5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Illustration of Black man dressed in military regalia opposite a man in religious garb. They are surrounded by soldiers and citizens, and a god-like figure looks over them from the clouds." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564546/original/file-20231208-18-oomc5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564546/original/file-20231208-18-oomc5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=779&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564546/original/file-20231208-18-oomc5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=779&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564546/original/file-20231208-18-oomc5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=779&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564546/original/file-20231208-18-oomc5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=979&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564546/original/file-20231208-18-oomc5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=979&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564546/original/file-20231208-18-oomc5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=979&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A print of Toussaint Louverture holding a copy of the Constitution of 1801.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/ppmsca.31021/">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1801, as a testament to his growing authority, Louverture issued a <a href="https://www.marxists.org/history/haiti/1801/constitution.htm">famous constitution</a> that appointed him governor-general of the whole island. Yet he still professed fealty to France even as the colony became semi-autonomous. </p>
<p>By then, however, Bonaparte had assumed power as first consul of France – and had made it his mission to “<a href="https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k62963462/f330.image">annihilate the government of the Blacks</a>” in Saint-Domingue so he could bring back slavery.</p>
<p>In January 1802, Bonaparte sent his brother-in-law Charles Victor Emmanuel Leclerc to Saint-Domingue with tens of thousands of French troops. </p>
<p><a href="https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k62963462/f424.image">Bonaparte’s instructions</a>? </p>
<p>Arrest Louverture and reinstate slavery. </p>
<h2>The fall of Louverture</h2>
<p>One of the film’s writers, <a href="https://www.indiewire.com/awards/consider-this/ridley-scott-napoleon-writer-david-scarpa-true-false-1234931486/#:%7E:text=There's%20a%20dangerous%20allure%20to,affair%20with%20his%20wife%2C%20right%3F">David Scarpa</a>, said Napoléon represents for him “the classic example of the benevolent dictator.” </p>
<p>If that Napoléon ever did exist, Louverture never met him.</p>
<p>In June 1802, Napoléon’s army arrested Louverture and deported him to France. As Louverture wasted away in a French prison, Bonaparte refused to put Louverture on trial. Throughout his incarceration, the guards at the jail denied Louverture food, water, heat and medical care. Louverture subsequently <a href="https://www.historytoday.com/archive/feature/wrongful-death-toussaint-louverture#:%7E:text=On%20the%20morning%20of%207,captive%20for%20nearly%20eight%20months.">starved and froze to death</a>.</p>
<p>With Louverture gone, Napoléon’s army operated with more bloodlust than ever before. In addition to conventional weapons, his troops fought the freedom fighters with <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/An_Historical_Account_of_the_Black_Empir/CTpAAAAAcAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22assumed+a+complexion+more+sanguinary+and+terrible+than+can+be+conceived+among+civilized+people%22&pg=PA326&printsec=frontcover">floating gas chambers</a>, <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Literary_Magazine_and_American_Regis/9BwAAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%E2%80%9CSeven+or+eight+hundred+blacks,+and+men+of+colour,+were+seized+upon+in+the+streets,+in+the+public+places,+in+the+very+houses%22&pg=PA447&printsec=frontcover">mass drownings</a> and <a href="https://www.sas.upenn.edu/%7Ecavitch/pdf-library/Johnson_dogs_and_torture.pdf">dog attacks</a> – all in the name of restoring slavery.</p>
<p>The Black freedom fighters, now calling themselves the armée indigène, led by Haiti’s founder <a href="https://theconversation.com/meet-haitis-founding-father-whose-black-revolution-was-too-radical-for-thomas-jefferson-101963">General Jean-Jacques Dessalines</a>, definitively defeated French forces in the historic <a href="https://ageofrevolution.org/200-object/the-battle-of-vertieres/">Battle of Vertières</a> on Nov. 18, 1803. On Jan. 1, 1804, they <a href="https://haitidoi.com/doi/#:%7E:text=IT%20is%20not%20enough%20to,act%20of%20national%20authority%2C%20to">officially declared independence</a> from France and changed the name of the island to Haiti.</p>
<h2>‘A fatal move’</h2>
<p>If the filmmakers had included Napoléon’s failed mission to restore slavery in Saint-Domingue, it could have served as a propitious moment to tie the movie back to one of its only coherent arcs: Napoléon’s undying love for <a href="https://www.history.com/news/napoleon-josephine-bonaparte-love-story-marriage-divorce">Joséphine de Beauharnais</a>, his first wife.</p>
<p>In one memorable scene in the film, Joséphine tells Bonaparte that he is nothing without her, and he agrees.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Painting of woman with short brown hair wearing two necklackes and a white ruffled blouse." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564547/original/file-20231208-29-3a2n46.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564547/original/file-20231208-29-3a2n46.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=738&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564547/original/file-20231208-29-3a2n46.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=738&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564547/original/file-20231208-29-3a2n46.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=738&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564547/original/file-20231208-29-3a2n46.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564547/original/file-20231208-29-3a2n46.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564547/original/file-20231208-29-3a2n46.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Joséphine de Beauharnais advised Napoléon to let Saint-Domingue operate as a semi-autonomous colony.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/Jos%C3%A9phine_de_Beauharnais_vers_1809_Gros.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>However, Joséphine’s posthumously published memoir suggests that Bonaparte disregarded his wife’s most prescient counsel. Joséphine wrote that she urged her husband not to send an expedition to Saint-Domingue, prophesying this as a “fatal move” that “would forever take this beautiful colony away from France.” She <a href="https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k9636609r/f112.image">advised Bonaparte</a>, alternatively, to “keep Toussaint Louverture there. That is the man required to govern the Blacks.” </p>
<p>She subsequently asked him, “What complaints could you have against this leader of the Blacks? He has always maintained correspondence with you; he has done even more, he has given you, in some sense, his children for hostages.” </p>
<p>Louverture’s children had attended Paris’ storied <a href="https://www.persee.fr/doc/dhs_0070-6760_2000_num_32_1_2364">Collège de la Marche</a>, alongside the children of other prominent Black Saint-Domingue officials. Although Bonaparte ended up sending Louverture’s children back to the colony with Leclerc, another Black general from Saint-Domingue who fought to oppose slavery’s reinstatement was not so lucky. </p>
<p>Just before Bonaparte’s troops began their genocidal war in the name of restoring slavery, Haiti’s future king, <a href="https://aeon.co/essays/the-king-of-haiti-and-the-dilemmas-of-freedom-in-a-colonised-world">General Henry Christophe</a>, sent his son, François Ferdinand, to the Collège de la Marche. </p>
<p>After the Haitian revolutionaries defeated France and declared the island independent in 1804, Bonaparte ordered the school closed. Many of its Black students, like young Ferdinand, were then thrown into orphanages. The abandoned child <a href="https://archive.org/details/rflexionspolitiq00vast/page/6/mode/2up?q=Ferdinand">died alone in July 1805</a> at the age of 11.</p>
<p>Only at the end of his life, during his second exile on the remote island of St. Helena, did Napoléon express remorse for any of this. </p>
<p>“I can only reproach myself for the attempt on that colony,” the <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b4710580&seq=533&q1=Toussaint">defunct emperor</a> said. “I should have contented myself with governing it through Toussaint.”</p>
<h2>A missed opportunity</h2>
<p>By including some of this rich material, Ridley Scott could have made a truly original film with historical and contemporary relevance. </p>
<p>After all, Napoléon’s history of trying to stop the Haitian Revolution – the most significant revolution for freedom the modern world has ever seen – has never been depicted on a Hollywood screen.</p>
<p>Instead, hiding behind beautiful cinematography, magnificent costuming and Vanessa Kirby’s masterful portrayal of Joséphine, Scott ultimately produced an unimaginative film about the already well-trodden military successes and failures of the man depicted as having literally crowned himself France’s emperor.</p>
<p>If “Napoleon” doesn’t exactly glorify its main subject, its creators certainly seemed to sympathize with the man whose wars were responsible for more than 3,000,000 deaths, as the film’s final caption reads. </p>
<p>The film did not say whether that number includes the tens of thousands of Black people Napoléon’s army killed in Saint-Domingue.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218878/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marlene Daut does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Leaving out the history of Napoléon’s brutal subjugation of Haiti is akin to making a movie about Hitler without mentioning the Holocaust.Marlene Daut, Professor of French and African American Studies, Yale UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2189652023-12-08T14:55:12Z2023-12-08T14:55:12ZNapoleon: ignore the griping over historical details, Ridley Scott’s film is a meditation on the madness of power<p>While Ridley Scott’s Napoleon has been causing <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/25/napoleon-film-ridley-scott-critics-miitary-expert-battle-scenes">consternation among some historians</a>, they are overlooking the fact that the historical record does actually support the film’s narrative in terms of one man taking power and shaping a new order during times of revolution and chaos.</p>
<p>Set against the bloody backdrop of the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/French-Revolution">French revolution</a> (1789-1799), Empress Josephine – a beautifully judged performance by Vanessa Kirby – who narrowly escaped <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Maximilien-Robespierre">Robespierre’s</a> guillotine, loves Napoleon for his power and image. </p>
<p>In turn, the general (played by a much older Joaquin Phoenix – Napoleon at this point was 30, Phoenix is 49, but is so good it is easy to overlook this detail that had historians squawking), is obsessed with Josephine. The film unfolds in an unpredictable narrative, laying bare the poignant letters that expose the complex love/hate relationship they share. </p>
<p>But Napoleon’s Egyptian trip is interrupted by rumours of Josephine’s infidelity, compelling him to return home in secret. He justifies this with the need to monitor the turbulence that threatens the cohesion of France. </p>
<p>By illuminating Napoleon in different shades – sometimes as a passionate being devoted to his love for Josephine, and sometimes as a military genius leading his troops – Scott manages to bring us into the intimacy of power. This comes at a time when France faces the temptation to turn back the clock and deviate from its revolutionary ideals by <a href="https://www.cairn.info/revue-napoleonica-la-revue-2008-2-page-16.htm">restoring the <em>ancien régime</em></a> (the system of prior to the French Revolution).</p>
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<h2>Picking his moments</h2>
<p>The film avoids descending into excessive carnage and instead maintains a fast pace with carefully chosen scenes. The intention is not to reproduce every detail of Napoleon’s life, but rather to present the powerful French general who captured the world’s attention for more than 15 years.</p>
<p>On the geopolitical front, the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Siege-of-Toulon">battle of Toulon</a> was fought in 1793, where Napoleon surprised British troops by taking possession of their fleet. Then came the conquest of Egypt, whose scenes, no doubt exaggerated (such as the destruction of the pyramids and the opening of a sarcophagus), form part of Scott’s artistic interpretation.</p>
<p>When Napoleon’s hat rises above the corpse in the sarcophagus, it recalls <a href="https://theclassicreview.com/beginners-guides/mozart-requiem-a-beginners-guide/">Mozart’s Requiem</a> – death slowly approaching in these carefully choreographed moments of destruction. The <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-Austerlitz">battle of Austerlitz</a> is admirably rendered, with Napoleon’s memorable strategic manoeuvre outsmarting the enemy by making them think there was a weak point where he could attack.</p>
<p>By letting the enemy surround him on both flanks, Napoleon used the strategic advantage to fight superior opposing armies. He then meets <a href="https://www.napoleon.org/en/history-of-the-two-empires/biographies/alexander-i/">Tsar Alexander I</a>, portrayed by a young actor. Scott uses the age aspect to show the ambivalence of Napoleon’s relationship with power. Napoleon thinks he is dealing with a young tsar, less experienced and impressed by the large army.</p>
<p>The fact that they have a common enemy is not enough to unite them, and the director gives the viewer a powerful wink when Phoenix sits on the abandoned throne of Alexander I, a leader who preferred to burn his cities to starve the great army.</p>
<p>It is as if we have a second version of Scott’s Oscar-winning <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2000/may/12/3">Gladiator</a> here, with Napoleon as Emperor Commodus, unable to accept the rationality of reality and stubbornly stuck in a form of hubris that will claim the lives of more than <a href="https://www.history.com/news/napoleons-disastrous-invasion-of-russia">500,000 soldiers</a>.</p>
<p>The “spirit of the world”, as the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel called Napoleon, is now no more than a shadow of his former self, aware that death is never far away. Scott chooses to show us a man who, despite the exaggerations, is sincere and direct, capable of winning the respect of soldiers and leading them into difficult battles.</p>
<h2>History and power</h2>
<p>The film is rich in subtle nuances, alternating between the tragic, the farcical and the grotesque, as power often manifests itself in this paradoxical arena. Karl Marx, a keen observer of the upheavals in France, showed no hesitation in his <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/">book on Napoleon’s coup d'état</a> in emphasising the tragic and comic recurrences in history.</p>
<p>A despot always creates successors, and history is found in parodic reincarnations. <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Napoleon-III-emperor-of-France">Napoleon III</a> was, for instance, a pale replica of Napoleon I, losing most of <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1861-1865/french-intervention">his wars</a>. In fact, Napoleon III tried to mimic the leadership style of Napoleon without being able to reconcile monarchist and republican forces. Although he succeeded in modernising the country, he never really established himself as a leading figure in the memory of the French people. </p>
<p>In Scott’s film, we can feel the postmodern hesitation between the old and the new world. Historically, Napoleon consolidated the gains of the Revolution, and the French are grateful to him for ending this phase. This prevented a complete return to the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/ancien-regime"><em>ancien régime</em></a>, despite the illusions of the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Bourbon-Restoration">counter-revolutionary Restoration regime</a> after the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Congress-of-Vienna">Congress of Vienna</a>.</p>
<p>That is why this film is an absolute must-see. Through the fiction, sometimes surpassed by the brutal reality, the viewer is invited to immerse themselves in the madness of power and its irreversible impact on the fate of nations.</p>
<p>There is also an underlying appeal to not just read history to trace the past, but rather to understand the experience of power madness. Scott has undoubtedly created the film that <a href="https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20190808-was-napoleon-the-greatest-film-never-made">Stanley Kubrick dreamed of making</a>. Don’t miss it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218965/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christophe Premat does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Ridley Scott’s film is not intended to paint a romanticised image of Napoleon, but rather immerse the viewer in the dilemmas and complexities of power.Christophe Premat, Associate Professor in French Studies (cultural studies), head of the Centre for Canadian Studies, Stockholm UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2187172023-12-05T19:24:24Z2023-12-05T19:24:24ZNapoleon director Ridley Scott is calling on us historians to ‘get a life’ – and he has a point. Art is about more than historical facts<p>The release of Napoleon unleashed a torrent of objections to <a href="https://theconversation.com/did-napoleon-really-fire-at-the-pyramids-a-historian-explains-the-truth-behind-the-legends-of-ridley-scotts-biopic-217951">historical errors</a> in the movie. </p>
<p>Social media platforms were inundated with outrage – particularly from military historians – objecting from everything from details on uniforms to military formations. </p>
<p>These heated responses highlighted a more fundamental question: how should historians respond to creative works about history? Do historians have a public responsibility to apply their specialist knowledge to contest spurious claims about the past? Or should they simply respect creative licence, and let moviegoers have their fun? </p>
<p>Historical accuracy matters. But more important for historians should be whether creative works pass the test of authenticity: whether a creative work “rings true” to the historical context as a whole. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/did-napoleon-really-fire-at-the-pyramids-a-historian-explains-the-truth-behind-the-legends-of-ridley-scotts-biopic-217951">Did Napoleon really fire at the pyramids? A historian explains the truth behind the legends of Ridley Scott's biopic</a>
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<h2>Historical inaccuracies</h2>
<p>Whatever the cinematic opulence of Ridley Scott’s battle scenes and of the coronation of Napoleon and Josephine in 1804, historians have railed against a plethora of shortcomings and silences.</p>
<p>Careful makeup could not disguise 49-year-old Joaquin Phoenix as the 24-year-old lieutenant who first came to notice at the battle of Toulon in 1793. The portly, middle-aged Robespierre (Sam Troughton) bears no resemblance to the young revolutionary in appearance or style. Napoleon was not at the execution of Marie-Antoinette, nor did he order his troops to open fire on the Pyramids when in Egypt. </p>
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<p>There are many more serious objections one could make – notably of silences about Napoleon’s failure to suppress guerilla resistance in Spain and his disastrous attempt to reimpose slavery in French colonies in the Caribbean after its abolition in 1794. </p>
<p>But historical inaccuracies are nothing new. Similar, if less strident, objections may be made about all historical recreations on film or in theatre.</p>
<p>In the celebrated Australian movie The Dish (2000), Rob Sitch and his team located the first reception of news of the Apollo 11 moon landing and Neil Armstrong’s famous words about his “one small step” at the iconic Parkes Observatory rather than, as in reality, at the NASA stations at Honeysuckle Creek near Canberra and in California. Cinematic attraction trumped accuracy. </p>
<p>The 1982 film Breaker Morant is <a href="https://theconversation.com/pardon-me-but-breaker-morant-was-guilty-5025">still receiving criticism</a> for its lionising of Morant. The pivotal Battle of Stirling Bridge scene in Braveheart <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/bendzialdowski/inaccurate-films">didn’t include a bridge</a> in the film. Hospitals <a href="https://www.warhistoryonline.com/featured/endless-historical-errors-made-pearl-harbor-movie.html">weren’t a target</a> during the attack on Pearl Harbor.</p>
<p>Far more controversial was the scintillating musical Hamilton (2015) created by Lin-Manuel Miranda, based on the prize-winning 2004 biography of Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563222/original/file-20231204-29-p27cgk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Production image of Hamlet." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563222/original/file-20231204-29-p27cgk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563222/original/file-20231204-29-p27cgk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563222/original/file-20231204-29-p27cgk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563222/original/file-20231204-29-p27cgk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563222/original/file-20231204-29-p27cgk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563222/original/file-20231204-29-p27cgk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563222/original/file-20231204-29-p27cgk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Hamilton cast people of colour as the Founding Fathers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Disney</span></span>
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<p>Miranda explicitly recognised the musical was his interpretation of the founding of the United States from today’s perspective, deliberately cast non-white actors as the Founding Fathers and drew on musical styles ranging from R&B to soul and hip hop. </p>
<p>Despite his candour, <a href="https://screenrant.com/hamilton-historical-inaccuracies-wrong-true-story/">historians rushed</a> to point out errors, exaggerations and elisions. Hamilton’s contributions to the battlefield during the American War of Independence are exaggerated for effect. The Schuyler sisters articulate feminist ideas far from those they would have had at the time. While Miranda makes much of Hamilton’s opposition to slavery, Hamilton was personally involved in purchasing slaves and his wife came from a wealthy slave-owning family. </p>
<p>But artists create works within different genres to that of professional history. They are not creating documentaries that can be evaluated according to the historical conventions of the careful use of available evidence, and respect for ambiguity and uncertainty. These need to be considered, first and foremost, as creative works. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-alexander-hamiltons-deep-connections-to-slavery-reveal-about-the-need-for-reparations-today-151459">What Alexander Hamilton's deep connections to slavery reveal about the need for reparations today</a>
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<h2>A place for historians</h2>
<p>As <a href="https://variety.com/2023/film/news/ridley-scott-napoleon-historical-fact-checkers-1235781258/">Scott snapped</a>, the fact-checkers should “get a life!” and join the crowds enjoying his interpretation. </p>
<p>Instead of nitpicking the historical details of entertainment, perhaps historians should celebrate the fact that a long historical drama has been an immediate box office success, <a href="https://www.nme.com/en_au/news/film/napoleon-conquers-french-box-office-despite-vicious-reviews-3549901">including in France</a> – home to some of the film’s most vocal critics. </p>
<p>People who attend Napoleon, or any historically-based work of art, are more likely to be curious to know more rather than be gullible about its historical accuracy. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563111/original/file-20231203-19-bw5qds.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Portrait of Napoleon." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563111/original/file-20231203-19-bw5qds.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563111/original/file-20231203-19-bw5qds.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1000&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563111/original/file-20231203-19-bw5qds.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1000&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563111/original/file-20231203-19-bw5qds.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1000&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563111/original/file-20231203-19-bw5qds.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1257&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563111/original/file-20231203-19-bw5qds.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1257&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563111/original/file-20231203-19-bw5qds.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1257&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Jacques-Louis David’s 1810 portrait highlighted the Napoleonic law code on his desk.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.46114.html">National Gallery of Art</a></span>
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<p>Of course, historians should not fall silent on failings of historical accuracy, but the central issue for historians should be authenticity. That is, a creative work should be evaluated by historians not so much on whether specific details are accurate but on whether the producer’s imagination captures the essence of the historical moment. </p>
<p>“Poetic licence” permits selectivity and exaggeration in the interests of evoking a deeper meaning. (Of course, that cannot excuse deliberate distortion unless, as in Miranda’s case, it is openly acknowledged.)</p>
<p>The real weakness of Napoleon is Scott’s failure to ground the Emperor’s motivations in the principles underpinning his 1804 legal code – which he saw as his greatest legacy. Scott’s focus on Napoleon’s brutality and megalomania means the explanation for his behaviour boils down to a mixture of murderous territorial greed and a pathetic need to impress Josephine, instead of a more complex impulse to also impose revolutionary reforms. </p>
<p>In their public comments, historians might focus more on the level of contextual veracity in creative works and leave their long lists of errors of detail to professional journals. The problem with the Napoleon movie is not so much its errors of detail as its lack of authenticity about what we know of the man and his world view.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/napoleon-bonaparte-features-in-60-000-books-and-more-than-100-films-does-ridley-scotts-stand-up-212782">Napoleon Bonaparte features in 60,000 books and more than 100 films – does Ridley Scott's stand up?</a>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter McPhee does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Napoleon has unleashed a torrent of objections to the film’s historical errors. More important for historians should be whether creative works pass the test of authenticity.Peter McPhee, Emeritus professor, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2127822023-11-23T23:02:56Z2023-11-23T23:02:56ZNapoleon Bonaparte features in 60,000 books and more than 100 films – does Ridley Scott’s stand up?<p>There have been more than <a href="https://mrodenberg.com/2021/10/16/finding-napoleon/">60,000 books</a> written about Napoleon since his death in 1821. Cinema too has been drawn to him time and again. </p>
<p>The Lumière brothers made a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZcYkP9y-Q4">short film</a> in 1897 and he featured in the mostly lost British film The Battle of Waterloo (1913). Already, the standard image of Napoleon was established: the squat frame, the horizontal hat, the arms behind the back. </p>
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<p>There have been more than <a href="https://www.vulture.com/article/napoleon-movies-history.html">100 incarnations</a> on screen since. </p>
<p>Now, Ridley Scott’s latest charts the rise of the lowly artillery officer who became Emperor of France. All Scott’s <a href="https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/where-begin-with-ridley-scott">usual components</a> are in place: meticulous world-building, visceral combat scenes and a devil-may-care attitude to <a href="https://theconversation.com/did-napoleon-really-fire-at-the-pyramids-a-historian-explains-the-truth-behind-the-legends-of-ridley-scotts-biopic-217951">historical accuracy</a>. But how does it stand up to its predecessors?</p>
<h2>Cinema’s love affair</h2>
<p>In 1927 came the monumental <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0018192/">Napoleon</a>, directed by legendary Abel Gance, which has acquired a mythic status in France. </p>
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<p>Gance initially planned to make six films focusing on a particular part of Napoleon’s life, but ended up focusing on Napoleon’s rise and his victorious campaign in Italy. A restoration of the seven-hour original is being partly <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/netflix-romances-french-industry-finances-restoration-of-napoleon-4116998/">funded by Netflix</a> to be released in 2024.</p>
<p>Napoleon is often depicted as a fish-out-of water comic character – one of most memorable moments in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989) was a time-travelling Napoleon <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJNql1dUPJo">hanging out at a bowling alley</a> and eating ice cream. </p>
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<p><a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences/applied-and-social-sciences-magazines/napoleon-complex">Longstanding myths</a> are often played for laughs. In Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (2009), Ben Stiller tells Napoleon “There’s a complex named after you … you’re famous for being little” while the so-called “<a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-british-journal-of-psychiatry/article/napoleon-delusion-200-years-later-psychiatry-in-the-arts/21D2B8425FB9CD2D4336B4B965C7E418">Napoleon Delusion</a>” – a mental illness in which a person believes they are Bonaparte himself – features as a plot device in Stan Laurel’s delightful <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Rc5-k2JrTQ">Mixed Nuts</a> (1922).</p>
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<p>Marlon Brando played him as a kind of soap opera star in the Technicolor biopic <a href="https://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/72866/desiree/#overview">Desirée</a> (1954). Brando – who earlier that year played a sweaty, muscular Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire – completely transforms into an exact replica of Napoleon, complete with clipped diction and a ponytail. </p>
<p>Most of the film unfolds in drawing rooms and at decorative society balls, far away from the battlefield and focuses on his relationship with <a href="https://www.napoleon.org/en/history-of-the-two-empires/paintings/portrait-of-bernardine-eugenie-desiree-clary-princesse-de-pontecorvo/">Bernardine Eugénie Désirée Clary</a>, the queen of Norway and Sweden.</p>
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<p>Rod Steiger’s performance in Waterloo (1970) returned Napoleon to the theatre of war, where he played him as a bad-tempered bully. </p>
<p>He’s since gone up against <a href="https://looneytunes.fandom.com/wiki/Napoleon_Bunny-Part">Bugs Bunny</a>, Blackadder and Bewitched.</p>
<p>These earlier incarnations are less focused on the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_man_theory">Great Man myth</a> and more interested in Napoleon the lover, the politician and the irascible Frenchman. Scott returns us to a much more complex and convoluted version. Helped by an <a href="https://screenrant.com/napoleon-movie-battles-cgi-ridley-scott-response/">impressive array of CGI effects</a>, Scott’s and Joaquin Phoenix’s Napoleon is a mix of clear-sighted strategist and cuckolded buffoon.</p>
<h2>A whirlwind view of history</h2>
<p>The tagline for this latest incarnation is “He came from nothing. He conquered everything”. </p>
<p>Over two and half hours, Scott and screenwriter David Scarpa show us exactly how. They sweep breathlessly through 30 years of French history, starting in 1793 and the guillotining of Marie Antoinette before a bloodthirsty mob. </p>
<p>Then, in rapid succession, come Napoleon’s triumphs at Toulon, Egypt and Borodino, stunning examples of tactical acumen and military innovation and finally his exile to Elba, return and eventual defeat at Waterloo. </p>
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<p><a href="https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/retrospective-the-films-of-ridley-scott-114468/">Scott’s films</a> are not known for their focus on psychological motivation or character depth. So his decision to chronicle much of Napoleon’s volatile relationship with French aristocrat Josephine (Vanessa Kirby) in an awkwardly comic manner is a misstep. The account of their <a href="https://frenchcargo.com.au/blogs/news/napoleon-and-josephine-the-great-love-affair">passionate</a> and often mutually destructive relationship is the weakest part of the film, and features the oddest line: “Destiny has brought me this lamb chop”. </p>
<p>Scott, who has given us the tough <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_Ripley">Ripley</a>, <a href="https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/gi-jane-1997">G.I. Jane</a> and <a href="https://tonicmag.com.au/all/thelma-louise-turns-30">Thelma and Louise</a> reduces the always excellent Kirby to a passive bystander.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/napoleon-and-josephines-real-relationship-was-intense-but-they-loved-power-more-than-each-other-218160">Napoleon and Josephine’s real relationship was intense – but they loved power more than each other</a>
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<p>He is on much surer footing when depicting strategies, battles and geopolitical rivalries. The <a href="https://www.nmrn.org.uk/news/truth-behind-napoleons-meeting-duke-wellington">confrontation</a> (which never actually happened) between the Duke of Wellington and Napoleon onboard HMS Bellerophon after Waterloo is a blend of machismo posturing and mutual admiration.</p>
<p>Phoenix does an excellent job at revealing Napoleon’s legendary strategic shrewdness as well as his petulant, often vainglorious stubbornness. He gets Napoleon’s look just right – the haircut, the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67465802">bicorne</a>, the thousand-yard stare. </p>
<p>The reviews have been <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/12/04/napoleon-movie-review-monster">mixed</a>. But Scott doesn’t care. What has always mattered most to him, from Alien (1979) and Blade Runner (1982) right up to House of Gucci (2022) is visual panache and spectacle. He spent ten years as a <a href="https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/looking-back-at-ridley-scott-advertising-career/">commercials director</a> in the United Kingdom before making his first film, and it shows. </p>
<p>We see epic recreations of Napoleon’s coronation as Emperor in 1804, the eerie scene of Moscow in flames and the pivotal <a href="https://www.historyskills.com/classroom/modern-history/austerlitz/">Battle of Austerlitz</a>, all shot with precision and verve.</p>
<p>It remains to be seen whether Scott’s Napoleon will be the definitive version. The director has promised a future release of a <a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/ridley-scotts-napoleon-getting-a-4-hour-directors-cut-on-apple-tv">four-hour version</a> for Apple TV+. Maybe this extra footage will allow a more consistent and balanced story to emerge.</p>
<h2>The greatest movie never made?</h2>
<p>Hollywood’s love affair with Napoleon is set to continue. Steven Spielberg <a href="https://deadline.com/2023/02/steven-spielberg-stanley-kubricks-napoleon-7-part-series-hbo-1235266372/">announced</a> earlier this year he was preparing an HBO mini-series based on a Stanley Kubrick screenplay abandoned in the 1970s. Before quitting the project, Kubrick did an <a href="https://www.napoleon.org/en/magazine/publications/stanleys-kubrick-napoleon-the-greatest-movie-never-made/">astonishing amount of research</a> on the film that would have starred Jack Nicholson and Audrey Hepburn.</p>
<p>Napoleon incarnates everything Hollywood looks for in a hero - genius, charisma, star quality, hubris, and the embodiment of the “comeback”. It’s no surprise his legend continues to grow.</p>
<p>And Scott, who turns 86 this week, now leaves 19th-century France behind to return to Ancient Rome in the <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9218128/">sequel to Gladiator</a>. Like Napoleon himself, Scott has more battles still to win.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/did-napoleon-really-fire-at-the-pyramids-a-historian-explains-the-truth-behind-the-legends-of-ridley-scotts-biopic-217951">Did Napoleon really fire at the pyramids? A historian explains the truth behind the legends of Ridley Scott's biopic</a>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ben McCann does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Joaquin Phoenix is a great Napoleon. How have other films treated France’s most famous man?Ben McCann, Associate Professor of French Studies, University of AdelaideLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2181602023-11-21T12:16:05Z2023-11-21T12:16:05ZNapoleon and Josephine’s real relationship was intense – but they loved power more than each other<p>When Vanessa Kirby was announced to play Josephine in Ridley Scott’s Napoleon, it caused a ripple of surprise among historians. Kirby is considerably younger than the actor in title role, Joaquin Phoenix (14 years her senior), but in fact, Josephine was six years older than Napoleon. </p>
<p>The film portrays Napoleon as someone who, <a href="https://variety.com/2022/film/news/ridley-scott-napoleon-rewritten-joaquin-phoenix-comfortable-1235467546/">according to Scott</a>: “conquered the world to try to win her [Josephine’s] love, and when he couldn’t, he conquered it to destroy her, and destroyed himself in the process”.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Vanessa Kirby discussing her role as Josephine.</span></figcaption>
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<p>The director has since <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/11/13/ridley-scott-director-profile">told historians</a> who have been correcting inaccuracies in the film to “get a life”, but the age difference between Napoleon and Josephine was a significant factor in the way in which their lives – and their love – played out. </p>
<h2>Napoleon’s infatuation</h2>
<p>Widowed during the French Revolution, and with two young children, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Josephine">Marie-Josèphe-Rose de Beauharnais</a> (the woman Napoleon called Josephine) faced an uncertain future. She was unable to access her family’s wealth from sugar plantations in Martinique, or from her guillotined husband’s estate. </p>
<p>As she was in her thirties, she was no longer considered young, but she did what she could to become part of fashionable Parisian society, calling in favours and cultivating the friendship of leading politician <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Paul-Francois-Jean-Nicolas-vicomte-de-Barras">Paul Barras</a>. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560480/original/file-20231120-21-5d59g9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Portrait of Josephine in coronation finery" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560480/original/file-20231120-21-5d59g9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560480/original/file-20231120-21-5d59g9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=812&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560480/original/file-20231120-21-5d59g9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=812&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560480/original/file-20231120-21-5d59g9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=812&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560480/original/file-20231120-21-5d59g9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1021&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560480/original/file-20231120-21-5d59g9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1021&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560480/original/file-20231120-21-5d59g9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1021&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Empress Josephine in Coronation Costume by François Gérard (1808-18080).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Baron_François_Gérard_-_Joséphine_in_coronation_costume_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg">Musée national du Château de Fontainebleau</a></span>
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<p>She was persuaded to marry an up-and-coming young Corsican general, Napoleon Buonaparte, who was intoxicated by her. Just a few months after meeting Josephine – and almost immediately after their marriage in March 1796 – the general was sent to lead the Revolutionary Army in Italy.</p>
<p>From Italy, he wrote her <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/37499/37499-h/37499-h.htm">dozens of impassioned letters</a>. They are so full of controlling, emotional blackmail that the repeated declarations of love seem menacing rather than maudlin. </p>
<p>“You never write to me; you don’t care for your husband”, he exclaims in one. “I get no news from you, and I feel sure that you no longer love me”, bemoans another. And: “Every day I count up your misdeeds. I lash myself to fury in order to love you no more. Bah, don’t I love you the more?”</p>
<p>When Josephine joined him in Italy, she had to put up with him tracking her every move and opening her letters. By the time they were reunited, however, he was less infatuated – although still controlling. Napoleon recognised the usefulness of his wife’s connections and seemed to accept a mismatch in their feelings. His earlier novelistic outpourings were replaced by a very different tone as early as 1797, and by 1800 he turns rather cold. These letters are practical, with formulaic sign offs such as “a thousand tender things”.</p>
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<img alt="Portraits of Napoleon and Josephine" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560386/original/file-20231120-29-6w9xuc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560386/original/file-20231120-29-6w9xuc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560386/original/file-20231120-29-6w9xuc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560386/original/file-20231120-29-6w9xuc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560386/original/file-20231120-29-6w9xuc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=541&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560386/original/file-20231120-29-6w9xuc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=541&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560386/original/file-20231120-29-6w9xuc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=541&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Portraits of Napoleon and Josephine, probably made in 1797 after their return to France.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b84130164.r=buonaparte%20josephine?rk=85837;2#">Gallica/Bibliothèque nationale de France</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
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<p>As the wife of a feted war hero, <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Jos%C3%A9phine/3-zzDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Pierre+Branda+josephine&printsec=frontcover">Josephine exploited her political connections</a> for her own gain, perhaps as a way of resisting the control Napoleon was exerting over the rest of her life. </p>
<p>Aware of how effective they could be as a team, detractors including Napoleon’s own family took delight in spreading rumours to tarnish Josephine’s reputation. Josephine’s <a href="https://www.abebooks.com/9782228890564/Correspondance-Pincemaille-Christophe-Catinat-Maurice-2228890561/plp">letters to her lover</a> Hippolyte Charles give an idea of how precarious the situation was for her. </p>
<p>Napoleon was on campaign in Egypt when he was given proof that she had been having an affair. A letter to his brother where he talks about it was intercepted and published by the British and quickly became known in France. Furious at first, he forgave her when he returned to Paris and she supported the political manoeuvring which led to him taking power after a coup d’état in 1799. </p>
<p>He needed her soft diplomacy and her aristocratic lineage to help smooth over the factionalism that had characterised the Revolutionary decade. She relished the preeminence that the role of helping create a new France gave her. Having been reluctant to join her husband in Italy in 1796, she took to accompanying him everywhere. It was very much in her interests that he was not distracted by a younger woman.</p>
<p>In 1807, he wouldn’t let her accompany him to Poland where he conducted a lengthy affair with the noblewoman <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Maria-Walewska">Maria Walewska</a>, although his letters show that he was still on intimate terms with Josephine as well. Nevertheless, the risk of divorce was growing.</p>
<h2>The divorce</h2>
<p>Once Napoleon instigated a hereditary empire in 1804, his family increasingly badgered him about the need for an heir. Josephine was unable to give him one. One of her maids, <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/58254">Mademoiselle Avrillion</a>, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=twxaAAAAcAAJ&source=gbs_navlinks_s">wrote an account</a> of how, in the period leading up to their divorce, the couple had become less close. But Josephine was still devastated when her fate was confirmed in 1809. </p>
<p>The divorce was framed as a sacrifice to the needs of the nation. Napoleon continued to visit Josephine and write to her before his marriage to the Hapsburg Archduchess <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Marie-Louise-Austrian-archduchess">Marie-Louise of Austria</a>. Josephine congratulated Napoleon on the birth of his son in 1811, telling him that she would always share his happiness as their destinies were inseparable. </p>
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<img alt="Painting showing Josephine's divorce from Napoleon." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560385/original/file-20231120-25-h3lx9y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560385/original/file-20231120-25-h3lx9y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560385/original/file-20231120-25-h3lx9y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560385/original/file-20231120-25-h3lx9y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560385/original/file-20231120-25-h3lx9y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560385/original/file-20231120-25-h3lx9y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560385/original/file-20231120-25-h3lx9y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The Divorce of the Empress Josephine in 1809 by Henri Frédéric Schopin (1843).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Le_divorce_de_l%27Impératrice_Joséphine_15_décembre_1809_(Henri-Frederic_Schopin).jpg">The Wallace Collection</a></span>
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<p>Napoleon visited her at Malmaison, her preferred retreat just outside Paris, before he began his Russian campaign in 1812. He would never see her again as she died in 1814. After his defeat at Waterloo, Napoleon spent time at Malmaison before being banished definitively to St Helena.</p>
<p>Establishing their real relationship is difficult because so few of Josephine’s letters survive to offer her side of the story. Did she love Napoleon at the beginning? Probably not. Did she come to love him? Probably yes. </p>
<p>Napoleon enabled her to defy her age and critics, and he took good care of her children, Hortense and Eugène. Ultimately, both Josephine and Napoleon loved power more than each other. </p>
<p>They recognised the benefits of working together and achieved a vertiginous rise to the top. In the end, Napoleon’s need for a son destabilised both the regime and their marriage, but his visit to Malmaison on his way into exile shows how much Josephine meant to him. </p>
<p>She had remained loyal, if not always faithful, and had been a lucky talisman. Shortly before he died in 1821, Napoleon dreamt about her. His faithful grand marshal <a href="https://www.napoleon.org/en/history-of-the-two-empires/timelines/napoleons-last-days-march-may-1821-as-seen-through-the-eyes-of-the-grand-marshal-bertrand">noted</a>: “He said that he had seen Josephine and spoken to her”. He’d hoped they’d be together again soon. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katherine Astbury receives funding from UKRI's Arts and Humanities Research Council. She is affiliated with the Commission internationale d’histoire de la Révolution française.</span></em></p>A historian explains what the relationship between one of the most famous couples in history was really like.Katherine Astbury, Associate Professor and Reader of French, University of WarwickLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2179512023-11-17T14:00:59Z2023-11-17T14:00:59ZDid Napoleon really fire at the pyramids? A historian explains the truth behind the legends of Ridley Scott’s biopic<p>Directors of historical feature films face a difficult task. How can they make the characters familiar to an audience without reducing them to caricature? How can they make sure that knowledge of the outcome – battles won or lost, empires built then ruined – doesn’t make the story seem like it’s writing itself? </p>
<p>Director Ridley Scott is not a historian and presumably wants to entertain rather than to enlighten. But the problem of historical truth is an interesting one. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LIsfMO5Jd_w?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The trailer for Napoleon.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is not easy to know the “real” Napoleon. There’s a recognisable version of him – the confident general beloved of his troops, the instinctive military tactician who could run on empty for days at a time, his stern and somewhat petulant gaze. But much of this is the product of layers of historical storytelling, accrued by the labour of generations of artists, journalists and memoirists – and of course, Napoleon himself.</p>
<p>Abel Gance’s spectacular <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6504eRh5h6M">silent film</a> Napoleon (1927), for example, charted the life and career of Napoleon up to his departure as a military general for the Italian campaign in 1796. In one scene, a heavy winter snowfall interrupts classes at Napoleon’s military college. The boys run outside to play and inevitably start throwing snowballs at each other. The scene depicts a very young Napoleon emerging as a natural commander, directing the combat as though on the field of battle.</p>
<p>Yet the veracity of this moment rests primarily on a single account – the <a href="https://archive.org/details/memoirsofnapole01bour/page/n7/mode/2up">memoir</a> of one of Napoleon’s childhood friends, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Louis-Antoine-Fauvelet-de-Bourrienne">Louis de Bourrienne</a>, who attended the same school. The author was later an employee of Napoleon, who sacked him for embezzlement in 1802.</p>
<p>Many years later, in 1829, de Bourrienne <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3567/3567-h/3567-h.htm">penned a memoir</a> in the hope of cashing in on the popular appetite for authentic tales of the great general. What we think we know about the “real” Napoleon is often filtered through self-interested and partial accounts like this one.</p>
<p>Here are the facts and legends behind some of the major scenes from Ridley Scott’s new Napoleon biopic.</p>
<h2>Did Napoleon crown himself?</h2>
<p>Napoleon went to great lengths to craft his image as a benign ruler and man of the people, often enlisting the talents of artists to do so. </p>
<p>Most notoriously, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jacques-Louis-David-French-painter">Jacques-Louis David</a> was commissioned to produce a series of grand paintings <a href="https://artsandculture.google.com/story/story-of-a-coronation-palace-of-versailles/NgWhI7emoChPKw?hl=en">depicting Napoleon’s coronation</a> in Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris in December 1804. In the most famous, we see Napoleon place a crown on the head of the new Empress Josephine while a reluctant Pope Pius VII looks on.</p>
<p>In an astonishing act of hubris, Napoleon had indeed already placed a crown on his own head, though the oil painting shows him only in laurel leaves to signify his martial triumphs. What Scott’s film depicts is the magnificence of the oil paintings, which showed Napoleon and his empress in the most flattering light, rather than the coronation ceremony itself. </p>
<h2>His relationship with Josephine</h2>
<p>There is no doubt that Napoleon felt a deep passion for <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Josephine">Marie Joséphe Rose de la Pagerie</a> – known to him as Joséphine – whom he married in 1796 as his military career was in the ascendant. Yet her depiction in Ridley Scott’s film as a young seductress probably speaks more to sexist cliche than to Joséphine’s undoubted self-assuredness. </p>
<p>She was six years older than Napoleon, a widow and mother of two young children when they met, and the young general’s romantic feelings were seemingly stronger than hers. While on campaign he wrote to her virtually every day, his pen sometimes piercing the parchment, such was the force of his emotions. Yet some of these <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Josephine.html?id=KS1MXwAACAAJ&redir_esc=y">letters</a> to her remained unopened. </p>
<p>Their relationship was as tumultuous as it was passionate, and both spouses had several affairs. Yet when Napoleon instigated divorce in 1809 for want of an heir, it was surprisingly amicable. The Empress retained her imperial title until her death in 1814 and was permitted to continue living in the imperial <a href="https://musees-nationaux-malmaison.fr/chateau-malmaison/en/history-chateau-de-malmaison">Château de Malmaison</a>.</p>
<h2>Was Napoleon present at the execution of Marie Antoinette?</h2>
<p>The autumn of 1793 was especially busy for Napoleon given his increasingly important role in the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Siege-of-Toulon">Siege of Toulon</a>. Federalist rebels had handed over the French fleet to the British <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Samuel-Hood-1st-Viscount-Hood">admiral Samuel Hood</a>, and the young artillery officer commanded the operation that eventually seized it back. </p>
<p>Therefore it is highly unlikely that he ventured to Paris in October to be among the crowd that witnessed the execution of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Marie-Antoinette-queen-of-France">Queen Marie-Antoinette</a>. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/OAZWXUkrjPc?wmode=transparent&start=12" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Another trailer for Napoleon shows the lead up to Marie Antionette’s execution.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In a <a href="https://ia800909.us.archive.org/7/items/lettersofdocumen006632mbp/lettersofdocumen006632mbp.pdf">letter to his older brother Joseph</a>, however, Napoleon did claim to witness the <a href="https://revolution.chnm.org/d/319">storming of the Tuileries Palace</a> by an angry crowd of republican protesters in June 1792. It revolted him.</p>
<h2>Did Napoleon really fire at the pyramids?</h2>
<p>Napoleon began his Egyptian campaign in 1798. The cultural legacy of the campaign can be seen in the well-stocked Egyptology section of the <a href="https://www.louvre.fr/en/explore/the-palace/a-royal-setting-for-egyptian-antiquities">Louvre</a>. But it was also the scene of atrocities. </p>
<p>At one point, several thousand <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/napoleon-9781408854693/">Ottoman soldiers</a> were shot or driven into the sea on Napoleon’s orders, rather than taken prisoner. You don’t need to invent ice traps or Napoleon ordering his men to fire at the pyramids, as Ridley Scott’s biopic does, to convey his callous disregard for life. </p>
<p>It was the rumour that he had ordered his own plague-stricken troops to be poisoned in the town of Jaffa that finally tarnished Napoleon’s reputation in the early 19th century. It stuck, no matter how brilliant the <a href="https://www.napoleon.org/en/history-of-the-two-empires/paintings/2-bonaparte-visiting-the-plague-victims-of-jaffa/">sanitising riposte of the artist Antoine-Jean Gros</a>, whom Napoleon commissioned in 1804 to paint a different story.</p>
<p>Ridley Scott’s film does not represent the past so much as carry versions of the tales and images depicting Napoleon that have spun him into existence since his own lifetime – many of which were crafted by his own hand. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
<hr><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217951/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joan Tumblety is affiliated with the Labour Party as an ordinary member.</span></em></p>Here are the truths behind some of the major scenes from Ridley Scott’s new Napoleon biopic.Joan Tumblety, Associate Professor of French History, University of SouthamptonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2045672023-05-23T11:14:46Z2023-05-23T11:14:46ZHow Alien mutated from a sci-fi horror film into a multimedia universe<p>A new life form was born on May 25 1979 when an alien exploded from the chest of a bewildered officer aboard the commercial towing vessel, Nostromo. The alien that comes to be known as the xenomorph escapes, grows, stalks and kills all but one of the ship’s crew. The lone human survivor, Ellen Ripley, played by Sigourney Weaver, blasts it into deep space turning it and her into icons. </p>
<p>We are, of course, talking about the cinematic classic, Alien.</p>
<p>But what was born that day was not just a horrifying monster. It would become a fully fledged fictional world that, in the four decades following, has become an indelible part of our popular culture. And it is a topic we explore in our new book, <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/alien-legacies-9780197556030?cc=gb&lang=en&">Alien Legacies</a>.</p>
<p>Though initially conceived as a cash-in on the popularity of science fiction in the aftermath of Star Wars, Alien grew from a hugely successful film into not only a franchise but a whole universe. It spawned three sequels - James Cameron’s Aliens (1986), David Fincher’s Alien3 (1992) and Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Alien Resurrection (1997). </p>
<p>There were also two prequels - Prometheus (2012) and Alien Covenant (2017), which were both directed by Scott. And finally, there was a spin-off “mashup” franchise - Alien vs Predator directed by Paul WS Anderson (2004), and its sequel Requiem (2007). </p>
<p>It has inspired innovation and creativity beyond the films. There have been novelisations, video games, audiobooks, comics and <a href="https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/%E2%80%98Ages-five-and-up%E2%80%99%3A-Alien-toys-for-children-and-the-Antunes-Plowman/37a5b6f9d25db0aa08a24322bd82cbcd7bd87d87">toys</a>.</p>
<p>The first two films, Alien and Aliens, have enjoyed considerable scrutiny given their cultural presence and resonance for debates concerning gender, technology and genetics. </p>
<p>But what has received less focus is what Alien has become. The franchise has proliferated and mutated across various forms of media while staying true to its cinematic origins.</p>
<p>Alien, like Star Wars, is what we can now call a “transmedia franchise”. It has pioneered ways of expanding storytelling across media boundaries. Our book examines the transmedia universe as a whole, addressing the original films, the prequels and everything that followed. </p>
<p>The franchise has been open to adopting new methods and ideas, as well as adapting to changes in new media technology and politics. </p>
<p>In fact, one almost entirely neglected aspect of the Alien universe we explore are documents purporting to be “real” crew profiles, training manuals and diaries that expand upon and develop our knowledge and understanding of this fictional world. </p>
<p>One of the extras on the 2010 Alien Anthology Blu-ray collection was a special feature called Weyland-Yutani Inquest: Nostromo Dossiers. This was a collection of corporate documents detailing the professional lives of the Nostromo spaceship crew.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">From The Weyland-Yutani Report: A look at the Nostromo’s crew including past employment and personal life details.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some of this material, such as the <a href="https://avp.fandom.com/wiki/Aliens:_Colonial_Marines_Technical_Manual">Colonial Marines Technical Manual</a>, has been created by fans. It found its way into gaming instalments of the franchise having been picked up and explored by the many creative artists and writers who have worked in the Alien universe. These include Aliens versus Predator, Aliens versus Predator: Extinction and Aliens: Colonial Marines (2013).</p>
<p>The attempt by media companies to control and manage fan practice is not new, but it demands our attention. <a href="https://ew.com/movies/2019/03/13/alien-trailer-shorts-40th-anniversary/">Inviting people</a> to pitch their own short films set in the Alien universe to mark the fortieth anniversary in 2019 was a canny means by 20th Century Fox to curry favour with the fans of the series. </p>
<p>Similarly, transmedia marketing campaigns have grown to include fictional evil corporate websites, exclusive events at conventions, personalised advertising and franchise universe websites. </p>
<p>We argue that Alien’s transmedia marketing is <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dorothypomerantz/2012/04/18/prometheus-when-movie-marketing-goes-very-right/">particularly captivating</a> because it is closely linked to the film’s production. As a result, these marketing campaigns are arguably becoming as creative and entertaining as the films themselves. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XqW4JgI4-Vw?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The transmedia marketing campaign for the Prometheus film.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Alien series asks existential questions uncommon in mainstream blockbuster cinema about the origins and destiny of humanity and the dividing line between the human and the machine. </p>
<p>Alien should not be seen, as popular culture so often is, as unimportant or irrelevant to our understanding of ourselves as a species. It has the potential to contribute to our knowledge and enlightenment. </p>
<p>The continuing debate among scholars and fans surrounding the Alien franchise demonstrates how popular culture can bridge disciplinary boundaries and make complex academic debates more accessible. It helps us better understand the significant questions we must ponder as humans. </p>
<p>We hope our book will contribute to conversations about Alien. It explores its relevance to contemporary debates and paves the way for future studies on the franchise. After all, it has entered an uncertain <a href="https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/World-building%2C-Retconning-and-Legacy-Rebooting%3A-Fleury/01dd0b7bc45907cf1f56e55e1237c6d3678609af">new phase</a> under the control of a new owner. </p>
<p>In 2019, Disney bought Fox and with it the rights to Alien. And Disney is a company that, throughout its history, has shown itself willing and able to adapt and build upon all aspects of its holdings in a variety of ways. </p>
<p>This starts with <a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/new-alien-movie-set-to-begin-production-this-month-as-cast-and-synopsis-is-revealed">Fede Alvarez’s untitled Alien film</a>, currently in production, and set for release via Disney’s Hulu streaming service. </p>
<p>Fans and academics will both probably continue to chase Ripley and the xenomorphs across the cosmos for the next forty years.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204567/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nathan Abrams has received and continues to receive funding from charitable organisations and research councils.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gregory Frame has in the past received funding from disciplinary subject associations and research councils.</span></em></p>A new book explores the enormous Alien franchise spawned by the 1979 film.Nathan Abrams, Professor of Film Studies, Bangor UniversityGregory Frame, Teaching Associate in Film and Television Studies, University of NottinghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1312052020-09-24T03:43:56Z2020-09-24T03:43:56ZExplainer: what is storyboarding for film?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/359725/original/file-20200924-24-1x3itbd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=68%2C34%2C5630%2C3776&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/artist-illustrator-draws-storyboard-film-animator-1749819146">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Images are all around us. But what about the images you may never have seen, which influence the storytelling you watch every day?</p>
<p>Storyboarding often forms a crucial part of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-production">pre-production</a> process of film, television, animation, game design, advertising, comics, children’s book illustration, even <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/3002813/how-snow-white-helped-airbnbs-mobile-mission">UX Design</a> and other forms of visual communication. </p>
<p>Developed at Disney Animation Studios in the 1930’s, it was first used in live action film for <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0031381/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Gone with the Wind</a> (1939). As film critic Fionnuala Halligan has <a href="https://www.hachette.com.au/fionnuala-halligan/the-art-of-movie-storyboards-visualising-the-action-of-the-worlds-greatest-films">written</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The unsung heroes of film, storyboard artists are the first to give vision to a screenplay, translating words on the page into shots for the screen.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Directors employ storyboard artists to visualise their scripts for large crews. They guide visual language, scene transitions, action sequences, cinematography, <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-film-lighting-30658">lighting design</a>, location scouting, costume development, <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-production-design-24062">production design</a>, art direction, computer generated effects and different phases of animation. </p>
<h2>Art of the plan</h2>
<p>An applied use of drawing, storyboarding is an illustrative art that communicates context. </p>
<p>Legendary director <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljjlXSGdSYs">Ridley Scott</a> always begins his films with the drawing board, using the pencil to inform the visual tone of his direction and discuss scenes with actors. </p>
<p>It limits the potential of the story and script, defining a scene visually to reduce the shooting of excess scenes. </p>
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<p>Traditionally each cell — or film frame in the narrative — is drawn by hand, artists rapidly refining the story. Large amounts of sketches are discarded. Small thumbnail sketches are reworked until the drawings move to final polished boards. </p>
<p>Storyboards often collect in archives, unreleased works bound by studio copyright. They are occasionally collated in book form, as in <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/The_Art_of_Movie_Storyboards.html?id=Bp91nAEACAAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y">The Art of Movie Storyboards: Visualising the Action of the World’s Greatest Films</a>. </p>
<p>Although pencil is still predominant, many artists now employ digital approaches. Storyboards don’t require the artist to embed lots of detail. The focus is how the boards communicate the camera angle, movement, timing, gesture and staging of characters.</p>
<p>Some artists produce mock sequences to get employed. <a href="https://www.instagram.com/heidijogilbert/?hl=en">Heidi Jo Gilbert</a>’s mock sequence landed her a job at <a href="https://www.dreamworks.com/">DreamWorks Animation</a>. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Heidi Jo Gilbert’s concept storyboard animation for ‘Defying Gravity’ from Wicked.</span></figcaption>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/21st-century-character-designs-reflect-our-concerns-as-always-40382">21st-century character designs reflect our concerns, as always</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Aspects and ratio</h2>
<p>Each panel or frame represents what the camera and eventually the audience will see. The shape of the rectangle is usually based on the planned shooting <a href="https://filmglossary.ccnmtl.columbia.edu/term/aspect-ratio/#:%7E:text=Aspect%20ratio%20refers%20to%20how,frame%2C%20image%2C%20or%20screen.&text=films%20is%202.2%3A1%2C%20and,Standard%2035%2Dmm.">aspect ratio</a> (width to height of frame).</p>
<p>Storyboards can help the cinematographer make choices about lighting, depth of field, locations and camera angles. Arrows indicate where the movement of the character or object is headed. Although the script is important for direction and dialogue, storyboards become a visual script.</p>
<p>Storyboard artists need a diverse but <a href="https://theconversation.com/drawing-inspiration-from-dreamworks-animation-24722">traditional skillset</a>.</p>
<p>Not only do they need the drawing skills — whether pencil or pixel, but they need to be able to negotiate visual observation, visual representation, metaphor, allegory and aesthetics. </p>
<p>Being highly skilled in realism is not necessary, communicating the idea of story is the most important. In fact, something realistic may not best <a href="https://ro.ecu.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://scholar.google.com.au/&httpsredir=1&article=1287&context=ecuworks2011">communicate meaning</a>. </p>
<p>Some <a href="https://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5872&context=etd">key drawing conventions</a> and features include:<br></p>
<ul>
<li>Anatomy <br></li>
<li>Shapes <br></li>
<li>Composition <br></li>
<li>Scale <br></li>
<li>Viewpoints <br></li>
<li>Frame division <br></li>
<li>Depth of field <br></li>
<li>Light and tonality <br></li>
<li>Horizon lines, vanishing points and perspective. </li>
</ul>
<p>Storyboards allow artists like <a href="https://creatureartteacher.com/">Aaron Blaise</a> to embed emotion, gesture and movement into a scene. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/nbM3MwppxD","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<p>This artistic process helps the director make choices. The panels of the storyboard are propped up against a wall or shown onscreen during production. Members of the production crew refer to them to discuss and see where the visual narrative will lead. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/long-days-heavy-loads-what-the-best-boy-does-on-a-film-set-123358">Long days, heavy loads: what the best boy does on a film set</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Sharing a vision</h2>
<p>Storyboards are a great way for people working together to visualise their ideas and brainstorm new ones. It’s fascinating to see how simple line drawings can spark and move through to the final idea. Here is an example of the storyboard side-by-side with the final product from <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1049413/">UP</a> (2009).</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XoyZmu0IOKc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>What’s evident is a honed approach to drawing skills still playing a role in creating the film’s visual direction. </p>
<p>These days not all film directors employ this technique. But many in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/we-can-rebalance-australias-economy-with-creative-industries-23458">creative industries</a> still start with the drawing board as a source of communicating concepts, ideas and story. </p>
<p>Like a compass steering a ship, drawings were probably the starting point for your favourite show or movie. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-production-design-24062">Explainer: what is production design?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/131205/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ari Chand does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The unsung heroes of screen production, storyboard artists are employed to create a shared visual script.Ari Chand, Lecturer in Visual Communication Design and Creative Industries, University of NewcastleLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1270882020-08-16T12:12:27Z2020-08-16T12:12:27ZHow Hollywood’s ‘Alien’ and ‘Predator’ movies reinforce anti-Black racism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346463/original/file-20200708-23-1a606bg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C4%2C2948%2C1964&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">As seen in 'Alien vs. Predator,' Hollywood alien movies can be read as depicting Black people as monsters to be feared. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://bloody-disgusting.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/alien-vs-predator.jpg">(20th Century Fox)</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>What makes Black people more likely than others to be killed, beaten, tortured and raped by white police officers and vigilantes? <a href="https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2019-08-15/police-shootings-are-a-leading-cause-of-death-for-black-men">Although Black men are killed by the police more than any other group,</a> Black women are <a href="https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1462&context=wmjowl">regular targets of police violence</a> even though this fact is often rendered invisible. </p>
<p>A culture and history of racist misrepresentation may have something to do with it. Why has there been considerable tolerance among the silent majority of white people for animal-like, demonic representations of Black people in media and popular culture? </p>
<p>The short answer is that we are dealing with a culture of domination. It is a culture that thrives on the sexualized demonization of Black people. Two examples of this are Ridley Scott’s <em>Alien</em>, which comports with the trope of Black women as alien breeders and <em>Predator</em>, written by brothers Jim and John Thomas, that riffs on images of Black men as dreadlocked, violent and superhuman.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/george-floyds-death-reflects-the-racist-roots-of-american-policing-139805">George Floyd's death reflects the racist roots of American policing</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/05/29/864732088/minneapolis-seethes-over-george-floyds-death-as-trump-calls-protesters-thugs">George Floyd’s recorded and widely publicized killing</a> as well as the <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/7099793/breonna-taylor-police-officer-fired-actions/">killing of Breonna Taylor in her own home</a> serve as catalysts for many white people discovering anti-Blackness and the reality of police violence. This reckoning asks that we examine the racist anti-Black cultural tropes that span art, politics and social control. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346464/original/file-20200708-31-1mbja4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346464/original/file-20200708-31-1mbja4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346464/original/file-20200708-31-1mbja4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346464/original/file-20200708-31-1mbja4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346464/original/file-20200708-31-1mbja4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346464/original/file-20200708-31-1mbja4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346464/original/file-20200708-31-1mbja4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Black women are seen as alien breeders in Ridley Scott’s <em>Alien</em> franchise.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://z1035.com/2020/06/04/65796/">(20th Century Fox)</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On March 13, Breonna Taylor, a nurse in training, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/article/breonna-taylor-police.html">was killed by Louisville, Ky., police officers</a> in her own home after police broke in using what is known as a “no-knock” warrant. Some researchers count as many as <a href="https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030012816">80,000 no-knock warrants</a> every year in the U.S. — as many times as there are people at an average NFL game. </p>
<p>Until recently, there has been considerable complacency about police killing and <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/21/us/oklahoma-city-officer-daniel-holtzclaw-rape-sentencing/">raping</a> of Black people. There is equally little effort to conceptualize in theoretically accessible ways how representations in cinema mesh with political racism.</p>
<h2>The Black woman as an alien</h2>
<p>Black women have been portrayed in contemporary white social and political culture as super-fertile and indestructible breeders whose <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/229445.Killing_the_Black_Body">sexual reproduction must be controlled</a>. This is a shift from the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvx070kn">slave-breeding campaign</a> that emerged across the Americas after Britain’s abolition of the slave trade in 1807 and slavery in <a href="https://origins.osu.edu/review/after-abolition-britain-and-slave-trade-1807">1834</a>. </p>
<p>This shift in public policy and white attitudes toward Black women’s sexual reproduction is evident in the U.S., especially with the 1965 <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/the-moynihan-report-an-annotated-edition/404632/">Moynihan Report</a> and 1970 <a href="https://www.nixonlibrary.gov/sites/default/files/virtuallibrary/documents/jul10/53.pdf">Moynihan Memorandum</a>. As part of the Republican Party’s <a href="https://www.salon.com/2013/10/27/reagans_southern_strategy_gave_rise_to_the_tea_party/">Southern Strategy</a>, Richard Nixon set in motion the myth of the <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/josh-levin-the-queen-book-review/">Black welfare queen</a>. This myth was later adopted by the Democrats. </p>
<p>It is now so fundamental a mythology in the white imagination that hardly any amount of contrary evidence can dislodge it. Enduring narratives about Black family pathology — particularly that of the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1536504216628840">overbearing and single Black mother</a> — have led to damaging representations of Black women. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/raising-children-under-suspicion-and-criminalization-113416">Raising children under suspicion and criminalization</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Ridley Scott’s <em>Alien</em> franchise, with its vicious and endlessly breeding carbon black alien mother, came at the height of neoliberal experiment and in the U.S. especially, an all-out assault on Black people. In the context of anti-Black culture, the film signifies the Black woman as an unkillable and ceaselessly breeding alien who threatened the body politic. In terms set by historian Lothrop Stoddard’s white supremacist 1920 book <em><a href="https://archive.org/details/risingtideofcolo00stoduoft/page/n9/mode/2up">The Rising Tide of Color</a></em>, a Black woman’s sexual reproduction is imagined to signal the <a href="https://psmag.com/news/a-fear-of-white-extinction-is-provoking-racial-bias-among-american-whites">genetic extinction</a> of the white republic. </p>
<h2>The Black man as predator</h2>
<p>Black men and boys are imagined as dangerous, threatening, inherently criminal and <a href="http://doi.org/10.1177/1948550614553642">superhuman</a> — <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/technology/black-men-perceived-stronger-threatening-1.4022277">bigger, faster, stronger and less likely to feel pain</a>. These views have roots in chattel slavery. </p>
<p>Canada is not innocent in the reproduction of this trope. Inspired by southern secessionists, <a href="https://utorontopress.com/ca/the-african-canadian-legal-odyssey-3">Canada’s first prime minister, John A. Macdonald, claimed the death penalty</a> would deter Black men from assaulting white women. <a href="https://btlbooks.com/book/fear-of-a-black-nation">Scholars David Austin</a> and <a href="https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780253218940">Greg Thomas</a> both demonstrate that in the 1960s and 1970s, the RCMP and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation were obsessed with Black men’s sexual prowess. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="The Predator stands with his mouth open, he is holding a man above his head." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346465/original/file-20200708-35-1sv2ei5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346465/original/file-20200708-35-1sv2ei5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346465/original/file-20200708-35-1sv2ei5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346465/original/file-20200708-35-1sv2ei5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346465/original/file-20200708-35-1sv2ei5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346465/original/file-20200708-35-1sv2ei5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346465/original/file-20200708-35-1sv2ei5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Does the movie imply Black men are large, dreadlocked, super-virile predators?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/XyuBAQvygIP6kNoUg1Yr7o2904E=/1400x1400/filters:format(jpeg)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/12870735/DF_14814_R2_rgb_2040.jpg">20th Century Fox</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the U.S., anti-lynching campaigner <a href="https://www.e-bookdownload.net/search/ida-b-wells-versus-judge-lynch">Ida B. Wells</a> and, subsequently, writer and scholar <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/37354/women-race-and-class-by-angela-y-davis/">Angela Y. Davis</a> documented how the myth of the Black-man-as-rapist undermined African-Americans’ economic, social and political position. </p>
<p>The idea that the late George Bush Sr. may have defeated <a href="https://www.history.com/news/george-bush-willie-horton-racist-ad">Michael Dukakis</a> in 1988 by promoting the Black-man-as-rapist trope shows how deeply this myth is embedded in popular culture. The idea of Black boys and men as <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/body-count-moral-poverty-and-how-to-win-americas-war-against-crime-and-drugs/oclc/35159279">super-predators</a> was also <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/21/hillary-clinton-black-millennial-voters">expressed by Hilary Clinton</a> in 1996. Clearly, the current culture of aggressive and militarized policing that kills Black people at <a href="https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/blacks-whites-police-deaths-disparity/">three times the rate of white people</a> in the U.S. crosses political lines.</p>
<p>In the context of racially charged white anxieties about immigration and social order, the historical demonization of Black men is a trope, a stereotype, that easily maps onto cinematic typecasting. The 1987 Hollywood film that launched the <a href="https://www.empireonline.com/movies/news/predator-synopsis-promises-genetically-upgraded-predators/"><em>Predator</em></a> franchise fits this pattern. </p>
<p><em>Predator</em> depicted a Black, dreadlocked, large and super-virile male in a way that converged white art with white political history. A white man once said he thought it was cool that I had dreadlocks like the Predator. This is not a compliment.</p>
<p>The police <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/1997/12/louima199712">rape</a>, <a href="https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2013/0912/Chicago-Mayor-Rahm-Emanuel-apologizes-for-two-decades-of-police-torture">torture</a>, <a href="http://guardianlv.com/2014/01/sexual-assault-by-police-equals-ruptured-testicle-for-high-schooler/">castrate</a> and murder Black men. The link between visual culture and anti-Black, racist, dog-whistle politics reveals that these violent, racist behaviours strikes deep at the heart of white psychosexual fears and pathologies. Black men are imagined as predators who must be controlled, if not eliminated with extreme prejudice. </p>
<h2>The way forward</h2>
<p>How do we move beyond these harmful anti-Black tropes? </p>
<p>At a minimum, I suggest at least three actions.</p>
<p>First, there must be candid admission that there is both sexualized fear of and desire of Black people. The fear shows up <a href="https://apnews.com/def4fbb664edeac24746cc7af0c5c555">viscerally</a>, or in an unconscious recoil, when a white and Black person share the same space. </p>
<p>Second, there must also be an admission that Hollywood and the media paint Black people as sexualized, superhuman monstrosities and that this meshes with racialized political discourse. </p>
<p>Finally, more white people need to critically examine their whiteness. Well-known white scholar and writer <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/postscript/noel-ignatievs-long-fight-against-whiteness">Noel Ignatiev’s</a> called for <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/abolishing-whiteness-urgent-191117153149028.html">whiteness to be abolished</a>: this call should ring true and is necessary if we are to see an end to the psychosexual and racist pathologies that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/28/us/i-cant-breathe-police-arrest.html">prevent Black people from being able to breathe</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two Black men carry posters with the words, 'I Can't Breathe'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352325/original/file-20200811-14-1monb3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352325/original/file-20200811-14-1monb3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352325/original/file-20200811-14-1monb3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352325/original/file-20200811-14-1monb3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352325/original/file-20200811-14-1monb3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352325/original/file-20200811-14-1monb3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352325/original/file-20200811-14-1monb3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Protesters who march against police shootings and racism during a rally in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 13, 2014, carry posters with the words, ‘I Can’t Breathe.’ The phrase originates from the last words of Eric Garner, an unarmed Black man who was killed in 2014 after being put in a chokehold by New York City Police.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Rena Schild/Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/127088/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tamari Kitossa does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Anti-black violence exists against the backdrop of the political and cultural dehumanization of Black people. How did this happen and where do we go from here?Tamari Kitossa, Associate Professor, Sociology, Brock UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/998922018-08-01T09:32:02Z2018-08-01T09:32:02ZHistorical movies: why a good story is more important than the facts<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230003/original/file-20180731-136655-1uy619m.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Twentieth Century Fox</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Ridley Scott’s epic 2005 movie Kingdom of Heaven, about the fall of Jerusalem to Saladin in 1187, has been <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/news/kingdom-of-heaven-in-wars-with-historians-1.438262">widely criticised</a> by historians for its lack of accuracy. Even while the film was still in production, Cambridge historian Jonathan Riley-Smith called it “nonsense” and “Osama bin Laden’s version of history”, while <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Templars.html?id=Xpj7Whuaq14C">Michael Haag wrote</a> that “Scott revises history wholesale, or rather makes it up.” He concludes his review by stating that “there is nothing that bears much relation to historical fact”.</p>
<p>Whatever the historians may have thought, the film won critical praise – <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-reviews/kingdom-of-heaven-251738/">Rolling Stone declared</a> that “Scott delivers rousing entertainment” – and took more than US$211m at the box office. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/06/movies/an-epic-bloodletting-empowered-by-faith.html">The New York Times</a> critic Manohla Dargis described the film as “an ostensibly fair-minded, even-handed account of one of the least fair-minded, even-handed chapters in human history”.</p>
<p>So who was right? On the one hand, the professional historians – or the critics and the public? Which rather boils down to the question of whether filmmakers should be educating their audience, or entertaining them. </p>
<h2>Lights, camera, action</h2>
<p>Film can only go so far towards creating an absolutely accurate portrayal of the past. At the most basic level, historical accuracy is impossible due to the nature of film production realities such as using actors, costumes and sets to recreate the historical narrative. Even if these achieve a consensus of accuracy among historians, these aesthetics only create an illusion of the past.</p>
<p>Filmmakers must rework an episode from history to become a marketable narrative that will be attractive to audiences and provide a financial return for investors. In the “<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2006/09/19/kingdom_of_heaven_directors_cut_dvd_2006_review.shtml">definitive edition</a>” of the DVD of Kingdom of Heaven, screenwriter William Monahan explained the need for writers to compromise history: “You use what plays, or can be made to play, and you don’t use what doesn’t.”</p>
<p>In her <a href="https://researchers.mq.edu.au/en/publications/history-goes-to-the-movies-studying-history-on-film">2007 book</a> History Goes to the Movies: Studying History on Film, film scholar Marnie Hughes-Warrington recounted the frustration of historian Natalie Zemon Davies on trying to work with filmmakers. Collaborating with the directors of the historical film, Le Retour de Martin Guerre, Daniel Vigne and Jean Claude Carriére, Davies complained that “aspects of the story were compressed, altered or even left out”. </p>
<p>According to Hughes-Warrington, Davies “wondered if film was capable of handling and conveying ‘the uncertainties’, ‘the perhaps’, the ‘may-have-beens’”. In other words, there are limits to the way historical movies can create a narrative that will satisfy historians. </p>
<h2>Magic medium</h2>
<p>But where are audiences going to get a better taste of what life might have been like centuries before it was depicted in newsreels? As American medievalist and film scholar, <a href="http://www.perspicuitas.uni-essen.de/medievalism/articles/Kelly_Beyond%20Historical%20Accuracy.pdf">A. Keith Kelly put it</a>: “What no print over centuries of writing has been capable of achieving toward an appreciation of medieval warfare, films like Braveheart and Branagh’s Henry V can accomplish in minutes.” </p>
<p>In other words, despite film’s limitations in providing the required factual detail, the medium can provide an audience with an experience that provides the appearance of historical authenticity. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230002/original/file-20180731-136652-fizejn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230002/original/file-20180731-136652-fizejn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230002/original/file-20180731-136652-fizejn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230002/original/file-20180731-136652-fizejn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230002/original/file-20180731-136652-fizejn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230002/original/file-20180731-136652-fizejn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230002/original/file-20180731-136652-fizejn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Braveheart: economical with the truth.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">20th Century Fox</span></span>
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<p>It would take a whole article to detail historical inaccuracies in Mel Gibson’s 1995 blockbuster Braveheart. The politics are oversimplified into a consumable narrative of good Scottish versus bad English. But this egregious lack of historical accuracy didn’t prevent the film winning five Academy Awards (including best picture, best director and best cinematography) and taking <a href="https://www.boxofficemojo.com/people/chart/?view=Actor&id=melgibson.htm">more than US$210m</a> at the box office. </p>
<h2>Not a lesson</h2>
<p>Documentary film can provide a deeper level of scrutiny but the assumption of historical accuracy is still problematic. Documentary filmmakers must compromise on accuracy and details to construct the desired “narrative”. For example, the documentary <a href="http://www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory/documentary/religion/crusades.php">Crusades: Crescent and the Cross</a>, focuses on the first crusade, the rise of Saladin and his conflict with Richard the Lionheart and skips out the rise of the all-conquering Mamelukes. This creates a narrative that depicts the third crusade as the climax of the crusades – which actually continued for another 100 years. </p>
<p>But it’s just too simplistic to assert that audiences can’t tell fact from fiction. Two studies – <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Presence_of_the_Past.html?id=4r1-LlcDpx4C">one from the US</a> and <a href="https://opus.lib.uts.edu.au/handle/10453/5632">another from Australia</a> – suggest that people are more inclined to trust books and the work of academic historians and museums than they are to believe movies or TV shows. </p>
<p>So, not even the audience expects filmmakers to educate them – and the numbers show that historical fiction is profitable when the film is an enjoyable experience rather than an accurate retelling. A historical movie is not a history lesson, but historical fiction, which provides a level of authenticity that sets a story in a commonly perceived historical reality. </p>
<p>If audiences don’t expect 100% accuracy, then why bother comparing these fictional narratives to works of historical scholars? It’s necessary neither for box office nor critical success – but good historical movies can inspire people to find out more about the period being portrayed. And comparing the difference between the historical fact and the movie fiction enables the viewer to analyse not only what the filmmaker perceives about the period, but what the filmmaker is using this historical reality to say. After all, as we’ve already heard: “You use what plays.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/99892/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Patrick Masters does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A great movie that gets some of its history wrong is way better than an accurate film that puts people to sleep.Patrick Masters, Lecturer in Film Studies, University of PortsmouthLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/881002018-01-05T15:30:55Z2018-01-05T15:30:55ZCutting Kevin Spacey out of a film could lead to ‘scandal clauses’ in Hollywood contracts<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/200525/original/file-20180102-26157-1pfttnv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">h</span> </figcaption></figure><p>The film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5294550/">All the Money in the World</a> has been released just in time for this season’s movie awards. But there were some significant last minute changes. The actor Kevin Spacey, signed up to play the role of oil tycoon J. Paul Getty, no longer features in the film. </p>
<p>Following the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-41918966">allegations of sexual abuse</a> made against Spacey, director Ridley Scott announced that the Oscar winner’s performance <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/08/arts/kevin-spacey-all-the-money-in-the-world.html">would be removed</a> from the final cut – and his role taken on by the actor Christopher Plummer instead.</p>
<p>There is little mystery regarding the motivation behind this casting decision. It must have been thought that <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5175743/How-Ridley-Scott-removed-Kevin-Spacey-new-film.html">leaving Spacey in the film</a> would have risked a negative impact on box office takings, and even prejudiced the future work of everyone involved in the film. But was the decision legal?</p>
<p>So far little has been said about Spacey’s rights as a performing artist, or any objections he may have to being edited out of a film production without his consent. </p>
<p>However politically incorrect this may be, it is a question worth exploring. Creative industries across the globe are still working out how to operate in the aftermath of the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-41594672">Harvey Weinstein scandal</a>.</p>
<p>Spacey’s rights involve intellectual property law. In most countries actors enjoy what are known as “performers’ rights”. Performers’ rights are the equivalent for performing artists of what copyright is to authors. </p>
<p>They are enforced to ensure that the consent of performers is sought before their performance is recorded and commercialised. They may also help performers secure payment.</p>
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<p>Performers’ rights can be relevant to cases where the recording of the performance was authorised – but not its subsequent modification. In such cases, it is the performers’ _moral _rights that may apply, which provide that the integrity of a performer’s interpretation (in its recorded version) must be respected. However, it is still uncertain what this protection clearly entails in practice. </p>
<p>This is because these rights remain a relatively recent feature of intellectual property law which has received little judicial scrutiny since their introduction. (Performers cannot object to editing which forms part of the normal process of production, such as dubbing for actors or sound mixing for musicians.)</p>
<p>In Spacey’s case, it is not so much the fact that his performance has been removed from the film which may question the legality of the editorial decision, but <em>how</em> this has been done. </p>
<p>Before the release of the film, many expected that the director would simply remove Spacey’s face from shots digitally, and replace it with Plummer’s. This solution would likely have been the quickest and cheapest, as Spacey appeared in scenes involving a cast of thousands, which would have been difficult to reshoot in their entirety. </p>
<p>Digital editing of this kind, although fairly routine in stunt scenes, would have been the most problematic in light of Spacey’s rights as a performer. One can easily imagine how a court would find it harmful to Spacey’s reputation to see his body be given another man’s face. </p>
<h2>Falling to the cutting room floor</h2>
<p>But could Spacey have legally objected to it? Probably not under US law, as actors’ moral rights are yet to be implemented. But he may have had a positive response in a French court, as French judges have tended to give the moral rights a broad application.</p>
<p>In the end, however, Scott went for an alternative solution. The director has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/13/movies/kevin-spacey-all-the-money-in-the-world-christopher-plummer.html">said no “digital trickery”</a> was involved, and he resorted to more traditional editing techniques. He cut the character’s screen time and refilmed scenes with Plummer. In scenes involving a large number of extras, Spacey’s performance was removed digitally (in its entirety) and replaced by Plummer acting in front of a green screen. </p>
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<em>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/should-we-be-ashamed-to-watch-a-kevin-spacey-movie-87399">Should we be ashamed to watch a Kevin Spacey movie?</a>
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<p>Because traditional editing methods were involved, it is unlikely that Spacey could object to his replacement on the basis of performers’ rights. Surprisingly, perhaps, being entirely removed from a film is less likely to be found harmful to a performer’s reputation by the courts than having a performance edited on screen. </p>
<p>Unless Spacey stipulated in his contract that no replacement for his role was possible during or after the production of the film, the actor would have no legal recourse to seek compensation for being cut out of All the Money in the World. In fact, the opposite may be true. </p>
<p>It may be that the production companies have a claim against Spacey if his contract included a morals clause. The producers could then possibly sue Spacey for breach of contract and try to recuperate the US$10m cost of the reshoot. </p>
<p>In the future it is likely that there will be big changes in the way film industry contracts are written and negotiated. Production companies may ensure that performers waive their rights to object to being replaced or their performances edited if their names are linked to scandals. Producers may decide to make sure that no intellectual property right of an actor gets in the way of cutting them out of the picture.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88100/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mathilde Pavis has received funding from the UK Research Councils (AHRC) and Arts Council England to support her research in intellectual property law.</span></em></p>Kevin Spacey’s star has fallen, and his role erased from a new film. Could he challenge this?Mathilde Pavis, Lecturer in Law, University of ExeterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/778202017-05-19T12:27:05Z2017-05-19T12:27:05ZAlien: Covenant falls short of the original Alien’s trailblazing feminism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170135/original/file-20170519-12257-sdp69z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Twentieth Century Fox</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It was <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20080905074007/http://www.montrealmirror.com/ARCHIVES/2003/102303/film1.html">pitched as “Jaws in space”</a>, but director Ridley Scott’s original <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078748/">Alien</a> film, released in 1979, couldn’t have been more different to Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster. Unlike <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073195/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Jaws (1975)</a>, Alien didn’t indulge in attacks on female skinny-dippers. Instead, it channelled <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/70sfeminism/">second-wave feminism</a> to reflect and critique the slasher genre’s spectacle of violence against women.</p>
<p>These politics are unfortunately a far cry from those in Scott’s new addition to the franchise, <a>Alien: Covenant</a>. Where Alien traced the contours of sexual violence, Scott’s new prequel excavates the original’s mystery, horror and feminism, leaving an empty shell that is all too redolent of the B-movie sexism its predecessor transcended.</p>
<p>Now nearly 40 years old, Alien still gives men more than a few reasons to squirm in their seats. The film’s monster, the insuperable “xenomorph”, is a seven-foot phallus, pouncing from shadows to attack male victims with a thrusting set of angry teeth. Its larval stage is a “facehugger” that impregnates its victim by clamping its reproductive organs over his mouth. The process culminates once the victim has carried the child-parasite to term and dies in bloody childbirth. </p>
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<p>This imagery of <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=k_H3vLIRECgC&lpg=PP1&dq=alien%20woman%20gallardo&pg=PA9#v=onepage&q&f=false">male rape</a>, noted by the film’s <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=RAvM9els2acC&lpg=PP1&dq=science%20fiction%20adam%20roberts&pg=PA80#v=onepage&q&f=false">critics</a> and <a href="http://entertainment.ie/cinema/news/How-Alien-Changed-The-Horror-Genre-Forever/392996.htm">creators</a>, allowed Alien to exploit a singularly male fear: that some monstrous thing might treat men in the same way that men too often treat women.</p>
<p>However, Ripley – the film’s protagonist played by Sigourney Weaver – prevents Alien from fixating on solely male anxieties. The alien’s victims, almost entirely men, are the poorly paid haulage crew of the spacecraft Nostromo. Their employer – “the company” – conspires to obtain the xenomorph, at the cost of their lives. </p>
<p>Scott’s stroke of genius is that, as all the male crew members die gruesome deaths, Ripley emerges as the central figure. The character had originally been male but was later <a href="http://ew.com/movies/2017/05/04/ridley-scott-alien-sigourney-weaver-casting/">recast by Scott</a>. This meant that Ripley represented the doubly assaulted woman, facing both the xenomorph’s sexual violence and her employer’s gendered economic exploitation. Audiences feel the structures of sexism and then reflect on the fact that it is Ripley, and not the male crew, who both resists “the company” – even when their sleeper agent literally attempts to ram a porno-mag down her throat – and kills the xenomorph.</p>
<h2>Male fantasy</h2>
<p>At first glance, the apple of 2017’s Alien: Covenant doesn’t seem to have fallen far from the tree. All the familiar beats are present as the cast of characters is whittled down – and Katherine Waterson’s Daniels, the ship’s third-in-command, emerges as the heroine/survivor. </p>
<p>And yet, in a film that resembles the very slasher exploitation cinema that Alien rejected, the echo of Ripley rings hollow in Daniels. Throughout Covenant, female characters haplessly slip and fall at crucial moments. They react stupidly and selfishly in moments of crisis. Twice women conveniently leave the group to bathe, granting the audience the voyeuristic opportunity to enjoy their predictable demises. The particularly egregious shower scene – in which the camera lands upon a naked Callie Hernandez, drenched in blood and screaming – is the furthest remove from the original film’s feminist aesthetic.</p>
<p>Covenant’s script matches this ornamentalisation of women, reversing Alien’s narrative formula and limiting the role of its female protagonist. Instead of Daniels, the plot revolves around Michael Fassbender’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/jan/16/a-z-wagner-alberich-antisemitism">Wagnerian villain</a> David, a robotic creation of “the company”. </p>
<p>David madly presides over an unpopulated world, determined to outstrip his human creators by bio-engineering the xenomorph. This new take divorces the sexual violence of the alien from the structural violence of “the company”. Rather than the monolithic corporation, violence now centres around David – the corrupted anomaly of male power rather than the prime example of its values. </p>
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<p>The film’s symbolism ultimately condemns David for his desire to break with a “natural” order. He perverts the company’s gendered directives by longing to create life alone, an act that requires he embody both male and female sex roles. Covenant couples this “deviancy” with a sexually charged scene involving a flute and David kissing his own doppelganger. And so the original Alien’s critique of heterosexual-masculine-capitalist violence is displaced, by the actions of the new prequel character.</p>
<p>Rather than galvanising Alien’s feminist critique against a patriarchy that <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/theresa-may-philip-may-husband-boy-jobs-girls-one-show-take-bins-out-bbc-prime-minister-marriage-a7727481.html">divides labour according to gender norms</a> and <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/10/the-psychology-of-victim-blaming/502661/">normalises sexual violence</a>, in Covenant Scott instead finds a scapegoat in the victims who are not adhering to the patriachy’s standards.</p>
<p>This is all encapsulated by the film’s final image. Alien’s horror fixated on deathly male-birth throughout the movie. By contrast, Alien: Covenant’s parting frames voice its kink-shaming terror through Fassbender’s smiling face, happily birthing xenomorph embryos from his mouth.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77820/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sadek Kessous does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Ripley beat the patriarchy and a rampaging xenomorph - but Daniels isn’t even given the chance.Sadek Kessous, Teaching Fellow in Modern and Contemporary Literature, Newcastle UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/686912016-11-11T15:58:41Z2016-11-11T15:58:41ZArrival review: first-contact film finds new way to explore the ‘otherness’ of aliens<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/145573/original/image-20161111-9083-1r74xwn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Amy Adams and the weird pods. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Paramount Pictures</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><strong>Spoiler alert: don’t read on if you don’t want to know what happens</strong> </p>
<p>Denis Villeneuve’s alien movie <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2543164/">Arrival</a>, which has just reached cinemas, is the latest in a long sci-fi tradition of “first contact” narratives. Twelve seed-like pods appear across the world, causing a global crisis when they hatch, as world leaders argue over what to do about them. Is it better to strike pre-emptively before they destroy civilisation or risk trying to communicate with them in the hope they come in peace?</p>
<p>The challenge for Villeneuve and anyone in this genre is how to portray the “otherness” of these visitors. There’s little that hasn’t been done before, of course, from <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LittleGreenMen">green men</a> to <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/InsectoidAliens">insectoids</a> to <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051418/">red blobs</a> – frequently thinly disguised versions of invaders from the East. This often goes hand in hand with the America Saves the World narrative, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116629/">Independence Day (1996)</a> being one of the classic examples. </p>
<p>But if sci-fi has had its fair share of clumsy metaphors, it is hard to depict the truly alien when all stories come from human imagination – and hard to represent them without some reference to the human. As the researcher Sherryl Vint <a href="http://liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/products/59808">has put it</a>, sci-fi must:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>achieve the delicate balance of enough familiarity such that alien can be comprehensible to the human readers, but still incorporate enough alterity in the text such that the alien also pushes us to conceive of the world and ourselves otherwise.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>How alien should an alien be?</h2>
<p>Edwin Abbott’s 1884 novel <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/433567.Flatland">Flatland</a> addressed this question of whether the human imagination can escape its own limits to imagine something unimaginably different. Not a conventional sci-fi story, it is about a character in a two-dimensional world whose reality is drastically challenged when he discovers there are three dimensions. Representing aliens is exactly that kind of problem. </p>
<p>Part of the challenge is that efforts to communicate otherness risk losing their effectiveness if they are overplayed. This is one reason sci-fi often doesn’t show the creatures until well into a film – Arrival being no exception. </p>
<p>Some of the most effective narratives avoid representing their aliens as much as possible. In HP Lovecraft tales like <a href="http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/cc.aspx">The Call of Cthulu (1928)</a>, cosmic horrors resist description: they are unspeakable and indescribable – and the imagination must fill in the gaps as best it can. Ridley Scott doesn’t go quite this far in <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078748/">Alien (1979)</a>, but understands that his creature is more frightening and convincing in partial glimpses – usually of its dripping jaws – than when shown in its entirety.</p>
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<p>In Arrival, Denis Villeneuve’s approach is to be careful in the representation of his aliens. The film’s characters barely use that word, tending to refer to them as “they”. The first glimpses suggest squid-like bodies, floating in a low-gravity mist. At first it is not clear whether these are entire bodies or the hands of something more giant – more complete views later in the film suggest something in between. The creatures are dubbed “heptapods” for their seven “feet”, though different feet have different purposes. </p>
<h2>The language barrier</h2>
<p>I’ve seen far worse representations of alien creatures, but where Arrival becomes really interesting in portraying otherness is in the language of the visitors. Other sci-fi efforts to communicate with aliens have ranged from universal translators like the <a href="http://www.startrek.com/database_article/universal-translator">ones in Star Trek</a>; to the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/hitchhikers/guide/babelfish.shtml">Babel fish</a> in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; or a common lingua franca like <a href="http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Galactic_Basic_Standard">Star Wars’s Basic</a>.</p>
<p>In Arrival, the American authorities call on Louise Banks (Amy Adams), an academic linguistics expert, to come to Montana – mirrored by communication efforts by linguistics experts in other countries around the world. In Montana it becomes clear that unless Louise succeeds, the physicist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) can’t begin to answer his analytical questions about the creatures. </p>
<p>Their speech, if that’s what it is, consists of clicks and booms that are never deciphered. Understanding them depends on what is visible, particularly the inky circles of their written language. Unlike English words which describe spoken sounds, these circles are <a href="http://www.dictionary.com/browse/ideogram">ideograms</a>, symbols directly representing ideas or things. And when Louise and Ian observe that their grammar shows no markers of time direction, they begin to speculate that the creatures’ brains may be wired very differently to ours.</p>
<p>We later discover that the written circles are bound up with the creatures’ ability to see into the future, and that as Louise learns their language, she can see into the future, too. Villeneuve makes full use of film’s capacity to flash seamlessly forward and back - we do not at first realise that we are being shown the future instead of the past. It becomes clear that Louise’s life problems are unusually bound up with the Arrival event.</p>
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<span class="caption">Louise greets the vistors.</span>
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<p>Debate rages between governments about how to respond to the creatures, amid civil unrest and global tensions, with Russia and China particularly twitchy. Louise argues that the creatures may not know the difference between a weapon and a tool. As another character observes: if you only give someone a hammer, everything becomes a nail. </p>
<p>Ultimately, Arrival is less about communicating with the aliens than with each other – internationally but also individually. Louise’s gradual understanding of what it means to experience time like her alien acquaintances will be central to how she lives her future. The gift for her and the rest of the world is to a glimpse a distinctively different way of being. </p>
<p>The film’s message is that difference is not about body shape or colour but language, culture and ways of thinking. It’s not about erasing that difference but communicating through it. This is what achieves the balance of familiarity and otherness that alien films depend upon – and it’s what makes Arrival one of the more memorable contributions to the genre in recent years. And without entirely giving the ending away, it’s not the Americans that come up with the right way forward, but a more unexpected country.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/68691/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Emily Alder does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>New sci-fi movie has a fascinating approach to an old question.Emily Alder, Lecturer in Literature and Culture, Edinburgh Napier UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/628742016-07-27T18:39:00Z2016-07-27T18:39:00ZUnder the influence of … the cult film ‘Blade Runner’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/132196/original/image-20160727-21584-1sdw2xw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'Blade Runner' poster</span> </figcaption></figure><p><em>This is the fifth in a weekly series called “Under the influence”, in which we ask experts to share what they believe are the most influential works of art in their field. Here, the University of Johannesburg’s James Sey introduces Ridley Scott’s cult film, “Bladerunner”, released in 1982.</em></p>
<p>OK. Confession time. I’ve seen <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000631/">Ridley Scott</a>’s “<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083658/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Blade Runner</a>” at least 50 times. I know the entire screenplay of the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Blade-Runner-Directors-Harrison-Ford/dp/0790729628">director’s cut</a> off by heart. I have owned three different VHS versions, three different DVD versions (including a very collectable 12" laser disc) and have downloaded the ever-expanding online FAQ. Sad, isn’t it?</p>
<p>My only excuse is that this version of acid-head science-fiction pulp genius Philip K Dick’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/apr/29/do-androids-dream-electric-dick-review">novel</a>, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”, is a movie of almost total prescient brilliance. </p>
<p>Cyberpunk guru <a href="http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/">William Gibson</a> went to see it when he was just beginning to write his seminal debut novel, “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jul/28/william-gibson-neuromancer-cyberpunk-books">Neuromancer</a>”. Legend has it that he walked out halfway through, saying later that the movie was too much like the inside of his head. </p>
<p>“Blade Runner” is one of those films that seemed predestined for underground immortality. Generally consigned to the “flawed but fairly interesting” category by most movie critics on its release, it was famously withdrawn from release to be re-cut. It was also given a laughable voice-over narrative to explain it better to the popcorn brigade.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/132002/original/image-20160726-7033-1qxnzdo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/132002/original/image-20160726-7033-1qxnzdo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132002/original/image-20160726-7033-1qxnzdo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132002/original/image-20160726-7033-1qxnzdo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132002/original/image-20160726-7033-1qxnzdo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132002/original/image-20160726-7033-1qxnzdo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132002/original/image-20160726-7033-1qxnzdo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Blade Runner’ director Ridley Scott.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Andrew Kelly/Reuters</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Since then the film has, like “<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0034583/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Casablanca</a>”, transcended its formula trappings as a sci-fi cum hardboiled noir detective thriller to spawn a dedicated cult following and fill a special niche in pop culture. One of the touchstones for its cult value over the years has been its singularity – it has never spawned any overt remakes or sequels, despite being hugely influential. Until now, that is. The news that Scott himself is involved in bringing a <a href="http://collider.com/blade-runner-2-director-denis-villeneuve-talks-sci-fi-sequel-harrison-ford/">sequel</a> to the screen, scheduled for release in late 2017, is making fans edgy and ambivalent.</p>
<h2>Why is/was it influential?</h2>
<p>“Blade Runner’s” storyline and theme is on one level a well-worn one. It is the Frankenstein theme – science creating life, or technogenesis. But it’s the way in which the film broaches that theme that has remained prescient and influential. It was released long before the advent of the commercial internet, and long before the headline experiments in stem cell research, genetic modification and human genome sequencing. </p>
<p>The film posits that commercially viable superhumans – known as replicants – have been created by science, and now pose a threat to their human creators as a rogue band of them return to earth to seek answers to the mystery of their lives. Police agents, known as blade runners, hunt them down and terminate (or “retire”) them.</p>
<p>The genre combination of savvy sci-fi with hardboiled noir thriller was unique at the time, and has since spawned many cinema imitators – “<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181689/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Minority Report</a>”, “<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0212720/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">AI</a>”, “<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0343818/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">I, Robot</a>” – but the film’s most marked influence has been visual. Its celebrated “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1213042?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">retrofitted</a>” production design – of a 21st-century Los Angeles megacity gradually imploding, overpopulated, largely Asian, and constantly raining from self-created weather conditions – has inspired numerous copycats, especially in advertising.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/132003/original/image-20160726-7045-150td0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/132003/original/image-20160726-7045-150td0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132003/original/image-20160726-7045-150td0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132003/original/image-20160726-7045-150td0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132003/original/image-20160726-7045-150td0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132003/original/image-20160726-7045-150td0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132003/original/image-20160726-7045-150td0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Actor Harrison Ford.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Fred Prouser/Reuters</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The term “retrofitted” was coined to describe the film’s clever design, with its postmodern flourishes and visual in-jokes. One of the best of these is a decrepit building in the city in which the final showdown between blade runner Deckard (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000148/">Harrison Ford</a>) and lead replicant Batty (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000442/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1">Rutger Hauer</a>) takes place. </p>
<p>An existing architectural landmark in Los Angeles, it’s called the <a href="https://www.laconservancy.org/locations/bradbury-building">Bradbury</a>, a nod to Golden Age sci-fi author <a href="http://www.raybradbury.com/">Ray Bradbury</a>. Another building is called the <a href="http://nofearofthefuture.blogspot.co.za/2007/11/blade-runner-borges-cut.html">Hundertwasser</a>, a nod to the famously quirky Austrian architect. </p>
<p>The film’s main theme is brilliantly realised, even with, and perhaps because of, the lack of sophisticated computer-generated imagery. Drawing on its own visual template – Fritz Lang’s sci-fi cinema classic “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/oct/21/metropolis-lang-science-fiction">Metropolis</a>” (1927) – for the vision of a technology-saturated early 21st century, it achieves the same level of visual artistry about a city of the future as Stanley Kubrick’s “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/nov/30/2001-a-space-odyssey-kubrick-sci-fi-epic-back-big-screen">2001: A Space Odyssey</a>” did about outer space. </p>
<p>It also gave two relatively unknown actors major cachet, which they used in different ways. Harrison Ford, who plays world-weary, compassionate, perhaps even a replicant, blade runner Deckard, went on to A-list Hollywood stardom. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/132005/original/image-20160726-7051-1kil393.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/132005/original/image-20160726-7051-1kil393.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132005/original/image-20160726-7051-1kil393.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132005/original/image-20160726-7051-1kil393.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132005/original/image-20160726-7051-1kil393.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132005/original/image-20160726-7051-1kil393.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132005/original/image-20160726-7051-1kil393.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Actor Rutger Hauer.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Denis Makarenko/Shutterstock.com</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Rutger Hauer, the prodigal son and leader of the rogue replicants, turned in the performance of his life as Batty (cult trainspotters can quote the entire “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe … attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion” etc speech), and then descended into the cult movie underworld, reprising the outlaw cyborg figure in a stream of dire B-movies (the brilliant “<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091209/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2">The Hitcher</a>” perhaps the only notable exception).</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/NoAzpa1x7jU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A well-loved scene from ‘Blade Runner’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Why is it still relevant?</h2>
<p>Perhaps the true index of the movie’s cult status is the vociferous debates about its different versions. One of the first contemporary films to have a collectable director’s cut version, which is radically different in feel to the commercial, noir voiceover release (as well as suggesting that the hero is a replicant), it also has the aforementioned laser disc version that, for initiates, contains subtle differences in soundtrack and visual editing. </p>
<p>Its astounding look has not dated at all, testimony to its intelligence and style. It has given the contemporary lexicon at least two new words – replicant and retrofitted – and its compelling urban future vision has been widely imitated. </p>
<p>In the final analysis its influence and relevance, as well as its continuing hold on me as a writer and film fan, are also tied into the age-old theme of <a href="https://ivc.lib.rochester.edu/how-we-think-digital-media-and-contemporary-technogenesis/">technogenesis</a>. In an effort to control the replicants better, the genetic engineers install implanted memories and a four-year lifespan.</p>
<p>The replicants constantly refer to their self-knowledge (Batty memorably says to the genetic engineer who makes eyes for the replicant series, “if only you could see what I have seen with your eyes”), and develop their own emotions as time passes. This astonishingly stylish realising of a complicated philosophical theme is the real triumph of the film.</p>
<p>The central concern is an ontological one: what are the psychological consequences for technologically created subjects who cannot reconcile their human-like consciousness to their status as made, not born? </p>
<p>Finally, the tragic fallen angel replicants of the film are denied “truly” human status by their relation to their own deaths. That is, they can have no productive conflict between life-instincts and death-instincts if they are always already aware of the hour of their deaths. It remains one of the most poignant aesthetic representations of the issue. </p>
<p>If ever a film was worthy of its underground reputation and cult influence, “Blade Runner” is it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/62874/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Sey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Ridley Scott’s ‘Blade Runner’ has transcended its sci-fi/hardboiled noir detective thriller formula to spawn a dedicated cult following.James Sey, Research Associate, Research Centre, Faculty of Fine Art, Design and Architecture, University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/479112015-10-02T15:57:37Z2015-10-02T15:57:37ZThe Martian: a space epic that explores ordinary human decency<p>On the red planet, amid arid desert and rolling mountain ranges, six sleekly space-suited astronauts grope their way back to their launch vehicle, fleeing a sudden and vicious wind storm.</p>
<p>Pelted and blinded by sand and metal, one of them is struck by debris and flung off into the darkness. The others, unable to stay any longer, leave him for dead, blasting off for Earth.</p>
<p>Later, the abandoned (yet still living) astronaut is snapped back to consciousness by a screeching alarm: his suit is out of oxygen. He’s been skewered in the stomach by a sheared-off piece of equipment. Picking himself up, he staggers inside the group’s now-deserted habitation module. Digging with pliers inside his belly, he plucks out pieces of buried shrapnel. Stapling his wound, he realizes he is stranded, alone, on Mars.</p>
<p>“Fuck,” he says, not unreasonably.</p>
<p>And so we meet Mark Watney: astronaut, botanist, survivalist and one of the more unlikely heroes of modern page and screen. </p>
<p>Adapted from Andy Weir’s novel, The Martian is the story of Watney’s attempt to stay alive long enough to be rescued. </p>
<p>It’s an uncomplicated plot: unlike most sci-fi blockbusters, there are no space monsters, no grand themes of intergalactic destiny, no evil villains. Earth is not in danger; time is not being traveled. The stakes are neither bigger, nor smaller, than a single human life – specifically, the life of Watney, played by Matt Damon with an appealing irreverence. </p>
<p>Watney is a talented problem-solver, yet he’s prone to the occasional overconfidence of a weekend home improvement enthusiast. Sparking a chemical reaction to produce water, Watney blasts himself across the room. Running out of ketchup to leaven the taste of his home-grown, life-sustaining potatoes, he dips them in crushed Vicodin. Asked by NASA for a PR photo, he poses, thumbs up and grinning, as the Fonz. Watney is motivated, it seems, by a refusal to be beaten by the absurd situation in which he finds himself. He’s also tickled by his accrual of self-anointed titles: best botanist on the planet, space pirate, colonial overlord of Mars.</p>
<p>What makes Watney adorable rather than obnoxious is his decency and self-effacement. He seems relatively untroubled by his own predicament, but crushed that his comrades will feel guilty for leaving him behind. He thinks of his parents, and wants them to know that he was on Mars doing something he loved and (as he doesn’t fail to note) was unbelievably good at.</p>
<p>A basic goodness characterizes his crewmates too: from Jessica Chastain’s effortlessly in-charge Commander Lewis to Michael Pena’s hotshot pilot Martinez, who is Watney’s closest friend on the crew. </p>
<p>It is Martinez who sends the first message to Watney once they realize he is still alive. “Sorry we left you behind on Mars,” Martinez texts Watney, “But we just don’t like you.”</p>
<p>The Martian is grounded in present or near-future technologies. Text messages drive the plot. Watney narrates his daily life to webcams in the habitation module, effectively creating his own channel on Martian YouTube. And of course, he has acquired his own <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/BringHimHome?src=hash">hashtag</a> during the promotion of the movie.</p>
<p>Ridley Scott makes some excellent directorial choices. Reprising a technique he deployed in Alien, Scott has his astronauts talk like ordinary human beings, rather than stilted protagonists in a space opera. He effectively conveys the smallness of Watney against the vast desolation of Mars. The Hermes spacecraft is beautiful.</p>
<p>I thought it was a mistake, though, to set the Earth portion of the plot in motion so quickly. The book is dominated by Watney’s first-person narration, driving home his isolation. In the movie, we can see NASA working on a solution before we’ve really understood the extent of Watney’s problems, and, as a result, tension dissipates.</p>
<p>Yet tension is not this movie’s metier; it’s a relentlessly positive tale. Most uplifting was the confidence that ordinary human decency – not existential questioning or threat, not supernatural intervention – could be the driving force in a space epic. </p>
<p>Watney wants to stay alive, and his friends and colleagues want to rescue him. It’s no more complicated than that. So while Watney generally despairs of the disco music his departed colleagues left behind on their laptops, he doesn’t protest when the slightly on-the-nose <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYkACVDFmeg">I Will Survive</a> turns up on the playlist.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/47911/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen Benedict Dyson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Review: stranded on Mars’ desolate landscape, a cocky, endearing protagonist breathes life into this survival tale.Stephen Benedict Dyson, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of ConnecticutLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/482012015-09-29T05:24:03Z2015-09-29T05:24:03ZThe Martian: a perfect balance of scientific accuracy and gripping fiction<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96500/original/image-20150928-30967-7kv3fi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Matt Damon is feeling lonely on Mars.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> 20th Century Fox</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>“I’m going to have to science the shit out of this,” says astronaut Mark Watney, played by Matt Damon, after being stranded on Mars. That pretty much sums up the tone in Ridley Scott’s new film <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ue4PCI0NamI">The Martian</a>, adapted from Andy Weir’s <a href="http://www.andyweirauthor.com/books/the-martian-tr">novel</a>, which appears in cinemas this week. Many have already commended the movie <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2015/09/23/the-martian-rooted-in-solid-science-says-nasa-scientist.html">for its scientific rigour</a> and Scott has said himself that it is as <a href="http://news.sciencemag.org/scientific-community/2015/09/here-s-what-ridley-scott-has-say-about-science-martian">“accurate as we can possibly get it”</a>. </p>
<p>So does the movie live up to its expectations? Well, the mission design and the hardware are based on actual NASA capabilities and an existing plan to get humans to Mars known as <a href="http://www.marssociety.org/home/about/mars-direct">Mars Direct</a>. However, there are parts that are less scientifically accurate. But what the story lacks in scientific rigour, it makes up for with great fiction that could inspire new interest in science.</p>
<h2>Growing food in space</h2>
<p>The main challenge for Watney is to find a way to grow food on the planet in order to stay alive the four years until NASA’s next planned mission to Mars. While this has of course never been done in real life, it is not entirely unrealistic. In August 2015 astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) ate lettuce that they had grown in space. This was the first time that humankind had grown and eaten food away from home. </p>
<p>In these so-called <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/aug/10/nasa-astronauts-lettuce-vegetables-grown-space">“VEGGIE” experiments</a> the crew had been provided with everything they needed: soil, seeds, specific lamps tuned to the requirements of the plants. In The Martain, however, Watney had none of this specially-prepared equipment and, crucially, no soil.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96479/original/image-20150928-30986-14qerdg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96479/original/image-20150928-30986-14qerdg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96479/original/image-20150928-30986-14qerdg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96479/original/image-20150928-30986-14qerdg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96479/original/image-20150928-30986-14qerdg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96479/original/image-20150928-30986-14qerdg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96479/original/image-20150928-30986-14qerdg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The vegetable production system aboard the ISS.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fc/ISS-40_Vegetable_Production_System_%28Veggie%29.jpg">NASA/wikipedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The technical term for loose material covering rock is regolith, which includes the soil that we all know on Earth. Even regolith on Mars is familiar: we have been studying its properties since the 1970s, starting with the Mars <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/viking/">Viking</a> missions. NASA’s <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/">Phoenix Mars Exploration Rover (MER)</a> has found evidence that the regolith contains crucial <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7477310.stm">minerals for growing plants</a> and is slightly alkaline, suitable for a range of crops – including asparagus and green beans. </p>
<p>Normally <a href="http://www.usask.ca/agriculture/plantsci/vegetable/resources/journal/Impact_pH_scab.pdf">potatoes are grown in an acidic soil</a> as this suppresses the effect of pathogens, such as common scab, but also because alkaline soils have a negative effect on the yield of potatoes. Our hero could easily account for this in his calculations for the number of plants required to grow enough food for a set number of days. </p>
<p>But Martian regolith may also contain <a href="http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/2008-08-04-mars-soil_N.htm">perchlorates</a> that are not good for human bodies. However, somewhat ironically, they are used as markers for the presence of water. Watney needs additional water for his crops and sets about making this by combining oxygen with hydrogen. To get the hydrogen, Watney catalyses a type of rocket fuel known as <a href="http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/motm/hydrazine/hydrazineh.htm">Hydrazine</a>, in a somewhat dangerous experiment which would be even more dangerous in real life – as you’d end up with some toxic leftovers.</p>
<p>But <a href="https://theconversation.com/nasa-streaks-of-salt-on-mars-may-mean-flowing-water-and-new-hopes-of-life-48182">exciting new results</a> suggest that water sometimes runs openly on the surface of Mars. So in reality, it would have been safer for Watney to just go and extract it from the regolith itself.</p>
<p>We are seeing the early days of growing food in space. Eventually, if humans are to start living for extended periods on the moon, and eventually Mars, we need to be able to do experiments generating raw materials directly on their surfaces. There are already ideas to test our ability to <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/cct/office/cif/2013/lunar_plant.html">grow food on the moon</a> in small canisters, including basil and turnips.</p>
<h2>Stormy weather</h2>
<p>What plunges Watney into peril in the movie is an aborted mission in strong winds. Here on Earth, we use the <a href="http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/guide/weather/marine/beaufort-scale">Beaufort scale</a> to measure wind strength. Gale force winds have speeds up to 74km per hour. To get a sense of what’s that like, imagine putting your head out of a car window when moving at 50 miles per hour. Then try to imagine what it would be like at 100 miles per hour as experienced by Watney and his fellow astronauts on Mars.</p>
<p>On Earth this would be a devastating storm, but not on Mars. The pressure that you feel on your skin when out on a windy day is known as the <a href="http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/physics/DynamicPressure.html">dynamic pressure</a>. It depends not only on how fast the air is moving, but also on its density. In gale force winds on Earth this pressure is about 250 <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/guides/zrcmn39/revision">Pascals</a>. The force this exerts on an average person is about one-third of <a href="http://www.universetoday.com/26775/gravity-of-the-earth/">Earth gravity</a>. This is why you have trouble walking about in gale force winds.</p>
<p>But on <a href="http://www.space.com/16903-mars-atmosphere-climate-weather.html">Mars, the atmosphere</a> is just 1% of the density of that on Earth, meaning the dynamic pressure is much smaller. Even in Watney’s storm the force on a human being would be tiny — less than one-tenth of <a href="http://www.universetoday.com/14859/gravity-on-mars/">Mars’ gravity</a>. The storm that Watney and his crew encounter would only feel like a gentle breeze – not the devastating storm shown in the film. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96435/original/image-20150928-423-nwt2kk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96435/original/image-20150928-423-nwt2kk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96435/original/image-20150928-423-nwt2kk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96435/original/image-20150928-423-nwt2kk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96435/original/image-20150928-423-nwt2kk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96435/original/image-20150928-423-nwt2kk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96435/original/image-20150928-423-nwt2kk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dust storms of 2001 observed on Mars by Mars Global Surveyor.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/mars103.php">NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Despite this, the wind and the sound it produces does actually have an important function in the film – it creates tension and allows us to empathise with Watney and feel his fear.</p>
<h2>Finding pathfinder</h2>
<p>Even though this is a work of fiction, as a follower of Mars exploration I felt a tingle of excitement as Watney recovered the <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mars-pathfinder/">Mars Pathfinder</a>, buried under a huge pile of dust. Just as NASA follow Watney’s exploits using imaging from orbit in the film, space scientists have also been <a href="http://www.uahirise.org/PSP_001890_1995">monitoring the landing sites of Mars spacecrafts, including Pathfinder</a>. </p>
<p>Measurements at the landing site of the <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/main/index.html">Mars lander Phoenix</a> have shown that dust settles out of the atmosphere at a rate of about <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2009JE003419">0.1 – 1 thousandth of a millimetre per Martian day</a>. Over the 20 years Pathfinder has been on Mars, that only amounts to between 1 mm and 10 mm of accumulated dust. So, in reality, Watney wouldn’t really have needed to do much digging at all. But this dramatic unearthing of Pathfinder pulls at the heart-strings of our exploration of Mars.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96433/original/image-20150928-415-1uov1dh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96433/original/image-20150928-415-1uov1dh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=238&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96433/original/image-20150928-415-1uov1dh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=238&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96433/original/image-20150928-415-1uov1dh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=238&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96433/original/image-20150928-415-1uov1dh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=299&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96433/original/image-20150928-415-1uov1dh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=299&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/96433/original/image-20150928-415-1uov1dh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=299&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pathfinder’s landing site imaged by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.uahirise.org/PSP_001890_1995">NASA/JPL/University of Arizona</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>All too often in science fiction the characters are placed in impossible situations from which they can only escape by resorting to a kind of scientific deus ex machina. This is certainly not so in The Martian, in which the story has a logically and physically possible resolution.</p>
<p>The Martian is one of an increasing number of Hollywood films that explore the human soul and spirit of humanity while still grounded in science. Another example is how Christopher Nolan and Kip Thorne used Einstein’s theory of General Relativity to tremendous effect in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSWdZVtXT7E">Interstellar</a>. However, The Martian uses science in a different way. It shows what it is to be a scientist. It shows Watney building scientific arguments, doing calculations, facing the outcome of making an error in reasoning – his answers aren’t in the back of the book. This engages audiences with compelling science.</p>
<p>One could easily be critical of the science shown in fiction. But in a push to reflect “real science” in the cinema we shouldn’t surrender strong narratives for the sake of scientific accuracy. To do so denies us the opportunity to tell stories and to show science in action and in unfamiliar settings.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/48201/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Arridge receives funding from The Royal Society and the Science and Technology Facilities Council. He is a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society.</span></em></p>The Martian may not be completely scientifically accurate but that is certainly not a problem.Chris Arridge, Research Fellow/Lecturer, Lancaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/358472015-01-08T19:23:08Z2015-01-08T19:23:08ZRidley Scott battles with the essence of the Exodus<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68338/original/image-20150107-1989-pybuev.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The violence of the Exodus is disconcerting to a modern viewer, but the ancients would not blink an eye.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">21st Century Fox</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Ridley Scott’s 3D biblical epic <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1528100/">Exodus: Gods and Kings</a> (2014), an interpretation of the exodus of Israelite slaves from Egypt by Moses, sparked controversy last month when it was <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/dec/26/egypt-bans-hollywood-exodus-christian-bale">banned in Egypt and Morocco</a>. Egyptian culture minister Gaber Asfour <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/film/shortcuts/2015/jan/04/exodus-gods-and-kings-deserve-banned-historical-inaccuracy">said</a>: “It gives a Zionist view of history and contains historical inaccuracies and that’s why we have decided to ban it.”</p>
<p>Portrayals of history are, of course, contested and contestable. History involves interpretation in a complex relation to fact, bias and worldview. </p>
<p>Portrayals of ancient history are even more fraught as they rely on ancient stories imbued with particular aims and worldviews. The genre of ancient storytelling is different from modern history. It is concerned with the power and meaning of human experience and their implications for social and religious life, rather than focusing only on factual accuracies. </p>
<p>This is exemplified in the Bible where similar stories are recounted reflecting different perspectives and meanings (e.g. the creation stories in Genesis).</p>
<h2>Modern musing on ancient ideas</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68337/original/image-20150107-1989-1agpxli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68337/original/image-20150107-1989-1agpxli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=891&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68337/original/image-20150107-1989-1agpxli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=891&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68337/original/image-20150107-1989-1agpxli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=891&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68337/original/image-20150107-1989-1agpxli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1120&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68337/original/image-20150107-1989-1agpxli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1120&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68337/original/image-20150107-1989-1agpxli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1120&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Exodus theatrical poster</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The way we tell stories in the West has similarities to ancient storytelling. Hollywood makes films “based on a true story” that often have tenuous or heavily redacted relations to the facts. These “true stories” can be unjust and misleading. But if created with the right balance of fact and interpretation, these films can be a way to reflect more deeply about the subject under examination and about our modern life.</p>
<p>The modern filmmaker, then, is interpreting a story, which is itself an interpretation of some kind of experience. I would argue that it is the theological, cultural and anthropological meanings of ancient story that need to be understood if a filmmaker wants to engage most thoroughly and authentically with the biblical text. </p>
<p>Accurate records of the past are important, but there is more going on in the genre of story than just recounting the past.</p>
<p>In the case of Exodus: Gods and Kings, Ridley Scott varies the story from the biblical account. In some ways, he keeps to its essence by showing God acting in history and building a friendship with Moses. In other ways, Scott presents modern preoccupations that take the viewer away from the biblical text in dubious ways.</p>
<p>Take Moses who Scott makes a warrior general (à la Gladiator), which is questionable historically and textually. However, Scott intelligently subverts this construction when God rejects Moses’ violent efforts to free the Israelites. </p>
<p>The point is: it is God’s action that ultimately saves the Israelite people. Connected to this, the character of Moses receives an interesting treatment as he learns to trust in God and less in his own violence and atheism, with some parallels to the biblical text but with a modern twist.</p>
<h2>A Hollywood love story</h2>
<p>The title of Scott’s film suggests a battle between gods and kings, but the film tends to focus on the Moses-Pharaoh or Moses-Zipporah relationships. Biblical themes are present, yet the psychologising and sentimentalising of the characters and their relationships presents a modern preoccupation.</p>
<p>Moses’ romantic relationship to his wife is a focus of the film, but this relationship is rarely mentioned in the Bible, except in relation to family or religious matters.</p>
<p>The Hollywood construction of identity and relationships presents a continued trend that misunderstands the ancient character and lifestyle, and projects a modern one onto them. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68419/original/image-20150108-1992-g23rwv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68419/original/image-20150108-1992-g23rwv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68419/original/image-20150108-1992-g23rwv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68419/original/image-20150108-1992-g23rwv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68419/original/image-20150108-1992-g23rwv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68419/original/image-20150108-1992-g23rwv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68419/original/image-20150108-1992-g23rwv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68419/original/image-20150108-1992-g23rwv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">21st Century Fox</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These constructions tend to detract from the social and religious conflict between the Israelite and Egyptian peoples and gods, with the Israelites playing a minor role in the film. </p>
<p>In contrast to the film’s exploration of relationships, it is the Pharaoh’s fear of the Israelites and his escalating efforts to violently oppress them that sets off the Exodus sequence in the Bible. The portrayal of Pharaoh in the film includes this aspect but introduces other elements, leading to an inconsistent treatment.</p>
<h2>God’s responsibility</h2>
<p>One of the more interesting aspects of the film is the portrayal of God in the guise of a small child, who is self-assured but also petulant and jealous for his people. This portrayal of God focuses on the dialogue and friendship between God and Moses, which is also an integral part of the biblical text.</p>
<p>In one unusual scene, though, Moses pleads with the child-God in relation to the suffering of the Egyptians caused by the plagues. God angrily <a href="http://www.express.co.uk/entertainment/films/549068/Ridley-Scott-s-epic-Exodus-Gods-and-Kings-Christian-Bale-reviewed">responds</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I want to see them on their knees begging for it to stop. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is a surprising moment that shows the childishness of violence. For the biblical Exodus, however, God’s action is not vengeful but liberating: a necessary action to free oppressed people from a violent and power-hungry leader claiming divinity. The essential experience of the biblical Exodus is of a people being freed in a completely unexpected way from unjust domination by one of the great empires.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68339/original/image-20150107-2002-1uki4r6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68339/original/image-20150107-2002-1uki4r6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68339/original/image-20150107-2002-1uki4r6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68339/original/image-20150107-2002-1uki4r6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68339/original/image-20150107-2002-1uki4r6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68339/original/image-20150107-2002-1uki4r6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68339/original/image-20150107-2002-1uki4r6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68339/original/image-20150107-2002-1uki4r6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">21st Century Fox</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Nevertheless, this violent pronouncement confronts the problem of violence and its connection to God. Is God involved in violence? How do humans contain their own violence?</p>
<p>The violence of the Exodus is disconcerting to a modern viewer, but the ancients would not blink an eye. The central questions for them were: who is in control and how can we bring the violence under control?</p>
<p>The Bible makes clear that the Lord God – the only God – is in control, even of violent plagues. In being in control, God does not act randomly or for his own benefit or to satisfy his own desires (in the way the Greek gods do), but seeks out an insignificant, oppressed people to help them for their own good.</p>
<p>The biblical text attributes responsibility to God only in so far as the Pharaoh obstinately oppresses the Israelite people. But this should not excuse the violence, which the biblical tradition itself critiques with the prophets and Jesus.</p>
<p>The film retains the essential experience of the violent and liberating exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt, though with modern constructions and tangents that do not work or convince at times.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/35847/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joel Hodge does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Ridley Scott’s 3D biblical epic Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014), an interpretation of the exodus of Israelite slaves from Egypt by Moses, sparked controversy last month when it was banned in Egypt and Morocco…Joel Hodge, Lecturer in Theology, Australian Catholic UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.