History on Page and Screen

1) Meaning is often (always?) generated through metaphor. In traditional or academic written history, the kinds of metaphors that are most prominent are those that describe large systems. The idea of historical 'forces' is the quintessential example; more generally, the metaphors link physical to social systems (geological, for example: societies can have 'layers,' or be 'fractured.') The written word allows for or encourages this more abstract mode of thought; what Robin Hanson would call far mode.

In contrast, film encourages us to focus on concrete, visible objects, and actions occurring in real-time: in other words, the small stuff. It therefore favours different kinds of metaphor, namely synecdoche, where a part represents a whole. A shot of a plane in mid-air represents a journey. That's a temporal example, but I think there are spatial or conceptual examples too. The look a wife gives her husband across the table represents a whole marriage; the atmosphere in the king's chamber represents the progress of a war. It is the different kinds of metaphor natural to each form that structure the (differences between the) ways each can presents the past.

2) The different focuses (near/far, concrete/abstract) of filmic and written-academic history entail different ways of encoding meaning in the past. Our preference for one or the other type of representation shows what kind of meanings we value most, or what kind of explanations we find satisfying or plausible. Perhaps there is also a reverse effect: our (independent) preference for one medium leads to an understanding that favours a certain kind of meaning. This is no doubt part of a process of dynamic cultural construction.

It might be that this range of focuses and types of meaning is the whole point. Academic history can get at meanings that film or biography cannot. And vice versa. There's still the question of which meanings are most valuable, though (or why meaning is valuable at all). If we are not to judge this by what kinds of meanings most people choose to pursue, then what other measurement shall we use?