Nothing serves this end better than discussion of the problems of communication created by distortion of medieval material.We are prepared to argue that the critical attitudes we hope to inculcate toward film are little different in spirit than the ones we expect students to apply to medieval primary sources.
FEUDALISM IN THE MIDDLE AGES LESSON SERIES
Our task in the film series is to keep it from being a passive pastime. In our culture, viewing film is a familiar and pleasurable activity. The organization of our film series depends on the stick-and-carrot approach to learning.
Unless that gap is bridged, medieval history will always remain an esoteric subject lacking a sense of continuum with and connection to contemporary culture and behavior. Particularly difficult to communicate to them is the blend of the recognizable and the remote: the ways in which medieval people are like us, and the ways in which they are shatteringly different in their concepts and actions. When that society happens to be medieval Europe, the medium becomes a particularly useful tool for American students who find the distant European past and its sense of space and monuments hard to envision. Yet film can be an exceptionally powerful tool for communicating information about another society and culture. Our enthusiasm makes us no less sensitive to the distortions that Hollywood and Pinewood can inflict on historical material when commercial considerations and audience targeting take precedence. This attempt to respond to our college's goal of extending intellectual activity outside the classroom rests on our confidence in the contribution that films can make to historical studies. "Reel in other words, may be the worst possible addition to our study of real life.įor almost a decade, we have organized the Medieval Film Series at the College of the Holy Cross. The student captivated by a particular vision of the past may not gain the critical skills necessary to grasp the messy contradictions and subtle distinctions of history. The visual images on which film relies have a potency beyond the power of the teacher to explain, define, and control. The videocassette recorder and even the primitive beginnings of CD-ROM have made film easier than ever to obtain and integrate, while books such as Past Imperfect: History According to the Movies provide lengthy bibliographies of critical studies.2 But the professor's obligation does not end with the push of a button or the distribution of a reading list. However, its addition to standard class assignments of text and source collections can be complicated. Film's ability to bring to life another time and place appears to meet that challenge. Those of us who teach history, particularly to undergraduates, long to re-create that rapt attention, to seize students' imagination and inspire them to approach the past with respect fired by passionate curiosity. Fascinated by Heston's stories of preparation for his historical roles and his sincere respect for history, the enraptured audience joined in the open discussion, offering personal testimonies of film's effects on career choices visualization of past times. The announcement informed them that actor Charlton Heston had decided to join the session "The Medieval Film: Its Uses and Abuses," sponsored by the Medieval Academy, thus casting the session's original participants in supporting roles.l Even without further advertisement, the early evening session garnered a standing-room-only crowd, not a typical response to academic papers. Historians at the 1991 AHA annual meeting encountered an unusual late-breaking announcement amid the meeting's bookstalls and message boards.
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