Let people enjoy things. Is someone excited about a new movie or book coming out but you aren't? No need to comment on their tweet with your snark. Leave them be.

Person on Twitter, who shall remain unnamed so she doesn't know we commented on her tweet with our snark.

The other day, a movie trailer appeared on my Twitter feed. For a big, epic 'pict-chah' by Mr Ridley Scott, who has apparently turned into CB DeMille. About Napoleon. First I've heard of it, of course: keeping up with the 'what's coming next' gossip is Awix's job. As I clicked on the trailer, but before I saw the thing, I had a sudden thought – horrible to me – about the casting.

'Oh, no, he's cast Joaquin Phoenix as the emperor, hasn't he?'

And so it was, which made me laugh at myself for guessing. To me, that's lazy imagination on his part. I suspect Mr Scott of believing that the only cinematographic representation of imperial hubris possible is that sneer Mr Phoenix is good at.

After that, I watched the trailer with growing unease. I imagined all the yelling that I will see on Twitter from historians – the real ones with PhDs, not the hobby ones with large followings who post photos and put up podcasts where they take ten whole minutes to share 'insights' such as, 'You know, they really did have colour in the Middle Ages.' Oh, really? Would you like to define 'Middle Ages'? What countries are we talking about? Are you talking architecture or fabric? Sure, there was lots of colour. Do you know anything about the pigments, the dye sources, the trade routes? Oh, no, you just want to hear yourself talk some more. I used to do radio and most podcasts drive me nuts. It's like being stuck in a room with people talking past you.

And now, here comes the Napoleon movie. And people are already saying, 'Shut up, don't spoil my enjoyment. Let us have this!'

Er, no. Please don't, historians. Here's why: suppose that movie says Napoleon's army knocked the nose off the Sphinx. This is actually an urban legend that's circulated for a couple of hundred years. It's not true: the nose was missing when Bonaparte's troops got there and proceeded to steal anything not nailed down. We're lucky they didn't try to cart off the Sphinx. I'm sure they would have if they could have figured out how to do it. And yes, the same goes for the British. (Give back the Elgin Marbles, you thieving tourists.) But knock the nose off the Sphinx, they did not do. Nor did they hit a pyramid.

Does that matter? Go type into your Google search box. Start with, 'Did Napoleon's army...' I'll wait.

It autofilled, didn't it? And the FIRST THING it said was, '...fire a cannon at the Pyramids,' wasn't it? Go on, admit it.

So stop saying, 'Let us have this. Lighten up. It's only a movie,' and similar lying cliches. Brits: remember how mad y'all were about The Patriot? Yeah, I'm mad about it, too. Do you know what the Scots say about Braveheart and that tv show, Outlander? Go and ask.

My feelings about lousy history in movies and on tv goes back to childhood and is the source of my baby sister's statement, 'You know, D, you would enjoy things more if you weren't so smart.' This was after I'd just reacted negatively to an episode of Bonanza in which a woman in labour was transported by buckboard wagon to a hospital in San Francisco by a panicked Hoss. The doctor had just come out of the room wearing a stethoscope around his neck. (It looked like a 1960s stethoscope, thank you very much.) He had on a white coat, this doctor. He was babbling something about how she 'had to find the will to live,' which is a standard trope for bad television...

I'm sorry. I don't want to 'enjoy' something like that. It's bad enough it's there, on my screen, offending me. To demand that I warp my brain out of shape in order to find that tripe acceptable is to add insult to injury. What I want is a chance to see an entertaining film that shows a decent respect for what people were really like.

But the lies sell better. I suspect that's why I can't get The Awakening Land on my streaming services. Go and read Conrad Richter's beautiful novels. The television miniseries starred Elizabeth Montgomery and Hal Holbrook. Real history of the Ohio Valley, devoid of cliches and full of surprises.

Want to watch a good series? Try Three Pines, with Alfred Molina as Inspector Gamache. The series is good, but the novels are better. I've read two so far and I am entranced – and learning words in Quebecois. Superfrenchie has already fussed at me about sharing earworms since I found out about La complainte du phoque en Alaska, which is a really romantic song about a lovesick seal whose girlfriend left him to join the circus.

So go ahead, bullying masses: loudly proclaim how much you just 'love that Mammy-Mammy Song,' as TH White put it in 1939. Yell that 'it's just a movie!' while you queue up for the latest, while we in the minority go hungry for something real to enjoy and think about. We'll keep rummaging in the remainder piles and seeking out the imaginative roads less travelled. Enjoy, we say sarcastically as we put our snark in the unfashionable (but much cooler) part of the internet.

Dmitri Gheorgheni

24.07.23 Front Page

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