The historian in popular culture

One of the reasons for the erosion of academic authority in public and the concomitant raising up of the individual, dynamic, undonnish celebrity presenter is the complex representation of the historian in popular culture. Outside of specific paradigms the humanities academic in the popular imagination tends to be relatively stuffy, fusty, male, and often homicidal (those who appear in Inspector Morse, for instance, are generally all four). Like Dylan Moran’s foolish David in Shaun of the Dead (Edgar Wright, 2004) – ‘A 30-year-old lecturer, in more ways than simply vocational’ – humanities academics are prissy, misdirected, not up to action and ultimately expendable.1 University historians specifically are petty and childish, emphasised by the ‘History Today’ sketch on The Mary Whitehouse Experience (BBC 2, 1990-92) which consisted of two eminent professors of history beginning to debate but descending into a series of increasingly baroque playground-style insults.2 Similarly Andrew Lincoln’s English teacher in the Channel 4 drama series Teachers is more interested in his students liking him than in poetry. Alan Bennett’s character Irwin in his play The History Boys (2004) is a secondary school History teacher who looks for the alternative, the almost counterfactual (or at least counterintuitive), and who recommends his students argue against the grain and think outside the box. Clearly inspired by Niall Ferguson, at the conclusion of the play Irwin has emerged in the 1990s as the presenter of historical documentary. His brand of slightly ruthless and definitely amoral historical investigation is seen to be actively bad for the boys he teaches, and, it is suggested, for the society which he advises. He is directly contrasted with Hector, the unique, passionate English master, out of time and sadly pathetic. Here is the historian as malign influence, creating problems and active destruction due to the baleful influence of maverick methods and historiography. The more cerebral processes of teaching, understanding and learning in the

humanities do not lend themselves to popular tropes. An exception might be the inspiring English teacher, like Robin Williams’ character John Keating in Dead Poet’s Society (Peter Weir, 1989) who helps his boys discover the truth within

themselves through a dynamic love of literature.3 The inspirational teacher motif suggests that eccentricity and uniqueness are the characteristics. Of course, this is to focus upon the minority representation – by far the most high profile academics in popular cultural product tend to be scientists, mathematicians, mechanics, medical doctors or computer experts whose knowledge is obscure, often world-threatening, and either sends them mad or leads them to a bad end.4 The fictional scientist is repeatedly represented and – at least since Frankenstein – has become the repository of cultural worries and fears. The humanities scholar – historian or archaeologist or literary theorist or philosopher – tends to be someone who might help unravel a code, point towards the truth of some description, or give arcane contextual information. They generally work at Oxford or possibly Harvard, and are rarely the central characters.5