'Blame Baldrick for our view of Great War'

[NigelS]

An article in today's Daily Telegraph 'Blame Baldrick for our view of Great War' drew my attention to the fact that there was a Parliamentary debate on 'First World War Commemoration' in the House of Commons yesterday afternoon. Links to the official 'Hansard' commentary & TV coverage can be found Here

The debate, whether watched or read, is lengthy but, IMO, well worth taking the time to view or read through to the end, showing a good knowledge of the GW by the MPs that took part as well as raising current issues relating to the forthcoming centenary commemorations. Hopefully, although Parliamentary, this topic won't, because of the nature of the debate, be considered as 'political'

NigelS

[centurion]

I suspect that rather than Acting Private Baldrick we can possibly blame Colonel House who was a friend of President Wilson and acted in a quasi diplomatic role spending a lot of time in London trying to get straight answers out of Lloyd George (poor sucker). I'm in the process of reading his notes and memoirs published at the end of the war and some of the old myths seem to originate from him. Unfortunately despite his title House had absolutely no military training or experience whatsoever (he was a sort of Southern Colonel [like Col Saunders] from Texas) and took somewhat simplistic views on some things.

[redbarchetta]

I know this has been discussed before, but searching for 'Blackadder' brings up hundreds of threads, mainly where it is just referred to, and not wishing to start a whole debate but...

Accepting this is fiction, comedy, and so ignoring technicalities (wound stripes two inches too high etc), could someone appraise me of the key 'wrong messages' that showing BGF to school children as part of learning about the Great War will give?

The trench and dugout seemed fairly realistic to me. The issues raised, albeit with humour, of poor food (thus eating rats and pigeons), the comradeship, forays into no-mans land to spot enemy positions (elephants etc), seem well done.

The only 'wrong' message is some elements of the depiction of the higher command - is that the only real issue?

James

[Mark Hone]

There's nothing inherently wrong with it as long as it is shown for what it is. The problem comes with some teachers using it as if it is a documentary and a major source for teaching the First World War. Some people I have spoken to over the years seem to believe that the poignant final scene lends a versimilitude to the whole series. On the other hand, I don't know anyone who tries to teach Elizabeth I through the medium of the earlier Blackadder series. You could say that 'Allo, Allo' contains some accurate material on the Second World War ( resistance, escaping airmen, gestapo etc) but people would look aghast if I said I was using that series as a means to teach the topic.

[centurion]

I know this has been discussed before, but searching for 'Blackadder' brings up hundreds of threads, mainly where it is just referred to, and not wishing to start a whole debate but...

Accepting this is fiction, comedy, and so ignoring technicalities (wound stripes two inches too high etc), could someone appraise me of the key 'wrong messages' that showing BGF to school children as part of learning about the Great War will give?

The trench and dugout seemed fairly realistic to me. The issues raised, albeit with humour, of poor food (thus eating rats and pigeons), the comradeship, forays into no-mans land to spot enemy positions (elephants etc), seem well done.

The only 'wrong' message is some elements of the depiction of the higher command - is that the only real issue?

James

Where would one start? The one on the RFC riddled with inaccuracies (easier to try and find something they got right they stand out more). All the officers going over the top together in a clump (presumaably to make it even easier for the Germans to wipe out the platoon command structure in a single burst), court martial procedures, the composition of firing squads etc etc etc oh and BTW the British army rarely if ever ate rats not when tinned bully was available which it was.

[David Filsell]

Just enjoy it for what it was - a pretty good comedy programme.

[centurion]

Just enjoy it for what it was - a pretty good comedy programme.

The issue is nobody thought Carry on up the Khyber was an accurate representation of British India any more than a generation earlier they thought that the inestimable Ben Turpin was a good depiction of Caligula - they just laughed. But BAGF is used as a teaching aid.

[Ron Clifton]

There's nothing inherently wrong with it as long as it is shown for what it is. The problem comes with some teachers using it as if it is a documentary and a major source for teaching the First World War.

I have the same problem with the poets!

On centurion's point, I once commented to a fellow battlefield traveller that there were five technical errors in the title sequence alone. She turned out to be a near neighbour of John Lloyd, the producer, and passed them on to him.

Ron

[Gareth Davies]

There's nothing inherently wrong with it as long as it is shown for what it is. The problem comes with some teachers using it as if it is a documentary and a major source for teaching the First World War. Some people I have spoken to over the years seem to believe that the poignant final scene lends a versimilitude to the whole series. On the other hand, I don't know anyone who tries to teach Elizabeth I through the medium of the earlier Blackadder series. You could say that 'Allo, Allo' contains some accurate material on the Second World War ( resistance, escaping airmen, gestapo etc) but people would look aghast if I said I was using that series as a means to teach the topic.

Do we have any evidence to support this claim?

The issue is nobody thought Carry on up the Khyber was an accurate representation of British India any more than a generation earlier they thought that the inestimable Ben Turpin was a good depiction of Caligula - they just laughed. But BAGF is used as a teaching aid.

If using it aids teaching then that's a good thing in my view. I don't think it is up to us to be telling teachers what they can and cannot use to support and aid their teaching.

[Mark Hone]

I have plenty of anecdotal evidence from talking to fellow teachers over the last twenty years that this is the case and have actually witnessed uncritical use of the series in an observed lesson. Guess what my feedback was?

[Tom Morgan]

I have lost count of the number of schools that have played "Blackadder Goes Forth" on the coach's DVD player on the way from Ypres to the Somme or return. It is, of course, neither a suitable preparation for the day's visits nor an adequate summing-up after them. As Mark says, the teachers play the DVDs without any critical comment.

Tom

[Gareth Davies]

I have lost count of the number of schools that have played "Blackadder Goes Forth" on the coach's DVD player on the way from Ypres to the Somme or return. It is, of course, neither a suitable preparation for the day's visits nor an adequate summing-up after them. As Mark says, the teachers play the DVDs without any critical comment.

Tom

Maybe they were showing it for entertainment?

[centurion]

Do we have any evidence to support this claim?

If using it aids teaching then that's a good thing in my view. I don't think it is up to us to be telling teachers what they can and cannot use to support and aid their teaching.

Yes it is - . Just leaving it to teachers is lazy, sloppy and irresponsible we should all have an interest in what and how the young are taught - if we have any interest in humanity's future that is.

[Gareth Davies]

Yes it is - . Just leaving it to teachers is lazy, sloppy and irresponsible we should all have an interest in what and how the young are taught - if we have any interest in humanity's future that is.

Telling teachers what they can and cannot use to support and aid their teaching is not the same as having an interest in what and how the young are taught. I have a great interest in what and how the young are taught but I wouldn't be so arrogant to tell a teacher what they can and cannot use to support and aid their teaching.

[bill24chev]

If an History teacher is using Blackadder to teach any of the History periods covered by any of the Series I would say that that teacher would be a candidate for a review of his or her competence to teach History. Unless of course they also carried out a critical review of the programs against the histography for the period covered.

For eample "Blackadder goes forth" is in my view blatantly in the Lions and Donkeys camp and this could, in History classes, be compared with the view of WW1 that I beleive many veterans had of the war prior to being influenced by the pacifist views of the 1930's and the anti war movement of the 1960's, and of course more recent literature that has to some extent debunked the lions and donkeys viewpoint.

[Mark Hone]

I confess that I have used the odd clip from Blackadder ( the Regency series rather than the Great War) in the past as light relief when teaching the unreformed electoral system of the early nineteenth century to sixth formers. The point is that I never pretended it was anything other than a silly comedy with only the vaguest relationship to real events. The problem with Blackadder Goes Forth is that the poignancy of the final scene seems to have emboldened some people to claim that the whole series embodies a 'deeper truth' and has something profound to say about the war. This was summed up for me by an interview with a member of the production team a few months ago in which he was crowing about the supposed historical accuracy of the series and how many of the incidents depicted had some sort of factual basis.

[Tom Morgan]

Maybe they were showing it for entertainment?

Well yes, I'm sure that's why they show it. I'm dedicated to the idea of Remembrance, can take a joke and love all the Blackadder series. But to spend a day visiting the sites of such great loss, nobility, bravery, tragedy and despair and then watch a sitcom which turns these virtues and sentiments into a running joke that underpins Series 4 seems badly-timed and inappropriate as part of an educational visit. That's how it strikes me, anyway.

[ianw]

I don't think that there is any doubt that humour can be a great learning aid - John Cleese built a hugely successful training company based on this - but the humour is used to deliver a solid educational message.

Showing an episode of Blackadder without any critique or contextualisation of it would be just plain daft - an as Tom says perhaps even offensive on a battlefield tour coach. It would be almost as daft to show random Great War film footage without comment. What would a student hope to glean from it unaided?

Blackadder goes Forth is an exceptionally funny TV programme that happens to have the Great War as a context. It has no overall responsibility to be historically accurate.

That said, the great intelligence of those who produced it transmuted its final episode into as heartfelt a tribute to the Great War generation as anything that has ever appeared on the goggle box.

I suspect that there would be a great meeting of minds if the Blackadder production team could share a beer with the Wipers Times boys.

[Gareth Davies]

I don't think that there is any doubt that humour can be a great learning aid - John Cleese built a hugely successful training company based on this - but the humour is used to deliver a solid educational message.

Showing an episode of Blackadder without any critique or contextualisation of it would be just plain daft - an as Tom says perhaps even offensive on a battlefield tour coach. It would be almost as daft to show random Great War film footage without comment. What would a student hope to glean from it unaided?

Blackadder goes Forth is an exceptionally funny TV programme that happens to have the Great War as a context. It has no overall responsibility to be historically accurate.

That said, the great intelligence of those who produced it transmuted its final episode into as heartfelt a tribute to the Great War generation as anything that has ever appeared on the goggle box.

I suspect that there would be a great meeting of minds if the Blackadder production team could share a beer with the Wipers Times boys.

Ack.

[David Ridgus]

I used it as a teaching aid over a decade ago. At that time just about all the children had watched the programme. We watched the final episode after we had finished the whole unit of work. As we watched it the students had to make notes on what elements they recognised from what we had studied and what parts did not match anything we had covered. Into the bargain they also had to note the jokes they had not understood when they had previously watched it (the most common one here was the exchange between Haig and Blackadder - 'I'm not a man to change my mind' 'Yes we've noticed that').

I then explained that we had done this in order for them to see that the study of history gave them a critical faculty that helped them to understand and evaluate evidence, in whatever form it came to them. Blackadder was no less funny even if it was now, to them, less true. I found this very effective and something that most students who went on to do A Level with me remembered clearly as a key moment in their development as historians.

Now I find surprisingly few students have watched it and so this approach is less appropriate and it is now several years since I have used it.

I suspect Warhorse may soon supplant it although not in my classroom. I now find 'Somme: Defeat to Victory' is the best vehicle for explaining many aspects of the Western Front and that and Richard Holmes' 'War Walks' are my staple fare

David

[healdav]

I have never seen Blackadder and can't stand that Atkinson bloke.

However, it is more than common for films and TV programmes to show things which are simply not true, but which are presented as "being based on a true story" - that's Hollywood for, "This story is true; only the facts have been changed so as to make it more interesting to a US audience". In fact, I seem to remember that one US TV series began, "This story is true, only some facts have been changed".

Films that spring to mind, "Battle of the Bulge" which takes place on the prairies, when it happened in forests.

U-571, which miraculously changes from a RN destroyer blowing a U-boat to the surface (not the U-571) and getting the Enigma code books, with two men dying in the process, to a valiant USN destroyer blowing a U-boat to the surface and nobody dying. Go to Bletchley Park and they have a look in the room devoted to the episode (one of the most important of the war) and the letter sent to the film's producer together with his reply. That can be summed up as , ".... off. It was made for profit. We made a profit. Who cares about truth".

These are among many others. There was some ridiculous US TV series about a POW camp where the prisoners were going in and out to the local café or something whenever they felt like it. I'm sure those who were POWs were most impressed.

The problem comes when these thing are presented as being history. They should really have a health warning at the beginning of each episode, "this was made for laughs. It bears no relation to reality, and should not be thought to have any use as history".

What to do about it? Unfortunately, virtually nothing. The myths are far too well ingrained and are too affected by our national viewpoints - having been told by some Americans (and more than once) that the trouble is that we in Europe don't have any idea of the privations that rationing in the USA caused during WW2. Or the man I heard talking on Radio 4 about his experience in the Warsaw uprising who with companions lived for a week on one raw potato. He said he told the story on a US lecture tour and a woman stood up to say they had had it hard in the USA, for a year they couldn't get steak, they had to make do with chicken.

"let them eat cake". Did Marie Antoinette really say that or did the revolutionaries make it up?

[David Ridgus]

I have never seen Blackadder and can't stand that Atkinson bloke.

However, it is more than common for films and TV programmes to show things which are simply not true, but which are presented as "being based on a true story" - that's Hollywood for, "This story is true; only the facts have been changed so as to make it more interesting to a US audience".

Films that spring to mind, "Battle of the Bulge" which takes place on the prairies, when it happened in forests.

U-571, which miraculously changes from a RN destroyer bowing a U-boat to the surface (not the U-571) and getting the Enigma code books, with two men dying in the process, to a valiant USN destroyer blowing a U-boat to the surface and nobody dying. Go to Bletchley Park and they have a look in the room devoted to the episode (one of the most important of the war) and the letter sent to the film's producer together with his reply. That can be summed up as , ".... off. It was made for profit. We made a profit. Who cares about truth".

These are among many others. There was some ridiculous US TV series about a POW camp where the prisoners were going in and out to the local café or something whenever they felt like it. I'm sure those who were POWs were most impressed.

The problem comes when these thing are presented as being history. They should really have a health warning at the beginning of each episode, "this was made for laughs. It bears no relation to reality, and should not be thought to have any use as history".

What to do about it? Unfortunately, virtually nothing. The myths are far too well ingrained and are too affected by our national viewpoints - having been told by some Americans (and more than once) that the trouble is that we in Europe don't have any idea of the privations that rationing in the USA caused during WW2. Or the man I heard talking on Radio 4 about his experience in the Warsaw uprising who with companions lived for a week on one raw potato. He said he told the story on a US lecture tour and a woman stood up to say they had had it hard in the USA, for a year they couldn't get steak, they had to make do with chicken.

"let them eat cake". Did Marie Antoinette really say that or did the revolutionaries make it up?

(In case that's not a rhetorical question, no she didn't say it it had been around for a century and was said by Louis XIV's wife)

I think U-571 (which made my blood boil) is a different kettle of fish to Blackadder. Nobody would seriously consider the latter as history. But U-571, JFK, The Patriot, Braveheart etc are clear attempts to rewrite history. 'JFK' in particular has had a pernicious effect on the ability to sensibly address the Kennedy assassination. 'Oh, what a lovely war' anyone?

David

[centurion]

(In case that's not a rhetorical question, no she didn't say it it had been around for a century and was said by Louis XIV's wife)

I think U-571 (which made my blood boil) is a different kettle of fish to Blackadder. Nobody would seriously consider the latter as history. But U-571, JFK, The Patriot, Braveheart etc are clear attempts to rewrite history. 'JFK' in particular has had a pernicious effect on the ability to sensibly address the Kennedy assassination. 'Oh, what a lovely war' anyone?

David

And the original let them eat cake was in fact let them eat brioche - the palace had a large surplus of the same and she stipulated that it should be distributed to the poor!

[Stoppage Drill]

And the original let them eat cake was in fact let them eat brioche - the palace had a large surplus of the same and she stipulated that it should be distributed to the poor!

And - given the date today - JFK said (in translation) "I am a doughnut" when he meant to say, "I am a Berliner"

I have put my flak jacket on . . . . .

[centurion]

And - given the date today - JFK said (in translation) "I am a doughnut" when he meant to say, "I am a Berliner"

I have put my flak jacket on . . . . .

Which in fact he did say but rather like saying I am a Frankfurter or I am a Hamburger (and isn't there a place in Austria called Pretzel?)