From Distant Comfort to Submersion: The Morphing of Historical Consciousness and Historical Authenticity in America

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M.J. Rymsza-Pawlowska’s book History Comes Alive: Public History and Popular Culture in the 1970s is a refreshing and perceptive examination of the changing manners in which history was taught, depicted, reenacted, and reflected upon in America from the 1950s to the 1970s. Rymsza-Pawlowska shows these shifts by presenting to her readers America’s earlier traditions to deliver history in a more distance and purely informational manner and America’s change in method which would incite emotions and provide more interactive ways to partake in historical settings[3]. What I found particularly striking and informative in her book was her inclusion of American television series which showed early reluctance to interact deeply with the past and the move of American television productions to present a more involved and sincere narrative of American history in later decades. For instance, she provides the ways in which early American shows such as The Twilight Zone would often involve a plot in which a character attempts to interact with history, but realizes that history is not the setting they want to place themselves in; she brings up the 1959 episode “Walking Distance” in which a man named Martin Sloane travels back in time to see his family and his younger self, but when he encounters his younger self, he ends up causing an accident which would render him disabled in the future[4]. I not only liked this inclusion because my father and I use to watch The Twilight Zone together when I was a child, but it was such a prominent example of how mid-20^th century Americans did televise historical settings (albeit fictional in this case), but not in ways “too harrowing” or disturbing for its viewers.

After presenting the vague historicity of The Twilight Zone, Rymsza-Pawlowska gears her attention to the television miniseries Roots: author Alex Haley’s book turned television series in which Americans showed appreciation for and distaste of its historical authenticity. Following the story of Haley’s ancestor Kunta Kinte, Haley’s book was groundbreaking in that it was one of the first widely aired television series which administered to Americans further insight into America’s past regarding its Black citizens and what they were made to endure in America’s not-so-distant past. Though Americans of various ethnic backgrounds appreciated the miniseries, some were upset, such as the anonymous writer from Indiana who wrote to the ABC television network that Black Americans were looking for pity, welfare, and food stamps”[5]. This comment bothered me for several reasons, but one thing that must be said is that books/miniseries such as Roots do not look to incite pity, they look to produce historical authenticity and another means to be attentive to Black American history. I am so very happy that Rymsza-Pawlowska shed light on Roots, its praises, its criticisms, and the way in which this historical depiction differed from earlier television series. I would argue that as readers see in History Comes Alive, people are still struggling to come to terms with the necessity of shows like Roots today. However, public historians can benefit from studying cases such as the one that Rymsza-Pawlowska presents in her narrative of history production in the 1950s-1970s. The reality that slavery in America happened will never be an easy pill to swallow; the best that public historians such as myself can do is to afford the same respect and awareness to histories such as that of Kunta Kinte and other historical figures to date.

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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roots_(1977_miniseries)

[2] https://www.pinterest.com/pin/71353975318688811/

[3] M.J. Rymsza-Pawlowska, History Comes Alive: Public History and Popular Culture in the 1970s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017), 5.

[4] Ibid., 18.

[5] Ibid., 35.