John Adams
Last night, I started watching the HBO series John Adams, which I rented from Netflix. Everyone in my office was raving about it, and I have to say that the first two episodes were really quite good.
I’ve always found American History kind of dull, and as such, I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the portrayal. From what I have read about Adams, Paul Giamatti seems an excellent choice to portray him. The drama surrounding the decision made by the colonists to revolt, to take the matters of liberty into their own hands because it was clear to them that King George III had no interest in promoting their well-being, was more tangible than I’ve ever seen it depicted. Knowing the might and brutality of the British Empire and willingly taking upon themselves the burden of treason in attempting to throw off that yolk without having any real confidence in their odds of success made me reflect on the difficulty of trying to act in my own life. Limited means, a sense of justice, and an uncertain outcome are often all that a man has to go on, and acting under those circumstances is hard. Damned hard.
Continuing to read Belloc this morning, I note that he says that “the King is there to safeguard the freedom of the small man against the tyranny of the great.” In the case of the Contintental Congress, it would seem clear that the king was acting precisely contrary to this maxim - that he had become, in fact, the Tyrant.
One word of caution if you plan on picking up the show: HBO has an obsession with pushing the envelope on content. In one scene in the first episode, I believe, a representative (perhaps the captain?) of the ship bearing the tea that will eventually be tossed, off-screen, into the Boston harbor, is unceremoniously tarred and feathered. It’s a tough scene to watch, made tougher by HBO’s choice to employ full frontal nudity as the man is stripped of his clothes and smeared with hot tar.
This is a show I otherwise wouldn’t have a problem letting my children watch, but I have concerns now about what other content may arise. On the whole, however, it’s been a worthwhile experience.
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I have the book and look forward to reading it once work slows down; sounds like the DVD set will be worth getting as well.
Another recent series on the subject that I highly recommend (and it’s much less graphic) is the History Channel’s “The Revolution.” Excellent reenactments, and an excellent treatment of the struggles not only with the Crown but within/between the various Continental factions.
History Channel airs it from time to time…otherwise, you can probably download it from iTunes.
My wife and I just finished the John Adams series and were really surprised at how much we enjoyed it (and how informative it was).
Couple of things:
1. If you select the “Facts are Stubborn Things” option when starting an episode, you get “popup” background information throughout the episode. On the downside, it keeps pulling you out of the story, but on the upside, it explains the background of a lot of things that you might have missed as they happen.
2. re: appropriateness for children. In a later episode, in France, there is some debauchery and a love scene when John and Abigail are reunited. Also, in the last episode there is a breast cancer operation that is pretty graphic.
Overall though, a great series that has rekindled my interest in the founding of our country.
As a Canadian I must tread gently on this subject–as I greatly respect United States and have no wish to be seen as stirring controversy–but I would venture to suggest that the British Empire was neither as ‘brutal’ nor King George as ‘tyrannical’ as is commonly held. In fact the Americans’ complaints were not with the King at all, but rather with a government increasingly accountable to Parliament (a large portion of which was mostly in agreement with the Americans). The problem was not of George’s ‘tyranny’, but one of differing conceptions of sovereignty–whether it could be divided or had to be centred in one place. Which was right, I cannot say, although I hasten to add the original American model eventually won out within the Empire, leading to the establishement of self-governing Dominions such as Canada and Australia. English scholar JCD Clark argues, interestingly if not entirely convincingly, that this ideological difference sprang up from religious differences between the traditional catholic-minded Anglicanism of Britian and the more radical Protestantisms of America.
For proof of Belloc’s maxim, though, one might look north to the Quebec Act of 1774 which allowed the newly-conquered Canadiens the free practice of Catholicism, their customary civil law, the use of French, and restored their economically-essential borders while still rewarding the Indian allies who had helped defeat the French during the Seven Years’ (French and Indian) War with grants of land in the west. This Act was passed over the vociforous objections of English settlers in Canada as well as those of the First Continental Congress. That body expressed astonishment that a religion which had “deluged [Britain] in blood, and dispersed impiety, bigotry, persecution, murder and rebellion through every part of the world” should be allowed free reign in North America, and hinted there was a plot to people the continent with Catholic immigrants who hated liberty. And that was the final motion, shorn of some of the speakers’ more heated words. This objection made its way, as the 20th Article about George’s “abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighbouring Province”, into the Declaration of Independence. So, in a sense, the Crown was willing to protect the weakest of subjects after all: at a very high cost.
I digress, but it came about because I thought the first few episodes of John Adams, as you mentioned, showed a little of the complexity of the situation at the time; it wasn’t as black and white as is so often portrayed by both sides.
For that reason the tarring and feathering, while hard to watch, was very important. So often it’s presented as a bit of mostly harmless embarrassment for the victim rather than the horrifyingly torturous, life-ruining (if not ending) assault it was: especially at the hands of some over-zealous Patriots who, in the name of liberty, administered the treatment to heads of households who refused to recant their oaths of loyalty to the King.
Most of those dispossessed United Empire Loyalists eventually settled here in Ontario, though, which means that by and large Canadians and Americans, despite some historical differences which have happily given way to warm friendship, are literally cousins.
Enjoy the rest of the series! (After the first few episodes, I thought the show became a little more melodramatic and, in places, soapish. But that’s pure opinion.)
Sorry about the length. I can’t control myself anymore; it’s crunch time as I finish my thesis on Catholic Relief in the–yep–18thC British imperial context.
It’s in my Netflix queue. After reading Adams’s ringing endorsement from Russell Kirk in the seminal The Conservative Mind, I bumped it up.
Steve,
My wife and I just finished the series just last night. It is marvelous. I highly recommend it. As good as it is, it falls short of the book (I mean this as no criticism of the series). I listened to the unabridged recording of it performed by McCullough himself. Spellbinding. I found the relationship between Adams and Jefferson to be one of the most interesting aspects of the book. Most interesting to me, though, was the examination of Adams’s faults, as they are so similar to my own. He knew them, and knew how much he needed Abigail as his “ballast” to overcome them. Watching it made me realize all the more how much I need my wife. A wonderful, wonderful production!
I’d like to recommmend “Angel in the Whirlwind: The Triumph of the American Revolution” by Benson Bobrick as one of the best single-volume histories of the subject. Don’t let the triumphant title fool you, he gives a fair portrayal of all sides and deals with the complexities of history (for instance, a chapter devoted to the “loyalists” or Tories; according to Benson, John Adams was rather unique in that his wife and children were on his side — many of his colleagues weren’t so lucky).
I don’t care what anybody says. The musical, “1776″, is a great treatment too. Don’t know about the movie, but I saw my brother-in-law in a stage version months a go, and I still can’t get it out of my head.
Thanks to all of you for your thoughts and suggestions for further reading on the topic.
Jeremy, have no qualms about your diverging view. We take all comers here, provided the discourse is respectful. As Catholics, I think many of us struggle with the monarchy vs. republic debate, so it’s always interesting to get another side of the story.
And I agree that the tarring and feathering was important to the story, I simply felt that the nudity involved, while it didn’t offend me in its context, was gratuitous. My 10-year-old daughter had been watching the show with me but had gone to bed just moments before, and up until that point (and since - I’m now moving on to episode 4) there’s been nothing else objectionable. The nudity could as easily have been implied without costing the telling of the story any gravity.
And Mike and Christopher Blosser - Welcome! Glad to have you here, and thanks for your comments.