By Avery<\/a><\/span> <\/p>\n

In general, I enjoyed the movie I watched for class, The Journey of August King<\/a>. The movie’s protagonist is not a perfect self-sacrificing hero; August King, though noble, is very much a product of the biases and prejudices of his time. The movie is set in the mountains of North Carolina in 1815. The story mostly takes place on the trail back from the market to the farmland; farmers are constantly weaving in and out of one another’s path on their journey home.<\/p>\n

In terms of communication, the characters’ on-screen communication is almost solely oral. However, property deeds factor in as one of the movie’s most important plot devices. I think property deeds, or property lines, can be considered a form of communication because farmers use them to indicate to each other the boundaries of acceptability and interaction. For example, once across the line onto his property, after a harrowing journey rescuing a woman who has escaped her slaver, August King mocks the dogs that have terrorized them. The implication is that King’s property line protects him from his neighbors. The protection only goes so far, however, in the face of the powerful villain, Olaf Singletary. In retaliation for King’s harboring of Singletary’s slave Singletary burns King’s house down, destroying \u201cproperty\u201d for property. Singletary uses the destruction of property and the crossing of the property line communicate his contempt for King.<\/p>\n

In his article, Sorlin makes a distinction between \u201cinformational films\u201d and \u201cfictional films\u201d (29), basically documentaries versus feature films. Sorlin described the differences between the categories in several different ways. He seemed to be agreeing with the categories, but taking issue with the idea that informational films are more helpful to historians than fictional films. He argues that fictional films may be a more authentic source depending on which time period the historian is studying. Sorlin abandons discussion of the categories, which left me, as a reader, wondering why he brought them up in the first place. I would have liked to see Sorlin explicitly reject categorizing some films as more \u201cinformational\u201d than others, as he spends the rest of the article illustrating the ways that films reveal the morality of the filmmakers (remember, he says, that \u201cmost [of] the films we see have been edited\u201d (28).) If every historical film represents the current culture’s understanding of the past (38), then why separate documentaries and feature films at all? From an analytical perspective, all films are informational.<\/p>\n

Certainly, the film I watched for class reflected a particular understanding of integrity that maps very well with sentiments in 1990s America. Like Sherwood found<\/a> in the Last of the Mohicans, sometimes the scene on screen is more recognizable to a modern audience than an historical one. I’m not saying there can’t be morals that stand the test of time, but August King’s sudden confession even as he was about to make a clean getaway indicated an ideal that telling the truth is more important than economic stability or communal ties. In economically stable 1995, yeah, it makes sense to stand up for what you believe in\u2014there’ll be another job around the corner. In 1815, on barely settled Appalachian land, I’m not sure the do-gooders would have been so loud.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Sorlin, Pierre. \u201cHow to Look at an \u2018Historical’ Film.\u201d In <\/em>The Film in History: Restaging the Past. Basil Blackwell, 2001.<\/p>\n

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