Artist's Statement: Historical Story

A Tale of Two

            Torill Cove presented to us an educative, yet wildly imaginative tale of Norwegian history in her film “My Grandmother Ironed the King’s Shirts”.  The short film is evocative of classic American tall tales and exaggerated story-telling films such as Real Big Fish, Fievel Goes West, National Treasure and most literary works by Dan Brown. There’s a charm in exaggerating historical tales that seems to stick with us in a way that one day furthers the question: “Wait, just how much of that was real? Let’s find out.”

            Although the world’s wars are an important piece of history that we should learn from, rarely does the common teenager or busy college student venture into the obscure details of Norwegian hierarchy during their free time from the books.  Cove’s tale manages to have just the right balance of information in it to suggest that there is a legitimacy to its skeleton, and an equal balance of comedic entertainment as an attractive skin to help those potentially “drier” points stick.

            Now the big question comes into play: in our role as media authors, what is ethical and unethical about the changes we make to stories?  At the bottom line the important thing is to remember that we are first and foremost entertainers in the industry, and no level of cleverly articulated didacticism, whatever the message may be, would matter if you don’t have an audience.

            In the readings we learned of a man who gained inspiration from a photograph he recalled of his mother hanging blankets on a clothesline.  In the end we discover that almost everything he had perceived about that photo was incorrect.  Did it matter? In such a lighthearted occasion: no.  It can be taken as comical, and in that specific instance, led to further investigation and resulted in a new revelation concerning not only his life, but of his grandmother’s.  The entertaining aspect that stuck evoked a study of the actual history, and therefore led to a new application of the story in the man’s life. Let us hope that we can do the same in our works, remembering to base them on the facts, no matter how “tall” our tales may be.

            I had the idea to do a civil war piece with two characters: both blind and hard of hearing.  I knew that I didn’t want to write about the American Civil war, which led to a research session of civil wars throughout the world.  The use of a typewriter in the film for comical purposes, also led to the research of what newspapers an author might be writing for during that time period.  Further investigation led to exactly how a blind and hard of hearing person tells that a machine is out of ink, which in turn led to a study of how old fashioned printers functioned.  All of this, mind you, due to a desire to construct one simple thing: a funny, and entertaining story.