National Treasure and How American History Got Its Groove Back (Assuming American History Had Groove to Begin With)

I majored in history at Georgetown with a focus on American history. I love history in general, but particularly American history. History is the novelization of humanity, with the drama, irony, humor, and tragic flaws that have always defined great fiction. The characters have weaknesses and quirks, but they drive along a plot unpredictable but that has to be realistic because it’s real. Even better, all of the tawdry gossip that we can’t help but stare at and read about in the grocery checkout line is only a pale reflection of the weird crap people have done in history.

When history is taught well, the students come to know all of these things. When taught correctly, history is the equivalent of great films or moving literature. Unfortunately, more often than not, history is taught incorrectly, becoming the equivalent of memorizing multiplication tables: dates and numbers with little context.

American history has all this, but with two important characteristics. The first is brevity. History at large spans millennia. American history is a few centuries. It is possible to become intimately familiar with wide swaths of it in a way that is impossible with other histories. This makes it that more appealing and manageable.

The second characteristic is idealism, which I understand is somewhat controversial. The totality of American history reflects the totality of humanity’s inhumanity. It includes slavery, genocide, violence, bigotry, ignorance, apathy and every other awful behavior, big and small. But all history has that. To put it politely, much of the time we’re not nice to each other. That’s not just an American sin, that’s a human sin.

But few civilizations have tried as hard as America to do better. We’re not unique in that, certainly. The Greeks spent a lot of time thinking about better government. The Romans spread science and learning across Europe. The Chinese expended considerable resources to build a thriving meritocracy within their empire. But these and other examples were done either incidental to the goals of the civilization or for the sole benefit of the civilization. Americans have tried to make the world better for the sake of making it better. We have done so haltingly, inconsistently, and at times half-assedly, but we have tried.

Our history is the brief history of a flawed but well-intentioned people. Unfortunately, American history is all too frequently taught poorly, with not enough emphasis given to the colorful portions. For some inexplicable reason, I think National Treasure helps to fix some of this.

For those of you who have missed the joyful ignorance of National Treasure, it’s a film starring Nicholas Cage that works like a great hypothetical: What if American history were like the DaVinci Code? Cage’s character – brilliantly named Benjamin Franklin Gates (!) – and friends go on a quest through the Declaration of Independence and the founding fathers in search of a great treasure. What kind of treasure? Gold? Jewels? No! After a quest through American history, they get to a treasure trove of world history. It’s very meta. It’s very campy.

Seriously, it’s a great romp. My summary probably made no sense if you haven’t seen the movie, so you should see the movie. It has action, adventure, an obligatory love story, a wise-cracking side kick… all wrapped up in a story of American history. Granted, it’s fake American history, and I would hate for Dream Weaver or anyone to watch this movie and think that it has more than a tangential connection to real life. But it’s so hard to watch National Treasure and not think that American history is cooler than you did before it graced your consciousness.

Although I want my kids to appreciate American history from an early age, I don’t think I’d want them watching National Treasure any earlier than 10 years old. Maybe even later than that. Some of the situations are scary for young kids, particularly the scenes with guns and cave-ins. But I’d like to think that I can get Dream Weaver to age 10 without completely turning him/her off to American history. And at that point I can let National Treasure work its magic. I’ll just need to find something cool to follow it up so s/he gets the full flavor of real history.

Be content,
John