Assume the Position – Print the Legend

Assume the Position – Print the Legend

A Review and an Opinion

Lately, I’ve been staying up late and searching for good comedy shows, but they are surprisingly hard to find across all my streaming services. Sometimes a show ends, and the next begins automatically. Often, the next show is a letdown, but a few nights ago, I discovered a true gem in HBO’s streaming library.

It is called Assume the Position, and no, it is not an adult movie about kinky sex, although it is full of adult language and satire. The star, Robert Wuhl, is performing in a college classroom sometime around 2005. In the show’s opening, he announces the subtitle.

“The stories that made up America and the stories America made up.”

It’s a hilarious, beautifully crafted, and well-researched performance. After warming up his audience, he announces the teaser that most of the classroom has already been looking at him questioningly, trying to figure out what he’s going to say next, and then he quotes Tolstoy.

“History is a wonderful thing, if it only were true.”

Mr. Wuhl, as he calls himself, announces his theme, “History is Pop Culture,” aimed at engaging the young students with a few pop culture references and call-outs to the audience, well-crafted humor, and simple slides on the wall behind him. The diverse group of young adults is entertained chiefly, with only a few appearing to have barely survived last night’s bender.

Illustrations

I won’t spoil the show by giving you all the details. Still, his first illustration features the infamous Christopher Columbus and his presentation to Queen Isabella, which history traditionally claims was intended to prove the world is round. Of course, we now understand that the presentation was more likely about western sea routes to Asia, driven by his personal ambitions for fame, fortune, and religious zeal. He was, as we now know, a devout Catholic who aimed to spread Christianity worldwide. Sadly, he also enslaved people in the Caribbean and sent hundreds of Taino Indians back to Spain. Not to mention, even though Wuhl mentions it, the globe was invented that year, and Aristotle proved the Earth was round 2000 years earlier.

So, how did history get it wrong, and culture influence the spread of “fake news?”

(Pop culture reference, see what I did there?)

As Mr. Wuhl explains, in 1828, Washington Irving was the pop star of his time because writers of books were often very famous, and there was no HBO back then. He wrote several bestsellers, including “The Knickerbocker Tails,” “Rip Van Winkle,” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” When he aimed to write an international bestseller, he decided to pen the even more popular “The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus,” which contained false information and cemented it into our consciousness in the United States.

For nearly 200 years, we celebrated this man for all the wrong reasons because of a pop culture reference. Besides his unsavory acts, he didn’t discover that the world was round, only that it was larger than he thought.

Napoleon said, “History is a myth we agree to believe.” I believe religion, especially Christianity, functions in similar ways because it revolves around a holy book that was also influenced by the culture of its day. More on that later.

Mr. Wuhl refers to this phenomenon as “The Liberty Valance Effect,” inspired by the 1962 film directed by John Ford titled The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. As he explains, the film stars John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart and primarily centers on the idea, at that time, that Stewart’s character was credited with killing the outlaw, Liberty Valance. Near the end of the film, he admits that he did not kill the outlaw, but rather it was actually John Wayne’s character. The biographer of his story tears up the confession note and exclaims,

“This is the West, when the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”

That was the point Mr. Wuhl was trying to make from the start. Without missing a beat, he continues with the story from 1775, when a 23-year-old postal worker rode 350 miles from Boston to Philadelphia to warn of the British invasion. Then, he explains, the name of this postal worker was not Paul Revere, as history often suggests; it was, in fact, Israel Bissell. Revere did warn people about the invasion, but he finished his journey in Cambridge, only 19 miles away.

How does pop culture inaccurately recount history in this situation?

At this point, one of the most famous poets in U.S. history, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, enters the narrative. He was renowned at the time for three works, including “Evangeline”, “The Courtship of Miles Standish,” and “The Song of Hiawatha.” Before the Civil War, he wanted to inspire patriotism to bring the country together, so he credited the ride to Paul Revere instead of Israel Bissell (Mr. Wuhl reasons, “His name sounds like a Jewish vacuum cleaner”). Instead, begin the tale with the phrase,

“Listen, my children, and you shall hear / Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere.”

Mr. Wuhl then exclaims confidently, “We cast our heroes,” followed again by the topic sentence, “When the legend becomes fact…print the legend!” By now, the classroom is echoing his key phrase loudly and on cue. I won’t spoil the show by sharing all the examples that are carried into the second episode, but I highly recommend watching it!

Opinion

I realize that this topic, for some of us, can be very frightening because we’ve been taught that our beliefs are actually facts, and our assumptions about history are considered correct. But often, they are not true, and it was simply the story told by the people who survived and, for whatever reason, including privilege, were allowed to tell it.

Without delving into a deep discussion about the Bible, Christianity, and various faiths and their holy books, I want to encourage you to watch the show I recommended and spend some time contemplating these issues. To some extent, we rely heavily on the historians who share their myths, legends, and stories with us. But that’s not enough to form a belief statement. What I believe and dedicate my life to is far more complex than just reading a book, accepting its contents, and blindly following it—much like we believed Christopher Columbus was a decent guy for a long time!

I choose to keep learning, exploring, and trusting my intuition more and more. When someone presents something as fact, I always try to verify it with other sources, think it through logically over time, and look for validation in the real world that supports my suspicions. And every once in a while, I stumble upon something like an HBO series that makes me laugh hysterically about it all!

Be where you are, Be who you are, Be at peace!

Karl Forehand