Edutainment vs Education: History, Hollywood, the Greatest Showman, and Walt Disney

My family went to see The Greatest Showman this afternoon.  It is an absolutely wonderful film, great songs, acting, and visuals.  The team that put it together (both on and off camera, on set and back in the studio) did an amazing job.  And Hugh Jackman is just awesome!

What the film is not, however, is history.  Yes, it is about a real historical person (P.T. Barnum) who put on performances, had a museum of "oddities," created a circus, was indeed, "the greatest showman."  But the film is not historically accurate on any number of levels, much to the dismay of critics--whom I won't link to because this post really isn't about the criticisms of this particular film (but I will say, to paraphrase Jackman's Barnum, that some of them seem to be film critics that hate film). 

No, you see, the real Barnum, the Barnum of history was and did much more than the movie version we watched showed.  He was a politician in Connecticut (serving as mayor and in the state legislature).  He was a Democrat who became a Republican in the years before the Civil War.  He was a temperance speaker.  He was, in fact, the father of four daughters (only two are shown in the film)---one of whom died as a 2 year old.  He was an author, "debunker," a marketer.....it is almost impossible to list all he did.  Oh, and he looked nothing like Hugh Jackman!

What I did not expect the film to be, was historically accurate. As I wrote on Twitter:

"As an historian, I consider any “history” based movie I see as primarily entertainment, not educational. If I end up looking things up after I get home, and maybe learning something from that, so much the better. Just some insight for non-historians (and film critics) as well."

What I was getting at in this Twitter post was the concept of edutainment, an idea pioneered by Walt Disney (and something I talk about in Dis-History quite a bit).  The idea was that film (or theme parks) could be both entertaining and educational.  It does not promise to be 100 percent historically accurate, or engage every aspect of a particular story, only to use history to tell a story.  The idea as Walt conceived of it was that it would spark further discussion, research, and engagement with the past.  It was not a substitute for history, but a tool to further historical (or literary, or folk lore) inquiry.

I think many critics (including historians, who should know better) sometimes forget that Hollywood is about making money, not "doing history."  Even the best history based films take artistic license.  The goal for studios is to tell a story that gets audiences into theaters (or purchased at some point via some medium).  It is not to do the job of historians.  It is incumbent upon historians to make sure there is material to inform the public after they have seen a film.  As a profession, we should not be dependent to do our job for us--nor should we want them to be!  Rather than complain that a film doesn't capture every possible facet, we should be ready to use the film to engage and educate.  It's what Walt would have wanted, and what Barnum would have endorsed!