This just in….
In 1798, Napoleon invaded Egypt.
Feeling the pressure of rising unemployment in France, and seeing the power that British colonies had given England, Napoleon set forth with his fleet, first picking off the riches of Malta and then heading to Alexandria, in Egypt.
Admiral Nelson was in hot pursuit, and though he was unable to cut off the French fleet before they got to Egypt, he trapped the French in Aboukir Bay and at the Battle of the Nile wiped out all but 4 French ships, who were able to escape.
Hence, Napoleon and his army were, for all practical purposes, trapped in Egypt.
Napoleon, never one to miss a chance to turn misfortune into opportunity, seized Egypt (and later Lebanon and Syria), and began to carve out a French Empire in the Levant.
To win the support of the French people at home (who could have been a bit annoyed at their army being stranded in Egypt), Napoleon commissioned a kind of cultural army to come to Egypt and create propaganda for home consumption.
This was an era before television (for our younger readers), but the primary tool for news and education was painting.
This had been the case since the Catholic Church had commissioned painters to ‘tell the story of Jesus’ all across Europe.
Painters like Eugene Delacroix, Jean Louis David and Antonie-Jean Gros, among others, began to ‘tell the story’ of Napoleon’s sweep across the Levant to the French public, and latterly to the world.
The medium they used was painting. The MTV of it’s day.
Vibrant. Compelling. Visual. Image-driven. Easy to access.
Pictured above, Bonaparte Visiting the Plague House of Jaffa by Gros. It shows Napoleon and his troops (having just suffered a defeat in Egypt and running to Palestine for cover) as the enlightened westerner and Christian among the suffering heathans (Muslims) of Jaffa. A great TV story. Before TV. Played really well in France. So well that the painting still hangs in the Louvre. The David Patraeus of his day. Or Obama from Cairo.
Delacroix, David, Gros and others were the CNN of their era. The reporters, the cameramen, the producers.
They came to Egypt (or sometimes ‘reported’ from a distance – just like we do!!!), with about as much knowledge of the Middle East as most of our own correspondents have today. (ie, they did not speak the language, know the culture, know the history, or anything else. But they had a lock on the technology (oil on canvas), and they were looking for a good story to tell.
(Just like most of the coverage from Egypt last week. However, I really doubt any of it will go on to hang in the Louvre!)
The inaccuracies they dispensed still resonate with us. (See Edward Said’s classic Orientalism), just as the ‘great reporting’ that US networks did from Iraq will no doubt resonate with us for 100 years at least.
However…. what they did produce was great art.
It was a period in which art and journalism were inseparable.
And nothing wrong with that.
The power of their images remains to this day.
Just as DeFoe’s writing (thanks Adrian for the correction), so too Delacroix’s painting.
There is no attempt here at fair and balanced. But there is every attempt here at great art.
Passionate. Moving. Pouring everything they have into it to make a point.
Here, I think, is where ‘journalism’ went astray.
Journalism as Art creates works of power that withstand the ages.
(and let’s be honest about the ‘objectivity’ of our own journalists, from whatever perspective). Journalism as oatmeal creates.. well, not even readers for The New York Times.
So let’s get back to our roots.
I think it’s our only path to salvation.
8 Comments
pencilgod June 10, 2009
Its funny I’m just reading Simon Scarrow’s The Generals, Napoleon in Egypt, Wellington in India.
To me a lot of the problems with journalism today is the fragmentation at the local end but the outsorcing to a central editorial hub at the other.
I see journalists actually competing with press releases to get past the content gatekeepers.
pencilgod June 10, 2009
and losing…
Michael Rosenblum June 10, 2009
erik
As a former producer for CBS and the former President of New York Times TV, I can tell you in all honesty that ‘news’ operations in the US are also propaganda, but of a slightly different stripe. They are all about selling airtime or ads in the paper and very little about ‘journalism’.
If you would like to do an interesting study along these lines, why not see how many stories ’60 Minutes’ did about the lying Bush administration in the 8 years they were in power versus celeb interviews or stories about sheriffs in Oklahoma.
Erik Gunn June 11, 2009
Mike, I’m mostly with you on that one. Note I said Journalism “at its best” — sadly, the craft has not been “at its best” in recent years nationally. But there are exceptions: The Post’s coverage of Walter Reed Hospital, to name just one. Or the courage with which McClatchy (and Knight-Ridder before it) challenged the Bush administration’s claims in the run up to and prosecution of the Iraq War.
Those are not the sort of things that will be “commissioned” by centers of power, the way the Church commissioned the story of Christ in paintings a thousand years ago.
They’re also not necessarily stories (well, maybe Walter Reed) that could be easily and compellingly told in a visual rather than printed medium. I’m not speaking against visual journalism, but along with my worry about how we pay for information that necessarily afflicts the comfortable, is a parallel worry that if we just throw the written word overboard in favor of image-based communications, what will we lose?
Erik Gunn June 10, 2009
Here’s the problem, Mike: What you’re talking about isn’t journalism. It’s propaganda. And propaganda is easy to make much more attractive than journalism. Wasn’t one of the vexing things about Hitler’s favorite film-maker, Leni Riefenstahl, the sheer brilliance of her technique?
Propaganda will always get made because it will always have a patron: those whose interests it advances.
Journalism, at its best, was able to be so successful because it could get itself funded by those willing to feed the mouth that bit them–because it was the only way they could get their message out.
I realize that old economic model of journalism–sell half your real estate (whether air time or newsprint) to those who want to buy a venue for their own message, so that you can then give away the other half with whatever message you (the journalist) want to communicate–is dead. But let’s not pretend that this is just a matter of medium (flashy, exciting images vs. dull print) or even style (opinion vs. facts). The bottom line is who’s paying, who’s being paid, and will the latter continue to be independent from the former even as they take the coin?
pencilgod June 09, 2009
There are injustices everywhere Michael.
This year I decided to enter the New Zealand 48 Hour film comp. We drew musical and after much panic I think we did ok. A small team of 6, my operating suffered because I was directing and my camera crew was… well me.
But I was happy with the thing as a whole we made a proper musical and we did well.
Call Me Al: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSCKwfM6AmY
Team: A Trick With A Knife
Elements: Character- Alex Puddle, an exaggerator : Line- “It doesn’t fit” : Prop- a rock
2009: “Call Me Al” (musical) City Runner Up #1
WINNER: Best Score
NOMINATED: Best Actress-Emma Kinane, Best Cinematography-Stephen Press
Then bizarrely despite coming second in our region when they played the 30 “best of” on TV we were left out.
Instead they played 3 of the films we beat.
Nothing personal apparently.
I guess the fact the team was mostly all over 40 makes us not cool enough for the competition.
Now I get to the end of my story I don’t know remember what my point was… probably something about dealing with pocket Napoleon’s.
pencilgod June 09, 2009
You know that Napoleon set up several of his own newspapers… I doubt they were any more factual than the artwork.
Michael Rosenblum June 10, 2009
Or than The New York Post