74 Books and arts The EconomistFebruary 24th 2018
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The history of artOut of one, many
O
N FEBRUARY 23rd 1969 Kenneth
Clark, a British art historian and
museum director, told the nation’s televi-
sion viewers that he could not define
civilisation. “But”, he said, standing in
front of Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, “I
think I can recognise it when I see it.”
Clark’s haughty didacticism typified the
BBC’s 13-part series outlining the history
of Western art and architecture from the
Dark Ages onwards. In Britain the pro-
gramme helped launch the colour-TVset.
There was much to be admired, even if
his fogeyish views led the newly en-
nobled presenter to be mocked as ‘Lord
Clark of “Civilisation”.’
One of his enthusiastic viewers was
Tony Hall, then 17 years old. When he was
appointed as the BBC’s director-general
in 2013, Lord Hall, as he had by then
become, announced his aim to updatethat formative series. “Civilisations” will
be broadcast in Britain from March 1st.
The additional “S” is dropped onto the
end of the title in the opening credits in a
telling, self-referential irony. (A tweaked
version, narrated by Liev Schreiber, will
air on PBSin America from April 17th.)
The remake is even more ambitious
than the original. Three years in the
making and filmed in 31 countries, it
features patient camera work and sweep-
ing drone footage, which allows the
viewer to properlyappreciate the objects
being discussed. It usesmultiple voices to
make connections across the world.
Simon Schama, Mary Beard (pictured)
and David Olusoga, historians with
assorted specialities, each present their
own episodes. Among other themes they
focus on how the nude became the hall-
mark of Western art, the meaning of
colour and the significance of colonial
encounters from Mexico to Mali. What
different cultures drew from each other,
through conflict or assimilation, is a key
aspect of their analysis.
They explain how Japanese wood-
block prints became all the rage in Paris in
the 1860s; how, when Mimar Sinan built
the Suleymaniye Mosque in Istanbul, he
applied many of the same principles
Michelangelo used in designing the
dome of St Peter’s basilica in Rome; and
how Portuguese traders brought back
people and animals, which is why so
many Africans appear in an anonymous
painting of Lisbon from the 1570s called
“View of a Square with the King’s Foun-
tain”. If you learn anything from “Civili-
sations”, it is that influence and authority
are messier than they once appeared.“Civilisation” isn’t what it used to beMary Beard and friendsnable. By early February it had earned
$73m in domestic sales—a decent haul for a
film heavy on men in bad ties, meetings in
newsrooms and stirring homilies about
free speech. It has been nominated for best
picture at the Academy Awards.
Mr Spielberg makes no secret of having
rushed out “The Post” to counter Mr
Trump’s attacks on the press. Between the
film’s success and opinion polls recording
a modest uptick in public trust for newspa-
pers, optimistic journalists might conclude
that they, or at least their cinema avatars,
are still widely admired. They might even
detect the beginning of a general backlash
against those snarls about “fake news”.
That would be wishful thinking.
“The Post” was initially pitched as a hu-
man drama about Katherine Graham, a
Georgetown heiress who found herself
running the Washington Post, and proved
braver than the Nixon administration (and
many of her own staff) imagined. How-
ever, says Stacey Snider—CEO and chair-
man of Twentieth Century Fox Film, the
movie’s co-producers and distributors—as
parallels with current news grew clearer,
the story became more of a political thrill-
er. The studio predicted it would mostly do
well “on the coasts and in college towns”.
It exceeded those expectations. The top
studios know how big a slice of the Ameri-
can box-office is earned, on average, in
each largish market. That allows Fox to cal-
culate that the film is over-performing in
some Republican-leaning areas. In Fort
Myers, Florida, it has sold 87% more tickets
than the averages would predict. Other
hotspots in Trump-voting states include
Tampa, Florida; St Louis, Missouri; Des
Moines, Iowa; Austin, Texas, and Harris-
burg, Pennsylvania. “It has done well in
towns all round the country,” says Ms
Snider. “It couldn’t have been a big-city
movie only and done as well as this.”
That looks like a fillip for those worried
by declining faith in the news. Alas, there
are four reasons to doubt that enthusiasm
for journalists is reaching unexpected
places. First, cities such as Austin are left-
leaning islands in deeply conservative
country. Des Moines has pockets of hip-
sterdom amid the Iowan cornfields. Re-
publicans in Fort Myers or Tampa include
lots of moderate retirees from the Midwest.
Second, Ms Snider identifies another
powerful demographic factor behind the
spread of ticket sales. Though she had
hoped the film would appeal to all ages,
the audiences for what is, after all, a period
piece skew markedly older. That age bias is
easier to discern in box-office data than any
differences between Republican and
Democratic states, she says. Some critics
have duly dismissed “The Post” as gauzy
nostalgia (though wistfulness for a time
when pursuit of the truth was a more bi-
partisan affair may be understandable).
Third, look closer, and polling data onsupport for the press is lopsided. According
to Gallup, 27% of Americans expressed a
great deal or quite a lot of confidence in
newspapers in 2017, up from 20% in 2016.
But the boost was all on one side: nearly
half of Democrats trust the press, while a
dwindling 13% of Republicans agree.
Finally, both “The Post” and “Spotlight”,
an Oscar-winning film from 2015 about the
Boston Globe uncovering clerical sex
abuse, have drawn much smaller audi-
ences than “All The President’s Men”, a Wa-
tergate drama starring Robert Redford and
Dustin Hoffman as intrepid hacks. Re-
leased in 1976, it earned the equivalent of
$300m. Of course, it helped that it por-
trayed an extremely recent mega-scandal.
But changes in the political climate may
have contributed to the differential too.Jon Boorstin, an associate producer on
“All The President’s Men”, remembers the
great effort taken to avoid scenes that
might look like liberal gloating (one aban-
doned ending would have shown Nixon
leaving the White House byhelicopter
after he resigned). He recalls a test screen-
ing deliberately held in Arizona, far from
New York or Los Angeles. The movie was
less a polemic about the press than about
“the need to know”, Mr Boorstin says.
He worries that “All The President’s
Men” seems quaint now. Trump-sceptics
still love it: a recent live reading of the script
drew sell-out crowds in Los Angeles. But its
premise is that investigating and uncover-
ing evidence of rule-breaking will lead to
consequences, he notes. “You couldn’t
make that movie now.” 7