The Road to a New Alternate History, part 3

[Meadow]

Discuss this article here.

 

[The Red]

It's a good point about the SS-GB adaptation. It had more glaring issues, and the production wasn't as tone deaf as to cover a real city in Fascist iconography, but it still does sap away the feeling of London being physically and spiritually shattered when reading the book and replaces it with the sort of pulpy noir setting that made Archer famous in-story.

 

[FriendlyGhost]

Another good article, thank you @Skinny87 .
I fully agree about little museums. There's a small museum near where I live which aims to give visitors experiences about the local area going a long way back in history ('10,000 years of history in one visit' is its tag-line). Living where I do (Northumberland), there's quite a bit of conflict involved and one of the things which children (and children-at-heart) can do is try on mediaeval armour and hold various weapons. I don't think I've ever not heard someone say, "that's heavy!" or similar. But there's also a lot of focus on day-to-day living across the centuries, which I think is incredibly important for understanding the background to the big-picture history. Luckily, children get in free and many local schools do trips to it.
Some of the museums along Hadrian's Wall have similar (focussed on the Romans, obviously).
So I found myself nodding along to your points as I read. Thanks for expressing them much better than I ever could.

 

[Talwar]

The human element is hugely important in anything that has, well, humans. Thirty plus years after the fact, one of the few bits of the Sharpe novels that I still remember is a bad guy being impressed at Sharpe has the strength to hold a sword to the guy's throat for a few monutes without shaking. It's a neat detail you won't get unless somebody has hefted blades or done a lot of research.

 

[RyanF]

I knew it was the art galleries! Even when it was the the edgelord teens, I knew it was them!

Framing this in terms of regimental museums makes a great point in the need to humanise history. And that leads to the difference in storytelling where the stories are told from a human perspective. That perspective is the norm in our vignette contests, and I think there has been a shift in recent years towards that from the fake textbook or especially snarky Wikipedia article style that was dominant earlier. That might have been hand in hand to more works being written online with an end goal of publication as opposed to just consumption by the small fora community.

Sometimes in these conversations it's underestimated how much of an impact Amazon's adaptation of The Man in the High Castle had on the genre and the discourse around the genre. It helps linking it to how off the adaptation of SS-GB felt when it was just a creatively bereft UK aping of what the Yanks were up to. This does lead to a recency bias where the post Amazon High Castle state is seen as the only state, even from those who were around longer. Don't mean for that to sound all Disco Truther, but I do think it's a point.

 

[Talwar]

Swastikas over New York or London are stylish and cliche but also effective narrative shortcuts because it's cliche enough for us to figure it out quick. Literal picture-tells-a-thousand-words territory.

 

[Hendryk]

Take as an example some of the set-pieces found in The Man in the High Castle, many of which are found in immensely popular YouTube Shorts or TikTok videos (and other things The YouthTM watch these days): lovingly-crafted CGI spectacles that see blood-red and void-black Swastika banners unfurled across New York skyscrapers, or Swastika-clad crowds cheering maniacally as the Statue of Liberty is blown up amidst fireworks by victorious Nazi occupiers.

It has long been a thought of mine that the English-speaking world is so fond of Nazi occupation alternate history precisely because it never happened to them (the Channel Islands notwithstanding), and so they can imagine it at a safe remove. For most of Continental Europe, one only needs to open a history book to see how it went down, no flight of fancy required.

 

[Charles EP M.]

I'll speak up for the Imperial War Museum, when I visited in April - first time in twelve years - I was impressed with how some of the permanent exhibits were grounded in human experience, things like the Snatch rover and Troubles-era armoured vehicle with accounts from veterans playing as you stood there. You look at a machine while near photos of where it was and hear aging soldiers say what it was like to have to raid a house while the family looked at you.

It's a good point about the SS-GB adaptation. It had more glaring issues, and the production wasn't as tone deaf as to cover a real city in Fascist iconography, but it still does sap away the feeling of London being physically and spiritually shattered when reading the book and replaces it with the sort of pulpy noir setting that made Archer famous in-story.

I liked it fine when I saw it but I hadn't read the book then. Now I have, I can tell how all the grotty banal depression has been replaced with a glamorous 'dark' sheen. Maybe this is a dark side of the need to Keep Up With Amazon, but maybe it's just lack of balls; Secret Army was a glossy big budget show at the time ("WE'RE REALLY IN BELGIUM!!!") but was still a grubby, mean show about desperate people in a normal place.

Or it's the whole "history as-lived forgotten" thing again, because Deighton was writing about alternate outcomes of events from a few decades ago and Secret Army was doing a real occupation & RAF bombing raids that older audiences had lived through. It's easier to get it right then.

 

[FriendlyGhost]

Or it's the whole "history as-lived forgotten" thing again, because Deighton was writing about alternate outcomes of events from a few decades ago and Secret Army was doing a real occupation & RAF bombing raids that older audiences had lived through. It's easier to get it right then.

That's true, but I think you're closer to the mark with your comment about keeping up with Amazon. The advent of big-budget international shows has put pressure on smaller production companies to make things look just as good as the perceived competition and that has an impact elsewhere. For example, although not AH when it was made, Threads is one of the darkest, grittiest programmes/films ever broadcast but I can't imagine anything similar being made now - the focus would be too much on getting the special effects right. I hope I'm wrong though and that smaller companies can continue to make realistic, human-based drama.

 

[Charles EP M.]

That's true, but I think you're closer to the mark with your comment about keeping up with Amazon. The advent of big-budget international shows has put pressure on smaller production companies to make things look just as good as the perceived competition

And is it just me but half the time it never quite works, there's something - less extras, slightly off CG - that just reminds you the budget is lower?

 

[RyanF]

And is it just me but half the time it never quite works, there's something - less extras, slightly off CG - that just reminds you the budget is lower?

Used to be if you couldn't rely on effects you'd hide it through writing, direction, lighting.

Now they've tried nothing and they're all out of ideas.

 

[Jared]

Used to be if you couldn't rely on effects you'd hide it through writing, direction, lighting.

Now they've tried nothing and they're all out of ideas.

Sounds eminently qualified to stand for parliament.

 

[Charles EP M.]

Used to be if you couldn't rely on effects you'd hide it through writing, direction, lighting.

Now they've tried nothing and they're all out of ideas.

Oh god, lighting, my bugbear with some cheap indie streamers and their trailers (sometimes I view them for sick pleasure) is when the lighting is subpar or entirely natural and the directing is also a bit off, and it turns Epic Viking Stuff into some guys larping in the woods. It looks inferior to the 90s Who video  Downtime where fans in UNIT cosplay fight Yetis by some trees because Douglas Camfield was trying for good shots and edited it

 

[RyanF]

Oh god, lighting, my bugbear with some cheap indie streamers and their trailers (sometimes I view them for sick pleasure) is when the lighting is subpar or entirely natural and the directing is also a bit off, and it turns Epic Viking Stuff into some guys larping in the woods. It looks inferior to the 90s Who video  Downtime where fans in UNIT cosplay fight Yetis by some trees because Douglas Camfield was trying for good shots and edited it

I'm convinced A24 is the culprit when it comes to thinking you can get away with natural lighting. It's almost created a dichotomy where the only two looks in film are brightly lit, vibrant coloured, Hollywood popcorn flicks and naturally lit, muted palette, indie pictures.

They've varied things a bit more of late, but seeing trailers for The Iron Claw looks like they've accidentally made a real distinction between the real lives of the Adkisson's, which look like any other A24 film, and the in-ring lives of the Von Erich's, which go the opposite direction.

 

[Coiler]

I knew it was the art galleries! Even when it was the the edgelord teens, I knew it was them!

Framing this in terms of regimental museums makes a great point in the need to humanise history. And that leads to the difference in storytelling where the stories are told from a human perspective. That perspective is the norm in our vignette contests, and I think there has been a shift in recent years towards that from the fake textbook or especially snarky Wikipedia article style that was dominant earlier. That might have been hand in hand to more works being written online with an end goal of publication as opposed to just consumption by the small fora community.

Thing is, almost all AH works aimed at a large audience are told from a human perspective. They might not be told well, but there's at least a sincere normal human narrative almost all the time. Even Robert Conroy, regarded not unreasonably as one of the worse pop-AH writers, still tried to have varied, human perspectives in his books. Likewise, while they may feature too many infodumps and conference rooms, the average Fuldapocalyptic story (itself a small niche) is not like Hackett.

It's really just community inside baseball (or should I say cricket because most of us here are British lol) to complain about something that almost all alternate history that "normal" people potentially get has already been doing constantly.

 

[RyanF]

Thing is, almost all AH works aimed at a large audience are told from a human perspective. They might not be told well, but there's at least a sincere normal human narrative almost all the time. Even Robert Conroy, regarded not unreasonably as one of the worse pop-AH writers, still tried to have varied, human perspectives in his books. Likewise, while they may feature too many infodumps and conference rooms, the average Fuldapocalyptic story (itself a small niche) is not like Hackett.

Not what I said.

It's really just community inside baseball (or should I say cricket because most of us here are British lol) to complain about something that almost all alternate history that "normal" people potentially get has already been doing constantly.

Then you insult me by assuming I like cricket?

 

[ChrisNuttall]

It has long been a thought of mine that the English-speaking world is so fond of Nazi occupation alternate history precisely because it never happened to them (the Channel Islands notwithstanding), and so they can imagine it at a safe remove. For most of Continental Europe, one only needs to open a history book to see how it went down, no flight of fancy required.

That's probably true.

It also does make an effective shortcut. You don't have to spell out what it means for people to know that Nazi Occupation is BAD. You can just have a nazi flag flying from Big Ben and your watchers will fill in the gaps themsleves.

Chris

 

[Time Enough]

When discussing the possible human aspect of alternate history, I do always think Yiddish Policemen’s Union achieves that in spades.

Chabon goes on vast polemics about why the Filipino - Jewish doughnut is one of the great ever made, or the eccentric characters and folks that embody Sitka, or even the main character being afraid of the dark.

Indeed despite being an increasingly abandoned city, the Sitka of Chabon’s world feels incredibly lived in, right down the decaying remains of a World Fair’s in 77’ which is an ever present of the ‘golden years’ of Sitka.

Whilst Chabon does indulge in at times, rather silly aspects of alternate history, it doesn’t matter too much due to the fact that he spends his time developing the lived in world and experiences of the characters and the city they habit.

Essentially more folks should take inspiration from Yiddish Policemen’s Union and the work of Chabon.