As novelist William Faulkner wrote, "The past is never dead. It’s not even past." Battles over remembrance, interpretation, "cancellation" and censorship of history take center stage in the 2021 documentary "Civil War (Or, Who Do We Think We Are)," streaming today on Peacock. The film was begun in 2016 and meets with individuals north and south of the Mason-Dixon line to discuss the different ways the history of the Civil War has been taught and interpreted, commemorated and celebrated.
The recent publication of the 1619 Project, commemorating the 400th anniversary of slavery and the centrality of slave exploitation in the American story, has sparked a backlash and even legislation to ban it from the curriculum in classrooms. Skirmishes over historical interpretation and the content of textbooks is hardly new, or unique to the United States. There have been frequent protests and riots staged by Koreans and Chinese outraged by ways that Japanese teach (or don’t teach) their students about WWII-era atrocities.
If American popular culture has any consistent theme when it comes to history, it can be called "creative amnesia with a reactionary undercurrent." In both "Birth of a Nation" (1915) and "Gone With the Wind," (1939) the whip-holding slave masters of the 1852 novel "Uncle Tom’s Cabin" became Hollywood heroes and underdogs in a new 20th-century art form.
These fanciful inversions aren’t unique to the Civil War. Just a few years after the United States withdrew from a conflict that left more than a million Vietnamese dead, movies like "The Deer Hunter" depicted Americans as the victims of savages forcing them to play Russian roulette. The absurdity exploded with the wildly popular "Rambo" movies, which traded in fairy tales of hidden prisoners of war and a U.S. government that conspired to betray them, a message that deliberately echoed the "stab-in-the-back" myth that circulated in Germany in the years before Hitler rose to power.
As we see in "Civil War" and in the frenzied hysteria over "Critical Race Theory" whipped up on Fox News and elsewhere, battles over the past aren’t about history at all. They’re about political power and who gets to be powerful enough to define "what really happened."
As Winston Churchill once wrote, "History will be kind to me. For I intend to write it."
TONIGHT’S OTHER HIGHLIGHTS
— The 2021 U.S. Open golf championship (7 p.m., NBC).
— An ever-recurring present allows a selfish weatherman (Bill Murray) endless chances to correct his flaws in the 1993 comedy "Groundhog Day" (7:15 p.m., Starz Encore).
— Putts and puns on two helpings of "Holey Moley" (8 p.m. and 9 p.m., ABC, TV-PG).
— Clutter may be a manifestation of other issues on "Hot Mess House" (8 p.m., HGTV).
— A rash act has consequences on "Clarice" (10 p.m., CBS, TV-14).
— U.S. Olympics trials (10 p.m., NBC) features swimming finals.
CULT CHOICE
A district attorney (Burt Lancaster) discovers that one of the thugs he must prosecute for murder is the son of an old girlfriend in the 1961 crime drama "The Young Savages" (8 p.m., TCM, TV-14). Directed by John Frankenheimer, the film is based on a book by Evan Hunter, who also wrote under the name Ed McBain, whose "87th Precinct" novels inspired many aspects of the television police procedural. The film also introduced actor Telly Savalas, playing a detective not entirely unlike Kojak.
SERIES NOTES
Sliding doors on "Young Sheldon" (8 p.m., CBS, r, TV-PG) … A time to clear the air on "Walker" (8 p.m., CW, TV-PG) … Jamie Foxx hosts "Beat Shazam" (8 p.m., Fox, TV-PG) … Doggone on "United States of Al" (8:30 p.m., CBS, TV-14).
Bonnie worries on "Mom" (9 p.m., CBS, r, TV-14) … Will Arnett hosts "Lego Masters" (9 p.m., Fox, r, TV-PG) … A hallucination that just won’t quit on "Legacies" (9 p.m., CW, TV-PG) … A chance to rebound on "B Positive" (9:30 p.m., CBS, r, TV-14) … Pop culture matters on "The Hustler" (10 p.m., ABC, TV-PG).
LATE NIGHT
Mila Kunis is booked on "Conan" (11 p.m., TBS) … Nathan Lane and Griff appear on "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert" (11:35 p.m., CBS) … Jimmy Fallon welcomes Helen Mirren, Kenya Barris and Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds on "The Tonight Show" (11:35 p.m., NBC) … Dax Shepard, Monica Padman, Tony Hale and Saweetie appear on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" (11:35 p.m., ABC).
Peyton Manning, Bowen Yang and Edgar Wright visit "Late Night With Seth Meyers" (12:35 a.m., NBC) … Will Arnett and Lord Huron appear on "The Late Late Show With James Corden" (12:35 a.m., CBS).
