\nExcellent blast from the past about the dilemmas in\u00a0\u201chistorically accurate\u201d fiction.
Envision a scene in which two Renaissance men are hanging out in a bar in Bologna with a prostitute. Watching this scene, I, with my professional knowledge of the place and period, notice that there are implausibly too many candles burning, way more than this pub could afford, plus what they paid for that meal is about what the landlord probably earns in a month, and the prostitute isn\u2019t wearing the mandatory blue veil required for prostitutes by Bologna\u2019s sumptuary laws. But if I showed it to twenty other historians they would notice other things: that style of candlestick wasn\u2019t possible with Italian metalwork of the day, that fabric pattern was Flemish, that window wouldn\u2019t have had curtains, that dish they\u2019re eating is a period dish but from Genoa, not Bologna, and no Genoese cook would be in Bologna because feud bla bla bla. So much we know. But a person from the period would notice a thousand other things: that nobody made candles in that exact diameter, or they butchered animals differently so that cut of steak is the wrong shape, or no bar of the era would have been without the indispensable who-knows-what: a hat-cleaning lady, a box of kittens, a special shape of bread. All historical scenes are wrong, as wrong as a scene set now would be which had a classy couple go to a formal steakhouse with paper menus and an all-you-can-eat steak buffet. All the details are right, but the mix is wrong.\nThat\u2019s a good way to put it, and moreover I agree with her on the failure modes of getting too attached to historical accuracy.\n
Scorcese\u2019s a big American history fan and loves using it as material (like I say I think the natural successor is Rockstar\u2019s open world vidya) and Gangs of New York was basically a series of \u201chey didja know?\u201d Easter eggs. \n\n
Didja know that NYC was an anti-Lincoln town? Didja know that playwrights\u2019 texts didn\u2019t used to be so sacred and directors would insert topical material and run fix fic endings? Didja know that moral reformers would try to co-opt the demimonde of saloon prostitution towards good Christian living and the demimonde would co-opt them right back?\n
\nI did know, and I got it, and loved it. I got the ending, \u201caah, the point is these quirks were never so much resolved as obviated by the modernizing nationalism brought on by the Civil War!\u201d But even I thought there wasn\u2019t enough connective tissue to hold it all together and other people I talked to were like \u201cwhat the HELL was going on\u201d
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