Praktikos

Using Popular Culture to Intrigue Your Students

Exploring the history behind the façade of television, movies and other forms of pop culture.

Jem Duducu and Greg Chapman, History podcasters

One of the biggest issues involved in keeping history discovery in Liang Bua cave on Indonesia’s Flores students engaged is making things relevant or, dare Island in 2003 shifted the boundary between human we say it, cool. A history teacher today has resources and hobbit, between fantasy and fact. It was here like no generation before, with access to a wealth that fossils of a new Homo genus were found. of YouTube videos, podcasts, Virtual Reality and Scientists called it Homo Floresiensis, but it was beyond. Yet many teachers still find it difficult quickly nicknamed The Hobbit.1 The hominin stood to engage some students in history, because no just over a metre high – about the height of a Hobbit. matter how much modern technology is used, some They also seemed to live in caves, like a hobbit, and students seem to think the subject is stuck in the they were even intellectually sophisticated enough past. to use stone tools.2 However there the similarities end, as clearly the caves they lived in were not some One way to address this is to find links between kind of subterranean rural English cottages, nor was obscure tales from history and popular culture that there any evidence of clothing, wizards, or magical help your students find relevance in the past. In rings. this article we link three obscure historical facts to popular culture to help history students see that This discovery opened up a whole new branch of the history is alive all around us. hominin tree – hominins are human-like individuals who would have lived at the same time as both Hobbits: Out of the Book and into the Cave Homo Sapiens and the last Neanderthals. Not much Tolkien’s classic 1937 novel The Hobbit opens with: is known about this type of proto-human and the remains of only nine individuals have so far been In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a found. However Homo Floresiensis has rewritten nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms archaeological text­books, as they lived in South East and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole Asia from around 94,000 to 13,000 years ago.3 with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort. It is wonderful to be able to link a made-up and fantastical creature with a real part of our Hobbits are of course fictional but an amazing evolutionary story.

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PREVIOUS PAGE: The ‘Hobbit cave’ in Indonesia. (Photograph by Rosino, used under CC BY-SA 2.0) RIGHT: Mace head depicting the Egyptian ‘Scorpion King.’ (Photography by Ivy Close AUSTRALIAN HISTORY Images/Alamy)

THIS AUSTRALIAN HISTORY STUDY AND EXAM GUIDE STUDY AND EXAM GUIDE FOCUSES ON THE FOLLOWING KEY KNOWLEDGE AREAS OF THE 2016–2020 VCE STUDY DESIGN: • The Reshaping of Port Phillip District/Victoria • Making a People and a Nation • Crises that Tested the Nation › The Great Depression Scorpion Kings: Silver Screen pharaohs have headgear with both › World War II Bad Guy and Egyptian King a serpent and a vulture head, which • Voices for Change shows that they ruled both the Upper 1 Carl Zimmer, ‘Are The Scorpion King is best-known as a 6 › Australia’s Involvement in and Lower Nile regions. Hobbits Real?’, New York baddie played by ‘The Rock’ (Dwayne the Vietnam War Times, 20 June 2016, Johnson) in The Mummy franchise of Whatever he was called (personally › Aboriginal Land Rights https://www.nytimes. films (1998–2008) and the spin-off I like the sound of Scorpion King › Equality for Women com/2016/06/20/insider/ Scorpion King series (2002–18, but let’s more than just Narmer,don’t you?), › New Patterns of are-hobbits-real.html. Immigration not go there). But there is genuine this king ruled at a time when trade 2 Zimmer, ‘Hobbits.’ evidence of at least one real pre- and agriculture were starting to bind 3 Thomas Sutinka et al., It also includes: dynastic Egyptian monarch, maybe Egyptian society into a larger entity › detailed revision notes ‘Revised Stratigraphy and even two, known as the Scorpion that would be the foundation of the › overview of SACs Chronology for Homo King. The monarch used the scorpion Egyptian dynasties for millennia to › overview of the exam floresiensis at Liang Bua › examples of strong exam in Indonesia,’ letter, as a symbol of his rule which is why come. It is also the time where the Nature, 21 April 2016, responses historians know him as the Scorpion first writing appears, which means https://www.nature.com/ 4 › general guidance for King. we can set the period to around articles/nature17179. 3,200-3,000 BCE.7 He is therefore an assessment This Egyptian monarch predates the 4 Natalia Klimczak, important and formative figure and › full sample exam and guide ‘Searching for the pharaohs, placing him truly at the it is frustrating that so little evidence to responses Lost Footsteps of very edges of history. It’s also worth exists. › exam preparation tools the Scorpion Kings,’ knowing that although ‘pharaoh’ and › online key knowledge quizzes Ancient-Origins.net, 27 ‘king’ are generally interchangeable The Scorpion King is a hot topic of February 2017, http:// www.ancient-origins.net/ titles, ‘pharaoh’ literally means ‘great debate amongst Egyptologists, with history-famous-people/ house or hall.’ It implies that the many theories and counter-arguments searching-lost-footsteps- monarch is so mighty you cannot swirling around these ancient PLUS scorpion-kings-007598. name him but have to refer to his artefacts. More than 5,000 years later, Geraldine Carrodus online key 5 Jaromir Malek et al., abode instead.5 we are still arguing over his legacy. I ‘Pharoah,’ The Sphinx doubt the movie Scorpion King will be knowledge Some of the first pharaohs might have Nose, http://www.griffith. famous for so long … quizzes ox.ac.uk/gri/9pharaoh. had multiple names. This means that html. the ‘Scorpion King’ and one of the first SENIOR HISTORY 6 Thomas H. Maugh II, Pharaohs, Narmer, could in fact be the ‘The Real Scorpion King,’ same person. Indeed a mace head in Los Angeles Times, 15 April Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum shows 2002, http://articles. latimes.com/2002/apr/15/ the Scorpion King in a very similar FOR MORE INFORMATION AND TO VIEW SAMPLE PAGES VISIT: science/sci-scorpion15. way to other depictions of Narmer. He 7 Klimczak, ‘Searching for wears the ‘white crown’ which shows the Lost Footsteps.’ he ruled the Upper Nile region. Later

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LEFT: Although these television Vikings don’t wear horned helmets, they probably don’t look much like real Vikings either. (Photograph by Bernard Walsh)

Vikings: TV Hit and Medieval helmets. Later academics moved away Menace from romanticism and conclusively disproved the existence of the horned Read this entry from Britain’s medieval helmets.9 (It’s interesting that the main Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and you’d image most people have of the Vikings, be forgiven for thinking that you pervasive even today, is false.) A flurry were reading Lord of the Rings, or a of books and papers pointed out what particularly apocalyptic section of the great sailors, explorers, traders and Bible: artists these men really were.10 It’s AD 793.This year came dreadful certainly true that the superbly sea- 8 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, fore-warnings over the land of the worthy and beautiful viking longships translated by James Ingram (London: Northumbrians, terrifying the people enabled Vikings to settle as far west as Everyman, 1912), s.a. 793. most woefully: these were immense America (briefly) and Ireland (much Full text available online sheets of light rushing through the more successfully) and as far east as the at Britannia, http://www. air, and whirlwinds, and fiery dragons Ukraine and Istanbul (bodyguards to britannia.com/history/ flying across the firmament. These Byzantine Emperors). docs/776-99.html. tremendous tokens were soon 9 Johnni Langer, ‘The This body of newer research went so far followed by a great famine: and not Origins of the Imaginary in tipping the balance in favour of the long after, on the sixth day before the Vikings,’ Viking Heritage Vikings as traders and explorers that it Magazine 2002, iss. 4, ides of January in the same year, the tipped almost too far, and the essential 6–9, http://www. harrowing inroads of heathen men truth that the Vikings were both traders academia.edu/390901/ made lamentable havoc in the church THE_ORIGINS_OF_THE_ and raiders was in danger of being lost. of God in Holy-island, by rapine and IMAGINARY_VIKING_ 8 VIKING_HERITAGE_4_2002_ slaughter. Much has been made of the reasons for GOTLAND_UNIVERSITY_ this era of Viking raids. There have been This might sound like Game of Thrones CENTRE_FOR_BALTIC_ in-depth discussions about population STUDIES_VISBY. meets The Vikings, with slaughtered densities and potential over-fishing 10 See, for example, monks and actual dragons but it’s of the seas around Scandinavia,11 but Philip Parker, ‘A Brief actually a contemporary account of one putting aside all the hard work done History of the Vikings,’ of the first Viking raids in Britain. The on herring breeding, it could be argued History Extra, 25 May History Channel historical drama series, 2016, https://www. that the question is being asked the The Vikings (premiered 2013), made historyextra.com/period/ wrong way round. Europe had already use of documents like this to create viking/a-brief-history-of- gone through generations of raiding the-vikings/. an almost-believable portrayal of the and invasion; Visigoths, Angles, Saxons, 11 Sharpe, John C., ‘The Viking Age, although later series are less Magyars – the list goes on. The Vikings Viking Expansion: historical and more drama. were just one more generation of the Climate, Population, Vikings are a chance to show the age-old family business of rape and Plunder,’ dissertation (2002), University of story behind ‘history,’ to delve into pillage, and their boat technology made Montana Graduate how these ever-popular marauders them particularly hard to catch. Perhaps Student Theses, have been portrayed different ways in the main question to ask about the Dissertations, & different periods. In the nineteenth Vikings is why they continue to fascinate Professional Papers, century, Vikings were famously us, even without the horned helmets? https://scholarworks. depicted with winged or horned umt.edu/etd/3862.

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BELOW: Screenshot of ‘The Using Popular Culture The concept of linking popular culture and Condensed History Gems’ in History Teaching teaching history has been turned into a new podcast. podcast called ‘Neon’ by Jem Duducu where You can see from our examples above each week he looks at TV, movies, video how a large range of subjects can be games or other forms of pop culture and made relevant to your students by reveals the real history that’s lurking behind finding ways to link them in to modern the façade: popular culture. This can really help https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/ students to find a way into a subject neon/id1355727374?. which may otherwise appear entirely foreign and separate from their lives. Greg Chapman produces his weekly podcast Of course there is a danger in using ‘Greg Chapman’s Tales from the Road,’ popular culture to teach history. There with stories of travelling around performing are many films and television programs his history-based shows at events and set in particular historical periods historical locations across the world: or featuring specific events, and yet https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/ it is important to keep foremost in greg-chapmans-tales-from-the-road/ the student’s (and our) minds that id593351744?. these works are created primarily for The two work together each week on the entertainment. For example, the recent ‘Condensed History Gems’ podcast, Churchill biopic, Darkest Hour,features dealing with a wide range of historical a scene where Winston Churchill meets subjects, and always looking at new ways to Londoners in the Underground, a scene make these subjects exciting and relevant: which probably never took place, and http://condensedhistorygems. is certainly not documented as ever podomatic.com/. happening. When we use popular culture as a jumping-off point for history, we must, therefore, take care that students never mistake a film, book or television show for history itself. So look through popular culture for ideas, inspirations and jumping-off points for your lessons, and as long as you are careful to show your students how to separate evidence-based fact for fiction, you can find this a very rewarding way to engage the class!

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