End of term anxiety? and historical movies

Today was the last class meeting this term for my course on the History of Islamic Civilization.  It was the due date for a term paper, too.  So many students had asked for one or two day extensions that I rather expected a very low attendance and very few papers handed in.  (I actually don't mind giving extensions, not when I've heard credible reports from numerous students that they are swamped at end of term.)

Imagine my surprise when the vast majority showed up with essays in hand!  Was it just end of term anxiety that made them think they needed those extensions?

The class did me the courtesy of watching one of my favorite movies, The Man Who Would Be King (1975), which I used in place of a lecture on "the West's advantage," i.e. what factors led to European dominance of the globe by the 19th century.  The movie doesn't really have much profound to say about that subject, but it has its virtues, besides being fun.  First, it portrays the confidence (arrogance?) that Westerners eventually enjoyed, and implies the lack of confidence that might inflict the people on the other side of the confrontation.  Second, after lots of discussion of the rise and fall of Middle Eastern and Central Asian empires in the course of the term, the class got to see a dramatic, schematic depiction of  the rise of one tiny empire.

I have a short list of movies in my head which I think of as "history as it really works" or "what you won't learn from your classes or textbooks."  These are not necessarily realistic historical movies -- prominent on the list is The Life of Brian -- but they do cut through the crap, or at least provide an opening for a laugh of recognition of some truth or other.  The Man Who Would Be King could easily encourage  more mythological thinking as anything else.  It's a movie about Freemasonry, for goodness sake.  But for its tracing of the rise and fall of "Uta the Terrible," and for the figure of Billy Fish, it makes my list of movies that have something to say about history.

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