{"id":1377,"date":"2021-10-21T19:41:02","date_gmt":"2021-10-22T00:41:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jsomers.net\/blog\/?p=1377"},"modified":"2021-10-21T19:41:02","modified_gmt":"2021-10-22T00:41:02","slug":"historical-present","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jsomers.net\/blog\/historical-present","title":{"rendered":"Should we cool it with the historical present?"},"content":{"rendered":"

On podcasts it's pretty common to hear something like this:<\/p>\n\n

\n

So Alexander Hamilton has just finished law school, and he's trying to\n make a name for himself. He's only been in New York a few years. So he\n takes on this case...<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

The problem with the past tense (\"Hamilton had just finished law school,\nand was trying to make a name for himself\") is that, very subtly, it\npreserves the distance that history already has. Old worlds can feel\nunreal. The \"historical present,\" as deployed here, invites you into\nHamilton's shoes. It's the rhetorical equivalent of that transformation\nthat Peter Jackson pulled with World War I footage in They Shall Not\nGrow\nOld<\/a>.\nAt its best, it makes history feel... present.<\/p>\n\n

But you've got to pick your spots. The historical present might be\nvaluable when you're describing a scene---a moment---and an individual\nacting in it. It can make those moments vivid. But if you just use it\nwilly-nilly anytime you talk about the past, it's confusing. After all,\nit's the wrong tense.<\/p>\n\n

I've found that the New York Times's\nDaily<\/a> reaches for the\nhistorical present almost as if it were against the style guide not to.\nAnd yet this is a podcast that normally takes such great pains to be\nclear.<\/p>\n\n

Here's an example from an\nepisode<\/a>\nabout the reaction in Wuhan to the coronavirus outbreak. The host,\nMichael Barbaro, wants to get the reporter to talk in the historical\npresent. The reporter sometimes obliges, but sometimes swings to the\npast tense. The result is a muddle:<\/p>\n\n

\n

MICHAEL BARBARO
\n And what is the scene at the airport?<\/p>\n \n

AMY QIN
\n The scene at the airport was a little bit frenzied. [...] So I'm in\n the airport lobby and I'm waiting for my flight. [...]<\/p>\n \n

MICHAEL BARBARO
\n So what happens once you land?<\/p>\n \n

AMY QIN
\n So once I land, I find that I am at the Miramar Marine base in San\n Diego, California. [...] And I've never seen people come together\n like this before---and people were so upset about his death.<\/p>\n \n

MICHAEL BARBARO
\n And what are they saying?<\/p>\n \n

AMY QIN
\n A lot of people were posting candle emojis and other kinds of\n remembrances for Dr.\u00a0Li.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

For a while, it still works. But jumble tenses long enough, and the\ntimeline becomes genuinely hard to follow:<\/p>\n\n

\n

AMY QIN
\n So the reaction is really remarkable. [...] It was so clear that\n this was something that had really tapped into the frustration that\n was happening.<\/p>\n \n

MICHAEL BARBARO
\n And what do you make of those reactions? Because it feels like it no\n longer is really just about this virus and the way that it was\n handled?<\/p>\n \n

AMY QIN
\n Yeah so at this point, it is clear that this is becoming so much\n bigger than just the virus. [...] People in China are already used\n to a pretty high level of censorship, but when it comes to censoring a\n warning about public health, that goes too far. And the reaction is so\n overwhelming that the government quickly realizes that they need to do\n something. And that's when we see China's leader Xi Jinping come\n forward out of the shadows and try to take control of the situation.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Barbaro's first question---\"What do you make of those reactions?\"---is\nambiguous. Does he mean, What do you make of those reactions today,\nright now, as we're speaking, or, What did you make of those reactions\nat the time? He means the latter.<\/p>\n\n

This kind of miscue happens often when you use the historical present to\nrefer to the recent past---because what tense are you supposed to use to\nrefer the actual<\/em> present?<\/p>\n\n

Just yesterday I was listening to another episode, this one about kids\nreturning to school amid the Delta\nvariant<\/a>.\nOnce again, the host, Sabrina Tavernise, tried to foist the historical\npresent upon the guest. Once again, perhaps because that felt so\nunnatural, the guest only halfheartedly went along:<\/p>\n\n

\n

SABRINA TAVERNISE
\n Richard, what happens when the Delta variant starts surging in\n Arkansas?<\/p>\n \n

RICHARD FAUSSET
\n So, Arkansas, like most states, saw this really nice trough with very\n low numbers of new cases that went from the spring into the early\n summer. The whole idea of wearing a mask starts to fade into the\n background. And life starts to kind of return to normal. But then\n Delta hits in the summertime. And you started to see [...] And this\n vaccine hesitancy became [...]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

The two continued mostly in the historical present, sometimes switching\ntenses like this, gradually narrating events until the timeline got\ncloser and closer to now. Fine. The real trouble came when the reporter\nwanted to talk not about specific events but about broader themes:<\/p>\n\n

\n

RICHARD FAUSSET
\n So the governor is going around the state and, particularly recently,\n we've seen some of the vaccination numbers go up in the state. But\n it's still lagging compared to a lot of states. And in the meantime,\n the beginning of school is looming ever larger. [...] And it kind\n of rolls into this big ball of concern about how kids are actually\n going to be able to go back to school safely. And it's that concern\n that really brought the question of masks in school back to the\n forefront of the conversation in Arkansas.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

The \"particularly recently\" makes it sound like we're talking about\nwhere things stand right now; the last sentence makes it sound like no,\nwe've been setting something up in the historical present. It's hard to\nparse.<\/p>\n\n

I'm not cherrypicking; the Daily does this in almost every episode.\nThat's because Barbaro pushes the conversation that way:<\/p>\n\n