"The Crusades: The Crescent & The Cross"
The History Channel
November 6 & 7, 9 p.m./ 8 Central

Days after Sept. 11, 2001, unsupervised by his cadre of speechwriters, the President of the Unites States stood in front of the American people and likened the war on terror to a crusade. "The Crusades: The Crescent & The Cross," which uses stylized reenactments, a snazzy cinematic soundtrack, digitally enhanced maps, interviews with articulate "experts" and a sober voice-over to tell the story of the first three European invasions on the Middle East, sheds an eerie light on the connection between the actions Bush called a "crusade" and the 200 years of European aggression against the Arab world that began in 1088. But the documentary doesn't do so explicitly — which, in the end, is a shame.

In typical History Channel fashion, "The Crusades: The Crescent & The Cross" offers two hours of visual enchantment in order to bring to life the distant events of the past. Regardless of its questionable historical accuracy, reenacting the actions, words and mannerisms of the most well-known crusade-era European and Arab generals is enjoyable. Watching the dramatic performances of actors battling on horses, wielding large swords and sacking walled cities helps us imagine the crusades as real events.

The program's claim that the crusades led the Middle East to become "synonymous with bloodshed and religious fervor" poses a question about its timing. Was Nov. 6, 2005 merely the best time to market and publicize a documentary about an Arab/Christian war? Or does "The Crusades: The Crescent & The Cross" seek to add something to the contemporary political dialogue?

In the series, while enough details about the events of the crusades are related to make a hungry history-buff happy — the numbers of soldiers in each army, the names of towns that are desecrated, the cruelties inflicted by whom and where — the more serious questions about the impetus for and the impact of the crusades are only barely mentioned. Clearly, the documentary is intended as an entertaining, educational summary of the historical events known as "The Crusades" — but in today's political climate, it would be absurd to assume the producers of such a documentary are not aware of the political relevance of these events..

If one thing can be said for how politics are addressed in "The Crusades: The Crescent & The Cross," the documentary seems to be striving — no, struggling — for neutrality. In this documentary, there are no knights in shining armor, and no apologies made for the treachery of the crusading forces. A gallant effort is made to represent the voices of all affected parties. Both Arab and Christian scholars are quoted extensively throughout the program, as are Christian religious voices (the voices of religious Muslims, however, are conspicuously absent.) Amongst the statements made by these scholars, there is constant reference to the relative greed, treachery and ignorance of the Crusader Army, while reference to the Arab violence (which was also ruthless) is always mitigated by the defence that they were protecting their homelands.

At one point, the camera even enters the modern day ruins of the citadel of Murat al-Numan, where the Crusader Army slaughtered an entire city of Arabs, men, women and children, and ate their corpses (yes, ate their corpses). Here, while the narrator explains that at this site "treachery and murder" became the "calling card of the crusaders," we watch Arab children dressed in Western-style clothing receive a history lesson, presumably, about what terrors were inflicted on their ancestors at the site.

But what is the effect of this depiction? Obviously, the actions at Murat al-Numan were dispicable. But why are we shown Arab children learning about them? Are we meant to think about our children, who learn nothing about these atrocities in school? It's doubtful, for there is no explicit thesis that leads us toward this, or any other way of processing the events of the crusades.

Strangely, however, there is one telling moment in the documentary when contemporary politics are explicitly mentioned. In the middle of one of his interviews, novelist and Middle-East historian, Tariq Ali, turns directly to the camera and says:

The Crusades had a very deep impact on Arab society. On one hand, they were seen as a barbarian incursion. And stories of those crusades are still told in cafes and families, as if they happened yesterday — which I think is quite striking. And so whenever the West has invaded that region again, people say it's another crusade. Which is why, after the awful events of 9/11 when the American President, inadvertently said, one assumes, that we now have to wage a crusade to stop this, a shiver went down the collective spine of the Islamic world, because they felt they knew what was coming.

In the context of a documentary that fails to make any clear statement as to the motivations and the effects of the topic at hand, this statement — a concrete example of the legacy of the crusades — upstages the scholarly plot-summaries and Masterpiece Theater-like reenactments. These words provide insight into the Arab culture of today — a culture entangled with, and seemingly opposed to, the Christian world since the crusades. This quote alone says something about the potential effect of Bush's off-the-cuff description of the "war on terror" as a crusade.

Yet while this clip has so much significance, in the middle of "The Crusades: The Crescent & The Cross," it merely serves as a reminder of what the bulk of the documentary lacks. As if the producers were aware of the descrepancy, the clip actually appears twice in the program, once at the poignant end of Part I, after the Christians conquer Jerusalem, and once again in the middle of Part II, when the Christians begin to expand their crusade-won kingdom.

As an entertaining survey of the long-ago battles over the Holy Land, the documentary is successful — even fun (if such a word can be used to describe a program on 200 years of bloody war). But except in one instance, instead of drawing conclusions from the past, or asking questions about its meaning today, "The Crusades: The Crescent & The Cross" offers us a quick Cliffs Notes summary of the crusades' most shocking moments.

Maybe it is not the role or the practice of the History Channel to offer the kind of challanging documentary that would be beneficial at a time when tension between Arabs and Christian still dominates the political stage — but only if it were. Imagine what we could have learned.

— Joey Rubin (joey at flakmag dot com)