A year ago, University of Minnesota graduate student Jason Herbert started Historians at the Movies, a Twitter thread in which people watch a film and live-tweet their reactions to it. #HATM has become a popular weekly event, recently invited by the National Air and Space Museum to live tweet From the Earth to the Moon on for the 50th anniversary celebration of the Apollo 11 moon landing. This Sunday, July 14, #HATM will celebrate its own first year anniversary with an encore showing of National Treasure, which launched the adventure.

HOW DID #HATM START?

Historians At The Movies started on a total whim. I had been tweeting back and forth with other historians about favorite history movies and National Treasure came up. People are always surprised at how much historians love the film because it is a bit hammy and takes a lot of liberties with history itself. But that’s what makes the movie for us. It doesn’t take itself seriously. And in a profession of Very Serious People, you need that release. Anyway, I had seen that it was on Netflix and tweeted that we should get everyone to watch it. People got excited and wanted to do it and away we went. This was the actual tweet that started it all: https://twitter.com/HerbertHistory/status/1017591891712512000
I had no intention of turning it into a “thing” but people demanded another one immediately. The next week we did Lincoln and Marie Antoinette after that. We’ve had a movie every single weekend since July 15, 2018.

It’s hard to get an exact number on #HATM’s reach because twitter doesn’t offer tracking tools for the hashtag. From what I’ve been able to gather, we’ll get anywhere from several dozen people to a few hundred actively tweeting and tagging the posts. Most of our audience is from the United States, and I’ve experimented with show times to ensure everyone has the best chance possible to watch together. Our time on Sundays at 8:30pm Eastern has been received really positively across time zones in the US so we’ll probably stay with it. The bigger audience, though, are those who don’t tweet, but follow along during the movie or catch up the next day.

WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?

#HATM is important for several reasons, but the biggest one is its capacity for good. Social media can be such an ugly, depressing place. But every single week we join as a community to watch a movie together. The people who join in not only share their love of history, but also forge real relationships during the movie. I couldn’t tell you how many people I have befriended as a result of #HATM. I think the power of creating a positive community is my favorite aspect of what we’re doing.

I always point out that National Treasure was our founding film and that’s because I don’t want to take myself too seriously. I think a lot of historians feel this way. It was about kicking off my shoes, pouring a glass of wine, and watching a movie with my friends. However, along the way a feeling emerged that we had the opportunity as historians to use our movies to engage the general public over really serious issues. Coco became a way to talk about immigration, Mudbound and Black Panther about racial issues in the United States, and films like Milk or Carol became mediums to discuss LGBTQ history. Spotlight was an opportunity to discuss sexual abuse within the Catholic Church and how it was covered. Watergate via All the President’s Men offered the chance to illustrate parallels between the Nixon and Trump administrations. #HATM addresses real-world issues in real time. There’s a real opportunity to use the medium in a powerful and informative way.

While Historians At The Movies is by design for everyone to enjoy, it works because of the vast number of historians whose expertise has colored our engagements with the films. Milk would not have been as effective if Eric Gonzaba (@egonzaba)— who studies African American and LGBTQ culture– wasn’t there to help us understand its context. West Side Story needed Sara Georgini (@sarageorgini) who is a scholar of the Adams family but who turns out to be a massive fan of the film, to shepherd us through it. We had a wide assortment of fisheries biologists tweeting along with us the night we watched JAWS. And of course, National Treasure wouldn’t have been the same without Revolutionary scholar Joanne Freeman (@jbf1755), who flipped out when they put the lemon juice on the back of the Declaration of Independence. And here’s the power of something like #HATM: scholars are able to put their thoughts and research in front of so many more people than traditional avenues alone permit. It allows historians, especially junior scholars, to introduce themselves not just to thousands of people in the general audience, but to their peers in academia as well. It is hard to separate yourself from the crowd. But I think #HATM (and social media itself) can be a way to do that.

WHAT SORTS OF FILMS WORK BEST? WHICH WORK POORLY?

If we think of history as a global memory, then it shouldn’t be a surprise that the best films have been the ones we’ve seen before. Our biggest nights have been when we’ve done blockbusters like Raiders of the Lost Ark, Trading Places, or Black Panther. There’s a nostalgia factor involved. Plus, having seen the films previously allows people to disengage from watching and tweet along and engage the rest of the crowd. We’ve done new films like Outlaw King or Mudbound but what we’ve noticed is that it’s really difficult to tweet and watch a film for the first time. People enjoy our selections, but get wrapped up in the films. We will continue to do new movies, but our best nights are always when we do blockbusters.

Maybe the biggest challenge I’ve had in curating our film selections is ensuring diversity in scope, era, focus, and especially casting. You hear about Hollywood making films that cater to a white audience but it doesn’t quite hit you until you start trying to find movies about people of color. The most important thing about #HATM to me is making sure people feel wanted and that their interests are being represented in our film choices. We’ve had some success with films like Roma or 42, but I still want to do more films that allow us to speak to the Asian American and Native American communities, as well as making sure we visit Africa in our films and talking enough about the environment. More to the point: will people enjoy the experience?

I spend a considerable amount of time thinking about how to balance the film selection. It’s important to talk about heavy topics but people will get burned out if every week is an emotional drain.  Ultimately this is about having fun, so the tone of #HATM varies week to week.

WHAT HAS SURPRISED YOU MOST ABOUT #HATM?

Definitely the longevity. Things have a really short half-life in our era and I was surprised that people not only kept coming back, but that demand continues to grow. Every single week we have more and more participation. People really enjoy coming together for this. It’s a night of community and positivity, and I think that’s what attracts people to our get togethers.

#HATM is a place people come back to.