Negotiating historical television in an era of political fragmentation and austerity: Tactics of heritage practitioners in Flanders,Belgium

Introduction

Historical television provides access to a cultural experience, a mode through which viewers encounter the often-unknown world of the past (Bondebjerg, 2020). Although televisual history is coded as foreign, it simultaneously speaks to shared memory (Nelson, 2024). Historical television is commonly approached by cultural studies through textual or reception foci, and political economy centering policy and commercial structures. Yet, research investigating cultural workers’ opportunities to negotiate, resist and reproduce these institutional logics falls between the cracks of both traditions (Havens et al., 2009). The expert is fundamental to these mnemonic narratives as they inform their “authority,” perceived relevance (Khitrov, 2020), and connect heritage conventions in text and on the ground. The contribution of this research to critical media studies is to extend beyond the common scope of academic historians as key experts for televisual remembrance and embrace alternative roles within the heritage sector as fundamental to its production process. Heritage practitioners, more broadly, are often overlooked or their roles underestimated (Edgerton, 2001; Rosenstone, 2023; Sklar, 1997) with the important exception of Bell and Gray (2010) considering public historians and media professionals, while they are vital within the production of historical television.

In Flanders, Belgium’s northernmost region, the cultural landscape is marked by contested notions of national identity, posing very relevant questions to explore this topic in depth. Indeed, the 2019–2024 governmental agreement triggered cultural projects which have laid out the groundwork for recent controversy concerning political instrumentalization of heritage in favor of sub-state nationalism. As the Flemish government, led by the separatist New Flemish Alliance (N-VA), declared its explicit interest in public culture to strengthen the Flemish identity (Vlaamse Overheid, 2019); The Canon of Flanders was ordered through an official brief. This resulted in a list of quintessentially Flemish historical frames of reference (Gerard, 2023). Before its release, media reported extensive criticism of the concept through academic essays, pamphlets, blogs, and interviews – including accusations of state propaganda (Reynebeau, 2022). The supplementary announcement of a museum dedicated to Flemish history further fueled commotion (Tollebeek, 2022). When uncovering vast governmental funding for a series, The Story of Flanders (2023), the polemic snowballed toward peak-momentum (Dumon, 2023; El Bakkali, 2023). Yet, N-VA’s Minister for culture argued it is natural such strategies, including television, are employed by the government to further the Flemish identity – resorting to “voter fraud” in his defense (Brinckman, 2022).

In a relative short period of time the Belgian heritage sector has been confronted with three disputed ventures, requiring practitioners’ input. Considering the complex identitarian struggle in multi-lingual and federalized Belgium, the docudrama makes a compelling case. The Story of Flanders is based on the Danish format Historien om Danmark (2017), which further inspired the Dutch Het Verhaal van Nederland (2022), Swedish Historien om Sverige (2024) and French Notre Histoire de France (2024). Clearly, the Flemish version sets itself apart by scoping nation-building regionally instead of nationwide. However, this scope isn’t a mere production-based strategy, but rather a consequence of pre-existing top-down political structures, embedding the sub-national focus into televisual historical narratives (Dhoest, 2003) and broader collective memory.

This article sheds light on The Story of Flanders as a case exemplary of how subversive tactics can still be implemented in areas that leave room for negotiation (de Certeau, 1984); even when political agendas drifts from academic committees, and collections, into television productions. This research seeks to nuance structure-agency perspectives by examining how heritage practitioners “make do” with tensions surrounding political re-appropriation of heritage narratives, both from within production and on the ground. The main research questions guiding this study are: (1) How do heritage practitioners negotiate historical television in the context of political fragmentation and austerity? (2) What tactics do heritage practitioners employ surrounding The Story of Flanders?

First, the theoretical background delves into collective memory, the role of Flemish public service media (PSM), and heritage practitioners in relation to televised history. Next, methodology and sample are addressed. Results report on different tactics employed by heritage practitioners in relation to three distinct areas of tension. Each tactical dimension is shaped by the contextual restrictions imposed by dominant political, commercial, or productional strategies.

Historical television and memory

Historical television works as both a narrative device and a cultural intervention. Due to its audio-visual character, historical television has been established as one of the most immersive modes to access the past and provides the ability to preserve it, ad infinitum (de Leeuw, 2010). Nelson (2024) describes the concept moving histories, the synergetic result that marries moving image and history, as delivering a “mass spectacle of memory” (p. 5). Dominant actors have and are still turning to mass media for constructing, supporting, and questioning the principal narratives of group identity and the construction of collective memory. This research thus understands historical television as central to our contemporary idea of the past, reality, and consequently ourselves.

Collective memory includes shared norms, values, ideologies, meaning and interpretations of events and narratives that are continuously reproduced and thus ground a national community in a common history (Halbwachs, 1997). It is established as a fundamental criterion in constructing collective identities. Despite the communal element to shared memory, it is an individual process limited over space and time as each member is able to engage with remembrance differently (Bell, 2003). Mass media and television traditionally play a major role in molding the communal psyche in forming cultural memory and nation-states (Anderson, 2006; Mi, 2005) as visual narratives with a serial structure are known to build stronger psychological bonds with viewers. Despite social media’s dominance, TV still provides effective means to distribute ideologies to a broad audience (Bignell and Woods, 2022).

Although historical television has an inherent cultural weight to it; formally, these narratives are increasingly governed by institutional logics. Bondebjerg (2020) highlights this cultural gravitas claiming national historical television facilitates mediated cultural encounters where foreign worlds, peoples, events, and reality of the past meet our present through television. Still, if one wants to fully understand the makeup of these texts, the creative process mustn’t be overlooked. Gray (2013) argues that it is important to address historical television not only “as free-floating cultural artefacts” (p. 81) but essentially position it within the broader systematic structures which are defined by different, sometimes competing imperatives. Thus, this research approaches The Story of Flanders as a cultural text that provides access to an identitarian experience but is progressively shaped by intersecting commercial and political practices.

Public service media and Flemish identity

As PSM are grappling to balance societal values and commercial logics in the context of austerity and political fragmentation, these tensions influence the treatment of historical programming. In Flanders, classic documentaries have foregrounded societal value over consumption value, attracting smaller audiences (Livémont et al., 2017). However, PSM seek to broaden niche genres to entice larger viewership to democratize history. Docudrama, a television genre that leverages dramatic strategies whilst committing to factual documentation of history (Ogunleye, 2005), arises as a popular solution. The relevance of exemplar formats like Historien om Danmark (2017), Het Verhaal van Nederland (2022), Het Verhaal van Vlaanderen, Historien om Sverige (2024), and Notre Histoire de France (2024) is not only tied to its content but also to its “authority” as a PSM production.

Re-imagining Belgian history is notably sensitive as the ruling party seeks to leverage PSM for sub-state nationalism. Belgium is shaped by a mosaic of linguistic, cultural, and regional alignments, with the most prominent ones being the Dutch-speaking region Flanders and French-speaking Wallonia, along German-speaking Belgium, and Brussels. Within this federalized state, Flemish sub-state nationalism has sought to assert a distinct identity separate from, and sometimes in tension with, Belgian national identity (Vos, 2002). Historically, Flemish actors have done this through right-wing, occasionally populist rhetoric (van Haute et al., 2018). Willems and De Wever (2020), describe how Flemish-minded strategies have leveraged media for sub-state nation building via distinct phases. Traditionally the Flemish Movement, a nationalist political formation, has always supported Flander’s independence through these different stages where a final phase prescribes policy decisions to favor Flemish media at the expense of Belgian media organizations. The N-VA, which has distinct roots in the Flemish Movement, is the biggest party in Belgium and has established its hold on policy since 2010 (Dewulf, 2012). Seen as a harbinger for heightened “organic” reproduction of Flemish-national sentiments, this media policy framework makes such narratives self-evident.

These strategies seep into historical narratives produced for Flemish PSM. During the 50–60s, Flemish PSB explicitly meant to popularize a uniform Flemish identity through its educate-and-emancipate approach (Van Den Bulck, 2001). Even later, when including entertainment, the promotion of Flemish identity persisted. Between 1953 and 1989 during the PSB-monopoly, 20 out of 32 fictional programs imagined Flanders in the past. Dhoest (2003) found that most texts presented a homogenous and one-sided image of a nostalgic Flanders, focusing on the diligent working-class roles. Examples like In Flanders Fields (2014) which takes place during German occupation in WWI and interestingly combines this with elements of the Flemish/Wallonia conflict (Bondebjerg et al., 2017) indicate a continuous focus on historic narratives. Felgenhauer (2013) argues this top-down effort to define a region through historical narratives includes a conservative dimension that rejects imagining a region as ever evolving, constructing a Flanders in stasis. While political agendas shape Flemish historical television, one mustn’t overlook the opportunities to perform individual agency on the productional level. To date, it is unclear how these historical narratives are negotiated upon creation.

Negotiating Flemish heritage narratives for television

To balance authority over the portrayed fictionalized narrative, docudramas often rely on collaboration with experts. In developing historical television, production’s main concern is to create “good television” and commonly does so via the conventions of fiction TV to maintain audience engagement (Gray, 2013). Yet, compared to other television programs, moving histories negotiate different audience expectations concerning its treatment of truth claims–also framed as The Burden of History (White, 1966). When practitioners are selected to perform as the expert; they become representative of institutional power and authority to construct a “neutral” narrative (de Certeau, 1984). Nevertheless, experts aren’t merely symbols of systems. Khitrov (2020) found that in the case of Hollywood TV production, experts such as historians trade symbolic capital and negotiate between different imperatives. Negotiation is multidirectional, as experts are also considering the trade-off from their end. With historiophoty, White (1988) was the first to define the complementarity of the motion picture to traditional histography with attention for the important societal role of film as a device and podium for public history (Nelson, 2024). For instance, broader exposure could prove the relevance of the expert’s work (Gray and Bell, 2013). This study sees experts as active agents, crucial in constructing historical docudrama.

Yet, marrying heritage expertise with television isn’t always straightforward or met with approval within the sector. It has been profusely documented that, for historians, discomfort is often involved when approaching history as a popular product (Evans, 2015). Professional historians traditionally tend to act as historian-cop and project scholar-level expectations onto television (Sklar, 1997). While public historians lean towards being more agreeable to the format as they’re used to working for a broader audience (Gray and Bell, 2007). Hereby, Nelson (2024) seeks to subvert this paternalistic approach toward principles, such as plurality and reflexivity, that embrace and improve audio-visual practices. Edgerton (2001) too argues that historiophoty and historiography keep each other balanced; as one provides a frame to understand the other. Notably, professional historians have increasingly been participating in popular history. However, Gray and Bell (2013) argue that as university-based historians become more restricted in funding for research, they need to find ways to prove the importance of their research with more commercial-driven means. This trend is also visible in the broader heritage sector (Tobelem, 2013). The loss of control over historical narratives through television when in the context of underfunding institutional levels, while demanding measurable impact and societal relevance, is worrying as participation becomes more of a necessity than a choice.

In Flanders, where national identity is inherently sensitive, discomfort with historical television has recently taken a different form due to fear of political re-appropriation more broadly. The 2019 Flemish governmental agreement includes initiatives concerning the promotion of Flemish identity, as the experience ought to be “uncomplicated” (Vlaamse Overheid, 2019). So, a commission of experts is ordered by an official brief to develop The Canon of Flanders. This results in a list of Flemish historical frames of reference, aimed at education, integration and naturalization, and heritage and tourism (Gerard, 2023). Ironically the canon became controversial within the realm of heritage, academia and beyond, underscoring the complex reality it aimed to avoid (Boone, 2021; De Paepe et al., 2019; Tollebeek et al., 2022). Next, the agreement announced what would become the Flemish All Around Museum, to make Flemish history and culture accessible (Vlaamse Overheid, 2019). After protest against a brick-and-mortar museum, the project transitioned to an online environment (Tollebeek et al., 2022). When eventually unveiling governmental funding for a new television series; The Story of Flanders was set to be told in its third iteration. After “defining” and “experiencing,” now there is also a series “imagining” the region as a nation. Heritage practitioners – working to facilitating dialectic platforms – find themselves in a climate of rapidly heightening identitarian discussion, whilst politics shifts support from PSM and cultural institutions toward the specific historical narrative itself.

The tactical expert and Flemish historical television

This study approaches heritage practitioners capable of consciously nuancing or rejecting top-down strategies. Important work argues in favor of foreground cultural workers in media research. Smith Maguire and Matthews (2010) highlight the concept of cultural intermediaries to lay bare issues of power, agency, and negotiation regarding daily cultural production practices. They expose lacuna as “the articulation and negotiation of tensions that arise between objective credentials and subjective dispositions in the performance of authority; the tension between formal strategies and informal tactics employed. . .” (p. 12). Thomas (2015) too shows that archaeologists’ approach contested television programs, either via collaboration, condemnation, or ignoring. This research avoids painting heritage practitioners as solely providing symbolic capital but sees them as capable of seizing opportunities relative to their position, to divert strategies with personal tactics (de Certeau, 1984). So historical productions can, rather than being approached as media product or cultural artifact, be treated as both; a space of constant and multi-layered negotiation. It is unclear how practitioners experience production when set in a broader sensitive context, such as in Flanders where the mere act of reimagining the past is inherently polarizing.

The analysis framework integrates de Certeau’s (1984) theory surrounding strategy and tactics to describe how actors make use of discreet opportunities to claim agency. Highmore (2006) elaborates on how de Certeau’s work helps to analyze cultural production. de Certeau (1984) argues that people employ tactics within dominant structures – for example, operated by the state, institutions, broadcasters – which in turn apply strategies to meet broader ideological goals for cultural production. Tactics are always opportunistic and employed by people or groups to navigate the constraints enforced by hegemonic players. He critiques the perceptual positioning of professionals as neutral “expert” as they risk tapping into more generalized fields of knowledge, straying away from their core expertise.

This study employs a qualitative research design to investigate the relationship between the The Story of Flanders and heritage practitioners. The analysis draws on complementary strands of data collection, organized along two main sections, contextual analysis, and expert interviews, using thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2012). This docudrama, produced by De Mensen and broadcasted by VRT, counts 10 weekly episodes of approximately 50 minutes centering specific periods in Flemish history (see Appendix 1). Two hundred practitioners were consulted including curators, archaeologists, and historians (VRT, 2022). As the relative position of individuals to the series informs tactical opportunities, this study looks at heritage practitioners who are collaborating on screen, partnering behind the scenes, consulted in the pre-production, and/or receptive of tourism induced by the series. Expert interviews were conducted with 17 heritage practitioners in alternative roles to academic historians, including curators, historians, directors, archaeologists, and public-educational staff. Compared to Bell’s and Gray (2007) argument that it is crucial to interrogate how historians view the mediation of history on television, this study approaches “expertise” holistically, aligning with the productional approach (VRT, 2022) and the theoretical framework (de Certeau, 1984).

For the contextual analysis, I interviewed three TV professionals to provide insight into collaboration, decision-making, and constraints (Braun and Clarke, 2012). Further, a textual thematic analysis of all episodes, using a code-book approach (Braun and Clarke, 2012) connects experiences of practitioners to the series. This informed the topic list, better understanding of expert interviews, and familiarization with the text. Conjointly, I consulted news articles, policy documents, and reports; supplemented by personal communications with four tourism professionals. The analysis resulted in three areas of tension, each with related tactics employed by heritage practitioners.

Conclusion

This research contributes to critical media studies by advocating for more intersectional foci on hybrid media genres and addressing the gap concerning how heritage practitioners function with strategic restrictions. Other than production studies’ usual attention to crew, cast, distribution and academic historians; I argue alternative roles including curators, historians, directors, archaeologists, public-educational staff are important to consider. Results lend themselves beyond media studies and toward the complementary field of memory studies as this research investigates how collective memory is perpetually formed and appropriated for identity construction (Havens et al., 2009). With the increased commercialization of heritage and the heightened exposure of traditional historiography to popular culture, findings provide awareness of how both production and heritage professionals are faced with new challenges within their respective day-to-day environments.

Conversations with heritage practitioners provide insight into how The Story of Flanders reveals discomfort and political fragmentation within the cultural landscape concerning the re-imagination of historical narratives through television. Partly, respondents echo Rosenstone’s (2023) analysis surrounding the discrepancy between histiography and histiophoty addressed by Nelson (2024); but the contribution of this paper goes beyond this framework. This study nuances claims about experts in TV production using field analysis (Khitrov, 2020) and archaeologists’ responses to contested historical programming (Thomas, 2015). Results cement the series and broader Belgian national identity pre-coded as contested and proposes the reconceptualization of “the burden of history,” as traditional challenges of factuality are further weighted down by ideological pressure.

Key findings lay bare different tactics adopted by heritage practitioners for reclaiming agency over narratives within restricted frameworks of production. I argue that these tactics must be understood in the context of austerity and political fragmentation, where both sectors (TV and heritage) are incentivized to seek more direct resources from political actors. Interestingly, most tactics are motivated by concerns surrounding politics, whereas vigilance for commercial instrumentalization is less prevalent. Ultimately, adopted tactics are clustered around three key tensions: anticipating political sensitivity and fostering trust, negotiating authority and authorship, facilitating cultural dialogue and navigating austerity.

While the series aims to unify Flemish identity, findings expose a fragmented cultural sector grappling with concerns of reappropriation of history and institutional instrumentalization. The main point of concern is the lack of transparency that restricts organizations in facilitating a public dialogue about the series. By the convergence of political, creative and economic strategies, heritage practitioners gear main tactics toward providing nuanced and inclusive information for media consumption. Notwithstanding the series triggered an opportunity for open conversation, practitioners felt they lacked the sectorial opportunity to engage with a narrative that incidentally proved the need of more critical discussion about national identity in Belgium. News media was an important outlet in the attempt to address tensions and subvert internal restrictions. Yet, voices in news reporting aren’t as democratic as is the case with public institutions. Therefore, sidelining the sector that is especially equipped to address complex notions of shared identity in a democratic manner is troubling in a time of political fragmentation.

Future research is needed to connect productional dynamics in more holistic settings. While interviews were conducted with production members, this data was treated as contextual. Additional perspectives from below-the-line-workers are necessary to draw a bigger picture of how the creative process functions with added ideological burden and strategic restrictions.