A comedic take on history
Evany Rosen has always had a thing for Napoleon Bonaparte. Not in a weird lustful way, but the Toronto comedian and TV writer, by her own proud admission, can turn any conversation around to the diminutive French dictator, whose impetuous foot-stomping leadership style has become a caricature rich in both dramatic and satirical appeal. “It’s so hard to extrapolate what elements of him are absurd and what elements of him are terrifying, and this makes him a figure that’s fun to lampoon,” Rosen says. “There’s a subtle comedy to other tyrants, but there’s something inherently silly about Napoleon.”
Napoleon was the first subject Rosen tackled when she began writing her new essay collection, What I Think Happened: An Underresearched History of the Western World, the first title under Vancouver-based Arsenal Pulp Press’s Robin’s Egg Books imprint, led by fellow comedian Charles Demers. The book isn’t intended to be a scholarly work — “Oh god, keep this book out of schools, I’m telling you,” Rosen says — but exactly as advertised: a heavily Wikipedia-sourced comedic survey covering a vast swath of history from America’s dumpiest presidents to the world’s creepiest artists. Tone-wise, the book falls somewhere between Comedy Central’s Drunk History, in which inebriated celebrities share their knowledge of world events, and the subversiveness of Kate Beaton’s historical comics.
Rosen’s face may be familiar to many as a member of the now-defunct sketch comedy troupe Picnicface, which rose from selling out packed bar shows in Halifax to pro- ducing viral YouTube videos for millions of fans.
Both Rosen and Picnicface’s other female member, Cheryl Hann, infused many of the troupe’s sketches with a sly feminist perspective. What I Think Happenedis also inherently a feminist response to the dude-dominated Western history taught in most schools. “It’s a cathartic first step, rather than focusing on the very real and horrifying atrocities that happened and were suffered at the hands of these men,” Rosen says. “I didn’t want to gloss over it, but from a comedic perspective I thought a good starting point was to take down the level of reverence we have for some of these people.”
By inserting herself into the narrative, Rosen — someone you want on your trivia team, in particular when it comes to facts about the British monarchy — hopes to show that, despite the sarcasm, her love of history is not a joke. “I wanted to infuse a sense of the personal through this enormous subject that usually is impersonal. It’s about people, so why shouldn’t it be personal?” Sue Carter is the editor of Quill and Quire.