← This Guy Sucked
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- [00:00]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Hi there, it's Claire. If you're hearing me, that means you're listening to the free preview of one of our Patreon episodes. We switch off every week between free and Patreon exclusive episodes. So if you'd like to hear the rest of this conversation, head over to patreon.com thisguysucked and join our honorary haters club. A list of sensitive themes and topics covered in this episode can be found in the episode description. Welcome to this Guy Sucked, the show where we prove that it's never too late to have haters and you can't lie about the dead. I'm your host, Dr. Claire Aubin, and I'm a historian, writer, and most importantly, certified hater. On this show, we talk about people from throughout history with legacies that need a little updating. Whether it's because of their politics, their behavior, or their impact on society and culture, these guys actually kind of sucked. And we bring in a new scholar every week to tell us why. With me today is Dr. Nicole Cochran, who is an art historian and curator specializing in the art and material culture of Britain and Europe in the 18th and 19th century. She is currently assistant curator in historic British art, so 1790 to 1850 at Tate Britain. And her most recent book, which is very relevant to today's topic, is an edited collection called Napoleonic Objects and Their Afterlives. Art, culture and heritage, 1821 through the present. So welcome to the show.
- [01:33]
Dr. Nicole Cochran
Thank you so much for having me.
- [01:34]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Yeah, thank you so much for being on. I do have a question for you because you post quite a lot online about films and television shows that you're watching, particularly like period shows and period films. Maybe this is difficult. What is your favorite period piece film and why, if you have one?
- [01:54]
Dr. Nicole Cochran
Oh, my God. That's like picking your favourite child. I'll go easy and I'll lowball and I'll say my favourite Napoleon, okay, is a really bizarre one that I try and get everyone to watch, which is a film, I think it was the 1950s. It's called Desiree, where Marlon Brand Napoleon, and it's all about Napoleon's first girlfriend, who is this woman named Desiree Clary. And it's super melodramatic and there's no battles in it. And Marlon Brando is just like the weirdest choice to play Napoleon. And I love it so much because it's so weird. It's really camp. It's like, if you're going to pick a Napoleon film, that's like the lowest one that actually depicts It. But it's all like conversations in drawing rooms.
- [02:40]
Dr. Claire Aubin
I feel like that is also kind of subversive.
- [02:45]
Unknown Speaker
Like having Napoleon and just doing no fighting at all in it and being like, oh, you thought that you knew Napoleon. Well, let's just have him be a.
- [02:54]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Guy who talks to strangers and you're listening to his conversations. Do you have a favorite Napoleon? Like, not the film, but actor who has played Napoleon or depiction of Napoleon, the character slash person?
- [03:08]
Dr. Nicole Cochran
There's so many. So, like, Napoleon is one of the most filmed people ever. So there's not a lot of, like, biopics about Napoleon. But Napoleon has been in film since film started. Like, the Lumiere brothers made a short film that featured Napoleon and he always kind of props up. One of my favourites is Bill and Ted.
- [03:29]
Unknown Speaker
Oh, yeah.
- [03:30]
Dr. Nicole Cochran
Just because I think it's so funny.
- [03:32]
Unknown Speaker
Of course, when he eat and he.
- [03:35]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Like, eats the ice cream. Oh, my God, I'm having.
- [03:37]
Dr. Nicole Cochran
He goes to the water park. It's just like. That's called Waterloo.
- [03:42]
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [03:44]
Dr. Nicole Cochran
It's so silly. I think the silly Napoleons are always my favorite because they go to show that how, like, Paroditi is as a figure.
- [03:50]
Unknown Speaker
Yeah.
- [03:51]
Dr. Nicole Cochran
My dream Napoleon and I shout this from the rooftops. Is that I think Kieran Culkin should play Napoleon. Would be incredible because he's spot on. Like, he can play that, like, weird, like, maniacal but, like, weirdly charismatic thing that I think Joaquin Phoenix could not do.
- [04:09]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Yeah.
- [04:09]
Dr. Nicole Cochran
So, yeah, I. I petitioned Ridley Scott.
- [04:12]
Dr. Claire Aubin
To reconsider Kieran Culkin. If you ever hear this. First of all, thank you so much for listening to the show.
- [04:18]
Unknown Speaker
Second of all, you should play Napoleon if you ever. If you're out there or anyone in Culkin hive, if you're listening, send this to Kieran Culkin and tell him that we want him to play Napoleon. And an expert says he should play Napoleon, which I feel like should.
- [04:35]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Should put this over. And also, Kieran Culkin, if you're listening, you don't want to play Napoleon. That's okay, too.
- [04:40]
Dr. Nicole Cochran
I just wanted to say what a. What a coup for the podcast. That would be.
- [04:44]
Unknown Speaker
That would be wild also. Yeah. It would be a coup in the Napoleonic sense. That would be. If Kieran Culkin. I.
- [04:53]
Dr. Claire Aubin
This is a wild thread to be.
- [04:54]
Unknown Speaker
On, but if Kieran Culkin is listening to the podcast right now, I would die. That was like, when I found out.
- [04:59]
Dr. Claire Aubin
That Patricia Arquette knows the podcast, I.
- [05:02]
Unknown Speaker
Thought I was going to have a fucking heart attack when she Was posting about it on her Instagram. I was like, excuse me, Patricia Arquette. Now I call her my good friend, Patricia Arquette.
- [05:12]
Dr. Claire Aubin
So if you're listening, Patricia Arquette, hello.
- [05:14]
Dr. Nicole Cochran
Shout out to you, friend of the podcast, Patricia Arquette.
- [05:17]
Unknown Speaker
My very close friend and confidant, Patricia Arquette. Okay, we've gotten off topic. Let's get into what we're really all here for.
- [05:26]
Dr. Claire Aubin
This probably will not come as a surprise to anyone because we've already talked about this.
- [05:30]
Unknown Speaker
Who is the episode about today?
- [05:33]
Dr. Nicole Cochran
So I guess this is like a weird divergence from your normal podcast, because I guess everyone kind of agrees that he sucked, But Napoleon Bonaparte, the kind of maniacal emperor of France that I feel like everyone, even if you don't know anything about him, people know who he is, is kind of, I guess, one of the. You could kind of say he's one of the most kind of known figures in human history.
- [05:56]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Yeah, I think absolutely.
- [05:58]
Dr. Nicole Cochran
For better or for worse.
- [05:59]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Yeah, 100%. And I also think this is a good opportunity for us to talk about why we have or why we pick the people that we pick for the show. Because, first of all, we don't pick them. We invite the scholar who picks who they want to talk about. One of the only requirements is that they can't be exclusively famously evil. And Napoleon, I think, is a good example of this where it's sort of like a lot of people think he sucked. Right. But not everyone thinks of him exclusively as, like, evil or bad because there. There are all these other parts of his legacy that are interesting and worth talking about and worth obsess over and making films over. And all of that, in some cases, is also kind of like a tragic figure for a lot of people. And there are a lot of things around him and a lot of narratives around him beyond just him being bad that also still fit with him sucking. And so I think this is a good opportunity for us to be talking about someone who doesn't necessarily have a positive legacy, but still deserves a little bit of nuance in how we think about and talk about him. So I really appreciate you picking him because we don't actually have to convince people that he sucked. We have to open up their minds to the variety of reasons that he sucked.
- [07:09]
Unknown Speaker
You know, does that make sense?
- [07:11]
Dr. Nicole Cochran
100%. I think he's a figure that even when he was alive, people were debating whether or not he was good or bad. And we always kind of think of him as Britain's greatest enemy is the narrative. I think we like to push A lot. But even at the time, British people thought he was great, thought he was interesting, thought he was bad. He was everything from the Antichrist to a reformer. And I think even today there are people out there that call themselves Bonapartists to this day. It was the anniversary of his death in 2021, and that was the big debate that happened the entire time is, should we be commemorating this? And Emmanuel Macron kind of was stuck in the centre of it. But it's interesting that all this time later, like 200 odd years later, we're still talking about him, which he'd love. He'd absolutely love that we're still debating him.
- [08:02]
Unknown Speaker
I mean, to be fair, we've had.
- [08:03]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Several people on the, that we've talked about, several people on the show that were kind of like, they would like.
- [08:08]
Unknown Speaker
That we were having this conversation actually that we're talking about them at all, good or bad.
- [08:13]
Dr. Claire Aubin
That would actually be something they, they appreciated. Before we go into why he sucked, let's maybe talk about an overview of his life, give people some sort of understanding for people who, despite how famous, might not be familiar with the sort of like smaller, more intricate details of his life or kind of know about one or two events, but don't really know the, the broader, some of the broader strokes that are important. Can you tell me just a little bit about his legacy, his impact on European politics, French politics, society, anything that you think is, Is important for people to know about him?
- [08:49]
Dr. Nicole Cochran
Yeah. So the broad, I guess, beats of his life is, I guess the thing that a lot of people find surprising is he's not French. He's born in Corsica, which at the time is in this weird limbo position between Italy and France. His family are ostensibly Italian. His name is Napoleoni Bonaparte. All of his family have Italian names that they then turn to kind of the French spelling of. So Luciano becomes Lucian, Luigi becomes Louis, Paolina becomes Pauline. So he lives in this kind of weird state. He, at a very young age, trains in a military academy in France, where he's kind of broadly bullied for being a bit impoverished and not speaking French with a very good accent. He very quickly rises through the ranks. He, without making a podcast entirely on his own of his military kind of tactics, he goes from this kind of lowly, kind of essentially foot soldier to general, to what they termed as First Consul, which I guess is a term that they kind of made up to be. He's kind of a leader in himself. He then becomes First Consul for life, which we all know where the Trajectory of this goes, then he becomes emperor.
- [10:01]
Unknown Speaker
Yeah.
- [10:01]
Dr. Nicole Cochran
He then fights a few battles that go badly, as many people know. He tried to invade Russia and it was a disaster. He tries to take over the Spanish peninsula. That's a disaster. And then he fatedly kind of gets the ire of Britain, as we love to talk about. He's then defeated and exiled. His exile doesn't go well, and he escapes and is then defeated again. And then he is shipped off to the most remote island you could probably find in the world to kind of quietly disappear. And all of this happens very quickly. He dies at only 51. So when you think about that, this is less than a century of time, or just over a century, half a century. He manages to rise to the highest kind of peak as you can and kind of spectacularly falls. And I think part of that is what his legacy is. I think if he had not crashed and burned quite as dramatically or he would not have been the kind of cultural icon that we talk about as he is. Because that was part of the fascination. This idea. This idea that he was. I think the tagline of the Ridley Scott film was, he came from nothing. He conquered everything, or something like that, which isn't true because he didn't come from nothing. He was from a noble family and he didn't conquer everything because he had quite a few spectacular defeats. But this kind of narrative of this is the great man of history theory. Like, he is. He is the great man of history theory.
- [11:28]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Yeah.
- [11:29]
Dr. Nicole Cochran
Unfortunately, I think one thing that you.
- [11:32]
Unknown Speaker
Kind of alluded to, which is funny.
- [11:34]
Dr. Claire Aubin
And we've actually seen it a couple of times already on the show or seen some manifestations of it are as.
- [11:41]
Unknown Speaker
Soon, I feel like as soon as.
- [11:43]
Dr. Claire Aubin
You name yourself, like, first console for life, or like emperor for life or.
- [11:48]
Unknown Speaker
Whatever, what you're actually doing is dooming yourself. Like, the consequence of that is a short life. Like, it's not that you. The consequence of that is not having a great empire. It's a short life, essentially, because nobody wants somebody to be emperor for life. So it is funny, whenever we hear.
- [12:05]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Something like that, I'm always like, okay.
- [12:07]
Unknown Speaker
Well, we kind of can guess where this. Which direction this one is is going to head in. You know, it's happened so many times.
- [12:13]
Dr. Claire Aubin
All of these sort of great men in history have in some way, or not all of them, but many of them have in some way decided that what their role for the rest of their life was going to be. And the people around them have said.
- [12:25]
Unknown Speaker
I don't know about that one, no, maybe we'll, maybe we'll hold off on.
- [12:29]
Dr. Claire Aubin
On this. And then they die, basically. Because that just doesn't. It just doesn't work. For more context, Napoleon is born in 1769, so he is born in the latter half of the 18th century and he dies in 1821, so the first part of the 19th century. And yeah, so where he grows up until he's about 10 is on Corsica, which Nicole mentioned, is this Mediterranean island between France and Italy. It's north of Sardinia.
- [12:56]
Unknown Speaker
And so a lot of people, you're.
- [12:58]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Right, like, well, sort of not misidentify him as French, but will not understand how the confluence of these two distinct cultural backgrounds and how they intermesh with his family life, with his childhood, all of that, how that all works together to actually paint a better picture of who he is and what his youth looks like. Some other sort of, like, interesting things around him. These military campaigns are obviously the most famous things about him. But he's also famous for having a lot of very, like, tumultuous relationships, romantic relationships, having these sort of strange family dynamics, which I think might be something we talk about.
- [13:40]
Unknown Speaker
I also want to say I went into this episode not knowing what you were going to pick for what was wrong with him.
- [13:46]
Dr. Claire Aubin
But he's also famous beyond just these, like, military campaigns that he does and his sort of political power. He's also famous for having all these very strange, like I said, tumultuous relationships, both in a familial and romantic way. His personality and behavior are also big parts of what he's famous for and what this sort of fascination around him relates to, which I think is interesting. What made you interested in Napoleon?
- [14:16]
Dr. Nicole Cochran
So I kind of came to Napoleon in a weird way where I did a PhD on art collecting. That was what I was interested in. And I liked the kind of impulse of what made people collecting. And I worked pretty much on the late 18th and early 19th century. And when I was looking at these collections, I kept being like, you would see Napoleon things. There would be maybe a painting, there would be maybe a book or a table. Like Empire style furniture is really common. But then the more you look, the more you find weird things like locks of hair. Napoleon loved giving out locks of hair. Rings, jewelry, his toothbrush. There's two museums that have his toothbrush. There was like this weird fascination with collecting things, particularly after his death. And there's a joke amongst my friends that no matter where I go in the world, I will find Napoleon in a museum because he is he is everywhere. There is a Napoleon museum in Rome, there's a Napoleon museum in Cuba. He just like his threads spread out across the world. And because he is so fascinating to so many people that there is just stuff everywhere. And the kind of impulse to collect Napoleon was happening during his lifetime, but still happens to this day. Like every few years a bicorn will go up at sale at Christie's that was allegedly owned by Napoleon, his horse. You can see things like that. And the thing that I find the Most interesting is 99% of these things are not military related. And you do see his battle clothes and as I say the bicorn. But there's a weird intimacy to the things that we collect about Napoleon. It is the hair, it's the toothbrush, it's the letters to Josephine. I think at one point wine from a cellar of a house he owned went up for sale. It's this weird connection that people find where they want to know the man. And I think that's kind of what Ridley Scott put in his film is we want to get to the heart of who he was. More so than you want to know the broad beats of each military tactic.
- [16:19]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Yeah. And there are people who are obsessed with the military part of this. I'm not a military historian, so I don't know a lot of this stupid stuff. But I mean people are obsessed with that. But I think you're totally right. A lot of what people know about him is about him as a person. And it is interesting the sort of material remnants that exist in the world. And.
- [16:38]
Unknown Speaker
Yeah.
- [16:39]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Beyond the idea that there are Napoleon museums in Cuba and Rome, if you go to any museum, Napoleon will just appear there. There'll be a painting, there'll be an object, there'll be some relationship to him. You know, there are like places where you can find recreations of rooms that he lived in and in his houses and stuff. And it's, it's. You're right, he's in every freaking film.
- [17:00]
Unknown Speaker
Like he's.
- [17:01]
Dr. Claire Aubin
He's everywhere. So much so that there is. I would say there is a lot of mythology around him and are much like Charlemagne, which we've talked about previously on the show. People are so certain of the mythology around him and they have become so attached to this mythology that they believe is demonstrative of the real person. Like they believe the mythology is real, is. Is who he really was. That a lot of times, I assume what historians are having to work against is the mythological Napoleon and having to reform the narrative around him as a person when people are already because they're so inundated with information about him, people are already feel very certain of who he is, who he was and what he was doing and why he was doing them, and what's good and what's bad. So I can see it being like a difficult thing to tackle because everybody feels like they already know him and know about him except me.
- [18:00]
Unknown Speaker
Like I said, I don't know that much of I didn't go into this knowing that much about him because this.
- [18:04]
Dr. Claire Aubin
Time period is very much a historical blind spot for me in terms of expertise. Thanks for listening to this preview of a Patreon Exclusive episode to subscribe and listen to it in full, head over to patreon. Com this guysucked.