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On Media Memory: Collective Memory in a New Media Age. Motti Neiger, Oren Meyers and Eyal Zandberg, eds. 2011. Collective Memory: Terms and Definitions. How would you define the term „collective memory”? What do you think, which disciplines are involved in studying this phenomenon?
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On Media Memory: Collective Memory in a New Media Age Motti Neiger, Oren Meyers and Eyal Zandberg, eds. 2011
Collective Memory: Terms and Definitions • How would you define the term „collective memory”? What do you think, which disciplines are involved in studying this phenomenon? • Def.: a shared pool of information held in the memories of two or more members of a group (Maurice Halbwachs, 1950). The term was originally coined by Hugo Van Hofmannsthal in 1902. • Halbwach’s central argument: „social groups construct their own images of the world by constantly shaping and reshaping versions of the past”. What does it mean that the past is shaped and reshaped according to the needs of the present?
Collective Memory: Collectivities 1: Groups, Social Groups • Group: groups remember more than individuals, as groups are able to draw on the knowledge and experience (i.e., memories) of all individuals present; better performance: each member of the group is knowledgeable in different areas. Do you see any similarity between this definition of collective memory and Haraway’s notion of situated knowledges? • Social groups: the basic assumption is that „every social group develops a memory of its past; a memory that emphasizes its uniqueness and allows it to preserve its self-image and pass it on to future generations” Why is it important to study the collective memories of different social groups?
Collective Memory: Collectivities 2: Nations • Nation: The collective memory of a nation is represented in part by the memorials it chooses to erect. E.g. Vietnam veterans War Memorial in Washington D.C.; Hősök tere in Budapest • Whatever a nation chooses to memorialise in physical monument, or perhaps more significantly, what not to memorialise, is an indicator of the collective memory. Why is it significant to pay attention to what is not memorialised? • Based on Benedict Anderson’s notion of „imagined communities”: Collective memory today differs much from the collective memories of an oral culture, where no printing technique or transportation contributed to the production of the nation where we come to share a sense of heritage with many human beings we have never met - as in the manner a citizen may feel a sort of 'kinship' with people of his nation, region or city.” Why does Anderson talk about emotions (feeling kinship etc.) when he defines the nation?
Collective Memory in the Media Age 1: Film, TV • Collective memory has to redefined in the media age: a flow of, and production of, second hand memories is generatedWhat does second hand memory mean? What would be first hand memory? • The arrival of film in the first half of the 20th century created many images, film scenes, news scenes, photographs, quotes, and songs, which became very familiar to regular moviegoers and remained in their collective memory. • When television became a global mass entertainment medium in the 1950s and 1960s the collective memory of former cinema visitors increased when various films could be repeated endlessly and worldwide on television broadcasts (Oz, King Kong, Tom and Jerry shown internationally and non-stop)– the process is similar to how the nation was imagined in the 18th century according to Anderson: appearance of the novel, newspaper, ritualistic (collective) reading, etc.
Collective Memory in the Media Age 2: Newsreels • Newsreels: Millions of people have viewed the assassination of John F Kennedy in 1963, the landing of Apollo 11 in 1969, the Wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana (1981) and the September 2001 attacks on their television. + Internet. 1990s; Youtube: 2000s • The impact of the media age on collective memory: „Nobody took into account the tremendous impact that would be made by the fact that films are permanent and easily accessible from childhood onward. As the sheer number of films piles up, their influence will increase, until we have a civilization entirely molded by cinematic values and behavior patterns.” (Kenneth Tynan) • Can we take the media seriously as creator/disseminator of collective memories?
Media Memory: the Main Issues Addressed • Def.: „the systematic exploration of collective pasts that are narrated by the media, through the use of the media, and about the media” • Questions: • What kinds of versions of the past are shaped by the different media? • How does media memory indicate sociological and political changes? • How to evaluate new „archives” (YouTube, online databases, etc.) • Can we treat these sites as archives at all? Why/why not?
The Impact of the TV • Collective memory is tied up with public articulation (rituals, ceremonial commemorations, mass media texts). It is an inherenty mediated phenomenon. • The role of the TV: „Television is the principal means by which most people learn about history today. Just as television has profoundly affected and altered every aspect of contemporary life – from family to education, government, business and religion – the medium’s nonfictional and fictional portrayals have similarly transformed the way tens of millions of viewers think about historical figures” /Gary Edgerton, 2000/. we have to treat the media seriously because of its impact on people, their way of thinking, etc. Is this a convincing argument? What do you think?
Five Characteristics of Collective Memory • Collective memory is a socio-political construct: cannot be considered as evidence of the authenticity of a shared past • The construction of collective memory is a continuous, multidirectional process: current events and beliefs guide our reading of the past, while frames of references learned from the past shape our understanding of the present • Collective memory is functional: social groups may commemorate their past in order to set a moral example or to justify their failures • Collective memory must be concretized: must be materialised through commemorative rituals, monuments, historical museums, educational systems, the Internet, and more • Collective memory is narrational: it must be structured within a familiar cultural pattern
A. Media Memory and Agency: the Question of Authority • Do you know what agency means? Object, subject, agent. • The question of authority: who has the right to narrate collective stories about the past? Not only academic and political elites; films, TV, the press. Standpoint of this book: the impact of the media is not only negative: the media provide a public arena for various agents (political activists, academics, local communities, etc). However, they also acknowledge that media professionals aspire to provide their own readings of the collective past.
Constructing the Media Narrative: Selection, Competition • The facts of the past have only limited significance in the process of shaping collective memories so as to suit current needs (Halbwachs) • The principle of selection is of primary importance: social memories change mainly via the process by which some events are emphasised and others are concealed. • Different interpreters compete over the place of their reading in the public arena. How the media is seen in this competition: 1. a platform for socio-cultural struggles; 2. (present themselves as) authoritative social storytellers of the past what kind of view of the media is this? Postitive/negative/non-judgemental?
The Collective, the Cosmopolitan, and the National 2. The question of defining the collective: to what extent can we still think about the nation as an „imagined community” in the media age? • „Cosmopolitanization means internal globalization, globalization from within the national societies” /Beck U., 2002/ • Their thesis: although most of the research devoted to collective memory centres on the construction of national memories, in the era of globalization collective memory that exist in a cosmopolitan context do not necessarily promote national values.
Individual Memory vs. Collective Memory 3. Individual memory vs. collective memory: how can we distinguish between individual and shared memories? Personal level: cognitive psychology Media: a vessel for shared recollections Pierre Nora: „secondary memory”: mass media representations create shared social frameworks for people who inhabit different social spaces, practices and beliefs. E.g. Schindler’s List; The Iron Lady, The House of Terror, The US Holocaust Memorial Museum
B. Media Memory and Contexts • The construction of the past by the media is understudied; „the ways in which the past and present are continuously constructed via routine journalistic work are harder to track down and conceptulize than the study of state-sponsored rituals, commemorative museums, or lucrative popular culture productions” • Question of selection: should we focus on popular or rather elite venues? Deliberately fictional constructs or documentaries? • Three traditional areas of interest: • Text: The analysis of media texts (characteristics of storytelling patterns, morals, etc.) • Production:Studying the dynamics of mass media production • Reception: Focusing on the ways by which audiences interpret media contents
Questions and problems in media memory research • The research field of collective memory suffers from the drunk-looking for-his-car-keys-under-the-lamp-post phenomenon • i.e., researchers look for the representations of collective memory in the most usual places and times • Collected memories: collected memories of many individuals vs. Collective memories: common public representations of the past
