just give me a number out of 20 [rate it], how do u think it went? is it bad, good? and whywat needs to be improved etc. everything appreciated
MODULE C REPRESENTATION ANAD TEXT
ElECTIVE 2: HISTORY AND MEMORY
YEAR 12 ADVANCED TASK 3
IDENTIFY AND EXPLAIN THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TEXTS, EVALUATING THE TEXT OF YOUR CHOICE AS A REPRESENTATION OF HISTORY AND MEMORY. YOU MUST ALSO CONSIDER TECHNIQUES IN YOUR ANSWER (~2000 WORDS)
/20
CRITERIA FOR MARKING
CHOOSES THOROUGHLY APPROPRIATE TEXT
EXPLAINS RELATIONSHIO BETWEEN TEXTS THOROUGHLY, ACCURATELY AND WITH PERCEPTION
ACCURATELY AND PERCEPTIVELY EVALUATES TEXT AS REPRESENTATION OF HISTORY AND MEMORY
ACCURATELY AND THOROUGHLY PERCEIVES AND EVALUATES TECHNIQUES USED BY COMPOSER
Memory has been defined as the mental capacity to retain and revive impressions, or recall or recognise previous experiences. History on the other hand, can be defined as a chronological series of indisputable events; while memory is highly subjective and affects the way an event is perceived. Conversely, between the two is an intricate bond. The link between history and memory, and the way an individual experiences them, is a component of the past and the present. History can be defined as “the methodical record of public events” where memory is defined as “the faculty by which events are recalled or kept in mind”. Thus history and memory interrelate as history can be seen as the contextual justification for memory, and are parallel to each other in many ways. . “Memory is life...borne by living societies founded in its name...History on the other hand, is the reconstruction, always problematic and incomplete of what is no longer”.
History and memory cannot be looked upon in isolation of each other, and neither is more significant than the other. Both have their own sets of potentials, flaws and limitations and its thereby best to use both in conjunction with each other. History is believed to add credibility, but memory echoes the past, presenting the truth that cannot be documented by historical documents. Nevertheless, its subjective nature of memory can sporadically be view as a flaw. ‘Memory can change the shape of a room; it can change the colour of a car’. The Memorial by Shaun Tan and Gary Crew and Fiftieth Gate by Mark Baker, both explore the relationship present between history and memory. Each of these texts presents a unique view of history and memory, and demonstrates a deliberate selective emphasis when each notion is represented. *We see this throughout the Fiftieth Gate by Mark Baker. Throughout Baker’s quest for the truth, the audience is made aware of the continuous impact that the past has on the present, as the memories from the past affect those who have endured it. This autobiographical text offers many examples of the complex relationship between history and memory.
History is to society what memory is to the individual. It is an ongoing process of the events from the past until present day. History, like memory, is dependent on access from the past. However, the objectivity of history has been denied due to the emerging ‘ age of postmodernism’. Differing and personal opinions, reflections and experiences of events can provoke great debate in the way in which history is recorded and interpreted. There is no longer an absolute believe in its validity and truthfulness. History cannot take place in the present as it can only be recognised in retrospect and, as memory, can be construes as unreliable.
The personal perspective that memory gives history is necessary for the understanding of historical value and meaning of both the past and the present. It is through a personal viewpoint of history that enables the discovery and journeys of self discovery to occur.
The Fiftieth Gate follows the journey of the protagonist Mark Baker, a historian and the son of Holocaust survivors. His journey [is a historical one] through memory to uncover the origins of the past and act as a catalyst for future generations to connect with their history, and thereby vindicating his parent’ memories. In many ways, the subtitle ‘A Journey through Memory’ corresponds with the fact that the book consists of reminiscences’ from his parents on their lives and experiences. Baker the historian supplements and verifies the stories of his parents with historical material that he has found from his own research ranging from documentation, poems and song lyrics, giving the readers a more complete picture of his parent’s life. However, Baker also undertakes a journey of understanding throughout the Fiftieth Gate. At the outset of The Fiftieth Gate Baker believes that memory is biased and less valid than history, and he makes many references to the discrepancies between the personal memory of his parents and the historical evidence, that Baker as a historian believes. In this way, it is clear that Baker is on a quest for verification “...my facts from the past are different”. This displays the flaw Baker notes in memory, and validates his need for historical evidence in order to verify memory. He discovers that neither can be used in isolation of the other. Baker comes to the conclusion that memory gives history an emotional context, and although memory can be shared, it cannot be taken away. His final acknowledgment of this enables him to understand his parents better that any amount of archival research on its own. “It begins where it ends, and ends where it begins; with my parent’s stories and my stories of their stories, and now, their stories of my stories.
A conversation between a boy, his great-grandfather, grandparents, and parents reveals a sense of community and remembrance that grew up around a statue and fig tree planted upon the return of the Australian soldiers from World War I. These memorials were constructed for the purpose of honouring the soldiers who fell. Each man in the family participated in a different war and shares memories of returning home afterward. The protagonist's inquisitiveness turns to idealistic outrage when local officials propose removing the tree. The boy believes that the tree is as much a memorial as the statue. For this is the tree planted by 'old pa' and dedicated in remembrance to honour those men and women killed in the war. Old Pa recounts the war and the people there at the ceremony, as well as memories of the ensuing years. This is essentially a conversation of a boy with his grandfather and great grandfather. Yet this book also delivers a powerful message to its audience, that it is the fighting spirit of the people that is remembered in the end. Detailed, engrossing, multimedia collages draw in readers and hint at hard war times, warm family times, and stages in the life of the tree and in the community. When the local council plans to cut down an old tree in the park there is immediate outrage. The relationship between history and memory that is portrayed through this multi-media text is that they overlap so much, it can be said that they are two halves of a whole. The boy sees his grandfather’s memory as history, and the full truth. It shows that memory can also accurately retell historical event and also has the ability to illuminate and emphasise certain aspects of history.
What is a memorial? Is it memory or is it memory? Or is it a combination of both? The memorial contains two different memorials, one is alive and one is made of stone, “But the tree’s a memorial....The same as the statue-except the tree’s alive and the statue’s just rock and concrete...the tree’s a memorial too...A living memorial”. Both these memorials create a link between history and memory. A memorial is a historical monument that serves to preserve the memory of a person or event, “Lest we forget”. In this multi-media text, these historical monuments serve to remind the people of the three wars; the First World War, the Second World War and the Vietnamese War. A memorial is set up to commemorate a historical event or individual. Memorials are made to promote memory. The tree is a shrine of remembrance.
The memorial also tells a story that might be either forgotten or hidden. It serves to remind the reader to remember and commemorate the sacrifices made by the various soldiers during the wars so they could preserve their country. The anecdotes that are told are personal representations of the past and memory. The snapshots that have been included validate the stories that are being told. They are historical evidence.
The composers of the multimedia text The Memorial have used illustrations to a powerful effect in demonstrating the relationship between history and memory. The style of the illustrations, in concurrence with visual techniques such as colour, composition, texture and style all play a major role in the representation of the relationship between memory and history. Shaun tan has used collages drawings to this effect, using fabric, leaves, wood, rusted metal, photographs, newspaper and dead bugs. Because of this assemblage, many of the images were not flat or could be scanned in the normal way, and had to be photographed first
The inclusion of snapshots of faces, war, the leaves and the tree itself demonstrate a facet of the relationship between memory and history. These snapshots can be viewed as both memory and history. They can be seen as snapshots from memory, for memory is a picture in your mind and historical evidence. Mark Baker’s Fiftieth Gate also echoes this idea. Baker’s memories consist of frozen snapshots of different times “...all my memories are framed in black and white images like this one, channelled through snapshot portraits which present the past as a series of frozen moments.” Forever, within these snapshots, in both Fiftieth Gate and the Memorial, both memory and history have simultaneously been captured. The relationship between memory and history that is reflected by this technique is that sometimes memory and history are so in accordance with each other, that the two merge together. The composers of the Memorial also choose to demonstrate this through letting leaves from the fig tree overlap with snapshots of soldiers from the war. The tree leaves are representative of memory while the snapshots, in this context, are mainly representative of history and by letting the two overlap, they are making a statement to the reader in regards to relationship between memory and history, that indeed, the two sometimes do overlap.
However, many of the photographs that have been used also correspond with the memories of the Great Grandpa, grandparents, and parents’ stories. This is to indicate that memory and history are the same. Each memory corresponds with the history, the photographs and each history corresponds with a memory. The boy is made aware of his great-grandfather’s memory and to him, the memory is history. The snapshots of soldiers, the memorial and the evidence of his childhood, forever capture the memory
Letting the pictures overlap, as shown after Great-Grandpa talks about Ypres, also presents to the audience another aspect of the relationship between memory and history. The large picture of Ypres consists of many snapshots of the same event, but different facets of the battle, overlapping and thereby creating a montage. Literally, this indicates to the audience that the camera had limited power, and the smaller pictures have been overlapped in order to get the much bigger picture. Figuratively, or symbolically, this is reflective and emblematic of the nature of memory, how one memory consists of many smaller memories, which are connected though similarities, and again this demonstrates the overlap between history and memory. The big picture can be seen as people’s awareness of the events, and it is the other memories, the collective memories that stuck together and created this collage.
Constantly, throughout this multi-media text the composer has inserted many pictures of old pseudo photographs and framed artefacts, very old material.Framed artefacts represent both memory and history. They are historical objects yet also contain memories. One such example is the borders which consist of old material. Everything is old and this is to convey to the audience that time has passed. Many of these artefacts are from the war, such as Great-Grandpa’s war medallions. Artefacts are historical items that can also be seen as historical evidence. Yet within this artefacts are stored memories. Again this is a technique to demonstrate the overlap present between memory and history.
Certain images can tap into our subconscious emotions. This is done through the insertion of faded, unlabelled photographs. The pictures are woven together. They trigger memory and imagination, inviting the interpretation through the “borrowing [of] the language from old pictorial archives and unlabelled scenes. There is an urging for the audience to fill the empty spaces around the frozen snapshots, and in doing so to revisit our own stories and conclusions that we have created through the images, more than words. Each scene is taken in by the reader at their own pace, and many of the images reflect the simplicity of the country town.
On page seven and page eight of the Memorial, the composers make a direct statement in regards to the relationship between memory and history. They have structures this as if it was a cabinet, full of many small compartments. Photographs and writing have been placed within these compartments. Photographs are used to symbolise history while the writing has been used to symbolise memory. However, this compartment has also been made so as to echo the nature of memory and how it is stored within our brain, or our memory bank. They are all separated into different compartments, and a trigger is needed in order to open the right compartment and release the memory within and also to connect it with corresponding memories.
Another instance where he uses symbolism is through his use of the seas, birds, bits of cloth, the raining leaves etc. He presents an ominous sequence when the audience is made aware that the tree has been cut down. This creates a connection between the text and the illustration.
There is the possibility that such cultural memory is lost in the abstractions of nationalism and ceremony, if the symbol does not bear direct witness to its own content. A minute’s silence is not pregnant with meaning. The concrete monument in Memorial, similarly, does not speak for itself, and neither does the other monument, the growing tree. This book investigates the way symbols work in relation to collective memory; it can be seen as a container that constantly needs to be filled in order to have money.
The soldier monument is places in the back corner, to emphasise its loneliness now that the tree has been cut down, and it is raining leaves. However, in the end it sprouts through the cracks and the reader is left to believe that these shoos are from the tree, symbolising that memory live in through the children, it never dies but is passed on. This corresponds with Baker where he sings the lullaby to his parents, telling them that their memories will never die, because their children and grand-children will carry it on “sleep my dear parents....tomorrow your children will shed your tears”.
The reader is left with the conclusion that in many ways history, and by extension memory, is like the tree. Each generation passes down their memory as well as memories given to them by the previous generation, and through this each generation is growing, and the past is not forgotten. Yet, it is history that is passed down to the generations put in the form of memory. This type of history is called oral history.
The timing of the visual and written narrative are discordant and this is particularly palpable towards the end where the three generations are discussing the possibility that the local council may soon cut down the tree, and Shaun Tan has already demonstrated the tree being cut down. This is probably due to the fact that this book was written from hindsight, all the conversations in the text themselves are memories of the young boy who, most likely, has become an adult by now. His last words “And now that I think about it, I know what he said is true,” are present tense and indicate that he has re-visited his past, both mentally and physically, and found that the memories do live on despite the fact that the tree, the memorial, has been cut down. It again demonstrates that memory lives on and is passed down to the next generation.
The illustrator endeavours to capture the nature of memory through the use of various materials in fragmentary pieces in order to emulate the ‘texture’ memory. Shaun Tan does this with the collage drawings using fabric, leaves, wood, corrugated metal, photographs, newspapers etc. We don’t remember things as we actually experience them, with the continuous clarity of videotape, but instead see the past in our mind as fading snippets and vignettes, vulnerable to the distortion and decay of dreams. Odd small things can trigger memory in quite a personal way - odour being the most obvious one - but also visual details that at a glance may seem banal; the colour of some fabric, a pattern of cracked tiles, a pressed flower, a cracked wooden joint or a teacup. The fact that the page layouts are not continuous, shifting from one environment and mood to the next, and involve attention to such objects, was an attempt to make the book feel like a memory, rather than an experience.
This book contains a “personal layer of expression through the voiceless holes”. The composer uses the idea of silence and voicelessness, outside of the spoken narrative. This also causes the reader to draw questions, therefore delaying the discovery of the meaning, in favour of the interpretation if the next line shape. But how are we to deal with things outside our language and far away from
Memory lives within history binding the creator to their social preconditions; it shapes and constructs, dictates their function and demands their superiority. The two cannot be separated, memory binds interpretation. The strength of history lies in its reception through personal nature of communication and demands that we select which is pertinent to our own experience. This concept is manifested through the integration of history and memory within the texts discussed. It is the interrelationship of both history and memory that allows us to gain an empathetic understanding of an event. Since memory does not follow a set of laws, composers dealing with memory in their texts will have different opinions regarding its ability to be retrieved.
