In another talk, a friend lamented the loss of photos from a family trip and then proposed redoing that family trip just to retake the photos. "How are we going to remember otherwise," she asked.
Meanwhile, news stories are constantly revisiting past events, politicizing them for current situations. In this article from yesterday's NYT,
Sometimes, as Senator Barack Obama seemed to argue earlier this year, a flag pin is just a flag pin. But it can never be that simple for anyone with direct experience of the 1988 presidential campaign. That year, the Republicans used the symbols of nationhood (notably, whether schoolchildren should be required to recite the Pledge of Allegiance) to bludgeon the Democrats, challenge their patriotism and utterly redefine their nominee, Gov. Michael S. Dukakis of Massachusetts. The memory of that campaign — reinforced, for many, by the attacks on Senator John Kerry’s Vietnam war record in the 2004 election — haunts Democrats of a certain generation.By drawing this contrast, the author simultaneously contextualizes the current campaign by re-historicizing (i.e. re-remembering) the 1988 one.
If we are our memories and those memories are now at least in part perpetuated within media (to be used indiscriminately and called upon going forward), then can we then suggest that our identities are now mediated? Or at least dependent on media? I throw this out there just for fun.
8 comments:
Thanks, what fun. I immediately think of Facebook and MySpace again. They (and other social network sites or dating sites) are the direct result of mediating out identities. A lot of people derive what is on another's Facebook page as that person's identity. And, I would argue, rightfully so because how else in this day are we supposed atriculate our identities if not through some mediated content (blogs, personal web sites, Facebook)?
Also, in answer to the question of dependance, I would argue that we are certainly dependant on media to form or even create our identites. Think about how you describe yourself beyond physical appearance. Often it is by what books, TV shows, movies, songs, or bands you like. The media that you consume defines who you are. This sounds pessimistic - that we are defined by something other than ourselves - but it isn't necessarily. Media gives us the tools to create an identity, we can pick what we like and what we don't and what we watch and which blogs we look at, and all of this is part of who we are.
I would have to argue that the media does not form our identity through how we keep our memories, but I really do think we have become on dependent on media to legitimize or identities. Take for example your friend, who wanted to redo a vacation because the pictures were lost. She will have those memories for ever, and I don't think we need pictures to remind us of a good time. But being able to share or recreate memories through media helps us legitimize to others, and maybe our self, that we had such experiences.
We take this further and post our lives on our online facebook or other social network sites. Not because we don't have an identity without them, we do. There was life before facebook. But in such a fast paced world we find the need to prove ourselves and experiences in the fastest medium we have, the internet.
Um.
Facebook has existed for four years. How did people articulate their identities way back in 2002? Not to mention the previous millennia? Sure, these newer tools give us the ability to project our identities to any person who chooses to look in our direction, but that’s not taking into account one important fact: people can, gasp, choose not to have a Facebook page. Or they can choose not to read a newspaper. And if they do, is their identity any less well-formed? Or does that simply mean that if someone wants to know what their favorite book is, they might have to expend the energy it takes to engage that person in a conversation?
Our identities are in large part the product of our experiences, and how we choose to process and remember those experiences. Some people may choose (or need) a tap on the shoulder from the media, some may not. But what will never change is our individual ability (and I would argue, need) to contextualize those experiences for ourselves.
This weekend a horse was euthanized on the track at the Kentucky Derby. Without the media, would anyone who wasn’t at Churchill Downs know that that happened? Eventually word would percolate out, but obviously not at the same up-to-the-minute speed, and certainly not with the same reach. But what makes our identity our own is not that we know that fact per se, but rather how we choose to process it. Some people will take that event and use it as a touchpoint to grandstand about the brutality of horse racing. Others will say: “Eh, them’s the breaks.” Where we fall on the continuum of reaction to that particular event is what shapes our identity—-not simply that we heard about it, and certainly not that we blogged about it. The current media tools can give our identities a bullhorn, but they don’t choose the words we decide to shout (or not shout). That is a wholly individual choice, and always will be.
I say, if our identities are indeed dependent on the media, then it might be a good time to put our collective heads in the oven and call it a day.
I remember when Sue brought up in lecture that her friend said she needed to go back to Story Land, or whatever it was, to retake the pictures to show people. So many times when we have company over, my mom always talks about our recent trips to Arizona or skiing or anywhere and pulls out the photo album to show everyone the memories. Do we create these photo albums to place our memories of a specific time into one place for us, or do we do it so that we can show others and seek gratification out of their responses? In other words, does Sue's friends need to retake the pictures of her children for her own sake, or is it so she can show them off to other people? And if it's the latter, than what does that say about us that we can only feel gratified about our experiences if they are shared or can be "appreciated" by others? This is the same for facebook albums. Why do we post them? Because we want everyone to see what we did. We want them to see how fun our mifflin was, how pretty OUR friends are, how drunk we were this past weekend. It's like we can't enjoy the things we did unless we know other people are seeing it. I'm not quite sure what theory this falls under, but its very interesting. In this sense, I think media gives us the tools to form our identities, esp the internet.
Sue asked: If our memories were gone, what foundation for values would we draw from to live? I think we would be completely dependent on media for our memories if we didn't have our own. Media already shapes society's norms (or is it society's norms that shape the media?) But we still get some our of values from our parents and our childhood, events and memories that make up our upbringings. Therefore, I believe if these didn't exist, then we really would only have TV and radio and the internet to draw all of our memories, values, morals, etc. from these forms of media. Thank god it isn't like that, but we would be entering a sad sad world.
I agree with Mary Jo....For our generation who had Facebook when they first entered college, a lot of my memories are stored on that site. I can remember countless times when my roommates and I have looked at old photos on the site and reminisce about "the good ole days." Just this past week, my roommate was cleaning out her desk and found an old disposable camera from our sophomore year at UW. She went to Walgreens and got it developed. After we laughed hysterically at the photos we didn't even remember we took, my roommate said "I definitely need to put these on Facebook." I think this points to the convenience the site has become for storing and sharing memories.
Also for myself, a lot of memories can be much more easily sparked through photos. Because photos are now digital, with the printed photo dying out, you could say our memories are triggered by media, our lives our mediated etc.
Another point is the last 20 years the amount of media out there has grown exponentially. We are faced with media overload at times. Because it is so ingrained in our lives, it has become a common reference point to call on. Most can relate to it, recall it etc. and it becomes a way to connect to the masses, strangers.
I think one of the biggest fears in life is to not be able to remember. I think of my grandmother and other elderly people who would give anything to have memories back they have lost. However, I know that every time I show my grandmother a photo, she smiles because it helps prove she was a part of the memory even if she can't remember it. I also find myself looking back on pictures I was in as a young girl. I don't always remember what I did as I was 3, 4, 5...years old, but I like to be reminded that I had fun as a little girl.
I think the media helps us realize the importance of events that have occurred in the past. It's really easy to forget the intense feelings I had on 9/11, but whenever I see photos or videos from it, all of the feelings I had that day come rushing back. I think it is important to remember the good and the bad. If we allow ourselves to forget about things like 9/11 or the Holocaust, then it is easy to pretend like it never happened. One of the fears of Holocaust survivors is that after their generation dies, no one will be left to carry on the memories, even though they weren't pleasant. We need reminding of the past and the lessons we learned from it in order to make the world a better place to live in the future.
First of all, and I had e-mailed Sue about this a while back, I am fascinated by her example of her friend and the photos. I would agree with the fact others have pointed out that whether they are on Facebook or in a photo album, they do have a ton of nostalgic value associated within them.
As ashamed as I am to say it, as a 22 year old, but my mom is still making a scrapbook of myself and what I have done throughout college. It's kind of embarrassing to me, but she loves showing it off to her friends and other family members whenever there is a get together. I think it is a great example of recreating our memories that wouldn't necessarily be possible if we didn't have the technology (camera's, phones, internet, etc) that was capable of capturing the moment.
For a different class I am in, we had to read a different Susan Sontag piece. In that, she argued that it isn't about what the picture represents, but what the moment we pushed the button to take the picture does. It's about the capabilities of the camera that will allow us to remember that moment and we understand and take a certain amount of fulfillment through that. The same can be said about the TV. Everybody has one, but when it is by itself, not turned on, it is just another piece of furniture. However, when Real World comes on, or any other show my roommates and I watch, it becomes an experience that we will remember and talk about.
Finally, to answer the question about dependance, I would say yes. Obviously everyone will remember, in their own mind if they go to a cool place, what that was like. However, we are also going to take pictures, put them up on Facebook and talk about them with our friends. There is no doubt we are dependent. As far as 20 or 30 years ago, I am sure it was the same way, just maybe not with such a highly technological world.
I agree that media does have a place in forming our identities, but I do not agree with what everyone else is writing. Yes, we have facebook and people see our pages and looks at our photos and can judge us not depending on what they see but not everyone has facebook or myspace or any type of page like that. I think media forms our identities by controlling what we think about and what we talk about. Someone who reads US Weekly is going to have a different conversation that the person who avidly reads the NY Times. The different kinds of media we expose ourselves to are going to create the different ways that we think and remember the world in which we live today. As Jason brought up, if we did not read the story about the Kentucky Derby, would we have the memory of the horse being euthanized?
I do agree, though, with what people are saying about photo albums. We make them public because we want others to see what we are doing and how much fun we are having. When we look back at pictures from traveling places, we do not look at a picture of the background and think how much fun we had and how special the trip was, but we look at the picture of us in front of the background and remember. While I do not think this is the way that we create out identities, I think this is one way of showing our identities to others.
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