Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Kayla Salyer -- Jameson

"This historical novel can no longer set out to represent the historical past; it can only 'represent' our ideas and stereotypes about the past" (Jameson 419). Jameson puts a lot of ideas forward, yet I think that this quote captures a large part of his piece. One of his main ideas is that we are losing our history. We have manipulated and changed it so much through media that we can no longer see it for what it truly is. Films portray history through a lens, which only capture parts of it. This lens makes us biased against the truth, and confused about what is real history, and what is just a story. When the actual truth is given to us, we have too much junk stored in our minds to see it clearly. Because it is seen through a lens, we only see one side of the story; we see it how we want to see it. We twist the facts so much, in a way that makes history far better than the present. This causes us to be nostalgic for our false history. When we see these films, they cast a sort of spell over us. These films must be entertaining, and spectacular. This causes them to give us a false take on history, and makes us believe that is was something far different than the truth.
Going back to the word nostalgia, Jameson makes a different point pertaining to this. We will look at history and see, through the lens, that history was better. At the same time, we look at our lives and see that there is something lacking. Going back to Benjamin, we can see that this is due to mechanical reproduction. This causes us to have a sort of nostalgia for the present, as well as the past. We are always longing for something more than our lives can give us in the here and now, because postmodernism has taken away a huge chunk of what has made us who we are.

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