Captured frames of time through videos is one way. For instance, professional basketball has been around for over 60 years, but video accounts of memorable events have existed for about 40 years. There is no doubt that the greatest moments in basketball history in the 50's and 60's had occurred; huge crowds witnessed the events and photographs of memories, such as Wilt's 100-point game, proved that they were no hoax (the same might not apply today because of the endless possibilities of using Adobe Photoshop). Nevertheless, videotaped games that emerged in the 60's only solidified unbelievable moments, such as (sorry, I got a little into video posting):
"Havlicek stole the ball!"...
Dr. J's reverse...
Magic Johnson's junior junior skyhook...
Reggie Miller's clutch 3's...
Jordan's final shot of his Bulls' career...
...and Robert Horry's finishing 3 against the Kings.
These events are forever recorded into the history books, reminiscent of the greatest moments in basketball history.
In contrast to videos, books rely on material drawn from reliable sources. In Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons, Brown uses real, historical, present-day places, treasures, and landmarks, from famous paintings to CERN to St. Peter's Square. In Angels and Demons, Brown goes as far as utilizing anti-matter and the Illuminati to mesh fiction with non-fiction: anti-matter, although it can be artificially created, is not abundantly fused in labs; the Illuminati, which formed in the late 1700s, is unlikely to be active today.
Unlike memory, history is definite and recorded - it will remain forever. What determines history may rely on visual accounts, present-day structures, or even the history of another event. Personally, history is a mundane subject and I have always been trying to avoid it; all the same, when I grow up everything I am experiencing now, such as the Iraq War and the crashing down of the economy, will be recorded in the books. I will be a speck, standing in a sea of billions of other specks, ground into the stone.
1 comment:
Here are some questions for you, Bernie:
What happens, though, when the cultural moment of Photoshop fully eclipses 'real' photography/video? Will we still believe that certain things even happened? At what point do we *not* trust 'history' precisely *because* we can 'see it'? Is it possible that someday we might view 'history' itself as a 'hoax' of sorts? Do historical events "remain forever," as you say, or are they inevitably "ground into the stone"—and irrecoverable as such? Why do we privilege books differently? What makes the reception of "Borat" so different from "A Million Little Pieces"?
These types of questions linger on the margins of your post. You use the video clips very effectively, and your last sentence is poetic—and even gripping.
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