Influence of Memory: The Way History is Communicated How does memory affect the way in which history is viewed? Memory is based on a series of decisions on what is worth remembering and what should be forgotten. It is a process of suppressing history that is unbearable or difficult, yet it is also about reflecting on what is misunderstood. Memory is formed through several influencing factors and elements; Memory can be formed by the study of pop culture and icons, which often propose a reexamination of difficult and repressed memories. Memory is also influenced through exclusions and biases. These can be racially or politically motivated, but they could also derive from personal or cultural trauma. Recorded history such as textbooks, novels, …show more content…
Besides memorials, haunting can also happen when people read fictional period novels or see historically set films, for example. These pop culture elements and icons become like ghosts; they expose people to themes and subject matter that may open their eyes on a difficult topic or conflict with what they believe to be true. This experience then forces a perspective on people who begin to question the events being told and the accuracy of what is portrayed. Gordon uses the novel Beloved, which deals with the effects of slavery, to illustrate how sparking the imagination on a topic and asking difficult questions of the audience can create a haunting effect that may lead to new reflections and further research and analysis. In this way pop culture elements and icons are important not only as tools for reflection and communication, but also as a lens for researchers and historians to understand why history has been shaped into its current …show more content…
These exclusionary practices often obscure the truth and shape a biased history. This can happen in a couple different ways. First, there is censorship through bias, which is usually motivated by racism or political affiliation. Racism is one type of bias that is found heavily in the early history of America and still has an influence on how slavery is viewed today. One form of history that tried to combat conceived notions of slaves was the slave narrative; these were autobiographies written by slaves or those who had been slaves to illustrate in the most authentic way possible the experiences they had suffered. They were created to enlighten and expose slavery in the hopes of seeing it abolished for good. However, the authenticity of such works must be brought into question because of the process of publication. Stories and biographies like the slave narratives were often “vouchsafed by a white authority” and had to give up some of their authenticity to become palatable to consumers. When studying these kinds of narratives, researchers must look at the restrictions placed on the writer, the editing process, and the publication where it was printed to fully understand what kinds of exclusions were imposed on the writer and how truthful the final product actually
Detrimental stereotypes of minorities affect everyone today as they did during the antebellum period. Walker’s subject matter reminds people of this, as does her symbolic use of stark black and white. Her work shocks. It disgusts. The important part is: her work elicits a reaction from the viewer; it reminds them of a dark time in history and represents that time in the most fantastically nightmarish way possible. In her own words, Walker has said, “I didn’t want a completely passive viewer, I wanted to make work where the viewer wouldn’t walk away; he would either giggle nervously, get pulled into history, into fiction, into something totally demeaning and possibly very beautiful”. Certainly, her usage of controversial cultural signifiers serve not only to remind the viewer of the way blacks were viewed, but that they were cast in that image by people like the viewer. Thus, the viewer is implicated in the injustices within her work. In a way, the scenes she creates are a subversive display of the slim power of slave over owner, of woman over man, of viewed over
Memory plays a very important in how history is interpreted. As time goes on and an event slips further into the past some of the memory's that are passed on are distorted and can change entirely. Things that happened during the Civil War that may have seemed important are replaced with things that may seem more important to us now.
insights into what the narratives can tell about slavery as well as what they omit,
The representation of race, in particular the issue of slavery and abolition in film is not only a highly emotive and potentially divisive subject but it also provides a means of accessing the past in a manner which is empowering and knowledgeably rewarding for the viewer. Representations of historical contexts in film are often critically considered to be amongst the main source of the general publics perceptions of the historic past. “When slave narratives are done on film, they tend to be historical with a capital H, with an arm’s-length quality to them. I wanted to break that history-under-glass aspect, I wanted to throw a rock through that glass and shatter it for all times, and take you into it.”1 Following the unlikely duo of a white German bounty hunter, Dr. King, and his black slave counterpart, Django Freeman, as they journey to reclaim the token damsel in distress, film director Quentin Tarantino sparked mass controversy surround the representation of African Americans and slavery in the south of America during the 19th century. The issue of race and slavery are directly confronted within the film told through the narrative of Django. Django Unchained is ultimately a story of white redemption; offering an interpretation into the justifications of slavery while race is represented in ways which both challenge and enforce stereotypes.
In the Novel Beloved, by Toni Morrison unmasks the horrors of slavery, and depicts its aftermath on African Americans. The story is perfect for all who did not experience nor could imagine how it was to be an African American in America circa the 1860's. Beloved lends a gateway to understanding the trials and tribulations of the modern African American. The Novel has many things that occur that are very striking, most of which have to deal with the treatment of the African Americans. The book as a whole is very disturbing, and even shows to what lengths African Americans were willing to go to avoid enslavement of themselves or their children.
One aspect in the novel Beloved is the presence of a supernatural theme. The novel is haunted. The characters are haunted by the past, the choices made, by tree branches growing on backs, by infanticide, by slavery. Sethe, Denver and Paul D are haunted by the past that stretches and grasps them in 124 in its extended digits. A haunt, Beloved, encompasses another supernatural realm, that of a vampire. She sucks the soul, heart and mind of her mother while draining the relationships that exists between Denver and Sethe and Sethe and Paul D.
”Beloved” is concerned with the negative effects of slavery on the blacks. The novel represents the psyches of its characters who suffer due to the horror-struck burden of their past which was full of exploitation under the cruel control of slaveholder. Past is a beautiful thing. The more we try to live with it, the more we get captivated by it. It’s a madness that can encompass people. African-American past was one such
Amnesia affects the memory. People diagnosed with amnesia lose memories that occur before the onset of amnesia. Amnesia affects the memory, how well you can store long term memory. If amnesia occurs, one might have trouble with long term memory in the future, or simply forget most of their past. Due to the brains plasticity, the brain can use association areas to help build memory. Amnesia commonly comes in two forms that occur together: Retrograde amnesia and Anterograde amnesia.
Slave narratives were one of the first forms of African- American literature. The narratives were written with the intent to inform those who weren’t aware of the hardships of slavery about how badly slaves were being treated. The people who wrote these narratives experienced slavery first hand, and wanted to elicit the help of abolitionists to bring an end to it. Most slave narratives were not widely publicized and often got overlooked as the years went by; however, some were highly regarded and paved the way for many writers of African descent today.
The Effects of Levels of Processing on Memory PB1: Identify the aim of the research and state the experimental/alternative hypothesis/es. (credited in the report mark scheme) To show how different levels of processing affects the memory. “People who process information deeply (i.e. semantic processing) tend to remember more than those who process information shallowly (i.e. visual processing). ” PB2: Explain why a directional or non-directional experimental/alternative hypothesis/es has been selected. (I mark) I have used a directional experimental hypothesis because past research, such as that by Craik and Tulving (1975) has proved this. PB3:
Memory is the vital tool in learning and thinking . We all use memory in
As much as society does not want to admit, violence serves as a form of entertainment. In media today, violence typically has no meaning. Literature, movies, and music, saturated with violence, enter the homes of millions everyday. On the other hand, in Beloved, a novel by Toni Morrison, violence contributes greatly to the overall work. The story takes place during the age of the enslavement of African-Americans for rural labor in plantations. Sethe, the proud and noble protagonist, has suffered a great deal at the hand of schoolteacher. The unfortunate and seemingly inevitable events that occur in her life, fraught with violence and heartache, tug at the reader’s heart-strings. The wrongdoings Sethe endures are significant to the meaning of the novel.
In Toni Morrison’s novel, Beloved, Morrison uses universal themes and characters that anyone can relate to today. Set in the 1800s, Beloved is about the destructive effects of American slavery. Most destructive in the novel, however, is the impact of slavery on the human soul. Morrison’s Beloved highlights how slavery contributes to the destruction of one’s identity by examining the importance of community solidarity, as well as the powers and limits of language during the 1860s.
We are used to think that stress has only negative effect on our productivity, health and cognitive functions and there could be no advantages of being stressed. But there are no just disadvantages of stress because there are 2 types of stress, which have different effect on our body and mental health: chronic stress and acute stress. Chronic stress is usually associated in our everyday life with “being stressed” and has negative influence, while acute stress might have both positive and negative effect on our cognitive functions. In this review, we concentrate on the second type of stress and its negative or beneficial effects on memory, which is a wide research field. We especially concentrate on particular type of memory – recognition memory, which can show to us memory strenth via the measure of recollection and familiarity.