Consuming history and memory through mass media products

Abstract

The representation of the past through products of the ‘culture industry’ bears the history of a long debate between detractors and optimists. This controversy becomes especially significant in a time where commercial audiovisual media affect in unprecedented ways the content and the form in which massive audiences relate to the events of the past. Even more so in a so-called postmodern moment in which public confidence in the real is overall in decline. In this context, the debate on the representation of the history and memory of the Holocaust – the paradigmatic example of limitations and imperatives to representational practice – has become a contemporary battlefield regarding the legitimacy and propriety of mass media products. By examining contemporary Holocaust representations that are at the intersection between the world of commercial mass media and the conventional nonfiction culture and documentary tradition (such as high-tech museums and Steven Spielberg’s Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation), this article will reflect upon the diverse implications of the mass media–history relation.

Attitudes towards the Government’s Remembrance Policy in Poland: Results of an Experimental Study

“…While public education shapes the younger generations, the use of mass media and the fine arts enables political elites to popularise their interpretations for the entire society. The mass media format offers narratives with a high degree of emotionalism, which often has to be reduced in other instruments; in addition, it enables the government to present simplified (or mythical) interpretations and to popularise unproven hypotheses about the past, an option that is also limited for other instruments (Baer 2001;Kansteiner 2004;Landsberg 1997;Lisus -Ericson 1995;Meyen -Pfaff -Rüdiger 2014). Moreover, Olaf Hoerschelmann (2001) and Katja Fullard (2010) point out that mass media and the fine arts may be used by governments to introduce new remembrance issues into the public debate or to accustom citizens to new interpretations of national history.…”

Como recuerda la televisión. El pasado evocado en los informativos españoles

“…En su mayoría no van más allá de los últimos 50 años, concentrándose en la década más reciente. Ese estrato temporal coincide aproximadamente con el objeto de la "historia del presente" (Aróstegui 2004), con la diferencia de que la televisión recupera eventos con menos de un mes de antigüedad, vale decir, de una inmediatez excesiva para un historiador del presente. resulta plausible atribuir esta preferencia por el pasado más reciente al efecto combinado del apego de los noticiarios a la actualidad y el deseo de mostrar a la audiencia un pretérito que le resulte familiar.…”

Holocaust Cinema as Depicted by Film Advisory Boards in Five English Speaking Countries

“…The second section focuses on the inclusion of this genre of films within Holocaust curricula, and finally, the working of film advisory boards are discussed. Baer (2001) identifies a deep and ongoing rift between those who reject the possibility that the culture industry in the form of television, new media, and films, can adequately represent the events of the Holocaust, and those who take a more positive stand on the matter.…”