Mario Van Peebles'sPantherand Popular Memories of the Black Panther Party

Abstract

The 1995 movie Panther depicted the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense as a vibrant but ultimately doomed social movement for racial and economic justice during the late 1960s. Panther's narrative indicted the white-operated police for perpetuating violence against African Americans and for undermining movements for black empowerment. As such, this film represented a rare source of filmic counter-memory that challenged hegemonic memories of U.S. race relations. Newspaper reports and reviews of Panther, however, questioned the film's veracity as a source of historical information. An analysis of these reviews and reports indicates the challenges counter-memories confront in popular culture.

Memories of Movement in a Postfeminist Context: Conservative Fusion in the Rhetoric of Tammy Bruce and “Dr. Laura” Schlessinger

“…People identifying as movement members may join the rhetorical battle to interpret the legacy of competing movements in order to bolster their own efforts. As Hoerl (2007) suggests, memories of movement may operate as countermemories that critique ineffective or unjust discourses. For instance, remembering controversial movement figures like Malcolm X anew may fight racism in the present (Hoerl, 2008).…”

“…Building upon the idea that discourse or meaning drives social change (DeLuca, 1999;Enck-Wanzer, 2006;Foust, 2010;McGee, 1980;Sillars, 1980), scholars assume that ''a social movement'' is not a given entity, but the outcome of a rhetorical struggle likely to outlast those who ''originally lived'' the movement (Griffin, 2003), and that rhetorical memory of social movements past contributes to the power of movements in the present (Hoerl, 2007). These main assumptions echo scholarship on collective, public, and=or popular memory, which accepts at its core that remembering the past is not a simple retelling of historical events.…”

Cinematic Jujitsu: Resisting White Hegemony through the American Dream in Spike Lee'sMalcolm X

“…As public memory scholars have noted, such portrayals are inevitably partial and limited by the scope of individuals who construct them (Hasian, 2001;Hoerl, 2007;Sturken, 1997;Zelizer, 1995). Likewise, constructions of the past are frequently created for instrumental purposes.…”

Commemorating the Kent State Tragedy Through Victims' Trauma in Television News Coverage, 1990–2000

“…Sites of memory provide resources for shared understanding about the relevance and meaning of past events for contemporary public life. Scholars across multiple disciplines including media, rhetoric, and American studies have explained how public, collective, or social memories are instantiated by a variety of cultural forms including commemorative structures (Blair, Jeppeson, & Pucci, 1991;Sturken, 1997;Blair & Michel, 2000;Bodnar, 1992), speeches (Browne 1993(Browne , 1999, museums (Gallagher, 1999;Katriel, 1994), photographs (Zelizer, 1998), literature (Lipsitz, 1990) and films (Sturken, 1997;Biesecker, 2002;Hoerl, 2007;Hasian 2001). 2 Far from representing an objective past, public memories are rhetorical and ideological expressions of cultural knowledge about the past.…”