Difference between revisions of "329--Week 1 Questions/Comments"
From McClurken Wiki
| Line 54: | Line 54: | ||
n.b. my post accepts Jackie's premise as sound. However, I would like to shift Jackie's debate back on to the historian. Let's talk about the standard by which historians are judged. We do it every time we write a research paper. We ask who wrote the secondary source? Who published the secondary source? What kinds of motivations were behind the construction of the source?, and so on. Just look at a subject's historigraphy to see that written history is not always air-tight. I think it would do us well this semester to not just analyze how film makers interpret history, but how historians interpret history. Too often we take historical texts as gospel (especially when compared to artistic representations), but is there really an ultimate truth by which we can compare apples and oranges? (historical text being apples, historical films being oranges)- Jason Ward | n.b. my post accepts Jackie's premise as sound. However, I would like to shift Jackie's debate back on to the historian. Let's talk about the standard by which historians are judged. We do it every time we write a research paper. We ask who wrote the secondary source? Who published the secondary source? What kinds of motivations were behind the construction of the source?, and so on. Just look at a subject's historigraphy to see that written history is not always air-tight. I think it would do us well this semester to not just analyze how film makers interpret history, but how historians interpret history. Too often we take historical texts as gospel (especially when compared to artistic representations), but is there really an ultimate truth by which we can compare apples and oranges? (historical text being apples, historical films being oranges)- Jason Ward | ||
| + | |||
| + | Jason brings up an interesting point when he said that "history is not always air-tight." To kind of support this a little further, I'd like to bring up one of our favorite sources, Wikipedia. Now, granted it is not the most reliable source of information on the planet but we do all use it as a starting point. But just looking at the history of those pages on historical events you can see that even events that took place hundreds of years ago are still under debate. Those pages are constantly updated and changed, sometimes by the hour. Historians themselves always have their own bias and oftentimes that is overlooked when doing research. How is this any different from a filmmaker and his bias? Or the bias of someone creating a documentary? - Kelly Wuyscik | ||
This is in response to Jackie's post. Although you have simplified your concern to a basic "is A better than B" question, I find the content rather complex. A great film that tries to tell a story during a specific period in our history combines the historical fact with the director's artistic expression/message. At times, the result makes it difficult for us to separate the two. I think when someone makes a movie, they take what is already generally known about history and fill in the little holes with what the director feels happened. A common debate of these movies is their portrayal of the character(s). Without a primary source, we become subjective to how we believe certain historical figures behaved. So to answer your question, I don't think directors should be held to the same level of historians are because I feel that they actually try to do different things. Historians give us facts about the past, and directors try to bring to life these facts while expressing their own artistry in their work. - David Flores | This is in response to Jackie's post. Although you have simplified your concern to a basic "is A better than B" question, I find the content rather complex. A great film that tries to tell a story during a specific period in our history combines the historical fact with the director's artistic expression/message. At times, the result makes it difficult for us to separate the two. I think when someone makes a movie, they take what is already generally known about history and fill in the little holes with what the director feels happened. A common debate of these movies is their portrayal of the character(s). Without a primary source, we become subjective to how we believe certain historical figures behaved. So to answer your question, I don't think directors should be held to the same level of historians are because I feel that they actually try to do different things. Historians give us facts about the past, and directors try to bring to life these facts while expressing their own artistry in their work. - David Flores | ||
