Difference between revisions of "329-2010--Week 1 Questions/Comments"
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I was interested in the correlation between history and poetry as a means to tell a story. But, I thought it was intriguing that according to Aristotle, poets must make the story completely "unified" (3) whereas historians are required to tell it all in that time period, regardless of whether or not it fits. The same can be said for movies. Directors are less focused on telling the whole story because oftentimes, that causes it to lose its entertainment value. So instead, the take the poetic approach to the film. But meanwhile, the true history becomes muddled or sometimes even lost in the process. - Kelly R. | I was interested in the correlation between history and poetry as a means to tell a story. But, I thought it was intriguing that according to Aristotle, poets must make the story completely "unified" (3) whereas historians are required to tell it all in that time period, regardless of whether or not it fits. The same can be said for movies. Directors are less focused on telling the whole story because oftentimes, that causes it to lose its entertainment value. So instead, the take the poetic approach to the film. But meanwhile, the true history becomes muddled or sometimes even lost in the process. - Kelly R. | ||
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| + | "As long as we bear in mind the differences between film and professional prose, we can take film seriously as a source of valuable and even innovative historical vision." (Davis, 15) This sentence we one of the final thoughts from Natalie Zemon Davis on how one can view cinematic history. Her work can serve as a guide to how to evaluate cinematic history (Toplin's term). We find that the difference between historical analysis and the historical film are not unlike the divide between Homer's poetics and the Aristotelian concept of history. She goes further to accurately and briefly define what historians should do during research. She lays out the criterion for good history with the question of how much is truly applicable to the film. Can one honestly expect the director of a film to sit with the audience and explain the sources for his ideas, frankly no. However, Davis's point is not to rag on films, rather she is trying to shift the general opinion to accepting films for what they are, a not as rigorous method to understand a particular person or event in history. She also notes that there are overlaps in methodology. Although one will readily critique the film for being limited in scope, yet every piece of historical writing must have some sort of narrowed scope and somewhat arbitrary cut off times. The film is under even tighter constrains with only a limited amount of time to explain a story. Long story short, I give Davis props for giving the filmmakers some credit in their work.--Joe | ||
==Introduction: Why Movies Matter== | ==Introduction: Why Movies Matter== | ||
