CINEMA, HISTORY, MEMORY

"This study is able to begin from the assumption that memory today derives its
primary meaning, its existence as such, from visually based technologies like
cinema; that cinema is not merely one of the most efective metaphors for memory
but that cinema - alongside pgotography - is constitutive of memory in its deepest
and most meaningful sense." (Kilbourn, 1)
"This is a collective, thoroughly 'artifcial' 'memory', constituted, legitimized and
'naturalized' through and by means of primarily visual media, most signifcantly
cinema; memory as representation in a perpetuation of a Euro-centric privileging of
the visual over other faculties and senses." (Kilbourn, 6)
Assim, para Kilbourn, essa memria muito mais coletiva, pblica, geral, externa.
Essa memria coletiva inclusive overlaps with the concept of history.
Ele cita a concepo de Maurice Halbwach de memria coletiva:
"Collective memory is embodied is embodied in mnemonic artifacts, forms of
commemoration such as shrines, statues, war memorials, heritage sites, museums
(what french historian Pierre Nora calls 'sites of memory'. We should also include the
mass media (newspaper, television, cinema). The memory industries, like the culture
industries which they form a part of, produce represenations ('cultural memorials')
with which we are invited to think, feel and recnognize the past. But these
representations do not embody memory as such, they embody the materials for
memory; they provide the materials from which 'collective memory' can be made."
(Kilbourn, 26)
Nesse caso, a histria estaria includa no rol de "indstrias da memria", em sua
produo de uma memria coletiva, notando-se seu valor especfco de
cientifcidade. E as indstrias da memria, ao criarem uma memria coletiva de fatos
histricos, estaria tambm entrando no terreno da produo de histria.
Com o peso da imagem nos sculos XX e XXI, o cinema, dentre outros meios
imagticos, foi importante em difundir relatos histricos com peso de Histria. Assim,
"eventos histricos so lembrados pelos flmes, personagens histricos de confudem
com os atores que os interpretam e os cenrios se passam pelo territrio real."
Desta forma, questes inerentes construo da Histria - quem contou, quando se
contou, sobre quem se contou, de que forma se contou - ganham ainda mais
proeminncia ao questionerem os relatos histricos do cinema de fco, e a noo
de "contruo" do relato - em oposio ao relato transparente e objetivo, que traria
"o que realmente aconteceu" - torna-se mais aparente.
QUEERING HISTORY
"History has all to often been a list of the deeds of famous men who are implictly
'heterosexual' and usually European. This approach has been very limiting, not least
to women. Likewise, 'love' and 'romance' in manu cultures are often portrayed as
'heterosexual' by default. [] Unsurprisingly, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender
people fave often felt excluded and silences, and without a history." (A little gay
history, Parkinson, 11, http://issuu.com/columbiaup/docs/parkinson-little-excerpt)
"Although same-sex desire seems to be present in all societies, some of the
examples in this book show how censorship, persecution and simple silence have
often written same-sex desire out of history, not only concealing it from
comtemporaries but also making it inaccessible to historians in the following
centures." (Parkinson, 26)
"Queer readings of history try to analyse the ways in which cultural forces privilege
and legitimize what is considered 'normal'. They usefully remind us that all defnitions
of what is normal or natural are not inevitable, but are instead fctions created by
particular societies, and that these fctions need to fnd things to label 'abnormal' and
'unnatural', against which to defne themselves." (Parkinson, 26)
Se antes, especialmente a partir de Stonewall, a ideia era tirar do armrios exemplos
positivos para gays e lsbicas - uma histria rara e em geral apagada - a partir da
emergncia da teoria queer, a ideia era desvelar o poder e a opresso histricos da
heteronormatividade e do patriarcado.
"[] Greyson consistently seeks to challenge the masculine masks of institutional
authority that have historically attempted to regulate and control desire, subjectivity,
and sexual identity in their own interests. Using Canadian current events as a context
for outing historical fgures (from Brecht and Weill to the fctional composite Bishop
Bilodeau) and as a vehicle for challenging aspects of heteronormative masculinity as
a masquerade (from cowboys to hockey players to Prime Ministers and priests), his
oeuvre documents, deconstructs, and de-deifes in the name of Grierson, Godard,
God and Greyson's pwn socio-sexual dissent." (Perils, 192)
VELVET GOLDMINE
Se Proteus pode dizer que histrico, ao Velvet Goldmine isso foi negado
(pesquisar!!!). Por isso a referncia indireta. Ou no foi negado, mas ele queria o
status de fco?? Pra ser e no ser confundido com relato histrico?
Primeira fala, da narradora: "Histories, like ancient ruins, are the fctions of
empires. While everything forgotten hangs in dark dreams of the past, ever
threatening to return..."
Enquanto os glams estavam engatinhando na androginia, Jack Fairy/Quentin Crisp
j tinha uma longa estrada. Mas ser que ele mesmo?
Curt Wilde tem a aparncia de Iggy Pop mas biografa deste e tambm de Lou
Reed.
Intertextualidade na forma e no contedo (pode?).
Na forma, uso de vrios formatos para contar a hitria: letra de msica, music video,
etc.
PRESENTATION
CHICO:
For our presentation, we decided to compare John Greyson's Proteus with Todd
Haynes's Velvet Goldmine, analizing how these flms deal with two issues: on the
one hand, with the constructedness of the historical account, and on the other hand,
with the practices of queering the history, after a long time of systematic erasure of
queer experiences from historical accounts.
We devided our presentation in two parts: frst, we're gonna present the two issues
theorethically, then we'll examine how each of the flms tackle with them.
Over the 20th century, there has been a change in the way memory was conceived:
from something inerently subjective, arising from presonal experiences with the
world, to something collective, that is shaped in relation not only to the world, but
mostly to images or representations of the world.
In this sense, Russel Kilbourne argues that (quote) "memory today derives its
primary meaning, its existence as such, from visually based technologies like
cinema; cinema is not merely one of the most efective metaphors for memory but -
alongside photography - it is constitutive of memory in it deepest and most
meaningful sense." (unquote)
When it comes to historical account, cinema's abilty to produce the efect of reality
gives it also the power to produce a historical collective memory in a way that,
(quote) "historical events are remembered through the flm's images, historical
characters are identifed with the actors who played them and movie sets and
locations replace the real territories" (unquote), as argues Rodrigo Almeida in his
article "Cinema and the aestetization of history: an epistemological debate."
This, in its turn, brings to cinema the same issues the history as science has faced
along the 20th century, such as the constructedness of the historical account. And by
constructedness I mean: Constructedness (Oxford dictionary): "The status of a text
(in any medium) as something created, authored, composed, framed,
mediated, and/or edited rather than being an unmediated slice of life or a
window on the world."
MAO LEI:
This constructedness can be easily identifed in the way homo/bisexual and
transgender experiences have been downplayed or erased from ofcial historical
accounts. Richard Parkinson argues that "History has all to often been a list of the
deeds of famous men who are implictly 'heterosexual' and usually European. This
approach has been very limiting, not least to women. Likewise, 'love' and 'romance'
in many cultures are often portrayed as 'heterosexual' by default. [] Unsurprisingly,
lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people have often felt excluded and silenced,
and without a history."
The gay activist movement that emerged from the Stonewall riots, along with
historians and scholars aligned with its politics, have fought against this practices not
only by recording, archiving and exhibiting their own history - as a number of activist
documentaries from the 70s and 80s do - but also by a revisionist practice, that outed
a number of historical fgures. Along with the demand for positive representations in
media, this revisionist practice was intended to help construct a sense of colectivity
and belonging among LGBT people, something unatainable in a scenario that
condemned or turned invisible homo/bisexual and transgender experiences.
With the emergence of queer theory, the focus of the historical revisionism was not
so much on historical fgures' sexual practices and identities, but much more in the
heteronormative power. Quoting Parkinson again: "Queer readings of history try to
analyse the ways in which cultural forces privilege and legitimize what is considered
'normal'."
This practice extended to the cinema, especially to what might be called the New
Queer Cinema, in which historical fgures have been not exactly outed, but more
precisely queered, such as: St. Sebastian, Caravaggio and Edward the II, in the flms
of Derek Jarman, Leopold and Loeb, in Tom Kalin's Swoon, John Lennon and Brian
Epstein in Christopher Munch's The hours and the times, Langston Hugues in Isaac
Julien's Looking for langston.
John Greyson is surely the one who has queered more historical fgures in his flms,
which include, among others: Rudyard Kipling, Sergei Eisenstein, Yukio Mishima,
Frida Khalo, Langston Hugues, Bertolt Brecht, Sir Richard Burton, Prime Minister
Pierre Trudeau, Gertrude Stein, Virgil Thonsom, etc.
We'll now analyze how the issues of the constructedness of historical accounts and
the practice of queering historical event and fgures have been dealt with in Todd
Hayne's Velvet Goldmine and Greyson's Proteus.
CHICO: VELVET GOLDMINE
Being historical accounts, both Velvet Goldmine and Proteus try to deal with this
issue, using a number of operations to make clear their status as constructions
rather then direct and objective accounts of a historical period.
Velvet Goldmine constructs a portrait of the musical movement called Glam Rock,
which developed in the United Kingdom in the early 70s, based on excessive
makeup and hairstyles, famboyant costumes, camp, androginy and sexual openess.
MAO-LEI: PROTEUS