Talking about what kind of forms a postmodern history might take reminded me of a trend I've been seeing lately -- oral history books. Honestly I haven't read any of the books (think World War Z -- it also seems to be a popular trend when writing about musical trends such as punk, metal etc) but a while ago I read an article on the Chicago Tylenol murders. The article obviously uses snippets of the interviews to piece together a narrative but I definitely thought of this when Kathryn mentioned doing interviews for a Uni history in class -- it seems like the only way to really put together a history of something past basics stats and figures, and just showing the raw quotes without a lot of the author writing around it definitely gives more of a showcase to the people involved.
I also think a postmodern history would put contradictory facts more at the core -- often I read essays that detail a whole story then put at the end "so-and-so denies this ever happening," or just straight-up put two conflicting stories side-by-side. This article about a mass shooter was disturbing for a number of reasons (and I would highly recommend reading it), but for one (as I remember from reading it months ago), it basically laid out stories from two different sides, poked some holes in both... then ended. I'm used to something feeding me "this is the way things happened" so ambiguity is both interesting and unsettling.
Thursday, February 6, 2014
Monday, February 3, 2014
Ragtime on the Big Screen
When I saw Ragtime on the syllabus, it brought back vague memories of the movie version we watched in freshman year. What I remembered: a burning library building (whoops, there goes the dramatic ending -- also, I may have made up a fire) and a story about poor old James Cagney and the director's desperation to cast him that my dad has told literally every time I've brought up the movie. During the novel I recognized a few more elements -- a ball, Stanford White being shot, finding the baby in the garden -- but the beginning of the novel was a little disorienting.
However, I found that I liked the novel much better than the film. Obviously I probably would have remembered a little more of the movie if I'd actually liked it (the memory loss may have something to do with the entire freshman year being a blur and watching the movie in little 45 minute chunks). On the other hand the novel immediately hooked me and I can't see completely forgetting it anytime soon. The novel just seems way more interesting and adventurous than the movie, which was nothing extraordinary, due both to the expanded plot and the writing style.
One of the things about history is that it's really hard to get all the sides of something, especially as you get bigger and bigger in scope. People have made all sorts of attempts at summing up various time periods -- decades seem to be particularly popular. In Race Class Gender Mr. Leff made a point at the beginning of almost every unit to say that the stereotypes we have of periods -- flappers in the 20s, Mad Men-esque in the 50s, etc -- aren't necessarily very accurate. To me Ragtime seemed like a more interesting attempt to portray an era -- including little stories from all sorts of different classes -- the little family, the black man, the rich men, the immigrants, etc. Obviously you can never really totally represent something that big but I liked how Doctorow tried to tie everything together.
After reading the novel I was also a little disappointed that the film was nothing special -- I felt like they could have done something much cooler. We talked in class about how Doctorow has all these sweeping paragraphs that feel like movie montages and I really enjoyed his treatment of the characters and his use of irony -- I don't remember any of these from the movie, but loved them in the book.
However, I found that I liked the novel much better than the film. Obviously I probably would have remembered a little more of the movie if I'd actually liked it (the memory loss may have something to do with the entire freshman year being a blur and watching the movie in little 45 minute chunks). On the other hand the novel immediately hooked me and I can't see completely forgetting it anytime soon. The novel just seems way more interesting and adventurous than the movie, which was nothing extraordinary, due both to the expanded plot and the writing style.
One of the things about history is that it's really hard to get all the sides of something, especially as you get bigger and bigger in scope. People have made all sorts of attempts at summing up various time periods -- decades seem to be particularly popular. In Race Class Gender Mr. Leff made a point at the beginning of almost every unit to say that the stereotypes we have of periods -- flappers in the 20s, Mad Men-esque in the 50s, etc -- aren't necessarily very accurate. To me Ragtime seemed like a more interesting attempt to portray an era -- including little stories from all sorts of different classes -- the little family, the black man, the rich men, the immigrants, etc. Obviously you can never really totally represent something that big but I liked how Doctorow tried to tie everything together.
After reading the novel I was also a little disappointed that the film was nothing special -- I felt like they could have done something much cooler. We talked in class about how Doctorow has all these sweeping paragraphs that feel like movie montages and I really enjoyed his treatment of the characters and his use of irony -- I don't remember any of these from the movie, but loved them in the book.
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