Hills College Modern History

"The challenge of film to history, of the visual culture to the written culture, may be like the challenge of written history to the oral tradition, of Herodotus and Thucydides to the tellers of historical tales. Before Herodotus, there was myth, which was a perfectly adequate way of dealing with the past of a tribe, city, or people, adequate in terms of providing a meaningful world in which to live and relate to one's past. In a post-literate world, it is possible that visual culture will once again change the nature of our relationship to the past. This does not mean giving up on attempts at truth but somehow recognizing that there may be more than one sort of historical truth, or that the truths conveyed in the visual media may be different from, but not necessarily in conflict with, truths conveyed in words. History does not exist until it is created. And we create it in terms of our underlying values. Our kind of rigorous, "scientific" history is in fact a product of history, our special history that includes a particular relationship to the written word, a rationalized economy, notions of individual rights, and the nation-state. Many cultures have done quite well without this sort of history, which is only to say that there are--as we all know but rarely acknowledge--many ways to represent and relate to the past. Film, with its unique powers of representation now struggles for a place within a cultural tradition that has long privileged the written word. Its challenge is great, for it may be that to acknowledge the authenticity of the visual is to accept a new relationship to the word itself. We would do well to recall Plato's assertion that, when the mode of the music changes, the walls of the city shake. It seems that to our time is given this vital question to ponder: if the mode of representation changes, what then may begin to shake?"

"American historial review"