Time traveling.
Media has the ability to transport me. Perhaps that is why I enjoy studying it. There is something about encountering a text and about the way that each subsequent encounter pulls me back to the past at the same time roots me in the present.
Over the last couple weeks, Marcus and I have been watching Six Feet Under. He had never seen it before. I hadn't watched the show in order since it was on HBO and was the destination of my Sunday (and later Monday) evenings. When I watch the show, I flash back to those nights at my parents'. We used to eat dinner in the living room and watch the show. I travel back to these moments when I watch the show. That said, media is also most definitely an experience of the present. I am amazed by the jokes and the references that I get now that I must have missed years ago. Watching the show with Marcus is also completely different. We pick up on different things. It is so strange.
People often tell me that that they cannot stand to watch movies more than once or reruns of tv shows or reread books. I love doing these things. The texts are never the same, and though they remind me of the past, they are a reminder of the horizon of my present. I have been thinking so much about repetition(s) and reviewing(s) lately. James Snead wrote an essay called "Repetition as a Figure of Black Culture," and in it, he argues that "whenever we encounter repetition in cultural forms, we are indeed not viewing ‘the same thing’ but its transformation" (59)*. I think this is true not only with repetition within media but also with repeated viewings of that media. When I rewatch a film or reread a book, I am not encountering the same thing; instead, I encounter a transformation of that text...a transformation that allows me to interrogate both my past and my present.
I am curious. What are some movies, pieces of music, books, art, whatever type of media that have the ability transport you? Do they also make you hyperaware of the present, too?
*Snead, James A. "Repetition as a Figure of Black Culture." Black Literature and Literary Theory. Ed. Henry Louis Gates.
New York: Routledge, 1984. 59-75.
Over the last couple weeks, Marcus and I have been watching Six Feet Under. He had never seen it before. I hadn't watched the show in order since it was on HBO and was the destination of my Sunday (and later Monday) evenings. When I watch the show, I flash back to those nights at my parents'. We used to eat dinner in the living room and watch the show. I travel back to these moments when I watch the show. That said, media is also most definitely an experience of the present. I am amazed by the jokes and the references that I get now that I must have missed years ago. Watching the show with Marcus is also completely different. We pick up on different things. It is so strange.
People often tell me that that they cannot stand to watch movies more than once or reruns of tv shows or reread books. I love doing these things. The texts are never the same, and though they remind me of the past, they are a reminder of the horizon of my present. I have been thinking so much about repetition(s) and reviewing(s) lately. James Snead wrote an essay called "Repetition as a Figure of Black Culture," and in it, he argues that "whenever we encounter repetition in cultural forms, we are indeed not viewing ‘the same thing’ but its transformation" (59)*. I think this is true not only with repetition within media but also with repeated viewings of that media. When I rewatch a film or reread a book, I am not encountering the same thing; instead, I encounter a transformation of that text...a transformation that allows me to interrogate both my past and my present.
I am curious. What are some movies, pieces of music, books, art, whatever type of media that have the ability transport you? Do they also make you hyperaware of the present, too?
*Snead, James A. "Repetition as a Figure of Black Culture." Black Literature and Literary Theory. Ed. Henry Louis Gates.
New York: Routledge, 1984. 59-75.