On the
more and less meaningful, complex, and valuable ways in which we remember wars.
Michael
Kammen, whose Mystic
Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture (1991) changed my life when I read it
in college and remains one of the best American Studies books I’ve ever read (and
is just one of many
great books he’s written), has persuasively argued that we need at least
two distinct concepts for public memory: remembrance, which would describe
genuine attempts to remember the past in all its complexity; and commemoration,
which would categorize those efforts that are more simplifying and
mythologizing, and usually more tied to present concerns than to the past itself.
Kammen goes into much more detail and nuance than that, as would I, but ultimately
I do think there’s significant value to separating out such thoroughly distinct
kinds of public (and at least potentially, for that matter, private) memory and
history.
There are many applications for that two-part
concept, but in following up yesterday’s post on the Tuskegee Airmen, and in
thinking about Memorial Day in general, it seems to me that our memories of war
are particularly ripe for this kind of analysis. I’m thinking especially about
cultural memories, stories and representations of war in popular culture—like Lucas’s
Red Tails, and like so, so many other
war films, TV shows, novels, and more. I would argue that many, if not the vast
majority, of those cultural representations are commemorative (which doesn’t
have to mean celebratory); that whether the cultural sources seek to celebrate
wartime heroism (as does Lucas’ film) to attack the brutalities and horrors of
war (as does for example Stanley
Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket), or to
stake out any position in between, they almost always create simplified and
even mythologized depictions of war in service of their agendas and goals. They
might incidentally introduce complexities and even contradictions (an ironic
critique of American racism within the celebratory Red Tails; a positive depiction of soldierly comraderie in the
cynical world of Jacket), but to my
mind their overall construction of war is far closer to commemoration than to
remembrance.
We do have models in our popular
culture for remembering rather than commemorating war, though. One such model
is when a talented artist builds on but deepens and amplifies his or her
personal experiences of war and creates a complex and powerful text as a result—Kurt
Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five is
one such text, as are the best novels by Tim
O’Brien. Just as important, however, are those models that don’t depend on
personal experience (at least not of the artist him or herself), and for that I
would highlight two complementary films from one of my recent Memory Day
nominees: Clint Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima. If we try
to consider what a battle like Iwo Jima, or a war like World War II, would look
like and mean for those fighting it on both sides, it seems to me that we’re a
long way toward remembering war in all its complexities. And it doesn’t hurt
that Flags itself focuses directly on
the most destructive effects of an emphasis on commemoration, in that case in the post-war lives of the
Iwo Jima flag raisers.
Commemoration has its value, as Kammen
certainly acknowledges. But you know me well enough to know that I greatly
prefer remembrance—even more so when it comes to a complex, dark, and crucial
historical theme like war. More next week,
Ben
PS. What do you think? Any texts that
are particularly good at remembering rather than commemoration war?
6/2 Memory
Day nominee: Betty
Freeman, whose philanthropic
support of contemporary
composers and musicians
profoundly influenced
world music, and who was a talented
photographer in her own right.
6/3 Memory Day nominees: A tie between two pioneering and controversial 20th century artists, Josephine
Baker and Allen
Ginsberg.
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