Tuesday, September 7, 2010

CRITICAL COMMENTARY

In discussing individual versus collective memory, Jose van Dijck draws attention to Halbwachs' notion of the overlapping spheres of "individual and larger communities, such as family, community and nation" (266). I have taken this as my starting point for exploring what sort of memory trail emerged when I recalled helping my son with his recent school project. Van Dijck discusses Halbwachs' concept of connectivity: that we "experience events in relation to others, whether or not these communal events affect us personally" (267). My son's history project around the Easter Rising 1916 in Ireland set off a cascade of memories for me, not necessarily my own, and I set out to construct a piece of work that could illuminate these memories.

The decision to write a short drama was dictated by the struggle to find a medium which enabled the memories of several different people to be represented. The only memory that is my own personal experience is that of helping my son with his school project. The other memories are family memories (scene 2 which actually happened to my elder sister and a neighboring boy from down the road); community memories (scene 3 contains a common Catholic ritual from earlier times - praying the rosary at home - which my family never did); and a form of national memory (the massacre at Croke Park in 1920).

Halbwachs draws attention to "auditory expressions ... which often form a basis of recall" (van Dijck, 267). As I thought about my son's school project, the folksong Come Out Ye Black and Tans came back into my head very clearly. I first heard this song in London as an adult, but it became a vector to enter the melange of thoughts I had around the Easter Rising and focus them for this exercise. The Black and Tans are lodged deep in the memory of many Irish and their descendants in the colonies, recalled with hatred, and it seemed to me that this strength of emotion presented a strong enough focus to tie all the memories together in terms of using film as a medium, where a strong emotional motivation for the story and visuals is imperative.

The visualization process (and the process of considering the colour/texture palette) for the film influenced many decisions in shaping the recall of the memories, for example in effecting a late change in scene 3 to what the little girl is staring at. She was looking at a statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. This has become a picture of the crown of thorns with stigmata. Equally the discipline of conveying pictures in words and shaping dialogue exerted a strong influence, especially in the choice of characters. The aim, as with most film, was to keep the dialogue to a minimum and this resulted in, for instance, the decision to create the Irish grandfather as someone who was actually at the massacre (in order to convey the emotion without having to talk about it).

My decision to focus on the massacre resulted in a complete change in scene 1 to what is on the front page of my son's school project. His project covers the surrender of the rebels in 1916. Once I made the decision to go with the Black and Tans, I had to fictionalize the project so that it bore some relation to what came in scene 4, in order to bring a sense of coherence to the narrative. The representation of the massacre itself is based on the representation of this event in the film Michael Collins. My memory of this film gave me the images of the football game, the crowd and the tanks breaking through the gates. Into this I was able to weave the character of the small boy in order to make this national memory personal.

There is for me, absurdly, a feeling of the personal in my recall of the massacre at Croke Park. As Kuhn notes "remembering appears to demand no necessary witness" (128). I am struck by the intensity of my shared disdain for the Black and Tans, which has no basis in reality but is an emotion carried almost at one remove, as my family did not discuss these things, though I was vaguely aware that my mother hated a man who lived down the road because he had been in the Black and Tans.

The use of elements of representation from the film Michael Collins is interesting also. Both my son and I watched this film recently for the first time as part of his school studies. I can say that the representations in that film have "become part of (our) personal archive of experience", acknowledging the validity of Alison Landsberg's definition of prosthetic memory.

This exercise has enabled me to explore individual and collective memories, and more specifically, various types of collective memories: family, communal and national. It has required the fictionalization of much detail and the creation of fictional characters, but these have been metaphors which have enabled my interpretation of the essence of the actual memories to be conveyed.


Kuhn, Annette. "Phantasmagoria of Memory." Family Secrets: Acts of Memory and Imagination. 2nd ed. London: Verso, 2002. 125-46.

Landsberg, Alison. "Prosthetic Memory." Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. 25-48.

van Dijck, Jose. "Mediated Memories: Personal Cultural Memory as Object of Cultural Analysis." Continuum, 18.2 (2004): 261-77.

Thursday, September 2, 2010

FIVE SCENES FROM A SHORT FILM

SCENE 1 - AUCKLAND - DAY - 2010

Fade up.

A blur of black and grey and white.

The sound of someone tapping on a computer keyboard.

Slow pull back to reveal pixelated shapes. Pull back further and the pixelations resolve into a NEWSPAPER PHOTOGRAPH.

In the photo a MAN lies face-down in a cobbled street. Clearly dead, with a dark pool of what can only be BLOOD surrounding his head. Above him stand two soldiers, rifles held casually, both smoking, in uniform of dark jacket and light-coloured breeches. Beyond them a desolate scene of war, buildings ruined, crumbled wrecks. It appears to be a European city in World War 1.

Underneath a CAPTION: Two Black and Tans stand guard over a fallen rebel.

Pull wide to reveal the picture is one of several on a large sheet of laminated paper. The sheet is an amateur fascimile of a broadsheet newspaper. There's a large heading in a classical font: The Irish Times. It's dated Sunday 30th April, 1920.

Wider still, revealing the paper is lying on a kitchen table. A 10-year-old boy is sitting at the table, working on a laptop.

The boy's mother comes into the room.

MOTHER: How's your project going? Let's see...

She comes to the table and stands looking down at the newspaper, at the man lying in the pool of blood.

Close on her face as she remembers...

DISSOLVE TO:



SCENE 2 - SMALL TOWN NEW ZEALAND - DAY - 1972

BLOOD drips on concrete.

The sound of heavy breathing, gasping, swearing.

BOY'S VOICE (OOV): Shit... shit... oooh shit...

DISSOLVE TO:

The old-fashioned HALLWAY of a working-class house in small-town New Zealand. It's wide with a tatty runner stretching full-length towards a closed FRONT DOOR. The top-half of the door is a large STAINED GLASS pane. The sun shines through the patterned glass.

Children can be heard shouting and arguing.

Suddenly they erupt from one of the side rooms.

A 12-year-old BOY slips on the runner as he heads towards the front door, closely followed by a 9-year-old GIRL.

GIRL: Michael! Michael! You come back here!

The boy rights himself and hurtles down the hallway to the front door, yanking it open and coming to a stop outside on the verandah.

The girl pulls up at the front door as he turns and stands laughing at her.

GIRL: I told you not to go into my room.

BOY: You can't stop me.

GIRL: Yes I can.

And as she SLAMS the door in his face, too late she sees him put up his OUTSTRETCHED ARM to stop it.

GLASS SHARDS fly in all directions.

Close on the girl's face in shock.

GIRL: Michael?

She yanks the shattered door open.

Outside the boy has stumbled down the front steps onto the concrete path.

Blood drips from a deep gash in his arm onto the concrete.

The boy is heaving and gasping.

BOY: Shit... oooh shit...

The girl stands staring. Close on her face as she remembers...

DISSOLVE TO:



SCENE 3 - SMALL TOWN NEW ZEALAND - EVENING - 1969

Three years earlier.

Close on a 6-year-old girl - a younger version of the girl we saw earlier - staring up wide-eyed at a PICTURE.

Close on the picture - a heart wrapped in a crown of thorns with a cross on top, surrounded by hands and feet with stigmata - all, the heart and the hands and feet, dripping copious amounts of BLOOD.

The sound of the rosary being said by a family. The FATHER is leading. He has an Irish accent.

FATHER: The Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary...

FAMILY: And she conceived of the Holy Ghost.

The family - father, mother, the girl and her 9-year-old brother - are kneeling on the carpeted lounge floor, facing a statue of Mary, the Mother of God.

All have rosaries and count off the beads as they pray, all heads bowed except for the distracted girl who continues to stare at the picture.

In a comfy chair nearby sits an OLD MAN, who stares into space, not praying just contemplating.

FAMILY: Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus...

The father notices the girl out of the corner of his eye and, without missing a beat, gives her a swift cuff around the head. She drops her head instantly.

FAMILY (INCLUDING GIRL): Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death, Amen.

FATHER: Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost...

FAMILY: As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end, Amen.

They all cross themselves as they get up off their knees.

FATHER: (TO GIRL) You learn to concentrate or you'll be doing a penance, young lady.

MOTHER: Leave her be - she's too young.

FATHER: Grandad was hauling coal when he was her age, weren't you Da?

DA: (IRISH) I wouldna wish that on my worst enemy.

FATHER: On the barricades at that age, weren't you Da?

The boy rolls his eyes. He's heard it all before, Grandad's war stories.

BOY: The black and tans, Croke Park. Yeah, we know -

FATHER: Don't you be cheeky lad.

The old man's rheumy eyes fix on the boy.

DA: You know nothing till you've faced down the barrel of a gun, boy.

Close on the old man's face as he remembers...

DISSOLVE TO:



SCENE 4 - CROKE PARK, DUBLIN - DAY - 1920

A FOOTBALL flies up in the air, spattered with mud.

The noise of a CROWD roaring.

A football match is underway on a muddy field - it's the 1920s. There's a rickety wooden stand housing part of a crowd, the rest push around the sides of the field - men and women, boys and girls - everyone cheering like mad. It's a relief to be having some joy in the grimness of their lives.

The ball is booted back down the field. The men tear after it.

The match continues as a small BOY stops, mid-cheer. He's puzzled, hearing something.

He turns to look towards the big, wooden GATES into the football ground, as -

With a CRASH the gates splinter.

A tank comes roaring through followed by another and another, as a HUSH falls over the crowd.

The game straggles to a halt, the men standing mid-field trying to understand what they're looking at.

The TANKS rip across the field, mud flying. They turn on an invisible command, screeching to a halt facing the crowd.

Silence.

A crow caws as it lifts from a nearby tree.

And the stillness is shattered as -

The tanks open fire on the crowd.

All hell breaks loose. The people go in all directions. One, two, three fall as the MACHINE-GUNS on the turrets of the tanks find their targets.

The boy stands still, staring. He's being knocked by people running past, an island of stillness in a sea of chaos. He stands his ground, staring at the nearest tank. Staring as the tank starts to turn, bullets spraying, towards him.

As the row of bullets pock the ground in a line heading straight for him, at the last minute -

A MAN grabs him bodily, throws him out of the way.

The man is hit, goes down. The boy lies a short distance away, the feet of others swerving around him.

He looks at the man, who lies eyes open, lifeless, BLOOD dripping slowly from his mouth.

The boy stares as -

DISSOLVE TO:



SCENE 5 - MONTAGE

The old man's face as he remembers.

The sound of people screaming, dying as the machine-guns rattle, merges slowly to the Wolfe Tones singing: Come Out Ye Black and Tans as -

The old man's face dissolves to a series of quick cuts:

The face of the man dead on Croke Park -

Close on the blood dripping from his mouth -

Close on the bleeding heart wrapped in the crown of thorns -

Close on the little girl staring up at the bleeding heart -

Wide on the crowd at Croke Park running in terror, falling shot -

A football flies up into the air spattering mud -

Close on the little boy's face as he turns towards the gates -

The gates splinter -

Glass shards fly in all directions from the shattering glass door -

Close on the 9-year-old girl's face in shock -

The 12-year-old boy stumbles down the steps onto the concrete path -

Close on the blood dripping from his arm -

Back to the girl in a wider shot, staring in shock -

Dissolve to:

The mother in the present day, stares down at the picture in the newspaper -

Close on the picture -

Close on the mother's face, as she comes out of her memory -

The mother gives her boy an affectionate rub on the head.

MOTHER: I'm proud of you, you know.

She turns to leave the room.

The boy watches her go. He shrugs his shoulders - no idea what that was about. Returns to his typing.


END