From Box office to memory: Telling stories is not an innocent act

Ayla Kanbur

doi:10.5195/cinej.2020.182

Abstract

Throughout human history to narrate have had crucial function to construct a society with meanings culturally binding its members and to sustain them for generations in society. Epic stories, proverbs, historical tales are such narratives which, in particular, form patterns for the “shared conceptual framework” of members of a culture. Thus, narratives, in a broadest sense circulate within a society through individual memories of its members and serve to communicate and create meanings by operating like language.Films Bread and Roses by Ken Loach (2000) and Maid in Manhattan (2002) by Wayne Wange intersect with their narrative tools indicating how individual and cultural memory overlap globally within international film industry.

Highlights

Is collective memory able to record? To talk about collective memory seems to be impossible without referring or imagining an individual or a human being
Individuals are the bearer of actual events on their memory but collective memory is not their total, rather it circulates and distributes the meanings and values for the individuals to make sense of the events they live
What about watching a film? Films cannot talk to themselves, they are made to speak. It means that “personal” belief and “values” of film makers and the audience communicate along with the films, which contribute to the maintenance of collective memory through their own ideology and the organized version of “personal memory”

Summary

Introduction

Is collective memory able to record? To talk about collective memory seems to be impossible without referring or imagining an individual or a human being. This paper will suggest that film industry plays a crucial role on the distribution of social and cultural values –serving to maintain collective memory- in the form of narrative.

Results

Conclusion