For the creative component of this assignment I decided to
use three forms of media, photo, text and audio. The black and white stills are
from films that I have seen in the past and which are films I hold in high
regard. The colour photos are pictures
that I took myself as I was travelling around the United States a few years
ago. The connection between the B&W and colour photos is that they both
take place in the same place. For
example, the frame of Jefferson Smith approaching the Lincoln Memorial (Mr
Smith Goes to Washington) is captured at the same place where I took the photo
of the Lincoln Memorial. These places that I had visited didn’t feel entirely
new to me because I had been there before, not in ‘real’ life but rather in film.
I had previous memories of these locations, not because I had been there in the
flesh, but due to “prosthetic memory”.
When travelling the United States I noticed that some of the
most popular tourist sites were those that were frequently depicted in film and
television. Many of the visitors to these sites have a connection to them
because of the experience they had ‘being there’ whilst watching a film. I also
felt a connection to these places because of the experiences I had during a
film. I felt as though I had visited the Bellagio Fountain, the Statue of
Liberty and the Las Vegas Strip, but I had never once stepped foot there. I had
memories of these places because of the experience I had in cinema. Alison
Landsberg names this form of memory experience “prosthetic memory”. In relation
to cinema, Landsberg describes it as such: “The birth of cinema made it
increasingly possible to experience in a bodily way something that one was not
actually living through” (28). In essence, prosthetic memories are memories
that have been acquired from experiencing something through mass culture that
one has not previously experienced in the flesh. In my case, I had prosthetic
memories of these five places because of the experiences I had watching film.
I decided to construct my memory the way that I did because
my experiences of visiting those places in the United States are intertwined
with my experiences of watching those five films. To clarify, all my thoughts
and attention weren't drawn to those films, but they did help form an overall
experience during my visits. My visits would
have been much different if I hadn't watched the films previously, because I wouldn't have had the prosthetic memories derived from the films. The text I
put into the creative component allowed me to share a few of the thoughts that
I had as I arrived in these locations. These locations took on extra
significance because of the prosthetic memories I took with me. The text describes the correlation between
the prosthetic memory and lived experience.
The reason I chose to add audio to the creative component of
this assignment is due to my own belief in the emotive power of music. When I
viewed these five films the two things that stuck with me were the images and
the music, and I felt it difficult to separate the two. The music added to the emotional experience I
had with the film, and when I visited those sites throughout the United States,
the music that accompanied those cinematic images also crept into my mind.
Landsberg argues that “film addresses people intellectually as well as
sensuously, through their bodies” (29), and I would contend that music is one
of the major factors in a film that helps us connect with a film in a sensuous
way. It is this emotional connection with a film that helps form prosthetic
memory, as it becomes more than just an experience seen, but rather an
experience felt.
Most of the Landsberg reading deals with prosthetic memories
being memories of events in the past which are depicted in film, but I believe
that they can also be memories of locations and places. The five films above
gave me prosthetic memories of a place in a certain time, and while the events
within them were fictitious (to a degree) the place itself was real and
tangible. When visiting the Bellagio fountain, I could feel a connection that someone
who hasn't watched Ocean’s 11 couldn't feel.
It was a memory of a place that I had never visited, given to me by the
emotive experience of watching a film. And just by watching the people
re-enacting the scene, I could see I wasn't the only one.
