Thought to van Dijck, J., “Mediated memories: personal cultural memory as object of cultural analysis”Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, Vol. 18, No. 2, June 2004, pp. 261–277 & Dean, Gabrielle. "Portrait of the Self" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.5 (2002) Readings:
I was seized by the first sentence that van Dijck, J wrote in the reading “I own a shoebox containing a variety of personal items signaling my personal past.” And the reason is that I have exactly the same “collective memory” or let’s say “social memory” as his experience. Just like what he has done to keep his “mediated memories” which has contributed to this shoebox, I’ve got countless shoeboxes as well as candy boxes to preserve my old photos, letters, birthday cards, tape music and video cassettes inside. I found that not many of my friends have this kind of habits to “record” their growth. I feel like it is a kind of self-construction and individual cultural identity for me, the meaning of this shoebox is more than anything but a cultural process of self-conducting. I still remember that the last time I opened up my shoebox was the graduation of university, I put my graduation pin inside along with the several previous pins from high school, junior high school and even primary school. Jose wrote “our shoeboxes deserve renewed attention as objects of research.” It is true that how many people use the traditional recorders instead of sound recording pen or MP3? I am sort of being proud of myself that I still keep the first cassette tape of my very first recorder from my mom. I enjoyed recording the voice and sounds everywhere in every occasions, such as my primary school’s graduation trip which I had collected the sounds from my classmates and any activities we’ve joined during those days. I was so stupid, wasn’t I? When everyone took out their shoot camera (Digital camera haven’t been produced and widely used at that moment.) to record the trip, I choose to use recorder to preserve the moment whereas Jose said collective identity are creative acts of cultural production which people make sense of their own lives and their connection to the lives of others. I mean, yes, who would know this little girl (me) who always carry the backups of cassettes and had been so fascinated with the sounds, has become a radio host today. I really enjoy reading this article because I am the person who is addicted to keep memories in maybe 100 ways that one could easily imagine one of it. For example, I made explanation for each picture I’ve developed in my photo album before I got my digital camera (but I love my snapshot camera more), and I am a kind of friend that always make “story books” with pictures for each of my friends as presents to describe how we met and how we been through everything. It always be an adorable present because most of people still prefer to have the “actual objects” especially memories. Thus, from the point of view in the social science, Jose raised the example about the ways that parents record their children’s first steps, first day to school or I guess maybe first time to speak out “Papa”, and while they decide to record it or not is actually the cultural frameworks that both consciously and unconsciously inform their intention and decisions to some extend. That is, most of people may choose record the memory when it’s positive, but how about the negatives? We would seldom or never take pictures when we are having conflicts or suffered from terrible experiences. For those happiness memories we are more likely to keep, this behaviors is like a norm that how we “shape” our memories. Therefore, there‘s another issue that Steven Rose suggested, “time and memory shape each other.” I believe that people changing with the time pass by, so does the memory. Philosophers addressed that “articulation of memory into matter,” I can’t deny that sometimes I get confused when I memorize something with my friend, such as, did I been here with you before? Or I was with whom? And it is really interesting that “dreams” sometimes involved with and linked with my memory connecting into the reality as a “matter,” but that is another issue, I won’t discuss it here. The other example he addressed is Anne Frank’s diary- one of my favorite book. He made the notion about how we mediate the past and present in the global present between individuality and collectivity. Anne’s diary is becoming a collective memory that was shaped by her father, directors and documentary makers…etc, and what we saw today is actually the representation of her memory. Therefore, isn’t it means our memory would never be ours under the various cultural collections and personal decision? As Dean in the reading talked about “book culture”, these kind of personal collections also has something to do with culture, people filled in their album with their own preference as identities or authorship. However, I think memory is somehow part of human’s thoughts that we may create, record, store, may be revised a little bit in some situations and finally restore. Isn’t it being ease and comfortable to live with the “ideal” memory? Yeah, the rule is: everything may change and is chaging all the time, so no one would say, I am in that old, antique pictures could always live in the truth of my own memory forever.
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