Tarihi Tüketmek

by Jerome de Groot

Uzun yıllar tarih; çivi yazılı tabletlerde, el yazmalarında, mezar taşlarında veya sikkelerde var oldu. Şimdilerde müzeler, sosyal mecralar, bilgisayar oyunları ve TV dizileri tarihsel imge ve nesnelerde dolu.

Nasıl oldu da bütün bir geçmişin hikâyesi olan tarih; bu denli yaygın, harcanabilir ve erişilebilir hâle büründü? Jerome de Groot, popüler çağda tarihin tüketim unsuru olarak seyrini bütün detaylarıyla inceliyor.

Tarihi Tüketmek, geleneksel tarih yazımından farklı biçimde kaleme alınmış bir tarih anlatısı. Yazar, tarihi anlamlandırmaya çalışırken teknolojik gelişmeleri, çağdaş kültür varlıklarını ve toplum davranışlarını dikkate alıyor. Onun çalışması, gelecekteki tarih çalışmalarına emsal olacak türden.

Bu kitabı bitirdikten sonra aklınızdaki sorulara yanıt bulamayabilirsiniz. Fakat mutlaka konu üzerine düşünecek, daha çok merak edecek ve okumaya devam etmeyi isteyeceksiniz.

"Bugün Birleşik Krallık'ta tarih ve popüler kültür arasındaki ilişkiyi ciddi bir şekilde ele alan, bunu ilgi çekici, düşünceli ve erişilebilir bir şekilde yapan tek kitap..."

Catherine Fletcher, Sheffield Üniversitesi, Birleşik Krallık

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Museums, Grad School

472 pages, Paperback

First published October 16, 2008

Reviews

[Sally Sugarman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This an excellent book and part of my ongoing fascination with history in all of its ramifications. At some points, I thought that it should be called cannibalizing history, but de Groot is really not making that point, although at one point he talks about the commodification of history. He covers a great deal, but in his conclusion discusses all the areas that he does not discuss. One he doesn’t mention is the historical mystery. He begins with a discussion of history as identified with the personality of the celebrity historian like Simon Schama who had his own television program. De Groot’s orientation is British and most of the examples he provides come from Great Britain although he does make mention of some American examples as well as some from other countries. Essentially, however, it is the British experience that he chronicles. Having visited some of the places to which he refers, having watched British television and movies, and visited their museums, I didn’t have any problems extrapolating from his examples. I have always said that the Brits never throw anything away, they just build a museum around it. Tourism and the heritage business is an area which de Groot examines extensively. What is this heritage that shapes people’s views of the present. De Groot talks a great deal about places that are presented as part of history. He also talks about reenactments and some of the challenges they present in terms of who is the enemy. The focus becomes on the specific battle and not the political issues that were involved in the wars. Reenactments get tricky when you are depicting the conflicts with the Nazis. He discussed reality shows that put contemporary people into historical situations and settings, particularly living in old houses for a particular period of time. There were a good number of those programs in the United States as well. In Britain they had volunteers living in trenches to recreate the experience of World War I He talks about antique road shows and the fetishization of objects. He also talks about the interest in genealogy, local history and digital archives. He discusses histories written specifically for children. There is a series called Horrible Histories, which is history with all the horrible bits left in to engage the children. Memoirs, biographies, autobiographies are also popular and book clubs that focus on reading history, both fiction and non-fiction. He makes a nice contrast between the reconstruction of the Globe and next to it the Tate Modern which is a renovated power station. History is recreated in the Globe while it is adapted in the Tate. Having visited both of those sites, I thought about how the Globe plays with the lights on at night to reconstruct the experience of watching plays during the daytime which is what they did in Elizabethan England. Issues of authenticity certainly arise in all of these situation. How much is conservative nostalgia for an imagined past that was not as complicated as our own? Renaissance fairs are also a part of this. He has a fine discussion of video and computer games, contrast first person shooters with strategy games and how they recreate history. In some the outcome is predetermined, but in others there are a range of possibilities that make replaying possible. He talks extensively about television, British and American, fiction and non-fiction. Documentaries are popular, but they are reconstructions by the very fact of what you put together and how you do it. He cites Ken Burns’ Civil War as an example. Then, of course, there is Roots. He has more British examples of course. He makes an interesting point about time travel television programs like the Time Warp Trio and Quantum Leap where one goes back in time to be sure history turns out as it should and Dr. Who where the doctor goes back in time not in terms of the larger history but of a specific individual problem. His discussion of Life on Mars, however, showed how these time travel programs could be critiques of contemporary life. It is hard to think of periods through which you lived like the 70s as historical, but I guess they are. He spends a great deal of time on the heritage costume drama of Masterpiece Theatre which tells stories based on novels of the 18th and 19th centuries, contrasting those of the Georgian and the Victorian periods. He does a rather devastating job on the Jane Austen adaptations. (I watched that Colin Firth bathing episode from Pride and Prejudice and am not quite sure why it was considered so sexy). Anyway, those are the county houses, lovely costumes, talented actors, witty dialogue which he sees as essentially conservative. Those adapted from the 18th century novels are bawdier. His assessment of HBO’s Rome and Deadwood are more favorable because they deglamorize the past. However, he does point out that from John Ford onward and up to Clint Eastwood, there were many American movies that showed a grittier American West. In discussing historical films, he classifies Merchant and Ivory in the BBC Masterpiece class except they do raise more relevant social issues. He also talks about historical novels, but not that very good one, Possession that was made into a movie juxtaposing the past and the present. To his credit, de Groot does a fine job in discussing graphic novels such as MAUS and From Hell and Frank Miller’s work. The way he talked about the translation from book to film of 300 would be a fine example for my students. His discussion of historical dramas like Top Girls and Arcadia and Copenhagen was insightful, seeing them as ways of providing a critical and postmodern perspective. He concludes with a discussion of museums and the impact of financial changes and that they have become commercial enterprises in many ways, focused on their customers. In some ways, he sees this and their focus on members and gift shops somewhat democratizing. One can take home a reminder of history from your visit. He also sees museums in the forefront of using technology for edutainment purposes, making their collections and exhibits available to a wider audience and doing the same for their merchandise. With all of these various topics, de Groot leads one to think about the complicated relationship of contemporary life to the past. Has any other time been as fascinated with the past as this one is and why? He does make the point that history no longer belongs only the historians. He does have fun earlier in the book as to how the professional historian is perceived using examples from Indiana Jones and the Da Vinci Code. This was an informative and thought provoking book

[Bernhard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ich habe noch nie so lange an einem Buch gesessen und so viele Versuche gebraucht, es zu lesen.
Der Autor hat mich nämlich nicht abgeholt, sondern mich stattdessen in eine Myriade von Themen geworfen, über die ich mir durchaus Gedanken gemacht habe, aber dennoch war der Zugriff schwer.

Warum? Das liegt zum einen daran, dass der Autor eine gewisse Vorbildung erwartet, die man gegenüber der britischen, und teils amerikanischen, Kulturszene haben sollte. Hat man diese nicht, muss man sich einfinden.

Glücklicherweise gab es genug Überschneidungen, dass ich dahingehend am Ball bleiben konnte. Zum anderen ist das Werk zum größten Teil deskriptiv und insofern ist diese Deskription, wie Geschichte in der Moderne konsumiert wird, wenig interessant für Personen, die im digitalen Zeitalter aufgewachsen bzw. mit ihm gewachsen sind, denn das meiste ist aus Ansehung bekannt.
Die Deskriptionen sind trotzdem kurz genug, um einen guten Einstieg zu gewähren, aber zu kurz, um eine wirkliche Beschäftigung zu ermöglichen.

Das ist letztlich schade, denn de Groot hat zu der ein oder anderen Thematik (v.a. bezüglich Dokumentationen und historischen Romanen, die ein wenig sein Schwerpunkt sind), interessante Punkte, die einer tieferen Debatte harren. In vielen Punkten fasst seine Übersicht aber zu kurz und lockt nicht. Es bleibt also ein erster Einstieg in die vielen Arten, wie wir Geschichte konsumieren und auch verhandeln, konstruieren, hinterfragen, erleben etc.

Insofern bleibe ich mit einer geteilten Meinung zurück, bereue aber nicht, mich durchgekämpft zu haben.

[Lois · Rating 4 out of 5]

“History is a set of stories and a range of discursive practices that have been borrowed liberally by popular culture”

“The past is literally commodity”

[Rosie · Rating 4 out of 5]

An expansive work on multiple forms of popular culture and the role they play in forming ‘historicals’. De Groot analyzes extensive examples of British popular culture and the blurring of authority and prominence of professionalized historians with ‘amateur’ or ‘public’ historians. A great overview of popular culture mediums and their influence on historical production.

[David Wagner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good start for public history, with a wealth of examples and many, many comments simply stating "this exists".
This exploration is of course necessarily shallow (and some parts on the games were really simplifying things a bit too much), but when the goal is "all popular history must be described" than well, hard to go deeper.

[Georgina Koutrouditsou · Rating 4 out of 5]

Πολύ ενδιαφέρουσα ανάλυση για το πώς η Ιστορία βρίσκεται συνεχώς στη ζωή μας είτε μέσα από λογοτεχνικά βιβλία,είτε μέσα από ταινίες,ντοκιμαντέρ κτλ.
Ιδιαίτερα σημαντικό κομμάτι της μελέτης για τα νέα τεχνολογικά μέσα και το ρόλο του διαδικτύου στη μελέτη και προβολή ιστορικών γεγονότων,ντοκουμέντων(ανοιχτά αρχεία,ψηφιοποίηση κτλ.)Μακάρι τέτοια έργα να μεταφραστούν και στην χώρα μας..γιατί έξω έχει κυκλοφορήσει ήδη το 2008.

[Becky Graham · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting look at the commodification and consumption of history by the general public - it raises an interesting question: is this resurgence of interest in history by the "popular culture" educating the public, or only serving to lower the bar on "serious history" (i.e. academia)?

[Paige]

review: http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/revi...

[Esther · Rating 2 out of 5]

Took me a long - a very long - time :/

[Kayli · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was the main text for my Public History course and I think its brilliant. De Groot outlines the various ways that the public consumes history including television shows, film, theatre, video games, books, museums etc. He fully discusses each mode in individual chapters and uses prime examples from around the globe. His writing is engaging and he also manages to link each subject to one another through his language. Something else that is fantastic is that he layout various details per subject such as gender roles within video games, the identity of the history, the context of ratings and much more. The chapters I found most engaging and intriguing were on history through television culture and video games (both computer and handheld were discussed). I think that this book, both as a leisure text and a text book, is great for reading the individual chapters that you are interested in. He offers the same passion, intense research and engagement per chapter that the book delivers as a whole.