Provocative excerpts from primary and secondary sources (some with audio glosses). Read the rationale behind these sound bites for more information.

211-220 of 734 Sound Bites. [show all]

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211) But the most fundamental political lesson of virtually all American films regardless of subject is that of the most enduring of all movie conventions, the happy ending: films show that, in the end, things will be all right, love will find a way, the good guys will win. Problems may be encountered -- indeed for dramatic purposes must be encountered -- but the resolution is nearly always a happy one. That the world is essentially fair and just is a deeply powerful political lesson. (Phillip L. Gianos 4) [SoundBite #211]

212) [C]ontention over the past is as old as written history itself . . . and . . . continuously reexamining the past . . . is the greatest service historians can render in a democracy. (Gary Nash et. al. 8) [SoundBite #212]

213) A mere collector of supposed facts is as useful as a collector of matchboxes. (Lucien Febvre, qtd. by Marwick 327) [SoundBite #213]

214) History in the post-modern moment becomes histories and questions. It asks: Whose history gets told? In whose name? For what purpose? Post-modernism is about histories not told, retold, untold. History as it never was. Histories forgotten, hidden, invisible, considered unimportant, changed, eradicated. It's about the refusal to see history as linear, as leading straight up to today in some recognizable pattern -- all set for us to make sense of. It's about chance. It's about power. It's about information. (Brenda Marshall 4) [SoundBite #214]

215) In many instances films dealing with historical events are the bearers of the mark of inaccuracy; these films represent shadowy images of obscured history, all for the sake of the marketplace. Time and again accuracy is sacrificed to the gods of popular culture -- entertainment and escape. On their own these elements are beneficial to society, but they become dangerous when they replace truth and meaning. As Tomas Gutiérrez Alea remarks, “popular ought to respond not only to immediate interests [. . .] but also to the basic needs and the final objective: transforming reality and bettering humankind” (The Viewer’s Dialectic 115). This criterion is important for all films, but it especially applies to the duty that has been entrusted to filmmakers who deal in the historical realm. To encompass a historical moment in film involves a dialogue between fact, event, and creativity. While their creative abilities may influence and alter the historical moment to make it palatable to a larger audience, the filmmakers also have the obligation to instruct humanity. (Edward Tabor, Lehigh University) [SoundBite #3664]

216) Power and ideology attempts to fix the meaning of images and languages. (Stuart Hall) [SoundBite #216]

217) The past has gone and history is what historians make of it when they go to work. History is the labour of historians. (Keith Jenkins, Re-Thinking 6) [SoundBite #217]

218) At the beginning of this century, "history is the biography of great men" [Carlyle] was still a reputable dictum. (Edward Hallett Carr 39) [SoundBite #218]

219) Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly found, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living. (Karl Marx, qtd. in Zinn 54-55) [SoundBite #219]

220) By looking back at history, we learn what has failed and what has succeeded, which allows us to use that knowledge even though we ourselves may not have experienced it. We do not need to re-experience the pain and horror of the Holocaust in order to understand that a ruler like Hitler can never again be allowed to come into power. We do not need to have been there for the Civil War to appreciate the value of freedom. If one truly soaks in history and allows it to become a part of one's self, much as an actual experience would be, then history has served its purpose. (Kathryn Burke, Lehigh University) [SoundBite #1240]