Provocative excerpts from primary and secondary sources (some with audio glosses). Read the rationale behind these sound bites for more information.
491-500 of 734 Sound Bites. [show all]
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491) History . . . hath made us acquainted with our dead Ancestors; and, out of the depth and darknesse of the earth, delivered us their memory and fame." (Sir Walter Raleigh, qtd. in Hamerow 213) [SoundBite #491]
492) The challenge of film to history, of the visual culture to the written culture, may be like the challenge of written history to the oral tradition, of Herodotus and Thucydides to the tellers of historical tales. Before Herodotus there was myth, which was a perfectly adequate way of dealing with the past of a tribe, city, or people. (Robert Rosenstone 43) [SoundBite #164]
493) But popular feature films and arcane academic histories do not rank equally in the production of our consciousness of the past. The evocative power of the lavish, expensively produced visual imagery available to the historical filmmaker inevitably outweighs the less immediately impressive medium employed by the historical scholar. (Mike Chopra-Gant 86) [SoundBite #1253]
494) In describing the concept of the dominant fiction, Ranciere emphasizes the importance of narrative and pictorial forms, particularly films, in fostering the sense of national identity, arguing that they create an "image of society immediately readable by all classes." (Robert Burgoyne, Film 2) [SoundBite #494]
495) Even if history is sanitized in order to make people feel good, there is no evidence that feel-good history promotes ethnic self-esteem and equips students to grapple with their lives. (Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. 93) [SoundBite #495]
496) If Hollywood threw reality at us, people would go catatonic. We need a foil to the daily news, that throttles us with pain and despair, so Hollywood gets their crack team of experts together, and they let the guy get the girl, and they allow the meteor to be detonated, and everything is happy, and we can rest. (James Clewley, Lehigh University) [SoundBite #496]
497) Tout comprendre, tout pardonner. But it does not follow that the historian who understands all forgives all. It is the historian's business to "understand"; it is not the historian's business either to condemn or forgive. He is not God. (Henry Steele Commager 68) [SoundBite #184]
498) If we could keep the two persons separate -- Ingrid Bergman as Joan of Arc vs. the enigmatic and probably schizophrenic Maid of Orleans -- then cinematic distinction would not be problematic. When a movie image, with all the conventions that falsify history, becomes our primary representation of a person–as has happened again and again and again–then we face a troubling situation. (Stephen Jay Gould, qtd. in Carnes 31) [SoundBite #498]
499) The past, I tell you, is a bucket of ashes. (Carl Sandburg, "Cornhuskers") [SoundBite #499]
500) This class made me realize that a historical event can be fleshed out on film in innumerable ways, and the way filmmakers portray historical events reveals their motives, be they social agendas or personal style, in telling the story the way that they do. (Tanya Saleh, Lehigh University) [SoundBite #2534]
