Belonging

English History and Memory History and memory are both interdependent forms, collating with one another. They present reflections on the past to build our future. Good morning students, today I am here to help you explore how composers use textural forms and features to represent the complexity of “history and memory”. The quotation “History is memory; we have to remember – if we dare, and we should dare – it is not abstraction, it is the enemy of abstraction”, this encapsulates my understanding of the complexity of history and memory. This quotation by Stephen Fry, explores certain ideas such as the different aspects and alterations of our memories of history. History does not tell the full story of events, individuals focus on their perspective, creating history to be a personal memory. Between the two texts, the film, directed by Stephen Frears, The Queen and the Film, Big Fish directed by Tim Burton, my thesis encapsulates both films representations. The Queen reflects concepts of collective memory and historical myth. The film depicts the worldwide grief following the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, and the role of Queen Elizabeth. It incorporates both fictitious elements and documentary footage into the story. The scriptwriter, Peter Morgan, acknowledges that he wrote about the issues from his imagination, although he also researched media coverage of Diana's death, read a number of royal biographies and 'interviewed many insiders, from all the various royal and political camps'. Frears and Morgan collaborated using actual documentary footage, reconstructed documentary footage and an imagined world of the royals all contribute to a reality effect, and the filmic world is carefully constructed. Dianna’s death occurred at a key moment in Britain's political history: the New Labour government had recently been. The director portrays Dianna as the “People’s Princess”, as his own personal view on how the public viewed the princess, with comparison to how the royal family viewed her and acted towards her death. The 'stag scene' is a key scene for viewers to analyze the representation of the title character of The Queen and her own perspective, and is considered by the director himself to provide a pivotal moment in the film." The stag is referred to on several occasions throughout the narrative but reaches a high point when the Queen's Land Rover breaks down as she is crossing a stream on her way to meet the stalkers”. This film reveals different individual key reactions to this event although in the end the viewers can never know how each individual truly reacted, showing the Film the Queen, to be an alteration of history and peoples’ views towards history. Tim Burton presents the film Big Fish as an exploration of the alteration of past and the use of memory to create history. This film is a making of the character, Edward Bloom’s life. The film begins with Senior Edward Bloom reminiscing about his past to children around a campfire, the first indication of a memory. Tim Burton the director, typically uses his own flair and style to add depth and his typical dark negative twist, so that the characters are shown within his films as the fantastical characters, such as Edward's stories involving giants, a ringmaster who turns into a wolf, a witch with an eye that can foretell the future, big fishes caught and then released, and so on. Each character is a portrayal of an embellishment of Edward’s memory They are embellished tales, and Edward relishes every word he says with utmost glee. Everyone seems engaged by his stories except his son, Will, a journalist who wishes his father would tell him the truth just once, although ironically he does not know that everything he is told is the truth although exaggerated. Edward Bloom deliberately distorted the truth as he intended for a more thrilling life, “I was intended for larger things”. The simplicity of this movie is the lovely truthfulness that life is just too dull and through Edward’s character he explores each of his memories and develops them into a beautiful fantastical-tale. One type of memory that Edwards reflects on is the way in which he got to marry his wife. The types of ways he was to woo her is shown to be an over exaggeration such as, a field of daises, sky writing and fighting a man for her love until almost death. Although through each of these acts a viewer can believe he showed smaller acts of love, instead of a field of daisies it was a bunch of daises was bought or he wrote a love note in class or he fought for her love. One can suspect that reality is always more boring than fantasy. At the end of the film the son comes to piece that there was truth within his fathers’ memories although they had been embellished to keep it interesting. Edward Bloom wants to live on with the fantasy, not the reality. The trick is in keeping our realities just as close to the heart, because we are living them. Through Tim Burton’s off the edge style he keeps the flair within the reality vs. memory depiction. Therefore between two texts they explore the reality of the complexity of history and memory and the alterations made through different individual perspectives.