One of the classes I'm taking this semester is RTF 386C "Media/History/Collective Memory" which deals, in part, with the ways that historical events are memorialized through media texts. For the term paper, I'm planning to write about the Oklahoma City National Memorial as a mediated and discursive practice. Apart from the fact I was a freshman at OU when the bombing occurred, I find it interesting how it uses a bombing by ultra-nationalist right-wingers as a launchpad for ultra-nationalist right-wing propaganda. Come on people, didn't they teach you the concept of irony in high school? You're just making Oklahomans look ignorant.
Anyway, The Guardian has a story about Joseph Beuys that deals largely with how he used his art to memorialize the past. The author says, "Beuys showed Germany and Europe a way to live without forgetting, and to remember without false piety." We're not reading about his work in class, but it would certainly relate to the issues we're discussing.
kind of off topic, but the best/worst oklahoma memorial site ever is the one they put up in Webber Falls for the I-40 bridge collapse a couple years ago (14 people died when their cars/semis drove right off the broken bridge into the Arkansas River). But the memorial is so literal...it's like this child-angel perched on the edge of a slanted and broken bridge railing. hideous. my dad sent me a bunch of photos of it. I can't imagine how the families of the victims would find this, um, sculpture comforting.
Posted by: cayce at February 3, 2005 10:35 AMI'm completely ready to believe that the OKC memorial "uses a bombing by ultra-nationalist right-wingers as a launchpad for ultra-nationalist right-wing propaganda", but I don't see it -- can you clarify?
Posted by: Prentiss Riddle at February 8, 2005 09:17 PMThe museum uses video, lighting effects, and artifacts (like broken glasses taken off of victims' faces) to make emotional arguments about how "America is the greatest country in the world", etc. Its really manipulative and shameful. Its been years since I've gone there, but I'm going to up over spring break to document it for the paper.
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