Historisk tidskrift 126:3 • 2006
Innehåll (Contents) 2006:3
Uppsatser (Articles)
Filmen som historisk källa Historiografi, pluralism och representativitet
Fredrik Gustafsson
Fulltext (pdf)
Summary
The Motion Picture as Historical Source Material – Historiography,
Pluralism and Representation
This article discusses why films have not been used more than
they have as historical sources and argues that films ought
to be used more by historians. Principally, historians can
use film in three basic ways, all of which give access to information
about the period when it was produced.
First, films can with
caution be used for information about the persons, objects
and events depicted in documentary films. Historians’ preference
for the written word has though largely excluded the use of
motion pictures. Attempts to use documentaries as historical
sources fell victim to the criterions of source criticism,
which declared all films to be false because they are manipulated
through use of cuts and voice-overs etc.
Second, films can
be used as a source for time-bound audiovisual configurations
of historical events and historical individuals: Recently historical
didactics have taken an interest in films due to the insight
that audiovisual historical writing dominates the dispersion
of views of the past among the general population. The audiovisual
writing of history thus becomes important because regardless
of whether or not it is false it contributes to the formation
of a historical consciousness among the public.
Finally, films
can be used as a source for time-bound conceptions concerning,
for example, gender, class, race and age in feature and documentary
films. Because films are produced for a mass audience, are
made by many people, and are expensive to make, there arise
the phenomenon of the films pluralism. This pluralism gives
considerable weight to the value of motion pictures as historical
source material. Since a film is a collective effort that has
to reach as many people as possible in order to turn a profit,
it has to keep very close to its own time preferences, which,
in turn, makes the motion picture inclusive by nature. Furthermore,
through motion picture’s close connection to realism, the human
raw material – the actors – will function as representations
of a range of different conceptions concerning gender, race
and class, and it’s mutual relations. Obviously, there are
also exceptions to this pluralism. For this reason, the scholar
must learn to read the films in relation to both the social
and medial context in order not to misinterpret them.
Keywords
film, history, representation, historiography, film as historical
source material, didactics, contextualisation
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