From Mass Media Shows to the Production of Memory: Three links between television and memory.

CLAUDIA FELD

Londres

Seminario; Memory and Politics: Provocations from Argentina and Beyond; 2012

Goldsmiths, University of London / British Academy

This work arises from the difficulties I encountered when I first presented my research on TV and memory in Argentina. At some places where I presented the results, some people argued that although I was talking about representations of the past, I couldn't speak about memory unless I mentioned the actors and agents which elaborated memories and took the representations to the public space. Some other people asked: What about reception? They played down the importance of exploring the meanings constructed by the medium. On this paper, I seek to reflect on these difficulties, proposing that the link between television and memory can be thought at least three ways, which means proposing three different approaches for research: the TV as an "entrepreneur of memory", the TV as a "stage for memory", and the role played by television in the work of transmission to the new generations. The construction of a link between memory and television allows us to open a wide field of research in order to study diverse phenomena. Different approaches can be applied, depending on what we want to highlight: the role of TV in configuring the public agenda, its effectiveness as a medium which communicates past events to new generations, or its role as a constructor of meanings through images, sounds and words. All of these roles, of course, co-exist and are intertwined, and there are also tensions among them.