Using the audio from a video of anti-communist Russia propaganda developed by the U.S., coupled with an expose on the glories of Capitalism in the U.S., and a third video on the courage of American soldiers, I sought to create with this short video a rendition of Baron’s ideas of the historicized joke, or historical satire growing from the New Historicist idea that “there is no single, universal history, but rather there are many histories” (110).
Like Adele Horne’s The Tailenders, I sought to offer “an experience of confrontation with the vast yet always partial and discontinuous archive of documents that precedes any construction of historical understanding” (111). Concerning documents from the time of the Cold War’s height and the Red Scare, the U.S. archives almost certainly contain an excess of films telling the same message about the evils of communism with a vacancy of equally weighty alternative historical perspectives critiquing the governmental policies and practices of the U.S.
While few, if any, would point the communist finger at the U.S., the purpose of the audio visual swap was to confront the positivistic, pro-war, pro-Capitalism, anti-communist historical narrative that the U.S. put forth at this time period, as is preserved in the archives. Using the talk of communism and the obvious substitution of “the United States” in several points of the audio, the intentional disparity is made intentionally obvious for two reasons. First, to cultivate the confrontation of the unitary historical narrative and second, provoke thought about alternative perspectives to America-the-perfect that couldn’t be freely expressed or “joked” about at the time period of this footage.
In much the same way as Horne, this video seeks to rethink the archons’ understanding of their espoused truths as absolute by placing it in a clearly reappropriated form that beckons viewers/listeners to understand the “joke” and thereby be offered an “opportunity to think beyond the habitual confines of rational [American] thought” (115). Furthermore, in presenting the U.S. as the communist enemy of another unknown, threatened nation, the video illustrates the possibilities presented by reappropriated films telling the stories of alternative histories to cause a reappropriation of society. In this vein viewers and listeners may find a display of the malleability the future history, along with that which already exists within the archives.
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