Cinema, Ideology, and Memory: Music Box as an Example
Cinema Studies: Cultural and Social Practices, Digitization, and Theory, NOVA Publications , ss.157-171, 2026
- Yayın Türü: Kitapta Bölüm / Araştırma Kitabı
- Basım Tarihi: 2026
- Yayınevi: NOVA Publications
- Sayfa Sayıları: ss.157-171
- Anahtar Kelimeler: cinema, ideology, memory, photography
- Van Yüzüncü Yıl Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet
Özet
Cinema is one of the essential tools for re-examining past experiences from a particular perspective and imposing that perspective on the masses. There are numerous reasons why historical realities are often reproduced through ideological lenses and embedded in collective memory. The first of these reasons concerns human existence. On the one hand, people try to hide the traces of traumatic memories, profound losses, and disappearances, and on the other hand, they always look for ways to keep them in mind and pass them on to the next generations. Cinema is one of the most essential tools for preserving the collective memory. It does so by following the commands of ideology through a visual and auditory medium inherently grounded in movement. When it comes to deep wounds that are the traumas of human history, the capacity of motion-based images and dialogues to influence the masses needs stronger support after a while. This basis may be photography, the pioneer of cinema, which derives all its power from the fact that it freezes time and has a documentary quality. When ideology decides that a historical fact should not be forgotten and must always be remembered, it uses both the magical power of cinema based on movement and the capacity of photography to freeze memory-time-history, as well as its quality as a document. The 1989 movie Music Box, directed by Costa-Gavras, which is the subject of the study, contains all these elements. Ideologically, the film focuses on the Nazi oppression in Hungary during the World War II, one of the most significant traumas in human history, and draws attention with the photographs it uses as well as visual and audio elements. The pictures that are evidence of Nazi oppression in the film are the basic references of the arguments imposed by the ideology on the masses, that is, the reality that is constructed and presented to serve collective memory. The father's crime against humanity is so profound that it symbolizes the eradication of fascism from the girl's heart, and metaphorically, from the heart of the United States. However, this is an illusion of reality that the director presents to the masses from his ideological perspective. Undoubtedly, the reality of photography is the reality of Nazi oppression; social memory should be kept alive through photographs. However, capitalist America, the representative of the free world, never refutes fascism behind bars; on the contrary, it uses it as an apparatus when the time comes. As a result, Nazi oppression is the product of an ideology, Fascism, that must be kept alive in social memory and threatens humanity. Therefore, in the eyes of the director, cinema is obliged to keep social memory alive as an anti-fascist ideological tool with the reality it produces with the support of photography. This study aims to show whether cinema fulfills its obligation to keep social memory alive through the selected sample film.