The Memory-History-Popular Culture Nexus: Pearl Harbor as a Case Study in Consumer-Driven Collective Memory

In this paper I examine the fusing of collective memory, history and popularculture by analyzing current trends in American-made commercial films withhistorical events as subject matter that have also been distributed to a globalaudience. Pearl Harbor is the primary case study. Analysis shows that dominanthistorical narratives are reified by the use of what I term an‘anticipatory-driven’ film experience where audience members engage in aninteraction with pre-existing mainstream collective memory while theiranticipation for impending climactic trauma is systematically heightened.Comparisons are made to other widely released US films about national andinternational events and ‘non-events.’ Questions are also raised about theincreasing global importance of the memory-history-popular culture nexus post9-11, and, how US produced films about 9-11 may or may not engage in thepractices detailed in this analysis. In this vein the paper concludes with adiscussion of how Pearl Harbor was marketed, edited and received in Japan, thesecond largest audience for Hollywood films and what this implies about socialmemory construction in a global commercial context.