Oldal 22 [22]
20
Dagnostaw Demski in cooperation with A. Kassabova, I. Sz. Kristöf, L.Laineste and K. Baraniecka-Olszewska
Robert Rosenstone said that film can “restore the entire life of the past” by an
“empathetic” reconstruction that allows the filmmaker to show what really hap¬
pened, why it happened, and how the film depiction properly communicates the
importance of the event (Rosenstone 1988: 1176). Developing his point, we may
say also that television allowed the audience to look through the screen directly on
representations of past events and experiences of people and places as if the viewers
were there. The images and sounds flooded the senses and thwarted the attempts to
maintain a distance, engage in criticism and be detached. This process of being en¬
gaged by new media can be observed throughout the period of focus of this work.
In addition we can observe a development of the particular tactic of represen¬
tation. Individuals in new media are identified only by some general social prop¬
erties or by a type of action. They are not particular individuals but constitute
rather certain impressions, embodiments of particular characteristics. This allows
the medium to underline its message. White described historical movies, in which
such general properties allowed people’s representations, to take their “roles” in the
historical event (White 1988: 1196). This kind of conceptualization, in a variety
of forms can be seen in images presented by Demski; Oroz; Czarnecka; Seljamaa;
Baraniecka-Olszewska; Uzlowa; Gadjeva; Sz. Kristéf; Sorescu-Marinkovi¢; Kaser;
Kassabova.
These new technologies enabled the creation of global networks of commu¬
nication. Paradoxically, such channels of communication accessible from home
made people experience reality from behind closed doors. Everyday experience of
reality has become more and more mediated by visual media which technologi¬
cal advancement made also more attractive. Giddens pointed out another feature
that marked the period of rising modernity. The individual experience became
mediated by an invasion of distant events into the realm of everyday life, and as
a second-hand account it turned out to be largely organized by these far events. An
individual can receive many news reports as recounted events but as external and
distant; some other accounts can also affect regularly the individual’s daily activi¬
ties (2002: 27). As Giddens stated, “Familiarity generated by mediated experience
might perhaps quite often produce feelings of ‘reality inversion’: the real object and
event, when encountered, seem to have a less concrete existence than their media
representation” (Ibid.: 27-28).
In the analyzed time period, despite living behind the Cold War iron curtain,
people were faced with being closer to the events represented in the new media
while simultaneously having opened up their eyes to what was far away. We can
observe a correlation between communication tools and distance—new media de¬
velopment and a deterritorialization of images. Giddens has given us interesting
examples from the past. New media, in a broader view as communication channels,
shaped the content presented in the final printed pages of information. He argued
that the telegraph, the telephone, and electronic media, the event of communica¬
tion itself and not place, slowly though increasingly became a decisive factor in its