History is a Thing of the Past

These past few weeks my English class has been dissecting Shakespeare's Hamlet using a variety of critical lenses, such as feminism and Marxism. One lens in particular, known as new historicism, really changed the way I look at historical works. New historicism dictates the impossibility of objective analysis. New historicists claim that we can only truly know the most basic facts of history, and the rest is left to interpretation. History is a thing of the past, and when we try to make it a thing of the present we almost always twist it in someway or another.

Think about it. When we look back to World War II, most of us see a bunch of cold-hearted Nazis mass murdering millions of Jews. We think of America as the winner, as the savior, as the hero. But what if we had lost? Historically speaking (no pun intended), winners write history. If the axis powers had won, we would be reading a very different account of Hitler's Germany and the war in general. A new historicist's goal is to separate personal interpretation from historical accounts and literary pieces. This essentially breaks down into a simple fact: we must consider all works and events to be products of a certain time and culture. Now, why does this apply to us?


Let's take a real example. Last night the Oscars were on, and I noticed that many of the films nominated for best picture centered around a momentous historical event or figure. Argo, Zero Dark Thirty, Lincoln - these critically acclaimed movies communicate ideas that have been covered countless times. They're really nothing new. However, the reason they gained so much recognition and distinction is that the personal interpretations of the producers of the works were innovative and unique.

I myself saw Argo and was impressed at how Ben Affleck and his co-producers included so much factual information in the film while keeping it entertaining. Nevertheless, I always like to do my research, and so I went home after the movie and looked up a "truer" account of the rescue of U.S. diplomats during the 1979 Iran hostage crisis. This article rants about some of the misleading aspects of the movie. The biggest flaw is that the rescue actually went smoother than described due to major assistance from the Canadian government, which did not get nearly enough credit in the film. Sure, the movie did not claim to be 100% accurate. But a new historicist considers the motives of the author and the culture in which a work is produced in order to partially eliminate bias. Affleck is a producer (and an actor) who wants to sell his movie. So he naturally would add in obstacles that make the narrative of events more exciting. Also, in the 21st century us Americans don't like to think of ourselves as weak or dependent. Maybe that's why Affleck left out the support from the Canadians. What other works or historical accounts do you think need to be revisited from a new historicist lens?

Body Space for Sale

As decades pass, new technologies penetrate the mainstream and transform the way people communicate with one another. From morse code to the first telephone to e-mail to social media, it seems the biggest trend is that these innovative methods allow people to communicate larger volumes of information at quicker speeds. It's hard for me to hide my enthusiasm for Apple products, and so I'd like to share the next potentially revolutionizing technology, the iWatch.

While Apple has not hinted at any such product (Apple loves to remain secretive), substantial rumors are beginning to sprout. If such a device is created, its applications would be limitless. A relatively new watch developed by Pebble can display incoming calls, text messages, e-mails, calendar alerts, and Facebook/Twitter notifications. An iWatch would be able to do all this and more. It could serve as a TV remote, a mobile device locator, a blood pressure monitor, a debit card, a GPS, and so on. Apple's famous voice command personal assistant Siri could be integrated into the product so that consumers could speak and interact directly through the watch. With the ability to store essentially my whole life story in a single pocket-sized computer (i.e. the iPhone), I used to think that innovation was reaching its peak. I guess I was wrong.


Google is also poised to release a prototype of Google Glass, a head-mounted display that would "display information in smartphone-like format hands-free and could interact with the Internet via natural language voice commands" (Wikipedia). The short video to the right is worth watching. Warning: it may change the way you think about human interaction.

All of these technologies are fascinating, but at the same time slightly scary. While phones can be disconnected or placed off to the side, both the iWatch and Google Glass would be physically attached to a body. Sure, these devices can still be removed. But when will the infiltration of personal space stop? The human body has become a rich canvas for devices of all shapes and sizes. As a postmodernist would say, everything is a commodity in the 21st century. Corporate giants are now vying for commercial space on our bodies. The bubble of personal space will continue shrinking as tech moguls breach new territories in order to maintain a competitive edge (thank you, capitalism). Who knows, maybe one day we'll all have microprocessor chips inserted into our brains.