Memory and Identity: Filmmakers and ‘natives’ collusion towards constructed identity

Maclean, Diane

Abstract

This paper examines the interplay between filmmakers and Scottish Highland communities in constructing an idealised identity that frames subjects within their landscape. It will also consider the appropriation of oral memories as visual texts, and thus, the power of filmmakers to mediate history, to the detriment of a collective community memory.

The Gaelic-speaking area of the Highlands, with its whisky, bagpipes and tartan, has had a strong role in constructing Scottish identity. It is a contested identity where the romance and savagery of the landscape is often extended to its people. The rugged beauty and perceived ‘wildness’ has attracted travelers for centuries: Urry’s (1990) missionaries, traders and travelers of the past replaced by modern explorers, filmmakers, and novelists who continue to interpret the ‘state’ of being on the geographical margin; projecting a mythologised identity onto the communities and people who live(d) there.

A predominantly oral culture, the Gaelic-Highlanders’ collective memory revolved around community, story-telling, oral history and an understanding of place. This treasuring and curating of origin stories and events that define them, agrees with memory studies’ contention that memory is at the heart of identity and nationhood. This becomes of increasing importance when considering the supremacy film has over original oral stories, which, once captured and translated to the screen, become fixed, losing the multilayered contexts of the original.

The paper will look at depictions of Highlanders in documentary film to consider who holds the power in shaping identity. It references Shield’s (2004) work on self-identification of islanders who, early on, consider themselves different from ‘elsewhere children’ – in that they choose to identify with the land, and position themselves firmly within it. The paper will use this research and the author’s own documentaries for the BBC, filmed in the area, to consider the degree to which, therefore, this identity is imposed by ‘outsiders’, or whether ‘insiders’ collude in their representation.

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (unpublished)
• Conference Name: Power and Identity: A cross disciplinary conference
• Start Date: Jan 10, 2017
• End Date: Jan 12, 2017
• Deposit Date: Apr 26, 2023