Abstract
In order to show that the concept of hesitation can connect various screen media texts, the author branches out in this chapter to the television broadcasts of the 1989 Romanian revolution. While serving a specific political goal, the hesitant televisual images covering the collapse of the regime employed a rhetoric which shows historical connections with the mobile subject positions that characterize the previously discussed feature films produced during the Ceaușescu era. The author positions the official and amateur recordings of the events as images that had a legitimizing function for the incoming power formation.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
- 2.
The following summary draws on the first chapter of the Dayan and Katz study, entitled “Defining Media Events.”
- 3.
According to the narration of the film, the civilian-clothed colonel later denied that he identified himself as a military officer.
- 4.
My discussion about the different narratives takes as a starting point Siani-Davies’s chapter “The Myths and Realities of the Revolution” (2005, 267–286), and goes on to analyze their audiovisual form in the television broadcasts.
- 5.
Maierean argues that the broadcasts had three main functions: information, legitimation, and mobilization (see Maierean 2006, 25–44). I propose that, in order to inform audiences and mobilize them, the broadcasts had to establish themselves as an authoritative source. Therefore, the primary and fundamental function of the broadcasts was legitimation.
- 6.
- 7.
Slavoj Žižek uses this phrase when speaking about the Western media coverage of the siege of Sarajevo (Zizek 1994, 2).
- 8.
See pp. 87–88.
- 9.
The arguments suggesting that from the beginning there was a master plan in the launching and the manipulation of the revolution leads back to the controversy about the definition of the events discussed earlier (see pp. 100–103).
- 10.
(Siani-Davies 2005) Chapter 7.
- 11.
In an interview with the BBC, Iliescu calls the revolution “a special, sudden and violent event which has eliminated the despotic power…In the process of structuring the new element of power, the Front, which emerged spontaneously at the moment of the explosion and which represents the soul of this process, assumed the responsibility of taking over power” (quoted in Siani-Davies 2005, 277).
- 12.
References
Câmpeanu, Pavel. 1993. De patru ori in fata urnelor. Bucharest: Editura All.
Couldry, Nick. 2003. Media Rituals: A Critical Approach. London: Routledge.
Dayan, Daniel, and Elihu Katz. 1992. Media Events. The Live Broadcasting of History. Princeton: Harvard University Press.
Elsaesser, Thomas. 2002. “Introduction: Harun Farocki.” Senses of Cinema 21 (July). http://sensesofcinema.com/2002/harun-farocki/farocki_intro/
Flusser, Vilém. 1990. “Die Macht des Bildes.” In Television-Revolution. Das Ultimatum des Bildes, edited by Hubertus Von Amelunxen and Andrei Ujică. Weimar: Jonas Verlag.
Guerin, Frances. 2012. “Videograms of a Revolution and the Search for Images.” A Companion to German Cinema. edited by Terry Ginsberg and Andrea Mensch. Oxford: Blackwell.
György, Péter. 2000. Néma hagyomány. Budapest: Magvető.
Hammer, Ferenc. 2012. “Coy Utopia: Politics in the first Hungarian TV Soap.” Popular Television in Eastern Europe During and Since Socialism. edited by Timothy Havens and Kati Lustyik. London: Routledge.
Kernbauer, Eva. 2010. “Establishing Belief: Harun Farocki and Andrei Ujică, Videograms of a Revolution.” Grey Room 41 (Fall): 72–87.
Maierean, Andreea. 2006. “The Media Coverage of the Romanian Revolution.” CEU Political Science Journal 2006 (1): 25–39.
Parvulescu, Constantin. 2013. “Embodied Histories. Harun Farocki and Andrei Ujicaă’s Videograms of a Revolution and Ovidiu Bose Pastina’s Timisoara—December 1989 and the uses of the Independent Camera.” Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice 17 (3): 354–382.
Shils, Edward, and Michael Young. 1956. “The Meaning of the Coronation.” Center and Periphery. edited by Edward Shils. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Siani-Davies, Peter. 2005. The Romanian Revolution of 1989. Ithaca, NY-London: Cornell University Press.
Ujică, Andrei. 1990. “Im Gespräch mit Livius Ciocârlie, Șerban Foarță, Andrei Pleșu und Mihai Șora.” In Television-Revolution. Das Ultimatum des Bildes, edited by Hubertus Von Amelunxen and Andrei Ujică. Weimar: Jonas Verlag.
Verdery, Katherine, and Gail Kligman. 1992. “Romania after Ceaușescu: Post-Communist Communism.” Eastern Europe in Revolution. edited by Ivo Banac. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Zizek, Slavoj. 1994. Metastases of Enjoyment. London: Verso.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Strausz, L. (2017). Television as a Factory of History: The Broadcast of the 1989 Romanian Revolution. In: Hesitant Histories on the Romanian Screen. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55272-9_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55272-9_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-55271-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-55272-9
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)