“History repeats itself.” That is because history is a mechanism for recollection. The idea of history as a mechanism for recollection is used by industries to fuel consumerism.
The Jordan brand of Nike is one such company that uses our conception of history to fuel consumerism. As stated in class once before, the Jordan brand continues to release remakes of their original shoe styles that Michael Jordan would wear during his career in the NBA. These rereleased shoes are known as “retro” models referring to past models. Michael Jordan made history through the game of basketball and his shoes are his legacy that he left to his fans. Nike knows the impact of Jordan’s history in the NBA and uses that mentality to drive consumerism with their Jordan brand shoes. When a person buys a pair of Jordan sneakers, they feel like they own a part of Michael Jordan’s history that goes along them and therefore his history can become part of their own. By wearing these shoes, they can make their own history similar to Michael Jordan’s.
Another example is the music industry. Hip-hop music repeatedly samples pieces of older music, usually from the Motown era, and uses the recordings as part of their new piece of music. By sampling pieces of older music, artists are recollecting and renewing once popular songs and have them be remembered by listeners. An example of this is “Mo Money Mo Problems” by Notorious B.I.G. and (then known as) Puff Daddy. It samples the famous song “I’m Coming Out” by Dianna Ross and one can even mistake the beginning of the song for Dianna Ross’s. Notorious B.I.G. uses this recollection of the history of music to appeal to a much more expanded audience. The song appeals to an older clientele because when they hear the song, they are reminded of their time and how Dianna Ross’s song impacted their own life.
We can see how industries such as the shoe and music industry use the recollection of history. For what we know now, time cannot be stopped, but what happens within that time can be recorded, retold, and reused. History is our way of recording and keeping time that has passed and it is referred back to as a means to drive consumerism. So, history really does repeat itself.
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13 years ago
2 comments:
I do agree that "history repeats itself" in the music industry since one can always find sections of lyrics or music reused.But I don't agree that Jordon's retro shoes are repeat of history but more connecting with history. I think that as long as they keep purposely referencing it to the past, it just be a connection and not a repeat. On the other hand, if you talk about other retro shoes, then those new ones can be consider repeating Jordon's retro. So I guess i would take "history repeats itself" as copying something of the past.
When people say that "history repeats itself," doesn't this have more to do with a longer sense of history? For instance, we say this about empires and how they tend to exhaust themselves—but we mean this by looking at the Roman Empire onward. To limit historical repetition to a single sport or overlapping music genres seems to have less to do with 'history' in a long sense than it does with postmodern pastiche and intertextuality; in this sense, copying is slightly different than repetition. Historical repetition would be more like looking at how Achilles' shield became a popular form of 'retro' armament, and future generations of soldiers used copies of Achilles' shield to recall the might of Achilles; then, if this seems to happen in the U.S. with Michael Jordan, we'd say that history has repeated itself. Otherwise, it seems to be little more than consumerism cannibalizing its own products for more consumption. Do you see what I mean?
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