0:00
So, in working backwards and therefore in a nonlinear progression the film comes
from the book. And the book is Black Hawk Down.
In this case, it's a a tidying version so that lovely man, Josh Harnett, whose name
I can barely say, is on the cover of this as well.
That's published in 1999. We have before that the publication of
Mark Bowden's investigative journalism within the context of the Philadelphia
Enquirer. Now You will be used to just going to the
website and you will be expecting there to be sidebars and hot links and a whole
range of things. I find what the Philadelphia Inquirer and
Mark Bowden has done with those articles, in terms of a site which is now kept
going from I think the articles were published in around about 1997.
Very interesting. Because it has in a sort of a microcosm
created its own archival reference point. Now I'm going to go through some of the
pages in this site. I already encouraged you to go a little
earlier to go and look at it to give you a familiarization of the topic.
but let's just, I know I used the word reflect and reference just far too much
in this but let's just go and reflect on what we've seen here and reference to the
material. Now just going back through these, the
first thing to bear in mind is this is right in and it is a reflection back, as
I said, on what happened. Was it a success, how do we actually
consider it? I find this very interesting, as I said,
because at the very top, one of the things we have here is what is, a hotlink
to the garrison letter. This is Garrison's reflection immediately
after the event. He's considering the information that he
had that led him to make the decision to commit.
And then he's reflecting back on the, the factors that did not work so well.
I mean, 18 men dead I don't mean to underplay this.
2:30
So, we've already got just a little bit of a transition here from a website,
newspaper articles. And suddenly it is, as I said, as a microcosm
of an archive of the information around it, around that particular
engagement shall we say. Now I just want to take you back through
one or two of the other pages. I really want you to explore this in full
detail and, and consider this in a more rounded way.
how much if you were going to write an essay on this.
How much would you base on exclusively on the source we wouldn't advocate that.
But the fact that it branches out. I use the term augmentment I think is
quit an important consideration in this regard.
One of the things that's been added here. Are clips from radio transmissions and
interviews for those involved at the time.
So, we're moving away from the printed text, your interaction with a statement
that is available all the time, compared to something which might be transient.
Thankfully, here it had been recorded. And now you have access to it.
Some of it is very difficult to hear. I'm not at this point going to try and
play any of it because let's face it, we're having to deal with London buses
behind us. But again, you get a feeling of immediacy
of the events. And that again can change your
perspective on what's going on. Now, let's go and look at one or two of
the other pages on this particular site and again consider how you might use
these coming back and reviewing what's going on.
4:20
Again I'm not going to play these now. But you have the video clips not links
YouTube but in some cases the original Pentagon footage which has been released
and linked to this page. If you go down here, it starts to deal
with testimony from a number of different sources and it is, coming up, with a
different perspectives as the events go through.
Now you can watch these continuously or you can cross reference them with the
individual chapters. And it might be worth you doing that just
in terms of having read the text. Then taking a step back, and saying, and
does that make more sense to me, hearing either contemporaneously?
Or reflecting on it in terms of interviews after the event, what the
people are directly involved with doing. I made the point a little bit earlier to
the, the excellent film crew who are having to put up with me.
Hi, guys. that Royal Holloway, we, in twentieth
Century history deal with a, a number of quite challenging events, and of course,
one of them is the Holocaust. Testimony , oral history, et cetera is
a very important way to try and contextualize what was a devastating part
of Western culture. So, the fact that you have access to
audio and video in this site I think is, is something that, again expands your
experience. We're talking about visual images having
impact and principally in terms of photographs.
Now, you have a, a number of multimedia ways of putting, ideas together.
6:11
If you go back to the main index page you will see that it is set out chapter by
chapter, I linked up a little bit earlier to the analysis, but as we go through
this there is the branching across. You get the text, you get the hot links
in there. So you can make a decision on how you
actually interact with the information that's given.
You can make a decision as to which pieces appeal to you most and concentrate
on them. It is not just simply the book.
Very good book, know this. Finally just to give you some idea of the
geography of what's going on. there are number of maps which highlights
how, the troops were intended to extract Aidid's the lieutenants from around the
Olympic hotel site. And then what the plans were to defend
and. extract the helicopter crews in
particular. So while they're very stylized it gives
you a, a more realistic view or at least a stylized view that you can relate to as
to the environment these men were working in.
Dr Emmett SullivanSenior Tutor
