The readings this week, and especially that from the Chicago School of Media Theory, have shown that every person (or philosopher) can interpret materiality in their own way, but largely there was not, until the modern era, a hard disconnect between the material object and the “aura” or ideas surrounding it (as Benjamin would call it). I tend to follow the Heideggerian interpretation of materiality, in which he “denies the strict definition of the things as limited to physical quality and releases it to the point where it carries the most abstract meaning. The material aspect of things thus is blurred, and the very meaning of material becomes associated with the abstractness of things” (https://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/mediatheory/keywords/materialmateriality/).
I found this particularly true when in the archives last week. Specifically, we looked at a letter from George P. Johnson to the War Department in 1921. This letter as a material object is interesting, but it is the larger implications of the letter that add depth to its meaning, and thus to its materiality. While I refrain from posting a photo of the object or quoting it directly due to reproduction rights issues, let me summarize. Johnson is responding to a previous letter and arguing that his actors and fellow members of the Lincoln Motion Picture Company are not attempting to dodge the draft. And furthermore, he is demanding that his company and other black-owned companies receive a fair share of the $7 million the U.S. government is spending on propaganda film-making for WWI.
The larger implications of this letter are not only in situating it in the context of a 1920s world and the hardships faced by minorities in a racialized world/Hollywood, but that these same problems are still occurring in our modern day and age. Parts of this letter could have come directly from a newspaper from the last five years. In fact, we would not even need to look that far. In 2016, Variety Magazine published an article entitled “Academy Nominates All While Actors for Second Year in a Row” (http://variety.com/2016/biz/awards/oscar-nominations-2016-diversity-white-1201674903/), showing that less than a year ago, black actors, directors, and crew were not equally represented in the film industry (although the Oscars as a proper barometer for inclusion is problematic in its own way). While this is not truly the main focus of the letter, its ability to evoke such connections adds to its materiality. It is now not characterized only by its physical attributes– typed, black ink, yellowing paper, official letterhead– but also by the peek into a different time. This peek then reveals something enlightening, and depressing in truth, about our own time. I think that materiality is not only “associated with the abstractedness of things,” but how one person’s take on that abstraction, in this case my own connections to the current controversies, allows their appreciation of a material object to have new depth and perspective–even if no one else has that exact same experience.