ABSTRACT

Public memory scholars contend that depictions of a figure can never be definitive, but the “biopic” genre of film complicates this. Biopics may be an audience’s only exposure to a figure, lending them great significance in determining how culture remembers the individuals portrayed. This phenomenon is explored through the biopic The End of the Tour, memorializing writer David Foster Wallace. The way that the film advances a specific reading of Wallace’s life has implications for the ways that popular culture informs the perpetuation of certain public memories. That Wallace’s story has been complicated by the #MeToo movement further implicates popular media in the formation of public memory. This article demonstrates how biopics embody the functions and form of epideictic rhetoric, and addresses issues of how epideictic power is accrued in media such as biopics in the contemporary neoliberal era. Wallace and The End of the Tour offer a unique opportunity to examine such issues due to fluctuations in his public reputation across the span of his life and death. Recognizing the consequences of mediated, neoliberal epideictic raises possibilities for future explorations of the relation between power and memory today.

摘要

公共记忆学者认为，对人物的描绘永远不可能是确定的，但是电影的“传记”类型使这一点变得复杂。传记人物可能是观众唯一接触人物的地方，这对他们确定文化如何记住所描绘的人物具有重要意义。这种现象是通过传记电影《旅行的终结》来探索的，纪念作家大卫·福斯特·华莱士（David Foster Wallace）。影片推进对华莱士生活的特定解读的方式，对流行文化为某些公共记忆带来永久影响的方式产生了影响。#MeToo运动使华莱士的故事变得复杂，这进一步暗示了大众媒体参与了公共记忆的形成。本文展示了传记作家如何体现流行病修辞学的功能和形式，并探讨了当代新自由主义时代如何在诸如传记作家之类的媒体中积累流行病力的问题。华莱士和旅程的结束提供了一个独特的机会来审查由于他的生与死期间的公众声誉波动而引起的此类问题。认识到介导的新自由主义流行病的后果，为当今探索权力与记忆之间的关系提供了可能性。