Oh the dreaded montage....

So thats what it is. I can't stand that in the beginning pages of the yearbook. I assume that something like that was discovered by accident. Back when yearbooks were in their infancy, a publisher scrambled random pictures and the yearbook staff said "We're going to have to go with it.." Little did they know.

LOL, Kevin... Thanks for that laugh. At least the yearbook reference is one I can remember. That'll help me the next time I claim to have forgotten the meaning of "montage."

So, for example, when Katie Couric left the today show, they showed flashbacks of all the different topics that she covered and the silly skits that she did while working...

Is that a montage?

There was a really funny "movie montage" in The Sweetest Thing with Cameron Diaz and Christina Applegate. They go in this costume shop and dress up the characters from Grease and Dumb and Dumber, I know, this is dumb too, but I had to mention it.

Gina, I think that's probably a good definition of a video montage. Sounds interesting... little clips and such.

And Erin? I never saw that movie, but perhaps the montage scene would be worth it, eh? :)

You guys would not believe this, but I was watching "High School Musical" over break (yes, I admit it. Remember I have a 16 y/o brother at home.) and they did several montages in the show. Well the version of the movie that I happened to watch was a "pop-up" version where the producers went back and gave behind the scene type deals and one of those "pop-ups" happened to be the defintion of a video montage.

Getting back to the literary references behind montages, couldn't one argue that a flashback of several memories is a montage. Say (for those of you in the Adv. Lit. class) the constant movement of memories that Benjy is feeling?

Tiff, if we are actually able to differentiate the memories that Benjy experiences perhaps it would be a montage. Since we know that they are different memories but they cannot be chopped apart into separate discernible parts, I would have to say that Benjy's memories remain simple stream-of-consciousness. Putting them into a montage would require them to be more separated, I think... then again, I could be wrong. Interesting point, though.

That's a great connection, Karissa. At the very end of that chapter, Benjy does refer to "when Caddy says I have been dreaming" (or something like that... I don't have the book in front of me). That's the only point where Benjy shows an awareness of an external point of view, a possibility that his impressions of the world are not all there is to the world. Faulkner very carefully placed this one moment, which expresses, in perfect, painful clarity, Benjy's attachment to his absent sister. (Compare the flood of Benjy's ever-present with Quentin's blackouts and his obsession with time.)