Sarah Polley wrote, directed and edited The Stories we Tell, a documentary in which she interviews her family members and their friends in order to depict the events in her late mother’s life. In an interview in Studio Q with Jian Ghomeshi, she discusses how she hadn’t done any press interviews while promoting the film in 2012. She claimed that doing interviews would have placed a burden on the “mess of storytelling” that takes place in the film by imposing a perspective before the viewing. Indeed, the film includes many versions of the same events that took place in Sarah’s life, some of these accounts of her mother Diane’s behavior and personality are conflicting.

Interestingly enough, Sarah states in the interview that she did not wish to shape a character of her mother that would eclipse who she once was. The film is successful in not offering fixed notion of who Diane was. This idea of a collective memoir that that refuses to give definitive answers is ironically what irked Harry about the process. Yet it seams obvious for contemporary audiences that a single perspective is neither right nor wrong, and that we do get a better idea of reality when exposed to conflicting perspectives. Each person that Sarah interviews in the film had their own version of the story, and Sarah states that everyone was very attached to their perspective since their lives where all affected in a tangible way by Diane’s actions.

Nevertheless, we do get Sarah’s version of the story, as she admits to having had a lot of say on what made it in the film, and on the many elements of her personal life that the chose to omit from the final cut. Moreover, she also had reservations about Harry wishing to publish his own memoir about the story. The issue that surfaces here is whether the film presents one version of the story, where all of the versions combined become Sarah’s version, or is it in fact a story where every perspective holds equal weight.

Art Spiegelman is an influential American Jewish comic artist best known for Maus, a comic series in two parts depicting interviews with his father about his experience in Auschwitz. Over his 40 year career, Spiegelman created and edited the Garbage Pail Kid series, and worked for The New Yorker creating its cover art to name a few of his cultural contributions. Yet, Maus and Maus II are his works that have known the most lasting success and influence. In a contemporary conversation with David Samuel for Tablet Magazine, Spiegelman comments on the iconic status of Maus, and its role of informing future American Jews about the holocaust by stating:

“I mean, I’ve now drawn it 15 different ways—the giant 500-pound mouse chasing me through a cave, the monument to my father that casts a shadow over my life right now. I’ve made something that clearly became a touchstone for people. And the Holocaust trumps art every time”.

This description of a drawing never published shows Spiegelman’s internal struggle with the image of Maus as a masterpiece that will be read by generations to come. Spiegelman is clearly aware of the omnipresence of Maus in academia and popular culture; its many translations and the references people make to the works create some sort of anxiety in him. Some of these feelings are expressed in Maus II in the Time Flies chapter as Art’s character has reservations about continuing the work following his father’s death, but it is very interesting to see that in 2013 Spiegelman is still somewhat haunted by the reception of his finest work.

I assume that these feelings of doubt steaming from the problematic nature of representing horrific events have an enduring effect on Spiegelman, especially since he is aware that people are still reading Maus today.

After visiting the “Speaking to Memory: Images and Voices from St. Michael’s Residential School” exhibit at the Museum of Anthropology, I reflected on the impact that the wide scope of material and mediums might have on the visitor. E. Beverly Brown’s photographs offer the perspective of students through images where the students in my opinion seemed to have very strong bonds to one another.

Moreover, Contemporary photographs of the now abandoned St. Michaels School in Alert Bay were included as backgrounds to the various quoted material posted up throughout the exhibit. These texts range from Duncan Campbell Scott’s reasoning behind the creation of residential schools in Canada: “I want to get rid of the Indian problem…” to details about the school’s failures quoted from the report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal peoples, 1996.

In the center towards the back of the room, there is a large food mixing machine with accompanying testimonies stating that children had to make substantial amounts of bread and received shocks from the machine. Finally, the apologies of various Church authorities, the Canadian federal government and the RCMP and several student testimonials are voiced on the walls of the exhibit.

These various perspectives are “speaking to memory”, in the sense that memory is a constructive process. According to Dr. Daniel L. Schacter: “Human memory is not a literal reproduction of the past, but instead relies on constructive processes that are sometimes prone to error and distortion.” Hence, in order to build a collective memory, a single perspective or medium is insufficient to portray past events. Since so many visual, textual and material elements are combined in order to construct this memory in the exhibition, each contributes to a larger testimonial, with the exception of the apologies and general quotes. The greater amount of images and voices the visitor is exposed to, the more they can grasp the events in a critical and intelligent manner.

I read a headline last weekend that I figured would be appropriate to link to Missing Sarah for the sake of a blog post: “Most prostitution-related offences no longer prosecuted in B.C.” British Columbia joined the ranks of Ontario and Alberta in shifting the focus from sex-workers onto customers and issues of violence. This comes following last December’s Supreme Court of Canada unanimous ruling to lessen the laws in regards to prostitution, as they were considered unconstitutional. Parliament was given one year to create new legislation on this issue. The ruling was a reaction to a court challenge by Terri-Jean Bedford, Amy Lebovitch and Valerie Scott who all have experience in sex-work. These women’s life narratives served as a form of activism against laws that can lead to danger and harm to individual sex workers.

Sarah De Vries experienced her share of oppression through prostitution laws in her experience as a sex-worker. Indeed according to Maggie De Vries, during expo 86, Vancouver was “cleaning up” its streets and had “no go zones” where sex-workers where not allowed to be in.  Sarah’s friend Angela was arrested for going into one of these “zones” in order to pick up some keys from someone (89).

Public opinion and the Supreme Court’s views have drastically changed since the time Sara De Vries was working in the Downtown East Side. In Missing Sarah, Maggie De Vries explains why the law prohibiting communication for the purpose of engaging in prostitution or obtaining the services of a prostitute is problematic. She writes: “And society’s actions take a more frightening toll as well because they drive vulnerable people into dark, industrial areas. If men are afraid of being exposed, they will not stop under bright lights to talk to a prostitute” (97); this law was struck down by the Supreme Court last December.

Finding out about the so-called algorithmic gatekeepers editing our experience of the web, through Eli Pariser’s TED talk, was quite illuminating. However, Facebook users seem to have a greater awareness of these things than I had prior to this week, and they express their concerns using the source of these issues as a platform. Perusing through the Facebook profile page, I stumbled upon their new years video post entitled “Happy New You”:

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