RECLAIMING HERITAGE: COLOURIZATION, CULTURE WARS AND THE POLITICS OF NOSTALGIA

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A b stract
This ar ticle considers the discursive continuities between a speci cally liberal defence of cultural patrim ony, evident in the debate over lm colourization, and the culture war critique associated w ith neo-conser vatism . It exam ines how a rhetoric of nostalgia, linked to particular ideas of authenticity, canonicity and tradition, has been m obilized by the right and the left in attem pts to stabilize the con guration and perceived transm ission of A m er ican cultural identity. W hile different in scale, colour ization and multiculturalism were seen to create respective (postm odern) barbarism s against w hich defenders of culture, her itage and good taste could unite. I argue that in its defence of the 'classic' work of art, together w ith principles of aesthetic distinction and the value of cultural inheritance, the anti-colour ization lobby helped enrich and legitim ize a discourse of tradition that, at the end of the 1980s, w as beginning to reverberate powerfully in the conser vative c hallenge to a 'crisis' w ithin higher education and the hum anities. This article attem pts to com plicate the contem porary politics of nostalgia, show ing how a defence of cultural patrim ony has distinguished m ajor and m inor culture wars, engaging left and right quite differently but w ith sim ilar presuppositions. C U L T U R A L S T U D I E S 1 3 ( 4 ) 1 9 9 9 , 6 2 1 -6 3 8 convert to colour twenty-four lm s in his new back catalogue. As an econom ic venture, colourization would give new pro t potential to lm s that had lost their m arket viability through age and the visual hindrance of their being in black and w hite. Proponents of colour conversion like Turner and the H al R oach C om pany, w hich helped develop the conversion process, argued that technological enhancem ent would represent nothing short of 'the rebirth of the lm classics of yesteryear' (quoted in Edelm an, 1986: 56). O pponents were less sanguine about the virtues of colourization, bodies like the A m er ican Film Institute and the D irectors G uild of A m er ica, and gures such as Woody A llen and John H uston, denouncing the process as a threat to the originality of the art-work and the m oral rights of the creator. The colourization debate set art against com m erce, creative rights against ow nership, m onochrom e against the dastard colour of m oney. Fought in the m edia and then in cour t, it raised questions about intellectual proper ty, but also, and signi cantly, authenticity and cultural her itage.

K eyw ords
At the sam e tim e as the colour ization fracas, another m ore pernicious culture war was beg inning to unfold. In 1987, Allan Bloom published The Closing of the Am erican M ind, a conservative jerem iad on higher education that would set the tone for a proliferating num ber of right-w ing broadsides against the legacy of 1960s radicalism in Am erican universities and the developm ent of an invidious new relativism . From W illiam Bennett (1984) to Roger K im ball (1991), a crisis w as being de ned, 'tenured radicals' conspiring to politicize know ledge, under m ine the great books of literature, and to threaten core values, liberal education and Western civilization generally. As w ith colourization, the preservation of cultural heritage, or w hat Bennett would call reclaim ing a legacy, becam e central to the barbed con icts over educational standards and the challenge of m ulticulturalism .
The colourization debate and the con ict over higher education have very different political stakes. If the form er is a question of personal property in relation to m oral rights and popular m em ory, the latter is a far m ore signi cant issue concerning the status of the university, the circulation of know ledge, and the representation of peoples and identities w ithin w hat counts as legitim ate know ledge and culture. O ne becam e a m inor issue that had snuffed itself out by 1989, w hile the other becam e a de ning controversy that would bur n through the 1990s, creating w ith it the sm oke and bluster of 'political correctness'. C olourization and multiculturalism are different in scope and scale, but they reveal sim ilarities in the way they were and are de ned in public discour se. Narratives of decline have been m obilized in each case, focusing upon the stability of tradition as it relates to the con guration and perceived transm ission of Am erican cultural identity. If colour ization and m ulticulturalism can be exam ined together, a signi cant basis for com parison is perhaps their m utual disrespect for the preserves of cultural tradition. M ore speci cally, they (are seen to) disrupt a cer tain concept of tradition grounding par ticular ideas about educational practice and the popular circulation of cultural texts. At the end of the 1980s, the C U L T U R A L S T U D I E S 6 2 2 process of colourizing lm and the politics of 'colourizing' the curriculum induced a sense of discontinuity w hich gave nostalgia a concerted rhetorical currency within Am erican cultural politics.
N ostalgia is often thought to have an intrinsically conser vative bias. It represents a plea for continuity in tim es of uncer tainty and change; the rhetoric of nostalgia posits a decline and then appeals to a m ore authentic and politically serviceable golden age. The nostalgics of the culture w ar are m ost readily observed on the right, typi ed by Allan Bloom and his requiem for cultural authority and the 'great books'. W hile nostalgia m ay underscore the polem ical tone of muc h conservative criticism , this does not lim it the extent to which its rhetorical strateg ies have been engaged across the political spectrum . The left has developed its ow n narratives of decline in battles fought over m ulticulturalism . This has focused upon the baleful em ergence of academ ic theory and the parochial nature of identity politics, w hat Todd G itlin calls a 'grim and her m etic bravado celebrating victim ization and stylized m arginality ' (1995a: 311). Beset by cant and cosm etic political trium phs, liberal cr itics like G itlin (1995b), Russell Jacoby (1987) and Robert H ughes (1993) chastise the shallow politics of a beleaguered left that now ghts politics from the library, protests by m eans of abstract theory, cannot build m ajorities and sees political action in the con nes of cur ricular revision. 1 A politics of nostalgia can em erge from m ultiple, not sim ply reactionary, conceptions of loss; it has been developed by factions of the right and the left (Tannoc k, 1995). O n occasion, this has produced som e intriguing parallels that cross the political divide. M y interest in the colourization debate stem s from the character of nostalgia it engendered am ong ranks of the liberal-left and the discursive continuities this revealed w ith key tenets of neo-conservative critique. Colourization gave rise to a liberal nostalgia that understood loss in term s of threatened cultural patrim ony. The status of the 'classic' text, the principles of aesthetic distinction, and the im portance of cultural inheritance all becam e points of issue for a liberal lobby seeking to fend off the deleterious encroac hm ents of com m erce in the cultural sphere. In m any respects, the anti-colour ization cam p traf cked in w hat Joan Wallach Scott (1995) has called the 'fetishizing of tradition' in contem porary discourse. Scott associates this w ith conservative endeavours to shore up the 'integrity' of A m erican identity (and its structures of pr ivilege) against m ulticultural discordance. The discourse of tradition has also been m obilized and re ned by the left, however. The colourization debate complicates the discursive 'territories' of left and right, joining rather curiously the likes of Woody Allen and Allan Bloom , M artin Scorsese and G eorge W ill, in a com m on defence of heritage and cultural transm ission.
The colourization debate set liberal artisan guilds, lm organizations, critics, directors and D em ocrat Senators against the powerful econom ic interests of Turner Broadcasting System s, CBS/Fox, H al Roach Studios, C olorization Inc. and Color System s Technology. In fram ing their opposition to the conversion process, m any liberal voices rushed to the defence of the classic work; they justied the policing of taste against com m ercial opportunism and the vulgarities of consum er preference; they sought to counter the debilitating effects of postm odern technology and its digital m anipulation of the visual im age. These were sim ilar, however, to the term s being deployed by the conser vative assault on m ulticulturalism as it developed in the sam e cultural m om ent. Right-w ing critics abhorred the attack on classic works of literature; argum ents were m ade about the onset of ignorance and super ciality w ith the 'politicization' of the hum anities; conser vatives sought to challenge postm odern theory and its corrosive im pact on sense, clarity and standards of value. Colour ization and multiculturalism created respective barbarism s against w hich defenders of culture, her itage and good taste could unite. The signi cant difference between the two debates w as the axis determ ining from where exactly a rhetoric of nostalgia, linked to particular notions of authenticity, w as being voiced. Colourization w as fought w ith rhetorical grapeshot com pared w ith the heavy weapons w heeled out for the battles over m ulticulturalism . I w ant to consider how both debates nevertheless revealed a sim ilar resistance, in a com parable language, to c hallenges m ade upon the ' xity' of tradition, the stability of artistic canons, and the form ation of A m er ican cultural identity.

C olourization
M ichael Bérubé has said that: 'postm oder nism 's politics w ill be a struggle for control -not over the m eans of production, but over the m eans of replication ' (1994: 127). This speaks, in part, of the licensed re-privatization of culture, w here capitalist energies enforce law s of copyright and ow nership w ithin areas that are, or should be, public. Colourization is one such exam ple. Both the Hal R oach Studios and Turner Broadcasting saw the oppor tunity to forge new copyrights for old works through techniques of colour conversion. Adding colour, it w as hoped, would be recognized as 'new creativity' by the Copyright O f ce (w hich it was in 1987), colourized lm s therefore becom ing an 'original work of author ship'. Ted Turner sought to m axim ize the pro t potential of works he already ow ned by securing copyrights for them as new com m odities. This had the effect of creating private proper ty out of an ostensibly public resource. W hile opponents tried m oving the issue on to m oral grounds -nam ely, was colourization a breach of the m oral rights of the original creators? -there was short legal m ileage to be gained from this argum ent. In 1988, President Reagan signed legislation for Am erica to becom e party to the Ber ne Convention, an agreem ent for the protection of literary and artistic works, but w ith a provision which effectively m eant that m oral rights would not be recognized in A m er ica. Colourization w as a legal victory for ow ners above artists, a trium ph for those holding proper ty rights and a digital paintbrush. C U L T U R A L S T U D I E S 6 2 4 C olour conversion w as rst and forem ost about m oney. As Ted Turner explains: 'M ovies were m ade to be pro table. They were not m ade as art, they were m ade to m ake m oney . . . anything that could m ake m ore m oney has always been considered to be O K ' (quoted in D aw son, 1989: 39). The vehicle and m edium for the colour ized lm w as television; pro t would be m ade through syndication and video release. In 1986, Turner announced that he would m arket a series of colour-converted lm s on a barter basis, including Yankee Doodle Dandee, W hite Heat, High Sierra, Father of the Bride, Dark Victory and The M altese Falcon. These were sold to television stations as part of the Color Classic Network. By 1987, the Vice-president of m arketing for Turner Broadcasting, David C opp, reported that eighty-ve stations had decided to par ticipate in the network, earning the com pany substantial revenues. For exam ple, two colourized Errol Flynn m ovies (Captain Blood and Sea H awk) grossed $800,000 in less than a year. In black and w hite, these had earned only $200,000 apiece. It was dif cult to anticipate the failure of colourization from the initial furore that it caused.
C harles R. A cland suggests, rightly in my opinion, that it is not colour that attracts audiences but the very fact of colourization, 'the spectacle of the renished product, a creation of technological w izardry ' (1990: 15). He argues that 'people are intrigued by the seem ingly profane reworking of de nitive m om ents in their collective cultural history'. There is perhaps a curiosity in digital alteration, of seeing a lm ar tfully doctored in the nam e of creating w hat Acland calls the 'new classic'. The fact that colourization failed to establish itself, that dem and was eventually low and com panies lost m illions in the gam ble, m ay illustrate the m om entary fascination. Colourization becam e a fad, a short-lived exercise that expired w ith the public's waning interest. By 1994, the N ew York Times w rote that 'the m ad dash to colorize classic blac k-and-white m ovies appears to be over' (Carter, 1994: 10). W ith cable c hannels like A m erican M ovie Classics and The Nostalgia N etwork showing a host of black and w hite 'oldies', and w ith the new m arketability of monochrom e m em ory, Ted Turner closed dow n his operations. For all its wizardry, colourization becam e little m ore than a digitally inspired novelty. W hat interests m e is less the fact that colourization failed in popular, if not in legal, term s, but the m anner in w hich it rallied opposition. W hile the debate was principally w aged over rights -ow nership versus the m oral entitlem ents of the creator -the rhetoric of the con ict focused upon a few central them es. Prom inent am ong them were those of authenticity, canonicity and cultural heritage. N otions of originality and authenticity have been problem atized in a clim ate w here cultural production has becom e ever m ore hybrid, inter textual and digitally reproduced. 2 Authenticity rem ains a powerful cultural category, however, evident in the colour ization debate. O pponents decried the process of colour conversion as a 'desecration' of the ar t-work (M artin Scorsese), a 'm utilation' (Woody Allen), an im propriety not unlike 'robbing a grave' (R ober t Redford). The D irectors G uild of Am erica called colour conversion 'cultural butchery'. C olourization was portrayed as an encroac hm ent on the rights of the creator but m oral argum ents were often linked to an idea of the authentic, that is to say black-and-w hite, work of art.
Authenticity is conceptually linked to the idea and possibility of fraud (O rvell, 1989). Exactly how fraudulent the colour ized lm is or can be said to be was basic to the legal and aesthetic debates that governed the issue of colour conversion w ithin public discourse. There were two m ain areas of discussion. The aesthetic debate questioned the grounds on w hic h colourization w as (im )m oral (should it be done?) and the legal debate questioned the grounds on w hich colourization was (il)legal (can it be done?). There is considerable overlap between the two, for, as I have said, legal argum ents were fought in term s of m oral rights. The concept of authenticity w as fram ed som ew hat differently in each case, however. W hile the legal debate contested the deg ree of control a lmm aker could expect to have over his or her original (authentic) work, the aesthetic debate focused m ore upon the form al proper ties of blac k and w hite in de ning a work's very or iginality (authenticity).
Flo Leibow itz (1991) argues that black and w hite can affect the entire m ood of a lm ; m onochrom e perform s expressive work in its ow n right. A m onoc hrom e m ovie is not sim ply a lm w ithout colour but has a tonal quality that is often used quite deliberately in genres like lm noir (Narem ore, 1998). Black and w hite has developed speci c connotations in different m om ents of lm history. It has becom e m ore recently associated w ith a general sense of pastness, however, linked signi cantly to ideas of the lm 'classic'. By digitally reinterpreting a m onochrom e m ovie, colour ization w as seen by m any to effect a lm 's m ood and feel, but also its period status w ithin cinem atic history. To the groups and guilds w ho opposed the process, colourization was a crude econom ic venture exploiting the potential vulgarities of public taste, but som ething w hich also upset notions of lm classicism that were joined to particular ideas of cultural patrim ony.
The black-and-w hite 'classic' becam e a fulcrum of the colour ization debate, giving rise to the issue of cinem atic canons. Episodes of Gilligan's Island could be colourized, but G od forbid anyone should touch Citizen Kane. It w as the digital threat to an assem blage of perceivable 'classics' that inspired legal initiatives. In 1988, C ongress sanctioned the creation of the N ational Film Preservation Board under the auspices of the Library of Congress. This was a board of thir teen people w ho, in 1990, began considering a list of 1,500 lm s nom inated by the public for selection as cinem atic landm arks. Twenty-ve titles would be chosen each year, the Library of Congress requiring the copyright ow ner to subm it a high-quality print or negative to its archive and obliging colour ized versions to be acknow ledged. The N ational Film Preser vation Board was the result of Senate hearings w hich, exam ining colour ization as an issue of m oral rights, were reluctant to follow France, G er m any and Italy and establish concrete legal protections for artists as well as ow ner s. 3 A s a com prom ise, the hearings decreed that a lim ited num ber of lm s that were 'culturally, historically and aesthetically signi cant' should be included in a N ational Film Registry. These lm s would not be exem pt from alteration but videocassettes would carry a stic ker on the front acknow ledging the fact of alteration. It w as a lim ited victory for the anticolourization lobby, but interesting in w hat it revealed about the role of governm ent in preser ving 'classic' works of art, and the stakes fought over the cultural transm ission of canonical artefacts and the particular histories they designate.
O ne of the argum ents used by opponents of colour conversion w as the effect it would have on her itage, m em ory and natio nal identity. John H usto n denounced colourization, saying that 'it would alm ost seem as tho ugh a conspiracy exists to deg rade our national character' (quoted in Klaw ans, 1990: 165). Bonita G ranville W rather, c hairperson of the A m erican Film Institute, said that colouring 'w ill destroy ou r natio nal lm history and th e rich her itage w hich it represen ts' (quo ted in Lin eld, 1 987: 35). Although m aster copies of original lm s are alw ays left intact after colour conversion and m ay even be better preser ved, this fact was thought to be insigni cant w hile a powerful entertainm en t industry controls distribu tion, circulation and access. W ith tim e, it w as argued, a colourized lm would replace the original version in the public m em ory. Works of art would be replaced by inferior com m ercial spectacles. This would have severe consequences for any real u nder standing of lm history and cinem atic tradition.
It was in this context that Congress published ndings that led to the creation of the N ational Film Preservation Board. O ne link between colourization and m ulticulturalism is that concer ning the role of governm ent in upholding standards and values w ithin a notional cultural polic y. This would becom e a hotly contested issue in the w ar over political correctness, focusing upon the level of public funding (adm inistered by the N ational Endow m ent for the Arts and Hum anities) given fam ously to artists such as Rober t M applethorpe and Andres Serrano. W hile the standards in this case were m oral -should the governm ent sponsor work that is 'por nographic' and 'anti-Christian'? -and were, in fact, linked to R epublican efforts to cut the N EA budget, the standards upheld by the colourization ruling were, one m ight say, m em or ial. G overnm ent took steps to articulate a concept of heritage through its com m itm ent, however em pty it m ay have been in practical term s, to 'classic' lm .
The threat posed to the cultural transm ission of heritage has becom e a key issue in A m er ican cultural politics. Colourization disturbed conventions of m em ory by visually reinterpreting artefacts of lm history. U nlike the historical revisions w ithin recent m useum and academ ic discourse, colourization had pecuniary rather than political m otivations. 4 Sim ilar issues about historical representation were at stake, however, and sim ilar com plaints were m ade against the perception of sacrilegious tam pering. Com pare these statem ents by John H uston, addressing the U S Congress on the issue of colour conversion in 1987, and G eorge W ill, w riting in N ew sweek about political correctness.
We are all custodians of our culture. O ur culture de nes not w ho we are but who and w hat we were. Those of us w ho have labored a lifetim e to create a body of work look to you for the preservation of that work in the form we chose to m ake it. I believe we have that right.
John H uston (quoted in Lee, 1991: 112) The transm ission of the culture that unites, even de nes A m er ica -transm ission through know ledge of literature and history -is faltering. The result is collective am nesia and deculturation. That pre gures social disintegration, w hich is the political goal of the victim revolution that is sweeping cam puses. G eorge W ill (1991: 72) Both exam ples invoke a threatened tradition integral to conceptions of Am erican identity and culture. If the colourization debate illustrates som e of the rhetorical tropes utilized in new right attacks on m ulticulturalism , the m ain agent of 'deculturation' for the anti-colourization lobby was never a tenured radical or m em ber of the loony left but Ted Turner (hardly a radical even if he is m arried to Jane Fonda). From the m id-1980s, a defence began to m ount in two different areas of cultural life and from different political positions, a discourse of tradition seeking to enclose and protect cultural heritage from insidious, or at best selfserving, corporate and pedagogical interlopers. H er itage is a capacious term and battles fought in its nam e reveal different political constellations and com m itm ents. The rhetorical defence of her itage in the culture w ar has been waged on certain term s. It has becom e less a question of m aterial preservation than a m atter of defending speci c histories inscribed in cultural texts. Stuart Klaw ans (1990) notes that one of the ironies of colourization w as that Ted Turner spent m ore m oney and did m ore to preser ve lm heritage by storing and m aking safe fragile nitrate-based lm stock than any federal effor t to do the sam e. H eritage has becom e an issue m ore often fought over questions of representation, over continuities of know ledge that shape and inform a particular sense of cultural identity. It is the discursive continuities between anticolourization and opposition to multiculturalism , evident in this ght, that I now w ant brie y to consider.

M u lticulturalism
'C olorization represents the m utilation of history, the vandalism of our com m on past, not m erely as it relates to lm , but as it affects society's perception of itself ' (quoted in Wagner, 1989: 645). So read a com m ittee letter by the D irectors G uild of A m er ica, subm itted at the Senate hearings on m oral rights. The tone here could be m istaken for that levelled against A frocentrism and the 'cult of C U L T U R A L S T U D I E S 6 2 8 ethnicity' in the work of a critic such as A rthur Schlesinger, Jr. In 1991, Sc hlesinger published The Disuniting of America, a bestseller that delivered a prognosis on the 'new ethnic gospel' being instilled through education and the teac hing of history. This w as a book w hic h, as M ichael Bérubé (1994) suggests, perform ed im portant cultural work in delegitim izing m ulticulturalism . It is not my purpose to exam ine Schlesinger but he does illustrate sim ilar discursive ground occupied by the anti-colourization lobby in its concern w ith historical mutilations and vandalism . Lam enting the use of education to build self-esteem in m inority groups, he argues that history should not be tam pered w ith in the service of cultural therapy. H ow else but through the invocation of history, he suggests, 'can a people establish the legitim acy of its personality, the continuity of its tradition, the correctness of its course? ' (1991: 48). The colourization debate never entertained the polem ics of (ethnic) difference, but it did raise issues of pedagogy and historical transm ission that were being expressed in the con ict over multiculturalism .
If we are to be precise, colourization was m ore about taste than pedagogy de ned in any institutional sense; the anti-colourization lobby tried to police standards of value for those im pressionable souls unable to distinguish between m onoc hrom e quality and colourized trash. Distinctions were m ade between authenticity and fraud, heritage and heresy. A sim ilar regulatory prem ise underwrites The Closing of the American M ind.A llan Bloom 's A rnoldian sense of cultural tradition seeks to preserve distinctions between high and low culture in the perpetuation of a discer nible (Western) cultural heritage. H e suggests that 'for Am ericans the works of the great writers could be the bright sunlit uplands where they could nd the outside, the authentic liberation for w hich this essay is a plea ' (1987: 48). Authenticity is a byword for true cultural value; it is basic to a critique that decries super ciality, ignorance, fakers and those who no doubt traf c in postm oder n theory.
I suggested earlier that colourization and m ulticulturalism both created barbarism s against w hich defenders of culture, her itage and good taste could unite. In each case, this barbarism is an expression of effects w hich m ight usefully be called postm odern. In the case of colourization, the conversion process is enabled by digital technologies that allow the lm im age to be altered in ways that previous techniques of tinting and toning could never ac hieve. Colourization was seen to create a sim ulacr um of the classic lm , underm ining authenticity and tam per ing w ith tradition. In the m ulticultural debate, postm odern theory becam e a perceivable m enace to originality and her itage, classic works of literature com ing under the relativist cosh. W hile a com plex m ovem ent w ith diverse political investm ents, m ulticulturalism was relentlessly stigm atized in public discourse and by the m edia press. R e ecting upon the culture wars at the end of the 1990s, Frederick Buell w rites: ' "m ulticulturalism " was repeatedly spoken of as a singular, easily-labeled position, one that am ounted to 1) separatism and 2) cultural relativism ' (1998: 555). The 'barbarism ' attached to m ulticulturalism w as a par ticular con ation of these two elem ents. The questions that the m ulticultural m ovem ent posed to the stability of artistic canons (nam ely, the concept of com m on culture) was linked, and often confused, w ith an assault on the the very status of nationhood (the concept of com m on society). I realize that I am using the word 'm ulticulturalism ' w ithout accounting for its ubiquitous use and m eaning in social and cultural discourse (G ordon and N ew eld, 1996). H owever, its conceptual and political diversity was never som ething its detractors were careful to preser ve. If the 'barbarism ' of multiculturalism can be com pared w ith that of colour ization, it is on the grounds that eac h were seen to fundam entally disturb the relationship between cultural canonicity and national identity.
Tropes of universal worth and tim eless value can be w itnessed in both debates. G eorge Lucas said at the Senate hearings that technological advances 'w ill alter, m utilate and destroy for future generations the subtle hum an truths and higher hum an feelings that talented individuals w ithin our society have created' (quoted in Wagner, 1989: 645). This im plies an idea of cultural uplift (higher feelings) in works that transm it enduring values (subtle truths). It is rem iniscent of the bright sunlit uplands that Bloom nds in the great w riters, those talented individuals of the literary world. In each debate, the status of the 'classic' text w as at stake, under m ined by digital reproduction and left-w ing 'politicization', respectively. In different ways, opponents of m ulticulturalism and colourization saw the ritual sacri ce of aesthetic and cultural standards in ill-considered attem pts to accom m odate injured visual and/or political sensibilities. This 'accom m odation' was seen to have a powerful com m ercial dim ension. Colourization was clear evidence to its critics of the vulgarities of the m arketplace, corporate im presarios out to m ake a ready buck through the base exploitation of (a created) consum er fancy. Colourization was seen as an expression of im personal m arket forces, global m agnates seeking to extend their com m and over lucrative new m arkets. Ted Turner was no cultural patron but, as American Film (1989) literally pictured him , a dangerous 'raider of the last archive'. 5 The m arket-based challenge to aesthetic value and cultural heritage also distinguished conservative com plaints about m ulticulturalism w ithin education. Academ ics, it was thought, were becom ing self-aggrandizing careerists; disciplines like cultural studies were em erging as lucrative cottage industries; the university was succum bing to a new consum erism less concerned w ith m aintaining the 'autonomy of knowledge' than show-casing a graduating roster of satis ed custom ers. W ithin a broad context, these kinds of criticism can be seen as a response to w hat Arjun Appadurai (1990) has called the 'global cultural economy'. They are a reaction to the substantial weakening of national patrim ony in a tim e w hen the transnational ow of persons, technologies, nance, inform ation and ideology has both underm ined local tradition and transform ed the social function of the university as it w as linked to ideas of national culture and the destiny of the nation state (Readings, 1996).
Placing the colourization debate alongside battles fought over m ulticulturalism is not as gratuitous as it m ay at rst appear. There are com m on them es in C U L T U R A L S T U D I E S 6 3 0 both con icts despite their difference in political scale. The stability of tradition, the need to m aintain aesthetic value, the preser vation of authenticity against fakery, the im positions of the m arketplace, and the continuities of cultural and historical transm ission, these were all basic to liberal opposition to colourization and conser vative opposition to m ulticulturalism . I do not want to bludgeon the sim ilarities between quite different types of culture w ar, but each debate was distinguished by a narrative of decline. N ostalgia becam e an idiom of cultural complaint for the left as m uch as the right, an under tone extending itself in debates that, w hile separate, em erged in the sam e cultural m om ent. C olourization m ay have been local and slight com pared w ith m ulticulturalism , w hich has becom e em bracing and pivotal, but the discourse opposing them both w as energized and thic kened by a concept of loss advanced by conser vatives and liberals. W hile ghting different enem ies -left-w ing 'thought police' and big business -eac h used sim ilar basic term s. Cultural m anifestations in education and popular culture, call them postm odern if you like, were seen to underm ine the system s of m eaning that give order and unity to Am erican tradition and, w ith it, cultural identity.

N ostalg ia
If nostalgia is de ned as a yearning for the past in response to a loss, absence or discontinuity felt in the present, conser vatives like Allan Bloom , Roger Kim ball and D inesh D 'Souza engaged a rhetoric that cast m ulticulturalism as a new fundam entalism . W ith it supposedly cam e the loss of tradition in the venal search for oppression, the absence of cultural value with the politicization of the hum anities, and a break w ith com m unality w ith the new obsession w ith difference. A rhetoric of nostalgia developed, glorifying a past w here the lunacy and totalitarianism of 'political correctness' was ineffectual, and w here cultural values (those of w hite m ale privilege) were seen to be m ore secure. In com paring m ulticulturalism and colourization, I have so far suggested that sim ilar rhetorical m odes were m arshalled in quite different debates. M y point, in m aking the connection, is about the developm ent of a particular com m on sense in A m erican culture. I want to dem onstrate the hegem onic battles for cultural author ity waged by right and left over the guardianship of taste and the protection of tradition.
The allure of nostalgia becam e an em otive issue in the late 1980s and early 1990s that cut across conventional political dem arcations. This was a result of new tendencies in postm odern culture rejecting the m eanings and identities inscribed w ithin traditional regim es of know ledge, reconstructing the work of art in an age of digital reproduction, and disrupting crucial distinctions between depth and surface, high and popular culture, authenticity and arti ce. Put under pressure were cer titudes of taste, value and cultural identity. The panic that ensued expressed itself in various form s but signi cant for both liberals and conservatives w as the critical af rm ation of a stable, authentic, heritage inscribed w ithin 'legitim ate' form s of cultural representation. A t stake here is the policing of cultural distinction. M ore speci cally, it illustrates how intellectuals and taste m akers of the left and right have m utually conceived the public as cultural dupes, in danger of being cretinized without the proper recognition and regulation of 'tim eless' cultural value. N ostalgia was rhetorically em broiled in attem pts to, in som e sense, 'reclaim ' consensual cultural heritage, rescuing the stupi ed public from both cultural fragm entation and their ow n ignorance.
The colourization debate was arguably structured by two form s of nostalgia, buried w ithin the legal contestation of m oral rights: a nostalgia for authenticity and the value attached to authentic nostalgia. Nostalgia for authenticity com es in a cultural m om ent w hen authorship and originality have been profoundly c hallenged by the capacity of new technologies to re gure cultural texts (C ollins, 1995). Colour ized m ovies were akin to the generation of (retro) lm s that Baudrillard has described as being 'to those one knew w hat the android is to m an: m arvelous artifacts, without weakness, pleasing sim ulacra that lac k only the im aginary, and the hallucination inherent to cinem a ' (1994: 45). The callous disregard for the original text in the colourization process w as seen to have grave im plications for heritage and popular m em ory. Am nesia is one of the m uch discussed sym ptom s of postm oder nity. A culture of surface and sim ulation supposedly threatens depth of historical understanding; the speed and style of m edia im agery creates a 'presentness' that obscures any m eaningful relationship w ith the past. Andreas H uyssen (1995) has asked w hat a postm odern m em ory would look like in a world w here the technological m edia affect the way we perceive and live our tem porality. For those suspicious of m eddlesom e digital effects it would no doubt look very m uch like a colourized lm -false, crude and not sufciently authentic. The colourized lm is a digital product of algorithm s stored in com puter m em ory. Som e would say that, in being simultaneously of the past and the present, a colourized m ovie destroys the visual pastness that m ight register a lm m ore obviously w ithin cultural m em ory. The idea of 'authentic nostalgia' reacts to the oxym oronic concept of the 'new classic', and to fear that m em ory is being short-changed in the reign of postm oder n simulacra. This corresponds with Fredr ic Jam eson's (1991) anxiety about the profound w aning or blockage of historicity in postm odernism . In a culture distinguished by the 'spatial logic of the sim ulacr um ', he argues that historicity has been replaced by a new aesthetic 'nostalgia m ode'. This describes an art language w here the past is realized through stylistic connotation and consum ed as pastiche. Sym ptom atic of a crisis in the postm oder n historical im agination, the nostalgia m ode satis es a desperate craving for history, w hile reinforcing the past as 'a vast collection of im ages, a m ultitudinous photographic sim ulacrum ' (Jam eson, 1991: 18). For Jam eson, the historical past has been replaced by stylized and glossy pastness; the simulations C U L T U R A L S T U D I E S 6 3 2 of the nostalgia m ode have enfeebled the experience of a properly existential nostalgia m ood.
Jam eson appeals, m uch like the anti-colourization lobby, to a conceptually auth entic apprehension of the past. This fails to accou nt for th e new for m s of narrativity that have developed in a heavily m ediated and m edia sophisticated culture, however. The recycling, hybridizing, and even colourizing, of past styles need not pre gure a postm odern 'crisis of historicity' bu t m ay instead suggest a co nscio us rearticulatio n of the past. This follow s Linda H utcheon's argum ent that postm oder nism 'does not deny the existence of the past; it do es question w hether we can know th at p ast other than through its tex tualized rem ains ' (1987: 2 5). Lam enting the depthless sim ulacra o f late cap italism , Jam eson g ives little sense that m eaningful narratives of cultural m em ory can be produced through the narrative techniques and stylized form s o f the 'nostalgia m ode'. Like the 'nostalgia lm ' th at Jam eson fam ously treats, colourized m ovies would only provide furth er eviden ce of w hat he suggests to be an incum bent m em ory cr isis, a paralysis in 'our lived possibility of experiencing history in som e active way ' (1991: 21).
In contradistinction to the liberal and postm oder n doom sayers, proponents of colourization argued that digital tec hnology would give new life to old lm s. Ted Turner believed that the 'new classic' would m aintain m em ory in alternative, m ore contem porary form s. H is defence w as not m ade on representational grounds but was couched in a populist rhetoric, af rm ing that 'consum ers have voted -they like it ' (quoted in D aw son, 1989: 39). This kind of m arket endorsem ent did not stem the fears of the anti-colourization lobby, however. The 'sugarwater' of colourization, as John H uston put it, only proved that the public were lac king in the cr itical capacities that m ight safeguard the chords of cultural m em ory. 'Authentic nostalgia' w as valued against the spectre of postm oder n forgetting. A s a concept, it underw rote liberal-left com plaints about the ahistorical experience of the colourized lm , a crude cinem atic spectacle caught sym ptom atically between the very words 'new ' and 'classic'.

The C u lture War
The anti-colourization cam paign set out to resist postm odern con gurations of cultural transm ission w hereby artefacts of history can be digitally altered and m ade to circulate in w ays that underm ine conceptions of authorship, originality and xed tradition. The debate over m ulticulturalism , w hile m ore varied, consequential and generating higher deg rees of political venom , raised sim ilar issues. This w as notable in w hat conser vatives saw as the cr um bling foundations of Western cultural heritage in higher education and the hum anities. It has not been my intention either to condone or condem n colourization. Instead, I have sought to illustrate som e of the discursive continuities between two debates that em erged in the sam e cultural m om ent and engaged left and right quite differently but w ith sim ilar presuppositions. In each case, narratives of decline were m obilized, barbarians identi ed, and tradition sancti ed.
I have distinguished the anti-colourization lobby as liberal, but this shouldn't im ply that conservatives were, by im plication, for the w hole process. Considering the regim es of taste that organize and structure sym bolic dom ination in the cultural eld, Andrew Ross has discussed a m utual distrust on the left and the right concerning 'new technologies and the m onstrous m ass cultures to w hich they give birth ' (1989: 209). Colourization was a new digital technology sponsored by corporate nance; the 'new classic' was industrially produced to m ake pro t, a cultural form that for m any com prom ised the borders of legitim ate taste and fostered the idiocy of its popular audience. As a cultural and aesthetic issue, colourization received condem nation from left and right alike. It was in term s of ownership and property rights that colourization becam e m ore speci cally m apped as a liberal/D em ocrat crusade. Even the black-and-white lm star Ronald Reagan could not, in his new role as President, be m oved to intervene and save the m onochrom e classic if it m eant doing so at the expense of business principles and copyright law.
M y interest in this article has been the m eans by w hich liberal cr iticism of colourization arguably helped to strengthen the legitim acy of right-w ing discour se in its fetishizing of 'traditional' know ledge and culture. Authenticity, canonicity and tradition becam e vital to right-w ing rhetoric in its attack on super ciality, ignorance and politicization w ithin A m er ican universities. These sam e term s were also used by the anti-colour ization lobby, however. Before m ulticulturalism ever becam e a national issue, but in the sam e m om ent that conservatives were gather ing steam , the defence of cultural her itage was being fought by right and left.
At the end of the 1980s, nostalgia developed a polem ical currency in two separate debates. In each case this w as linked to issues of value, taste and cultural patrim ony. O pposition to both colourization and m ulticulturalism has been, in part, the result of technological and intellectual transform ations that have disturbed values and identities inscribed in a selection of 'untouchable' texts. By rehearsing a particular com m on sense about the preservation of heritage and the status of the classic, the anti-colourization cam paign forti ed principles of cultural authority threatened by new postm odern connections between art, evaluation, education and the archive. I would argue that in their rhetorical nostalgia for the work of art and consensual cultural heritage, the liberal-left helped articulate them es that would reverberate powerfully in right-wing brom ides against the 'therapeutic' and 'separatist' tendencies of m ulticulturalism . Effectively, the anti-colourization lobby enriched a discourse that advanced the vitality of traditional know ledge, the value of aesthetic taste, and the virtue of cultural inheritance, a discourse that would be developed, de ned and deployed strategically in the hegem onic 'war of positions' waged to control the term s of the m ulticultural debate.
A politics of nostalgia is com m only associated with conservative critique. This can under state, however, the deg ree to w hich it has shaped liberal anxieties about a jeopardized cultural her itage. The threat to historical transm ission, whether by tenured radical or corporate parvenu, has been m et w ith resistance in m ajor and m inor culture w ars, producing oppositional con gurations w ith a shared investm ent in principles of authenticity, historical continuity and consensual heritage. A rhetoric has developed across political lines roping off and defending versions of cultural patrim ony. This m ay feed different debates w ith different discursive histories -nam ely, the cr itique of new technology and the contested function of the university -but in the late 1980s concer ns sharpened, for liberals and for conser vatives, upon a sim ilar basic fear: the daw ning possibility that in being exposed to odious form s of PC (popular culture, political cor rectness, postm odern cr itique), Am erican students and consum ers were becom ing, to use a politically correct argot, 'culturally challenged'.
C ritics from Todd G itlin (1995b) to N ikhal Pal Singh (1998) have discussed the origins and context of the culture w ars shaping public discourse in the 1990s. Although providing different political interpretations, they both point to the political and econom ic, as well as speci cally cultural, histories inform ing the struggles over m ulticulturalism . The culture wars were but a single, if sym bolic and politically pregnant, m anifestation of a m uc h broader sense of national identity crisis brought about by factors such as the end of the cold war and the m ore sustained effects of globalization. W hile the culture war debates have in som e sense run their course, including the jerem iads on the com prom ised nature of Am erican tradition, the need to articulate a coherent sense of nation and national m em ory rem ains. If postm oder nity is characterized by 'institutionalized pluralism , variety, contingency and am bivalence', as Zygm unt Baum an (1992) suggests, protective strategies have been engaged, across a variety of cultural discour ses, to articulate a puri ed national essence. In a tim e when national identity is being underm ined by transnational political and econom ic restructuring; when ideas of national com m onality are being challenged by an em ergent politics of difference; and w hen the m etanarratives of m em ory are straining for legitim acy against the m ultiple pasts of the m arginalized, the desire to stabilize the con guration and perceived transm ission of Am erican cultural identity continues to be a de ning aspect of hegem onic m em ory politics.

N otes
1 T here are interests at stake w ith any sense of loss. G itlin has been accused of nostalgia by critics w ho point to his ow n threatened authority as a w hite m ale politico, som eone w ho resists the c hallenge m ade by a new generation of academ ics and w ho can afford to disclaim identity politics because there is little personally at stake. G itlin denies the c harge of nostalgia, suggesting there is no golden age to w hich he aspires or seeks to recover. This does not explain away the narrative of decline in his work, however, gured around the w aning political capacities of an effective left. In m any w ays, G itlin issues a rhetorical nostalgia for the spirit of change that once m arked the early new left. 2 D igital im aging, in particular, has altered the representational 'truth' status of the photographic and lm ic im age. Time m agazine drew particular controversy over this w hen it w as revealed that a cover shot of O. J. Sim pson had been digitally altered and Sim pson's face visually darkened. The representational authenticity of the im age w as throw n into question w ith dubious racial im plications. O n the issue of digital technology in lm see Stephen Prince (1996). 3 In 1988, a Frenc h trial cour t perm anently banned the television broadcast of a colourized version of John H uston's The Asphalt Jungle on the basis that it would cause 'unm endable and intolerable dam age' to the integrity of the work and would therefore com prom ise H uston's m oral rights. 4 T he contestation of historical m em ory in curatorial display can be w itnessed in the controversies surrounding the 'West as A m erica' and the Enola G ay exhibitions at the Sm ithsonian in 1991 and 1995, respectively. Both were charged w ith 'political correctness' for their accom m odation of perspectives that fall outside of consensual frontier and atom ic narratives. For an account of recent curatorial controversies, see M ike Wallace (1996). 5 T he cover of the January 1989 edition of American Film show s Turner dressed as Indiana Jones, wearing a stetson and sporting a ri e, w ith the caption, 'Raider of the Last Archives'.