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Beauty and the Beach: The Postcard as a Time Concept.
Warwick Mules, Film and Cultural Studies, Central Queensland University
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A young girl is sitting on a beach somewhere in Fiji surrounded by a group of boys. This scene is not 'real' but printed on a postcard sent by a tourist in Fiji to a relative in Australia in 1961. Postcards raise interesting questions concerning messages and their temporality. What is the event that marks the occasion of the postcard message? What status does the information contained on the postcard have to readers other than those designated in the address? In what way does the printed scene frame the message? What kind of time is involved in the sending and receiving of postcards?
In this paper I will explore these issues, building on the work of Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Walter Benjamin, Paul Virilio and others, who have used the postcard and other everyday objects and experiences to think about time and its effects on communication and culture. The postcard can also be used as a concept to think about new kinds of electronic communication in terms of visual storage, access and 'posting'. As a message sent in anticipation of its own passing, postcards are always caught in a time warp, as relics 'out of time'. Through a reading of a range of postcards, I explore their visuality as private messages couched in a public communication format, which constantly anticipates its own demise as evidence of 'original' experiences.
