| Abstract | This article presents information related to the memory-history-popular culture nexus in context to the movie "Pearl Harbor." In a global context increasingly inundated with mass-mediated representations of events labeled newsworthy, there is a relationship between collective memory, history and popular culture. Specifically, the American film industry construct images of traumatic events specific to the U.S. and those shared with other nations. Moreover, these films and associated products are distributed and consumed by a global audience. Collective memory is a space where culture fuses with social power resulting in a dominant, although contested, historical narrative. "Cultural memory" is a site of negotiation that is intimately tied to national identity formation. Within hypermodern context the blurring of collective memory and history is primarily articulated in the realm of commercialized popular culture. While commercialized popular culture is hardly new, the form in which history-memory operates in this realm is clearly a recent hypermodern form and accordingly in need of critical interrogation.
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