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Manufactured Images

How do we want to be remembered? Do we have a say in how we are remembered?

 

Willy wanted to be remembered as this charismatic salesman, who had this energy surrounding him that

just made everyone like him. You know kind of like a Jim Halpert/ Harvey Specter character. Now it is

obvious that this fantasy of his would never come true but is it possible for that picture to be popularized. 

How many times have we seen people become more famous after dying, or how many times have the

bad actions of people been forgotten or overwritten after their death. It is incredibly evident that a

flattering narrative is usually encouraged after someone dies.


The most obvious example I can think of is fictional. It always fascinates me how the narratives switched

for Severus Snape after his death. For six, even seven, solid books everyone hated that man’s

existence. He was everything you hated in a person- arrogant, selfish, obnoxious ad condescending to

name a few. What further proves my point, is that Harry, the one who was endlessly bullied by this

professor, was so ready to forgive and forget a lot of those traits. The way the impression, or rather,

image of Snape changed after his death is a true reflection of how images and memories can be

manufactured to fit a narrative.


I mean even in non famous situations it is pretty clear that people sell a manufactured version of a

person after they die. You sort of brush over their more annoying traits, or you enhance their good traits

and change the fundamental impression most people had of them.


So essentially the question I am trying to get across is whether it truly matters what image you create

when you are alive. Is it possible for Willy to have lived his life happily and everything, and after he dies

to be remembered as a smooth salesman? Could that narrative have been spread by his sons, Bernard

and others who knew him? I mean we don’t know. 


SNL skit that sort of reminds me of this

(P.S viewer discretion it's SNL not all that PG-13) 

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