While his guitar gently weeps: Memory, documentary and the music biopic

In George Harrison: Living in the Material World (2011), Martin Scorsese creates a homage not only to the ‘great man’, but also to the memories of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s as seen through the eyes of those who shaped the era, represented through a palimpsest provided by contemporary media, memoirs and interviews. Although the documentary offers the authenticity of ‘insider’ accounts, it might be seen more usefully as a biopic, which chronicles broader historical movements through an individual’s story, and a meta-memoir, which self-consciously encourages the audience to reflect on their own achievements, failures and legacies. Rather than embedding this film in a conceptual framework of celebrity culture, we view the film with an emphasis on the affective dimension of historical representation through memory. The film can thus be seen as a work that refocuses the fans’ gaze from Harrison’s life back on themselves.