Film and Cultural Memory - 2013 - HC21 Film & Cultural MemoryWeek 2: Historical representation 1 How can we represent traumatic history in (mainstrea m) feature films ?-What are the strategies ?–Audiovisual manner–Dramatic manner‘It is precisely the task of film to add movement, colour, sound, and drama to the past’ (Rosenstone, p. 37)2 Conventions for the mainstream historical feature films ( Hollywood tradition )•To tell the past as a STORY•Story of individuals•One complete narrative •Personalization - identification – emotion •Look of the past•To show history as a process3 ‘[...] for the director of the dramatic film, who must create a past that fits within the demands, practices and traditions of both visual media and the dramatic form, this means having to go beyond constituting facts out of traces of evidence found in books or archives and tot begin inventing some of them.’ (Rosenstone, p. 38)4 INVENTION •Staging of the past •Compression and condensation•Displacement•Alteration•Dialogue5 Criteria for good historical feature films? Rosenstone: ‘how the historical film relates to, comments upon reflects and/or critiques the already existing body of data, arguments, and debates about the topic at hand.’ !Importance of the metaphorical, symbolical and poetic force of film(and not the rational scientific) 6
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-What are the strategies ? – Audiovisual manner – Dramatic manner
‘It is precisely the task of lm to add movement,colour, sound, and drama to thepast’ (Rosenstone, p. 37)
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Conventions for the mainstreamhistorical feature lms
( Hollywood tradition ) • To tell the past as a STORY
• Story of individuals
• One complete narrative
•
Personalization - identication – emotion
• Look of the past
• To show history as a process
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‘[...] for the director of the dramatic lm, whomust create a past that ts within thedemands, practices and traditions of bothvisual media and the dramatic form, thismeans having to go beyond constituting factsout of traces of evidence found in books orarchives and tot begin inventing some ofthem.’ (Rosenstone, p. 38)
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INVENTION • Staging of the past
• Compression and condensation
• Displacement
• Alteration
• Dialogue
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Criteria for good historicalfeature lms?Rosenstone: ‘how the historical lm relates to,
comments upon reects and/or critiques thealready existing body of data, arguments, anddebates about the topic at hand.’
! Importance of the metaphorical, symbolical andpoetic force of lm
The force of the lm Hotel Rwanda is altogether itscapability to give a metaphoric structure to what
occurred in 1994. In concentrating on PaulRusesabagina, the manager of the famous Belgianhotel Hôtel des Mille Collines, the lmachieves the showing of at least four things:
1) heroism of the individuals who won overbrutality;
2) the indistinctive effect of the 1994 slaughtersupon all the population of Rwanda;
3) the fact that survival was largely also a matter ofchance;
4) the indifference of the world, especially the whiteWestern World.
(Nzabatsinda) 7
- Epistemological aspect -
The task of the historian: Just the facts To construct a coherent narrative based on facts
- ‘narrative is regarded as a neutral container of historicalfact’
- Language (‘natural or ordinary language’) is neutral - Historical reality must be objective and is based on the
collection of facts
(H. White)
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Hayden White: ction
Postmodernism: epistemological crisis ! various narratives can co-exist. ! Historiography is challenged
For whether we like it or not, the predominant vehicles of publicmemory are the media of technical re/production and massconsumption. This is especially exacerbated for t heremembrance of the Shoah considering the specific crisis posedby the Nazis’ destruction of the very basis and structures ofcollective remembering.
(! )
The remembrance of the Shoah, to the extent that it was publicand collective, has always been more dependent on m ass-mediated forms of memory.
(! )
We need to understand the place of Schindler’s List in thecontemporary culture of memory and memorialising and the filmin turn may help us understand that culture.
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Hansen ‘s conclusion:
“To dismiss the film because of the a priori established unrepresentability ofwhat it purports to represent may be
justified on ethical and epistemologicalgrounds, but it means missing a chanceto understand the significance of theShoah in the present, in the ongoingand undecided struggles over which
• State denial• Link with trauma : denial reinforces the
trauma• Film as a possible « answer » to trauma ?
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The Armenian genocide - 1915
• First genocide of the twenty century: 1,5 millionsArmenians were killed.
• Hitler : « Who still remembers the Armenians? » (1939)
• Ottoman Empire lost power and prestige
! pan-Turkism : nationalistic ideology; a unifiedempire for the Turkish people.The “Jong-Turks” movement - comité for unity and
progress. Christian Armenians as an obstacle !
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Atom EGOYAN (1959-)
• Canadian filmmaker of Armenian origin• Autobiographic aspect• « Auteur » film• Central topic in his entire work : Memory• Observation : Armenian genocide does not belong
to our visual culture.• Ararat : protests (Cannes, 2002) and censorship
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Trauma and representation
• “Ultimately, it is not a film about the Armeniangenocide itself, but is instead a multi-layeredattempt to come to terms with the ways inwhich traumas of the past shape collectiveand individual identities in the present, andwith the questions of how to representgenocide in general and the Armeniangenocide in particular” ( Markovitz, p. 235)
• What is the meaning of such a film for us, in termsof cultural memory ?
• Can we speak of a « prosthetic memory » (A.Landsberg) ?
• Private or collective trauma of the Armeniangenocide ?
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Trauma
• Trauma = wound caused by some terribleexperience.
• Trauma of the Armenian genocide is double:1. Denial of identity (as ethnic group)2. Denial of the genocidal events
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Trauma / Text Ernst VAN ALPHEN
• Each experience is discursive• Trauma = failed experience• “The cause of trauma is precisely the impossibility of
experiencing, and subsequently memorizing , an event ” • Link with debate on unrepresentability:“When I speak of the Holocaust’s unrepresentability I am
referring not to the cultural issue of the impropriety ofrepresenting the Holocaust, but to the inability of Holocaust survivors to express or narrate their pastexperiences. The remembrance of Holocaust events is,then, technically impossible; this problem is fundamentally
semiotic in nature .” (p 26)15
• “It is not so much the content of the experience that causesthis problem, but that the capacity to narrate islacking.” ( p. 28)
• “Because the Holocaust situation did not fit into anyconventional framework, it was almost impossible to“experience”, and therefore later to voluntarily rememberor represent it.” (p. 34)
• Link met cultural memory :“ Memory is not something we have, but something we
produce as individuals sharing a culture. Memory is,then, the mutually constitutive interaction between the pastand the present, shared as culture but acted out by each ofus as an individual.” (p. 37)
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(Provisional) conclusion :• Lack of recognition reinforces the trauma.
•
Is film capable of creating a « prostheticmemory » of the Armenian genocide ?• Film in order to come to terms with the trauma ?
• Link trauma, testimony and film.• Question : Is the link between testimony
and film a historical, an ethical- psychological or purely a filmic issue ?
• Dori LAUB : role of the psychiatrist andarchivist in the collecting of audiotapedtestimonies.
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• Dori LAUB : psychiatrist and « child survivor »
• Co-founder of a testimonial project : FortunoffVideo Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale
http://www.library.yale.edu/testimonies/
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Aim of the Fortunoff:The survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust are diminishing in number.
Each year their recollections become more important, but each yearmoves them farther away from the original experience. This gives
special urgency to the effort to collect as many testimonies as possible- now.
There already exist substantial collections of written or audiotapedtestimony. The television image, however, using an open-ended, free-
flowing interviewing process, discloses expressive details about theday-to-day experience of the survivors with a force that can hardly beexaggerated.
These personal testimonies are crucial documents for the education of students and community groups in an increasingly media-centered era. Each tape is made under the supervision of a professional andsupportive team . Cataloged and cross-referenced, the tapes are animportant addition to the oral and written history of the period. The
Archive stands as a living memorial to counteract forgetfulness,ignorance and malicious denial.
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Dori LAUB, « Bearing Witness and the Vicissitudesof Listening »
• From the book : Testimony. Crises of Witnessingin Literature, Psychoanalysis and History (1992)
• Chapter 2 : Laub reflects upon his role (andresponsibility) as a psychiatrist in the process ofinterviewing.
• Laub is « the listener » :
The listener to thenarrative of human pain, of massive psychictrauma, faces a unique situation.
(p. 57)
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•
The testimony to the trauma includes its hearer,who is, so to speak, the blank screen on which theevent comes to be inscribed for the first time.
•
[The listener] is a witness to the trauma witnessand a witness to himself (p. 58)
• “He needs to know that the trauma survivor whois bearing witness has no prior knowledge, nocomprehension and no memory of whathappened.”
•
He or she must listen to and hear the silence, speaking mutely both in silence and both in speech, both from behind and from within the speech. He or she must recognize, acknowledgeand address that silence, even if this simply meansrespect – and knowing how to wait.
Mass media enable an affective, emotionalexperience : « to feel the event ».
Our relationship to the Holocaust is mediatedthrough the objects remaining here in thepresent.
« If the experience of the Holocaust i s precisely
the experience of the loss or absence ofpeople, then the objects stand in for thisabsence. » (119)
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Cultural memory :
Memory that is constructed from cultural forms.Cultural memory is the culture mediated practiceof collective memory.
! Mass media / public sphere can produce newsolidarities and collectivities.« The museum, like the comic book, raisesquestions about what it means to own or inhabit amemory of an event through which one did notlive. It also provides a terrain on which to begin toimagine the political utility of ‘prostheticmemories’. » (129)
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<$6&+30Empathy « is not an emotional self-pityingidentification with victims but a way of bothfeeling for and feeling different from the
Mass cultural media/technologies ofmemory deserve serious attentionbecause thanks to them the memoriesof traumas become imaginable,thinkable and speakable to us (139).
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Can we remember the past(traumatic history) withoutimages… without cinema ?