film and culture memory 2013 hc's

8/13/2019 Film and Culture Memory 2013 HC's

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Film and Cultural Memory - 2013 - HC2

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Film & Cultural Memory

Week 2: Historical representation

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How can we represent traumatic

history in (mainstream) featurelms ?

-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

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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

(and not the rational scientic)

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Film and Cultural Memory - 2013 - HC2

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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

• historical emplotment • (implicit) interpretation

• (implicit) inuence on meaning 9

Limits ? – Ethical aspect - ‘Can these events be responsibly emplotted in any of

the modes, symbols, plot types, and genres ourculture provides for “making sense” of suchextreme events in our past?’

‘Are there any limits on the kind of story that canresponsibly be told about these phenomena?’

‘do they [the natures of Nazism and the FinalSolution] set limits on the uses that can be made ofthem by writers of ction or poetry? ’

(H. White) 10

Danger:

• Emplotment denes what is part of the story

• Relativization, distorsion and denial

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Film and Cultural Memory - 2013 - HC3 14-12-13

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Film and Cultural Memory

Week 3

The Limits of representation

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The “unrepresentability” debate

• Central in the Humanities

• Jean-François LYOTARD ( Le Différend ,1983)

! Auschwitz is compared to an earthquake ofsufficient power to destroy the instrumentswhich could measure its magnitude.

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Theodor ADORNO

• « To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric »

( Negative Dialectics, 1949)

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Adorno

- Problem of “transfiguration” : when theunthinkable is transformed into somethingacceptable.

- Problem of “ aesthetical pleasure”

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Miriam HANSEN(« Schindler’s List is not Shoah »)

• Public Memory / Reception• 4 points of critics on Schindler’s List:

– « Culture industry » – Problem of narrative – Question of cinematic subjectivity – Question of representation

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• Lanzmann:

– ‘Taboo of representation’ – Schindler’s List is obscene

• Hansen: – Binary opposition: “Showing or not showing?”

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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

past gets remembered and how.”

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Trauma and Representation

- Marie Baronian -

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Ararat and the Armeniangenocide

• 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)

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Visuals symbols in Ararat

• Mount Ararat:Saroyan :“When I was a boy, my mother used to tell

me it was ours. Even though it was so far away. And Iused to dream of a way to approach it. To make itbelong to who I was, to who I became.”

! Ararat is a cultural mnemonic symbolOther examples : Charles Aznavour, the pomegranate,

a painting by Arshile Gorky (1904-1948)

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Filmic strategies in Ararat• « Film-within-a-film » = reflexive strategy• Wat sort of representation ? How can we

represent? Why should we represent ?• Thus, « film-within-a-film » has various

functions:1. To question the limits of representation

(ethical, semiotic, etc.)3. Narrative strategy in order to bring all the

characters together (all confronted to denial)4. To have access to the genocidal history

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Two films : Egoyan and Saroyan• Saroyan : “My mother was a genocide survivor. All

my life I promised to make a film that would tellher story. How she suffered. Now we are makingthat film.”

Saroyan as a sort of Spielberg !?“Popularized representation of the

genocide” (Markovitz, 238) - Saroyan = “What happened in 1915”- Egoyan = “What happens in 2002”Two ways to represent/to deal with the genocide.

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« Let’s just drop the fucking history »

Turkish actor and/in denial

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Arshile GORKY• American-Armenian artist who survived the genocide• [Abstract Expressionism]

• Portrait « The Artist and His Mother » (1936-1939)

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• Ani (art historian) : “the portrait is a repositoryof our history ! a sacred code that explainswho we are and how and why we got here.”

! Each character needs to represent: Saroyan’sfilm, Ani’s book, Raffi and his video images,Gorky and his painting.

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Questions for us :

• 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.

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Is film capable of creating a « prostheticmemory » of the Armenian genocide ?• Film in order to come to terms with the trauma ?

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Film and Testimony- Marie Baronian –

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Focus:

• 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.

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[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.

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• Responsibility of ‘the listener’ (p. 71)

• Existential experience ; ‘the listener’ isconfronted with death, alterity, etc. (p. 72)

• Laub ends his chapter with a question:

What can we learn from the trauma, from thetestimony and from the very process oflistening? (p. 74)

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!"#$ &'( )*#+*,&#-.$/,0Marie Baronian

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Is it possible for the Holocaust to become abodily memory for those who did not livethrough it ? » (112)

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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

subject of inquiry. » (135)

: it recognizes the alterity of identification.

(>< sympathy: presupposes an initial li keness)

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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 ?

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film and culture memory 2013 hc's

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