[lit-ideas] Re: The singular horror of the Holocaust
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2011 16:25:57 +0100 (BST)
----- Original Message -----
From: "cblists@xxxxxxxx" <cblists@xxxxxxxx>
Hitler and the Holocaust have once again come up in discussion on this list. I
am at the moment unable to participate in such discussion, but do offer this
not-unrelated article which was brought to my attention on a list devoted to
such matters. The article is long (three pages) and controversial - and well
worth critically engaging with.
_Faustian Bargain_, by Alvin Rosenfeld
"The singular horror of the Holocaust is being lost in exchange for enshrining
rare moments of inspiration and universal narratives of suffering"
________
There is a more than a grain of truth in this quotation [though I think it
wrong to treat the horror of the Holocaust as very "singular"] and indeed some
of grain seems to me unavoidable: for example, just as the 'Imagine' ending of
'The Killing Fields' was for me mawkish even tacky, so the colour scenes that
ended 'Schindler's List' also seemed to me an avoidable mistake. However, in
both these cases I guess the endings would have a calculated and wide appeal to
certain 'popular taste', rather than be seen by most as tasteless. (In the case
of "Life Is Beautiful" the whole conceit might be guessed to have such
calculated, wide appeal rather than be seen by most as tasteless).
But there are less avoidable problems: try to conceive a movie (other than
documentary) that did not approach a story set against a backdrop of genocide
without "enshrining rare moments of inspiration and universal narratives of
suffering" or some such? It is not simply the Holocaust but almost any serious
topic that is difficult to deal with in the movies without adopting some sort
of basis for the story that may appear compromised and even morally lacking. It
is as if the movies are simply not to up to it as a form, especially as their
paradigm is how an individual confronts _and overcomes_ obstacles and this
paradigm is hardly adequate to depict a phenomena like the Holocaust. Try to
imagine a war movie with no sense of heroics or a gangster movie with no sense
of glamourisation and what have you got - perhaps not much of a movie? Though
it is morally suspect to depict war in heroic terms or to glamourise gangsters,
perhaps the most we can expect is a
film that succeeds despite these somewhat dubious if almost inevitable aspects
of its presentation.
It may then be almost as predictable, if perhaps less excusable, that museums
and the like, in their efforts to draw, engage and entertain a crowd, also will
adopt "narratives" in their presentation of material that have similar flaws
and limitations.
Side-note. Though it is a long time since I sat through it, and while it is a
slow burn, I recall thinking "Shoah" a powerful work and one that eschews
"enshrining rare moments of inspiration and universal narratives of suffering".
While almost any segment of it might not seem very remarkable, even low-key and
lacking dramatic intensity, the cumulative affect was striking and even
strange. (Lanzmann the spokesperson may be un philosophe manque, however).
Donal
London
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