76 replies to this topic

[M. Leary]

But what do I know? I have no historical background that ties me intimately with these events. I don't know people who do have such a background. I've not read a great deal on the subject.

I do know a few Holocaust survivors, well... one now. There aren't too many left. What first attracted me to Holocaust Studies was a massive disparity between the way they would share memories, and the way similar events were portrayed in so many Holocaust films I had seen. I guess it comes down to who is the legitimate arbiter of historical memory - is it always the eyewitness?

[Tony Watkins]

I guess it comes down to who is the legitimate arbiter of historical memory - is it always the eyewitness?

This is not to defend a particular view (much less particular films) nor to denigrate those who endured the unimaginable, but I don't know whether eyewitnesses should be the sole arbiters of historical memory. The very nature of an eyewitness account is that it is personal and limited. Their personal, limited historical memory is vital and precious. But they cannot remember what it was like for someone else since they are themselves and not someone else. Memory is about experience, which is not simply the things that happened but how the individual person responded to them and felt about them. That is likely to be very similar to the experience of the person in the next bunk, but not quite. Holocaust survivors will share the same kinds of pain, but not precisely the same. This is a big philosophical issue, of course, but we would still see it as legitimate for a survivor to speak on behalf of others, because of the underlying similarities.

But this, I think, is not the sum total of the historical memory. The bigger picture of the rise of pan-germanic nationalism, the rise of anti-semitism, the disparaging of rationalism in favour of the heroic, from the beginning of the twentieth century must be part of it too. The individual events, the gas chambers, the inividual deaths are the consequence of major movements in Austria and Germany over two decades. How is the memory of the corruption of a nation to be preserved, so that it is not only the mass killings which stand as a warning to future generations, but the attitudes of a whole society? While obviously not wanting in any way to minimise the deaths of 6 million Jews, the corruption of the nation was much wider, so that those who were not in any way related to the labour camps and death camps were still complicit in what happened.

I think one of the things The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas did for me was make me aware of this corruption in a new way. David Thewlis's character is an uncomfortable reminder that the perpetrators did not necessarily seem like ruthless monsters to those around them. The development of certain attitudes over the previous 40 years meant that such men were just the most extreme manifestations of the plausibility structures of Nazi German society. While for any right-thinking person the Holocaust is an unthinkable evil, the acceptance of Jewish people as equals was, for almost an entire society, literally unthinkable. This is not to condone them, obviously, but to say that ordinary people like Elsa and Bruno were also, in some much more limited sense, victims of the ideologies and power games of Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler and other key influences.

Sorry, I'm rambling and thinking as I go, but what I'm trying to ask, I think, is: does limiting the historical memory to that of the survivors give us a big enough picture of what happened?

[M. Leary]

This is not to condone them, obviously, but to say that ordinary people like Elsa and Bruno were also, in some much more limited sense, victims of the ideologies and power games of Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler and other key influences.

I am too sure I would want to travel very far down this path. Violent anti-semitism had been around for centuries, as had pogroms and ghettos, and Germans were content to let their leaders sign off on the dirty work. I understand what you are getting at, but I would rather say something like: The Holocaust is an unthinkable evil, and its historical causes are rooted in the institutionalization of anti-semitism - rooted in making anti-semitism easily thinkable. As soon as Jews were culturally accepted as a "problem," the proffered "solution" became more palatable. Which is the greater evil? The Holocaust, or the centuries of institutionalized anti-semitism that made it possible? I can't decide which is more "unthinkable." This may be why Resnais' Night and Fog is so powerful, as it is constantly leaping back and forth visually between the causes and effects of the Holocaust.

Sorry, I'm rambling and thinking as I go, but what I'm trying to ask, I think, is: does limiting the historical memory to that of the survivors give us a big enough picture of what happened?

Nothing at all wrong with rambling. Good question. In the case of the Holocaust, what else are there than survivors? A lot of memory theorists talk about historical memory as a narrating process. What we have in our memories is the ordered story of our experienced past (with beginnings, middles, and ends). Memory may not encompass all the facts, but it is factual in the storied way that only memory can be. So when I see Holocaust imagery, I instantly wonder what "story" it is telling. Life is Beautiful, for example, is a dramatic farce about how to make it through difficult times. It uses Holocaust memory to tell a story that really isn't about the Holocaust at all. This is the same issue so many had with Schindler's List , which uses brutal Holocaust imagery to tell a redemptive tale - according to Holocaust studies there is no redemption narrative in its historical memory. So I wonder if it is not so much about whether the survivors should be granted carte blanche to determine what is legitimate Holocaust memory or not, but which uses of Holocaust footage and imagery are legitimate narrative reconfigurations of historical memory. Because of the problem you point out concerning the large host of people "remembering" the Holocaust, I would rather start with a text or film on its own terms and reason backwards. In reasoning backwards through Striped Pyjamas, I keep butting up against a Spielbergian moralism that helps us "remember to forget."

[Tony Watkins]

Really interesting reply. Thank you. Your more careful formulation of the problem is very helpful.

I don't have time to engage with this properly today, except to raise a question about this sentence:

Memory may not encompass all the facts, but it is factual in the storied way that only memory can be.

Doesn't this assume that memory is always reliable? Clearly we have to work on the basis that it is most of the time, but we know that it can play tricks. (I wonder what Hillary Clinton thinks of her memory of sniper fire! I've just had an unpleasant reminder of this with my neighbour who is now complaining about the noise from a macerator that was fitted in an en suite six years ago. He is adamant that he clearly stated his objections to the plan to install it, but my memory of the conversation six years ago is totally different. We are so concerned about not upsetting our neighbours that if I had heard an objection we wouldn't have gone ahead, so I don't think my memory is too far adrift. But he doesn't think his is. One of us is very wrong about what was said.)

[M. Leary]

Memory may not encompass all the facts, but it is factual in the storied way that only memory can be.

Doesn't this assume that memory is always reliable?

I should have said: Memory that is accurate is factual in the storied way that only memory can be. This is why I prefer the use of Holocaust footage to Holocaust stories.

[Tony Watkins]

Memory may not encompass all the facts, but it is factual in the storied way that only memory can be.

Doesn't this assume that memory is always reliable?

I should have said: Memory that is accurate is factual in the storied way that only memory can be. This is why I prefer the use of Holocaust footage to Holocaust stories.

I understand.

Thanks so much for pushing my thinking on. This is why I love A&F and wish I could spend more time here.

Edited by Tony Watkins, 04 December 2008 - 02:35 PM.

[Christian]

I thought you guy might enjoy this recent Carpetbagger post on Carr's experience at the premiere of The Reader:

Two nitwits talked throughout the entire movie – he gets when people chat through a movie at the multiplex, but at a premiere of a movie that that they had been invited to that takes the holocaust as its central concern?

There is a key scene in the middle of the movie that takes place at Auschwitz, yet the nitwits continued to chatter throughout, and the Bagger totally freaked out on that, creating far more mayhem and interruption than they had, so that didn’t really work out either.

[Peter T Chattaway]

MLeary wrote:
: This is the same issue so many had with Schindler's List , which uses brutal Holocaust imagery to tell a redemptive tale - according to Holocaust studies there is no redemption narrative in its historical memory.

Brings to mind that (possibly apocryphal) story about Stanley Kubrick saying Schindler's List wasn't about the Holocaust, because "the Holocaust is about six million people who get killed. 'Schindler's List' was about six hundred people who don't."

[Tony Watkins]

MLeary wrote:
: This is the same issue so many had with Schindler's List , which uses brutal Holocaust imagery to tell a redemptive tale - according to Holocaust studies there is no redemption narrative in its historical memory.

Brings to mind that (possibly apocryphal) story about Stanley Kubrick saying Schindler's List wasn't about the Holocaust, because "the Holocaust is about six million people who get killed. 'Schindler's List' was about six hundred people who don't."

Interesting comment. I wonder if he did really say this.

[Christian]

Brings to mind that (possibly apocryphal) story about Stanley Kubrick saying Schindler's List wasn't about the Holocaust, because "the Holocaust is about six million people who get killed. 'Schindler's List' was about six hundred people who don't."

Hmmm. Makes me wonder whether Kubrick would've counted The Boy in the Striped Pajamas as being "about the Holocaust."

[Tony Watkins]

Makes me wonder whether Kubrick would've counted The Boy in the Striped Pajamas as being "about the Holocaust."

In an important sense it's not. It's not primarily about the death of six million Jewish people but about the corruption of a nation and the death of two young boys as a consequence and as a symbol of the Holocaust. I don't think that gets it off the hook that MLeary has explained so clearly in this thread, though.

[vjmorton]

Any field of scholarship that says its own subject matter is unrepresentable is just engaging in (selective) special pleading.

As for THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PAJAMAS ... I didn't have high expectations going in, but I was surprised how much I actively hated the film.

A big part of the reason is sorta what Christian was getting at -- I sarcastically "Twitted" that the film's moral is "Don't gas the Jews because you might gas an Aryan by mistake." But we also got:
(1) doubleplusungood believability -- the kids were never spotted conversing; Bruno was unbelievably naive about the war, official anti-Semitism (I knew not to like Protestants at a younger age in a society much less anti-Protestant than 1942-3 Germany was anti-Semitic); no wife of an SS Death Unit soldier would be as naive as Farmiga (didn't she notice the skull-and-crossbones on his collar).
(2) a clumsy too-on-the-nose representative of Future Enlightenment -- the grandmother. I couldn't stifle laughter when she told her SS-uniformed son "my fault for buying you those toys as a boy." Down with violent toys!!! And in the same vein, the kids playing fighter planes, Bruno being killed at the last day at the first house (oh, the irony!!!). And did I mention that when the elder sister becomes a Nazi (she even braids her blond hair -- how symbolic) she throws all her dolls naked in a pile hidden in the cellar. I think it's supposed to echo the body piles from the liberation pictures of the camps, and I appreciate that the film didn't give me much of an opportunity to miss that point. Speaking of which ...
(3) the film's execution was nothing but manipulative, on-the-nose, overdetermined hackwork. For example, when Bruno comes to the fence to see Schmuel the day after Schmuel was caught at the home, it just so happened that he had his head bowed as Bruno walked up to him so as to give us a nice "reveal" moment as he raises his head. We're also supposed to believe that a ham and cheese hoagie fell out of a pocket while climbing through a window, but somehow managed to hit the ground and remained in recognizable form to be found "as a clue" later. And I wanted to cover my ears at that "haunting uber-talented" score during the climactic scene. So loud in the mix, so mickey-mouse in its content, combined with cross-cutting that makes the points quite well enough without all the hyperbolic shouting. The film is quite literally yelling at you SUSPENSE!!!! WILL THEY GET THERE IN TIME!!!!! STAY ON THE EDGE OF YOUR SEATS, DAMMMIT!!!!!! My reaction to this sort of score is "yes, I get it, now kindly stfu." And after a while, I resent that the film doesn't trust me to get it.

There is one good scene -- the scene where Schmuel is in the home and Bruno gives him some pastries and then an SS soldier sees him. The rest is risible nonsense. The great movie in this vein is Louis Malle's AU REVOIR, LES ENFANTS.

[M. Leary]

Any field of scholarship that says its own subject matter is unrepresentable is just engaging in (selective) special pleading.

Which is only characteristic of about half of HS. I wouldn't want to toss out Zelizer with the bathwater. It is worth at least trying to modify Adorno enough that we can adapt him to other atrocities.

There is one good scene -- the scene where Schmuel is in the home and Bruno gives him some pastries and then an SS soldier sees him. The rest is risible nonsense. The great movie in this vein is Louis Malle's AU REVOIR, LES ENFANTS.

I like the way Malle (autobiographically) does the opposite thing that happens in Pyjamas, which is to bracket out the Holocaust as this thing that only manifests itself in the disappearance of people from his school. It is made all the more horrific by its absence, incomprehensible by the imagination of these children. Why refer to footage or mock-footage when you have the narrative chops to refer to the Holocaust in alternative ways?

[Thom Wade]

There is one good scene -- the scene where Schmuel is in the home and Bruno gives him some pastries and then an SS soldier sees him. The rest is risible nonsense. The great movie in this vein is Louis Malle's AU REVOIR, LES ENFANTS.

So...you did not particularly care for the film?

[M. Leary]

Yikes: "Honey, I gassed the kids"

The moral of this outrageous, British-accented nonsense appears to be that if you build a death camp, sometimes the wrong people get killed. Not for the last time, alas, has the Holocaust been co-opted into a kitschy ''universal'' story of ''tolerance'' about how we're all ''one.'' But this one is supposed to be a story for children!

[Spoon]

Yikes: "Honey, I gassed the kids"

The moral of this outrageous, British-accented nonsense appears to be that if you build a death camp, sometimes the wrong people get killed. Not for the last time, alas, has the Holocaust been co-opted into a kitschy ''universal'' story of ''tolerance'' about how we're all ''one.'' But this one is supposed to be a story for children!

i dont understand this reaction at all. just because the film is told through the perspective of a german boy, doesn't mean he then becomes the only character we care about. the jewish characters are present to break our hearts at the atrocities and they do a damn good job at that. and hell, the only reason we care about the german is because of his innocence.

[Tyler]

Just watched this tonight on Netflix. I think one of the biggest reasons I liked it was the way it reminded me of I'm Not Scared, which is admittedly a better movie.