The Horrors of Trauma in Cinema. Violenc

The Horrors of Trauma in Cinema
The Horrors of Trauma in Cinema:

Violence Void Visualization
Edited by
Michael Elm, Kobi Kabalek and Julia B. Köhne

The Horrors of Trauma in Cinema:
Violence Void Visualization,
Edited by Michael Elm, Kobi Kabalek and Julia B. Köhne
This book first published 2014
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Copyright © 2014 by Michael Elm, Kobi Kabalek, Julia B. Köhne and contributors
All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
ISBN (10): 1-4438-6042-5, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-6042-0

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contributors .............................................................................................. viii
Introduction ................................................................................................. 1
The Horrors of Trauma in Cinema
Julia B. Köhne, Michael Elm and Kobi Kabalek
Part I – Horror in Trauma Cinema
Chapter One ............................................................................................... 32

CACHÉ (2005), or the Ongoing Repression of Traumatic Memories
Thomas Weber
Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 46

Screening Trauma: Reflections on Cultural Trauma and Cinematic
Horror in Roman Polanski’s Filmic Oeuvre
Michael Elm
Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 68

Horror, History and the Third Reich: Locating Traumatic Pasts
in Hollywood Horrors
Christiane-Marie Abu Sarah
Part II – Nazism and War
Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 90

Vengeful Fiction: (Re-)Presenting Trauma in INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS
(2009)
Dania Hückmann
Chapter Five ............................................................................................ 108

Narrations of Trauma in Mainstream Cinema: Forgetting Death
in Duncan Jones’ SOURCE CODE (2011)
Daniel Müller
vi Table of Contents
Chapter Six .............................................................................................. 125

Traumatized Heroes: War and Distraction
Kerstin Stutterheim
Part III – Memory and Trauma
Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 146

Shadows between Memory and Propaganda: War and Holocaust Trauma
in DEFA’s ‘Thaw’ Films
Pablo Fontana
Chapter Eight ........................................................................................... 163

Thomas Harlan’s Stories of Fathers: About the Precarious Relationship
between Historiography, Memory and Film in WUNDKANAL (1984)
and NOTRE NAZI (1984)
Jeanne Bindernagel
Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 177

Trauma and Fiction – Trauma and Concreteness in Film: Represented
in the Photofilm FIASCO (2010) by Janet Riedel, Katja Pratsche
and Gusztàv Hámos, based on Imre Kertész’s Homonymous Novel
Hinderk M. Emrich
Part IV – Israeli-Palestinian Film: Spaces
Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 194

History beyond Trauma: Re-Visualizing the Palestinian Ruin
in PARATROOPERS (1977)
Danielle Schwartz
Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 207

The All-Seeing Lens: Panoptical Reality, Televised Trauma and Cinematic
Representations of Urban Paranoia in Haim Bouzaglo’s DISTORTION
(2005)
Isaac (Itsik) Rosen
Chapter Twelve ....................................................................................... 224

Beyond Trauma: Aesthetic Strategies of “Minor Cinema” within
the Liminal Space of Palestine (Ula Tabari, Elia Suleiman)
Peter Grabher
The Horrors of Trauma in Cinema: Violence Void Visualization vii
Chapter Thirteen ...................................................................................... 251

“The struggle for meanings is the struggle to exist”:
Conversation with Peter Grabher
Ula Tabari
Part V – Israeli-Palestinian Film: Experiences
Chapter Fourteen ..................................................................................... 272

Transgenerational Trauma: On the Aftermath of Sexual Violence
Suffered by Women during the Holocaust in Israeli Cinema
Sandra Meiri
Chapter Fifteen ........................................................................................ 294

The Trauma of the Female Perpetrator and New War Cinema
Raya Morag
Chapter Sixteen ....................................................................................... 314

“From Individual Experience to Collective Archive, from Personal
Trauma to Public Memory”: Accounts of War and Occupation in Israel
Marcella Simoni
CONTRIBUTORS
Jeanne Bindernagel, studied theatre studies, linguistics, and

educational studies at the Universities of Leipzig and Paris. She is a PhD
student in the Department of Theatre at Leipzig University and holds a
scholarship of the German National Academic Foundation. The primary
emphasis of her research is the development of a philosophical term of
hysteria, which includes readings of Sigmund Freud’s case studies
informed by the texts of Gilles Deleuze and current theories of
theatricality. She is working on the history of psychoanalytic aesthetics as
well as filmic and theatrical practices in German and French post-war
societies concerning their conditions of memory, trauma and gender. She
has published and taught on the theatre of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, René
Pollesch and Signa, and films directed by Eric Rohmer, Jean-Luc Godard
and Thomas Harlan.
Michael Elm, PhD, studied sociology, political sciences and

educational theory at the Goethe-University in Frankfurt/Main, Germany.
He received his doctorate with a thesis on the depiction of Holocaust
testimonies in feature and documentary films. In 2008, he was a research
fellow at the Fritz-Bauer-Institute working on issues of memorial culture
and reception theory of the Holocaust. In this capacity, he co-edited the
conference reader “Witnessing the Holocaust. Trauma, Tradition, and
Investigation.” From 2007 to 2009, he taught sociology, film and cultural
memory studies at Goethe-University. Elm is compiling a book about
“The Modernity of Trauma in German Feature Film.” Currently, he is
working as a long-term lecturer for the German Academic Exchange
Service in the Center for Austrian and German Studies at Ben-Gurion
University of the Negev in Beer Sheva. Research fields: Film, Trauma and
Cultural Memory Studies, German Modernity in Film and Political
Philosophy, Cross-Cultural Educational Theory, and Holocaust Studies.
Hinderk M. Emrich, 1968 MD (University of Bern); 1998 PhD

(University of Munich); 1972 “Habilitation” in Molecular Neurobiology
(Technical University of Berlin); 1973-1974 patho-physiological studies at
the Pediatric Hospital, University Munich in collaboration with the
Department of Physiology of Munich; 1975-1978 postgraduate training in
The Horrors of Trauma in Cinema: Violence Void Visualization ix
psychiatry, neurology and clinical psychopharmacology; 1979-1987

Group and later Department Leader of clinical psychopharmacology at the
Max-Planck-Institute for Psychiatry; 1991-1992 Fellow at the
Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin; from 1992 to 2008 Chair of the
Department of Psychiatry at the Medical School, Hannover. Guest
Professorships at Ben Gurion University of the Negev (Philosophical
Psychology) in March 1995; 1995-1997 at the Kunsthochschule für Neue
Medien, Köln; 1996/97 at Ben Gurion University of the Negev
(Philosophical Psychology); 1997-2002 at Universität Witten-Herdecke;
since 1999 at the Deutsche Film-und Fernseh-Akademie Berlin
(Tiefenpsychologie der Medien); since 2002 at Hochschule für Gestaltung
Karlsruhe; since 2008 at Muthesius Kunsthochschule Kiel.
Pablo Fontana, is PhD candidate in the Department of History at the

University of Buenos Aires, where he teaches Soviet cinema as a source
for historians as the Chair of Russian History. His research interests
include: DEFA Films, memory politics in the cinema of socialist
countries, propaganda techniques and Soviet Union history. He has
recently published the book Cine y Colectivización (Buenos Aires, Zeit,
2012) on the representation of the Soviet forced collectivization of Soviet
cinema between 1929 and 1941. For his PhD thesis, he is at present
researching the representation of the National-Socialist extermination
policy in the East German and Soviet cinema of the ‘Thaw.’
Peter Grabher, is a freelance historian, film activist and works as a

school teacher. He studied at the University of Vienna and the École
Normale Supérieure in Paris. He is a member of the Vienna-based film
group KINOKI. His research focuses on leftist filmmaking in the First
Austrian Republic, the aesthetics of the cinematic essay and film in the
context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Currently he is a PhD candidate,
studying the representation of Israel-Palestine in essay films since 1960.
Dania Hückmann received her PhD from the German Department at

New York University in 2014 where she was a Honorary Fellow at the
Humanities Initiative at NYU and affiliated with the Trauma and Violence
Transdisciplinary Studies program. She received her BA in Comparative
Literature and European Studies from NYU (2002) and her MA in
Comparative Literature from the Free University in Berlin (2007). Her
dissertation Das Versprechen der Gerechtigkeit: Rache im Realismus
offers an interdisciplinary analysis of the way in which revenge poses a
threat to the nascent civil-legal society in German Realism. Her research
x Contributors
interests include discourses of law in literature and film, narratology, and

representations of trauma and violence, from German Classicism to the
post World War II period. She has published on Jean Améry and
metaphors, Heinrich von Kleist and revenge, Thomas Bernhard’s
Extinction and co-authored an article on 9/11 and the NYU community for
Traumatology.
Kobi Kabalek, holds a PhD from the University of Virginia, studied at

Ben-Gurion University in Beer Sheva, Israel and Humboldt-University in
Berlin. The title of his dissertation is: “The Rescue of Jews and Memory in
Germany, from the Nazi Period to the Present.” Research focus: cultural
history, historical experience, and memory in Germany and Israel. Recent
publications include (together with Peter Carrier): “Cultural Memory and
Transcultural Memory – A Conceptual Analysis,” in: Lucy Bond/Jessica
Rapson (eds.), The Transcultural Turn: Interrogating Memory between
and Beyond Borders (forthcoming); “Das Scheitern und die Erinnerung:
Über das Nicht-Retten von Juden in zwei deutschen Nachkriegsfilmen,”
in: Lisa Bolyos/Katharina Morawek (eds.), Diktatorpuppe zerstört,
Schaden gering: Kunst und Geschichtspolitik im Postnazismus (Vienna:
Mandelbaum, 2012); “Unheroic Heroes: Re-Viewing Roman Polanski’s
‘The Pianist’ in Germany and Israel,” in: Vera Apfelthaler and Julia
Köhne (eds.), Gendered Memories: Transgressions in German and Israeli
Film and Theater (Vienna: Turia + Kant, 2007), 61-82.
Julia B. Köhne, PD, PD, Dr. habil., is guest professor at Humboldt

Universität zu Berlin and Privatdozentin for Contemporary and Cultural
History at the University of Vienna. Her research focus is on cultural
studies, media culture, and film theory in the twentieth and twenty-first
century, the history of the body, and the history of military psychiatry.
Köhne is the author of Kriegshysteriker: Strategische Bilder und mediale
Techniken militärpsychiatrischen Wissens, 1914-1920 (Husum,
Matthiesen, 2009). She has edited and co-edited, among others, Splatter
Movies. Essays zum modernen Horrorfilm (Berlin, Bertz-Fischer, 2005,
2006, 2012) (with Ralph Kuschke and Arno Meteling); Filmische
Gedächtnisse. Geschichte – Archiv – Riss (Vienna, Mandelbaum, 2007)
(with Frank Stern, Karin Moser, Thomas Ballhausen and Barbara
Eichinger); Gendered Memories. Transgressions in German and Israeli
Film and Theater (Turia+Kant, 2007) (with Vera Apfelthaler); Trauma
und Film. Inszenierungen eines Nicht-Repräsentierbaren (Berlin, Kadmos,
2012); Zooming IN and OUT. Produktionen des Politischen im neueren
The Horrors of Trauma in Cinema: Violence Void Visualization xi
deutschsprachigen Dokumentarfilm (Vienna, Mandelbaum, 2013) (with

Aylin Basaran, Klaudija Sabo).
Sandra Meiri, is co-chair of Film Studies in the Department of

Literature, Art & Linguistics, The Open University of Israel. Her studies
concentrate on film and Israeli cinema – gender, feminism, subjectivity,
ethics, and trauma as well as ethics and poetics, film & psychoanalysis and
film theory. She is the author of Any Sex You Can Do, I Can Do Better:
Cross-Gender in Narrative Cinema (Tel Aviv: Migdarim Series,
Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishing House, 2011), and co-editor of Just
Images: Ethics and the Cinematic (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011)
and Identities in Transition in Israeli Culture (Raanana: The Open
University of Israel, forthcoming).
Raya Morag, is an associate professor of cinema studies at the

Department of Communication & Journalism, The Hebrew University of
Jerusalem, Israel. Her research and publications deal with post-traumatic
cinema, trauma and ethics, perpetrator trauma, New German Cinema,
Vietnam war movies, documentary cinema, Israeli and Palestinian second
Intifada cinema and corporeal-feminist film critique. Her current research
is focused on the perpetrator figure and societal trauma in cinema. She is
the author of Defeated Masculinity: Post-Traumatic Cinema in the
Aftermath of War (Peter Lang, 2009), The Defeated Male. Cinema,
Trauma, War (Koebner Series, Jerusalem, and Resling, Tel Aviv, 2011)
(Hebrew) and Waltzing with Bashir: Perpetrator Trauma and Cinema
(I.B. Tauris, London and New York, 2013). Her work has appeared in
such journals as Cinema Journal, Camera Obscura, The Communication
Review, Journal of Film & Video, International Journal of Communication,
and Framework.
Morag is an artistic director of the Documentary Film Section, the
Rabinovich Fund for the Arts, Tel-Aviv. In this role, she is involved in the
full-lifecycle of a project: funding criteria, supervision of directors, script
development/editing through to the final cut. The Rabinovich Fund
contributes considerable support to Israeli feature films, documentaries,
and student films. Since 2008 Morag has written a permanent cinema
column for the prestigious Haaretz newspaper.
Daniel Müller, is a PhD candidate in the Department of English and

American Studies at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. While
working full-time as a research manager, he also lectures on film studies
focusing on genre film. Among his research interests are the convergence
xii Contributors
of history, popular culture, social psychology, film and cultural theory, and
psychoanalysis as related to film. He recently wrote about “Nostalgia in
H.P. Lovecraft” in the anthology “Critical Insights: Pulp Fiction of the
1920s & 1930s” (Salem Press, 2013) and “Survival and System in
RESIDENT EVIL (2002): Remembering, Repeating, and Working-Through”
in: Unraveling Resident Evil: Essays on the Complex Universe of the
Games and Films (McFarland 2014).
Isaac (Itsik) Rosen, holds an MA and BFA in Film and Television

studies from Tel Aviv University and Sapir Academic College. He is head
of the Practical Engineers Program in the Film and Television Department
at the Camera Obscura School of Art. His research fields include: Urban
Cinema, New Israeli Cinema of the 21st Century, iconography of the
nightmare in Modern and Post-Modern Film, modern horror and
representations of the apocalypse in current world cinema. His work
“Hebrew Horror – The Origins and Destinations of Israeli Horror Cinema”
was recently published in Film and Festivals Issue 26, London, Jan. 2011,
22-25.
Christiane-Marie Abu Sarah, is a PhD candidate in the Department

of History at the University of Maryland and a Research Associate at the
Center for World Religions, Diplomacy, and Conflict Resolution (CRDC)
at George Mason University in Arlington, Virginia. She holds a Master of
Arts in History from George Mason University, and specializes in
transnational approaches to modern Middle Eastern and Jewish history.
Her work explores themes such as multivocality, popular memory, and
conflict in history.
Danielle Schwartz, is a PhD candidate in the Department of Hebrew

Literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she is conducting
research about the concept of Realism in Israeli literary and cinematic
criticism. She wrote her MA thesis on images of Palestinian ruins in Israeli
movies at the late 1970‘s in the Cultural Studies program at Hebrew
University, Jerusalem. The research was presented in several international
conferences and is expected to be published in Hebrew as a book. Her
research interests include: Israeli film and literature, cultural and visual
studies, and critical theories. Publications: “De-Historization of the Nakba
in Israeli Cinema,” in: Collected Volume on Israeli Cinema, Ismar
Elbogen Network for Jewish Cultural History (Neofelis Verlag,
forthcoming); “Kotrot Mabat: on Masha – a film by Dana Goldberg,” in:
Ma’aravon 8 (2012).
The Horrors of Trauma in Cinema: Violence Void Visualization xiii
Marcella Simoni, obtained her PhD from the University of London in

2004. She is now Junior Lecturer in History and Institutions of Asia at the
University of Venice where she has also been Research Fellow in 2006-
2008 and in 2011. She has also been teaching at New York University in
Florence since 2004. She has received various post-doctoral scholarships:
at the Centre de Recherche Francais à Jerusalem (2009-2010), at
INALCO, Paris (2010-2011), and the Alessandro Vaciago Prize of the
Accademia dei Lincei. Simoni has published two books, A Healthy Nation
(Cafoscarina, 2010) and At the Margins of Conflict. At the Margins of
Conflict. Social Perspectives on Arabs and Jews in British Palestine
(1922-1948) (Venezia 2010) and has co-edited three books in Italian. She
has published articles in various European languages in scientific journals,
among them “Middle Eastern Studies,” “Jewish History,” “Passato e
Presente,” “Genesis,” “Medicina & Storia.” She is working on projects
dealing with youth, protest, and conflict in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict;
the history of conscientious objection in Israel; and non-violent resistance
among Palestinians. She speaks English, French, and Hebrew fluently and
her Arabic reaches an intermediate level, Italian being her mother tongue.
Her latest publication on peace-building in Israel and Palestine can be
found at http://www.quest-cdecjournal.it/index.php?issue=5.
Kerstin Stutterheim, PhD, is professor of dramaturgy and aesthetics

at HFF “Konrad Wolf,” Department of Media Theory at Potsdam-
Babelsberg since 2006 and an awarded filmmaker. From 2001-2006 she
was professor of Film and Media at the University of Applied Design,
Faculty of Visual Communication in Würzburg, Germany. 2008-2011, she
acted as the founder-director of the Institute of Art Research at HFF. She
is the author of a book on dramaturgy in film and of several articles in
anthologies and journals – e.g., “Hitler nonfictional,” in: Matchans,
Karolin/Rühl, Martin A. (eds.), Hitler – Films from Germany. History,
Cinema and Politics since 1945. Macmillan 2013; “Gesichtslose
Projektion, inszeniertes Gegenbild. Das Bild des Juden in den deutschen
Wochenschauen zwischen 1933 und 1942,” in: Filmblatt 44 / 2011.
Currently, Stutterheim is editing a book on aesthetics and dramaturgy in
postmodern cinema, Come and play with us (forthcoming), and writing a
book about dramaturgy and film aesthetics in fiction film, documentary,
TV and Games (forthcoming).
Ula Tabari is an independent Palestinian filmmaker living in Paris,

also working as an actress, casting-director, and language coach for actors.
She was born in 1970 in Nazareth and started her studies in theatre and the
xiv Contributors
visual arts. In 1996, she collaborated with Elia Suleiman in his Chronicle
of A Disappearance where she handled different responsibilities in
production and casting in addition to playing a main role (Adan). Tabari
also worked together with Suleiman on The Arab dream (1997), with
Christophe Loizillon (Les pieds, 1999), Samir Jallal Eddin (Forget
Bagdad, 2002), Eyal Sivan and Michel Khleifi (Road 181, 2003), Steven
Spielberg (Munich, 2005), and others. Her cinematic work includes her
first long documentary Private Investigation (2002), the fictional short film
Diaspora (2005), and her latest work Jinga 48 (2009). Recently, she played
the role of Zeinab in the first feature of Hiam Abbass, Inheritance (2012)
& Violet in the first feature of Suha Arraf, The three sisters (2012). At the
moment she is preparing the shooting for her upcoming documentary film
entitled My Eyes for My Friend.
Thomas Weber, is a Professor of film and television studies at the

University of Hamburg since 2011 and project leader of “Topics and
Aesthetics of the Documentary Film” as part of the DFG-project: “History
of the German Documentary Film after 1945” (started 2012). Recent
publications include: “The Hybridization of German Documentary
Formats since the 1990s,” in: AVINUS Magazin, Sonderedition Nr. 7
(Berlin 2009); Medialität als Grenzerfahrung. Futurische Medien im Kino
der 80er und 90er Jahre (Bielefeld 2008), Mediologie als Methode (ed.
with Birgit Mersmann) (Berlin, 2008); “Les victimes de l’histoire.
Préalables à un programme de recherche,” in: Fleury, Béatrice/Jacques
Walter (eds.), Qualifier des lieux de détention et de massacre. Questions
de Communication, série actes 5, Metz 2008, S. 229-236.
INTRODUCTION
THE HORRORS OF TRAUMA IN CINEMA
JULIA B. KÖHNE, MICHAEL ELM

AND KOBI KABALEK
This anthology is the product of the international interdisciplinary

conference, “The Horrors of Trauma: Violence, Re-enactment, Nation, and
Film,” that took place at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beer
Sheva, Israel, in May 2012. The volume explores the multifaceted
depiction and staging of historical and social traumata as the result of
extreme violence within national contexts. It focuses on Israeli-Palestinian,
(former East and West) German and (US) American film, also examining
broad issues of ‘trauma’ depiction in films from other countries (France,
Great Britain, the former USSR and others).
Contributors to this volume come from Austria, France, Germany,
Great Britain, Israel/Palestine, Italy, the United States of America, and
Argentina. Their research covers a wide array of disciplines including
history, sociology, psychology, Jewish studies, Middle East studies, film
and media studies, trauma (in cinema) studies and gender studies. The
articles are directed toward academic readers of different levels as well as
non-academics interested in interpretations of mainstream and avant-garde
movies and documentaries dealing with the ‘horrors of trauma.’
In Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality (1960), the film
theorist Siegfried Kracauer analogized the silver screen to the shield of the
ancient Greek mythological hero, Perseus.1 To avoid a direct confrontation
with the petrifying stare of the gorgonian monster, Medusa, Perseus uses
his shield as a mirror. As her horrifying image is reflected in his polished
shield, it is – in this mediated form – no longer deadly. Thus, Perseus is
1
Siegfried Kracauer, “Das Haupt der Medusa,” in: Theorie des Films. Die
Errettung der äußeren Wirklichkeit, Inka Mülder-Bach and Ingrid Belke (eds.), vol.
3, (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2005), 467-469.
2 Introduction
enabled to decapitate her. Her head becomes a weapon and is put on an

aegis to frighten enemies. The volume, The Horrors of Trauma in Cinema:
Violence – Void – Visualization, follows both aspects of the mythological
tale and its interpretation. Cinema serves as a shield/screen offering
pathways to insight into dreadful scenes of actual horror, cruelty and
violence without petrifying our bodies. As such, film is a powerful and
liberating media because it allows us to ‘incorporate’ unsighted horrific
scenes in our memory, to ‘behead’ or distort the horror it mirrors, and to
influence the discourse about violent events in real life.
This volume examines these functions of cinema within the quadrat:
violence, trauma, nation and self. A variety of films, premiering between
the 1960s and the 2010s, ranging from documentaries and feature films to
independent cinema, will be analyzed. The approach of the volume is to
ask which modes of representation – regarding narration, dramaturgy,
aesthetics, mise-en-scène, iconology, lighting, cinematography, editing
and sound – film holds as a medium to visualize shattering experiences of
violence and their traumatic encoding in individuals or collectives, bodies
and psyches. What historical insights and cultural perspectives does the
medium of film enable in tackling the question of traumatic impact? The
contributors analyze the discursive transfer between first, historical
traumata necessarily transmitted in a medialized or theorized form,
second, the changing landscape of (clinical) trauma theory, third, the
filmic depiction and language of trauma, and fourth, official memory
politics and hegemonic national-identity constructions. Special attention is
given to horror aesthetics and trajectories as a way to re-enact, echo and
question the perpetual loops of trauma in the creative artefact film.
Several books similarly approach the nexus of ‘trauma,’ horror and
mediatization, for example, Adam Lowenstein’s Shocking Representation
(2005), Linnie Blake’s The Wounds of Nations and Elisabeth Bronfen’s
Specters of War. Hollywood’s Engagement with Military Conflict. Lowenstein
concentrates on the horror genre and its capacity to visualize traumatically
affected systems by analyzing horror classics like PEEPING TOM (1960),
ONIBABA (1964), LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (1972), and Cronenberg’s
movies and their link to the Vietnam War, Hiroshima/Nagasaki and other
man-made catastrophes. Just as Lowenstein, who sees cinematic horror as
a vehicle to articulate and communicate the horrors of history in alienated
form, Blake retells the history of violence – from the Second World War
to 9/11 – via filmic artefacts. Exploring the connection between horror
cinema, historical traumata and nation-building, she states that film can be
a multiplier, distributing psychological and academic knowledge about
“traumatic events such as genocide, war, social marginalization or
The Horrors of Trauma in Cinema 3
persecution.”2 Bronfen’s Specters of the War makes a contribution to

cinematic trauma discourse by stressing the role of Hollywood war films
conducing to circulate the fascination with war as certain ideologies, fears
and fantasies accompany it on a cultural level. The visual material serves
as a looking-glass rendering US-American traumatic war history
perceptible in a certain way that depends on the changing political climate.
Our volume, The Horrors of Trauma in Cinema, deepens the ongoing
debate about ‘trauma’ and cinema by paying special attention to the
circular structure of horror and ‘trauma’ from a transnational and cross-
genre perspective. ‘Trauma’ pervades all genres and national borders.
Traumatic histories travel through a multitude of diverse cinematic genres,
enriching them with horrific narratives. In this volume, ‘horror’ refers to
the intense feelings of fear, shock and disgust that are associated with
‘trauma’ and which the films examined represent as significant moments.
In some cases, these films directly adopt or quote rules of the horror genre,
while in others, reference to this genre is less obvious, though with
markedly similar effect. Horror standards have clearly been an intrinsic
part of the greater film culture since the invention of film. Storing and
communicating parts of traumatic histories – belonging to singular
psyches or the ‘collective unconscious’ – motion pictures from a variety of
national backgrounds succeed in rewriting or re-presenting history,
transcending their ascribed diegeses, as well as narrative frames and
classical interpretative limits. Rather than limit examination of the films
herein to their particular national contexts and sociopolitical milieus, this
anthology shall portray them as flexible carriers of meaning open to
perpetual revision and reevaluation from ever changing interpretative
positionings.
Violence – Void – Visualization

The abovementioned countries, in particular the United States,
Germany and Israel/Palestine, were ‘impregnated’ by different traumatic
experiences, including extreme and overwhelming violence, shock,
concussion, and distress, as they were shaped by atrocity, war, genocide,
catastrophe, and other man-made disasters. Therefore, they have often
been referred to as “traumatized societies,” “trauma cultures,” (E. Ann
Kaplan) and “wound cultures” (Mark Seltzer), or otherwise associated
with the phrases “politics of terror and loss,” and “pathological public
2
Linnie Blake, The Wounds of Nations: Horror Cinema, Historical Trauma and
National Identity (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008).
4 Introduction
sphere.”3 Yet it is rarely reflected in-depth that the term and conception of
‘trauma’ was actually transferred from (clinical) psychology onto the
socio-cultural and national spheres. The articles in this volume thus
examine the application of the trauma conception as an analytical tool to
investigate the production of “cultural meaning” (kulturelles Deutungsmuster)4
and meaning-making within the social body in light of the connections
between traumatic structures and films’ diegesis and between trauma
language and film language.5 Subsequently, the filmic ways to adopt,
imitate, transform, process, or ‘work through’ experiences and symptoms
of violence and ‘trauma’ will be discussed in sections referring almost
exclusively to the mentioned countries and societies, while reflecting on
the historical context of catastrophes and individual or governmental acts
of violence connected to them. At the center of this amalgamation stands a
reconstruction of the circular structure of discursive elements comprising
experiences of violence, traumatization and representation.
A psychic trauma is caused when an intense, often extremely violent
situation disables the ability of a consciousness to integrate an experience
within the narrative, linear memory of an individual. The psyche is
overwhelmed by negative impulses and stimuli to a degree that it cannot
react adequately.6 A frequent consequence manifests as a representational
void and lack of memory; ‘trauma,’ it seems, is unrepresentable and
unspeakable. On the level of both the individual and collective, a “trauma
process”7 may take place – usually accompanied by a variable latency
phase – sometimes leading to a repetition of the traumatizing situation on
another level or in a disguised manner (Wiederholungszwang, Sigmund
Freud). As part of the circular structure of violence-void-visualization,
events that traumatized individuals or collectives – after a varying period
of time – appear as medialized objects: a body influenced by the psyche
3
E.g., Ann Kaplan, Trauma Culture, The Politics of Loss and Terror in Media and
Literature (New Brunswick, 2005); Mark Seltzer, “Wound Culture. Trauma in the
Pathological Public Sphere,” October 80 (1997), 3-26.
4
Elisabeth Bronfen, Birgit R. Erdle and Sigrid Weigel (eds.), Trauma. Zwischen
Psychoanalyse und kulturellem Deutungsmuster (Köln/Weimar/Vienna: Böhlau,
1999).
5
E.g., Joshua Hirsch, Afterimage: Film, Trauma, and the Holocaust (Philadelphia:
Temple University Press, 2004); Dominick LaCapra, Representing the Holocaust.
History, Theory, Trauma (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994).
6
Jean Laplanche and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis: “Trauma,” in: idem (eds.), Das
Vokabular der Psychoanalyse (Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1972), 513-518.
7
Jeffrey C. Alexander, Trauma. A Social Theory (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012),
15-28.
displaying traumatic symptoms, literature, spoken memories of an eye-

witness, a photograph, or a motion picture. Filmic representation of the
notion of ‘trauma’ will be investigated in this volume concerning their
capacity to reenact, reactivate, or re-produce traumatizing situations (as do
inner-psychic structures of traumatization) in artistic and playful modes.
This is done by use of flashback structures,8 leading to so-called “backstory
wounds” (Michaela Krützen); the bending, shortening, or destabilization of
the intra-filmic timeline; traumatic iconographies; sounds that allegorize
the past, etc. Film thereby repeats and reenacts the experienced event,
causing or actuating ‘trauma’ again and again on a cultural level – albeit in
a transformed, mediatized manner. Apart from its potentially cathartic
effects, the loop of traumatizing events, aims to represent them, the
production of filmic images and restagings of the past in film may in
themselves create recurring patterns of ‘trauma.’
Trauma Theory and Film History

Since its invention, film has been intrinsically tied to the sphere of
traumatic wounds and vice versa. What began in the Grand Café in Paris,
when novice audiences instinctively recoiled from the unsettling images of
the Lumière brothers’ production of L’ARRIVÉE D’UN TRAIN EN GARE À LA
CIOTAT (1895/6), continues today via multiple filmic plots. According to
Lorenz Engell, the shock experienced by these early film spectators not
only became a myth, but also changed the categories of perceptions,
probability, and prospectability for future audiences of film screenings.9
Almost at the same time, the establishment of trauma theory and
psychological and (neuro)psychiatric research on traumatized patients was
founded among medical and other scientific disciplines. John Eric
Erichsen, Jean-Martin Charcot, Hermann Oppenheim, Josef Breuer, Sigmund
8
The term ‘flashback’ is used in psychology to indicate a sudden, involuntarily re-
experiencing of a past event without full awareness or consciousness of what really
happened. Its origin lies in the field of cinema and its narration techniques rather
than in trauma theory. Cf. Maureen Cheryn Turim, Flashbacks in Film. Memory
and History (New York, London, Routledge, 1989).
9
Lorenz Engell, Bewegen Beschreiben. Theorie zur Filmgeschichte (Weimar:
VDG, 1995), 107 et seq. and Anna Martinetz: “Filmdramaturgie und
Traumaforschung. Eine Betrachtung zweier parallel entstandener Disziplinen,” in:
Julia B. Köhne (ed.), Trauma und Film. Inszenierungen eines Nicht-
Repräsentierbaren (Berlin: Kadmos, 2012), 56-75.
9
Thomas Elsaesser, Melodrama and Trauma. Modes of Cultural Memory in
American Cinema (London: Routledge, 2009), 56-75.
6 Introduction
Freud, to name just a few, were among the pioneers and protagonists of
nascent trauma theory of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Post-
catastrophe or post-combat disorders, dubbed “railway spine,” had been
known since the 1860s in relation to railway accidents at that time.
Competing terms to describe the same phenomenon in other contexts such
as war included: “nostalgia,” “irritable heart,” “soldier’s heart,”
“depression,” “demoralization” and later, “neurasthenia”, “combat fatigue,”
and “traumatic neurosis.”10 The terminological chaos and lack of differential
diagnoses often “veiled clinical parallels and hindered practice and
research.”11 The First World War and the widely spread phenomena of
“war hysteria,” “shell shock,” “bomb shell disease,” and “war neurosis”
helped to consolidate the recognition, credibility, and ‘lobby’ of the
diagnosis traumatic disorder. Although there was weighty insecurity
concerning the classification, naming and treatment of what had been
diagnosed as “hysteria virilis,” “simulation,” “cowardice,” “inner
desertion” or simply “NYD[N]” (not-yet-diagnosed [nervous]), military
physicians took up the fight against this disturbing and troublesome
“disease” that seemed to destroy the order, regularity, and authority of the
army corps.12 In the Second World War, military physicians’ insecurities
returned alongside massive and multiple trauma symptoms.13 But it was
not until the Vietnam War that the phenomenon of ‘trauma’ – in terms of
clinical nosology (“post-Vietnam syndrome”), including depression,
flashbacks, delusions, nightmares, panic attacks, sleeplessness, and suicide
– was accepted on a larger scale and with greater consensus.14 Not least,
10
Allan Young, The Harmony of Illusions. Inventing Post-Traumatic Stress
Disorder (Princeton, 1995), 13-42; Edgar and Jones, “Post-combat Disorders: the
Boer War to the Gulf,” in: Harry Lee and Edgar Jones (eds.), War and Health:
Lessons from the Gulf War (Chichester, 2007), 5-39.
11
Philip A. Saigh and James Douglas Bremner, “The History of Posttraumatic
Stress,” in: Philip A. Saigh and James Douglas Bremner (eds.), Posttraumatic
Stress Disorder. A Comprehensive Text (Boston/London, 1999), 1-17, here 5.
12
Young, The Harmony of Illusions, 51 et seq. Cf. Julia B. Köhne, Kriegshysteriker.
Strategische Bilder und mediale Techniken militärpsychiatrischen Wissens, 1914-1920
(Husum: Matthiesen, 2009); Paul Lerner, Hysterical Men. War, Psychiatry, and the
Politics of Trauma in Germany, 1890-1930 (Ithaca/London, 2003).
13
See, for example, John Huston’s documentary LET THERE BE LIGHT (USA, 1946)
that claims realism, authenticity, and plausibility, despite its depiction of World
War II veterans in highly subjective, aestheticizing, and fictionalizing perspectives.
14
Eric T. Dean, Shook over Hell: Post Traumatic Stress, Vietnam, and the Civil
War (Cambridge/London, 1997), 14; for an analysis of the impact of the Vietnam
War on film, see: Raya Morag, Defeated Masculinity: Post-Traumatic Cinema in
the Aftermath of War (P.I.E. – Peter Lang, Brussels, 2009).
this was due to better orchestration of the disciplines of social psychology,

psychoanalysis and neurology corresponding to the field of military
psychiatry ultimately involved in the remedy of the problem.
In 1980, these symptoms were described as “post-traumatic stress
disorder” (PTSD) in clinical manuals (e.g., the Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders, DSM-III, a classification system edited by
the American Psychiatric Association) and were therefore diagnosable
with more ease and professional cognizance. Since then, this definition has
been challenged and altered by various psycho(traumato)logical approaches
that, like Bessel van der Kolk’s psychiatric theory on traumatic memory
processes, oscillate between psychogenic and neurophysiological patterns
of explanation.15 As with psychodynamic and interpersonal lenses unto the
impact of ‘trauma,’ such approaches have been augmented by contemporary
clinical perspectives including neurobiology and neurology. In later wars,
e.g., in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Iraq, Israel/Palestine and Kosovo, veterans
continued to suffer from “PTSD,” “a loss of ontological security,”16 or
“mild traumatic brain injury” – terms in current use.17 Military health
systems have experimented – and continue to do so – with therapeutic
treatment via hydrotherapy, hypnosis, suggestion, electrotherapy and, at a
later date, via psychotherapy and “Redekur,” psychological self-
management, self-regulation, “neuroimaging” and medication, depending
on the prevailing conjuncture of medical schools and their particular
therapeutic preferences. Often, the therapeutic scheme to reconcile with
‘trauma’ can be described by the triad: stabilization, confrontation and
integration of denied parts of the traumatic memory.
For instance, in 2007, the Veterans Administration, the public medical
organization for army veterans in the United States, adopted a concept by
the Mandatory Palestine-born psychologist Edna Foa. The so-called
“Prolonged Exposure Therapy” was supposed to reduce PTSD symptoms
in more than 80 percent of cases. This cognitive-behaviorist therapy is
based on the idea that a “traumatic memory” is not the enemy of the
patient. Rather, the subject is encouraged to retell his/her story in the
present tense in order to more directly encounter the “traumatic memory”
15
Bessel A. van der Kolk: “Trauma and Memory,” in: idem/Alexander C.
McFarlane/Lars Weisaeth (eds.), Traumatic Stress – The Effects of Overwhelming
Experience on Mind, Body, and Society (London/New York: Guilford Press, 1996),
279-302.
16
Young, The Harmony of Illusions, 8.
17
Cf. Edgar Jones, Nicola T. Fear and Simon Wessely, “Shell shock and Mild
Traumatic Brain Injury: A Historical Review,” in: The American Journal of
Psychiatry 164:11 (2007), 1-5.
8 Introduction
and ultimately alleviate one’s fear. Foa compares this process with
watching a scary film: “It is hard at the beginning, as if you were seeing a
very scary movie for the first time. But just like a movie, when you watch
it for the tenth time, the fear is forgotten and the movie gets boring.”18
Many other parallels can be drawn between clinical trauma research
and the knowledge of practitioners in the field of traumatology and film
aesthetics and dramaturgy. Revealing the parallel development of the two
fields are the academic termini: “scenic memory,” “screen-spectator-
technique” (Frank W. Putnam), and “psychodynamic imaginative trauma
therapy.” In the latter, traumatic memory fragments are projected onto an
“inner display screen” or “inner stage” watched by the patient like an “old
movie” that can be stopped, fast-forwarded, set to close-up, or switched to
black and white via imaginary remote control. Ostensibly, this enables
self-comfort and allows for control over the interplay between association
and dissociation.19
Film and Trauma Interface

The simultaneous historical development of the two spheres, film and
the symptoms and notion of ‘trauma,’ results not only in their empirical,
heuristic and semantic inseparability, but also in the question of how
traumatic and filmic languages may be telescoped and explored within a
research scenario that concentrates on their synergetic effects. The present
articles not only disclose interconnections between hyper-violent
traumatizing historical events and the development of trauma theory as
discussed rudimentarily above, but the contributors also analyze the
aesthetical, narrative, dramaturgical and diegetic functions of filmic texts
that embody traumatic encodings. Further research questions being
addressed in this anthology include: How can individual and/or collective
wounds be transferred to and popularized by film? How does film
communicate forgotten or repressed traumatic inscriptions, be it on a
national or international level? How does film affect or catalyze the
‘digestion’ and ‘incorporation’ of trauma histories in the official narration
of history and national identities built on the conceptualization (and
illusion) of a “continuous narrative of national progress, the narcissism of
18
Interview with Edna Foa in Haaretz 06.08.2010, “Queen of Broken Hearts,” by
Coby Ben-Simhon, http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/magazine/queen-of-broken-
hearts-1.306416, (Accessed April 15, 2013).
19
Luise Reddemann, Psychodynamisch Imaginative Traumatherapie (Pfeiffer bei
Klett-Cotta, 2005), 172.
self-generation, the primeval present of the Volk”?20 How do the acoustic,

aesthetic, dramaturgical and narrative means of film operate together in
signifying the phenomenon ‘trauma?’ How can the polysemic filmic text
created in this process be decrypted via academic-analytical means? Does
the aestheticized presentation of ‘trauma’ in film undermine or contradict
its historical content and references to real catastrophes?
To address these questions, a diverse selection of films and film
ensembles, from genres such as melodrama, thriller, horror, documentary,
and art-house film, will be explored. All of the nominated films deal with
historical traumata – ranging from the Second World War, the
Holocaust/Shoah, the Nakba, the Paris massacre of Algerian demonstrators
in 1961, and the on-going Israeli-Palestinian conflict – that continue to
haunt affected individuals and communities. Said traumata are mirrored in
the topics, plots, settings, trajectories, figures, mise-en-scène, sound, and
music of the discussed films, with the traumatization of the films’
characters semantically intertwined with the catastrophic issues of the
collective, in particular within the national sphere. In some cases, as in the
depiction of Adolf Hitler in German cinema, a historical figure may be
charged with the traumatic events of an entire nation and thereby
transformed into an icon of evil.21
This volume is based on the credo that film serves as a medium that
activates and deconstructs taboos associated with traumatic wounds in a
unique way – wounds that, because they are sometimes so painful and
incomprehensible, cannot be comprehensively integrated into the psyche
or narrations, history, mythology or ideology of the nation. Within the
notional “dialectic of trauma,” Judith L. Herman casts the oscillation
between traumatic oblivion and intrusion.22 Film can render otherwise
hidden traumatic wounds visible and perceptible, and therefore debatable
and negotiable. Film is capable of visualizing ‘traumata’ because it can
most effectively depict irregularities and anachronisms. Film can transport
images repressed or denied by the social body, forgotten iconologies and
intense flashbacks intruding upon the consciousness back into the social
discourse – albeit in an alienated manner. Traumatic memory fragments
20
Homi K. Bhabha, “Narrating the Nation,” in: Homi K. Bhabha (ed.), The Nation
and Narration (London: Routledge, 1990), 1 et seq.
21
Michael Elm, “Man, Demon, Icon: Hitler’s Image between Cinematic
Representation and Historical Reality,” in: Karolin Machtans and Martin A. Ruehle
(eds.), Hitler – Films from Germany: History, Cinema and Politics since 1945
(London: Palgrave McMillan, 2012), 151-167.
22
Judith L. Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—from
Domestic Abuse to Political Terror (New York: Basic Books, 1997), 1, 47.
10 Introduction
cannot be easily reintegrated into the individual or national master

narrative, which may be the cause of stress disorders and uncontrollable
anxiety attacks.23 Derived from what trauma theorist van der Kolk says
about “traumatic memory,”24 it can be stated that film translates sensuous
triggers, affects and sudden visceral sensations – such as particular smells
and sounds – into film language, alongside other references to the
traumatizing situation that are not decoded, such as interaction between
the acoustic level and the camera angles, the diegesis with the acting. The
latter transforms the face in close-up into a physiognomic landscape of
affects. The close-up has been described by film theorist Béla Balázs as
the most potent symbolic meaning-maker that abstracts all time-space-
coordinates and causes a standing-still of time. A dynamic room without
limits is thereby created,25 whose aesthetic aptly corresponds with the aim
to signify traumatic structures.
In combination with music, facial expressions alter non-readable traces
of ‘trauma’ into cultural encodings that might be more easily interpretable
and digestible. Thus, film functions as a medium that witnesses,
remembers and is haunted and obsessed by traumatic historical events that
can neither be seen in clear light nor be fully decoded. While film does not
provide an absolute decoding of the traumatic experience, this medium
comes, in a way, close to this goal, if only as a depiction of that which
defies representation.
Film not only stores and replays traumatic energies in a sort of
‘cultural container’ viewed by the public, it oftentimes also processes and
transforms these energies into even more complex cultural material. It
gives them a new, altered shape, a symbolic, more readable form that
might arouse less of a society’s fear than the historical event itself. The
transposed ‘trauma’ comes in the garment of distortion, as translating
traumatic language into film language often implies moments of
deformation, disfigurement, fracture, breakup, dislocation, or transmutation
that are not easy to decipher. ‘Trauma’ obviously does not lose its special
characteristics by switching the medium. Trauma theorist Shireen R. K.
Patell states that there is inherent danger in an “epistemological
23
Anke Kirsch and Tanja Michael et al., “Trauma und Gedächtnis,” in: Günther H.
Seidler, et al. (eds.), Handbuch der Psychotraumatologie (Stuttgart, 2011), 15, 20.
24
Bessel van der Kolk, “The Body Keeps the Score: Brief Autobiography of
Bessel van der Kolk,” in: Charles R. Figley (ed.), Mapping Trauma and its Wake:
Autobiographic Essays by Pioneer Trauma Studies (New York/London: Routledge,
2006), 211-226, here 301.
25
Cf. chapter on the close-up in: Béla Balázs, Der sichtbare Mensch: oder, Die
Kultur des Films (Deutsch-Österreichischer Verlag, 1924), 73 et seq.
destabilization of the traumatic (non)object/event” because it would be

“unaccountable.”26 The destabilizing powers tend to be passed-on when
‘trauma’ changes its representational medium: from the body to the psyche
or, vice versa, to scripture, images or film. Following Patell, we can also
add that film “conceals the productive intimate tension of mimesis and
diegesis [in an interplay of image and text] […] always relying on the
other as metaphorical support and epistemological buttress […].”27
Film feeds on the phenomenon that individuals or collectives afflicted
by traumatic catastrophes evoke fascination and repudiation, attraction and
aversion in an antagonistic interplay. Film translates tense interactions into
characters and dramaturgical conflicts. Film can be seen as a provisional
patch that is pasted over the traumatic abyss appearing as a result of the
absence of narrative, meaning-making and rational memory. It makes the
spectator forget the forgetting – Cathy Caruth said about a traumatic event
that it was “not assimilated or experienced fully at the time, but only
belatedly in its repeated possession of the one who experiences it.”28 Film
has the capacity to build metaphorical and metonymic images that, as a
matter of fact, artificially and temporarily cover old wounds that are pried
open in a delayed manner. By staging its non-representability, film
overcomes and challenges the vision of ‘trauma’ as non-representable and
turns it into an artistic creation. Thomas Elsaesser has argued that in order
to reach an “adequate” level of representation, film needed to invent a
particular “negative performativity,” which is only partly and transiently
achievable.29 Film seems a powerful means to depict the “unresolved
tension” between mimesis and anti-mimesis that Ruth Leys examines in
her fruitful re-reading of the canonical texts of Sigmund Freud and Cathy
Caruth.
As a consequence of Caruth’s interpretation of the role of ‘trauma’ in
relation to history, one could say that shocking, overwhelming trauma-
incidents and people’s constructions and conceptions of the official
version of history tend to overlap in larger areas. Following Caruth’s
thesis, history seems to feed on ‘trauma,’ which affects its course through
traumatic “infections.” Thus, history is reformulated as traumatic non-
26
Julia B. Köhne (ed.), Trauma und Film. Inszenierungen eines Nicht-
Repräsentierbaren (Berlin: Kadmos, 2012), 30.
27
Köhne, Trauma und Film, 32.
28
Cathy Caruth (ed.), Trauma. Explorations in Memory (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1995), 4 et seq.
29
Thomas Elsaesser, “Postmodernism as mourning work,” in: Susannah Radstone
(ed.), Trauma and Screen Studies: Opening the Debate, Trauma Dossier, Screen
42, 2 (2001), 193-201.
12 Introduction
representability – in other words, postmodern historiography is replaced

by traumatology.30 This is not considered a conscious and deliberate
process, but rather a result of a decades-long conceptual exchange between
trauma theory and perceptions of reality. Here, history is often substituted
by a model of generation and sequence characterized by traumatization;
‘trauma’ is sketched as a universal, anthropological constant, as cultural
scientist Sigrid Weigel pointed out in her critique of Caruth’s dictum.31
Film can be embraced as an artistic attempt to communicate what can
neither be transformed into a shared experience nor transmitted in an
undisguised manner. As such, film functions like a “prosthetic memory”
(Alison Landsberg), because it is a particularly apt medium to vicariously
experience global catastrophic events:
If the mass media […] can become transferential arenas in which we learn
to wear the memories of such traumas so that they become imaginable to
us, thinkable, and speakable to us, then these mass cultural technologies of
memory deserve our most serious consideration.32
Landsberg states that modernity introduced a “new form of public

cultural memory,” coined “prosthetic memory,” which “emerges at the
interface between a person and a historical narrative about the past,” for
example when attending the movie theater. “In this moment of contact, an
experience occurs through which the person sutures himself or herself into
a larger history […]. In this process […] the person does not simply
apprehend a historical narrative but takes on a more personal, deeply felt
memory of a past event through which he or she did not live. The resulting
prosthetic memory has the ability to shape that person’s subjectivity and
politics.”33 Yet, film does not serve as a cultural machine that produces
immobilizing metaphors – it does not universalize or ennoble powerful,
hegemonic meaning-makings in the context of traumatic public histories.
30
Cathy Caruth, Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History
(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 24.
31
Sigrid Weigel, “Télescopage im Unbewußten. Zum Verhältnis von Trauma,
Geschichtsbegriff und Literatur,” in: Elisabeth Bronfen et al. (eds.), Trauma.
Zwischen Psychoanalyse und kulturellem Deutungsmuster (Cologne, 1999), 51-76,
here 56 et seq.
32
Alison Landsberg, “America, the Holocaust, and the Mass Culture of Memory:
Toward a Radical Politics of Empathy,” New German Critique, No. 71, Memories
of Germany (Spring–Summer, 1997), 63-86, here 86.
33
Alison Landsberg, Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American
Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture (New York: Columbia UP, 2004), 2.
Instead, film can rewrite elements of the past retrospectively and

retroactively without laying claim to an objective truth, instead pointing to
irritations, disguises, and contortions included in this process.
This anthology also offers room for a debate between psychoanalytic,
sociological, political and cultural perspectives on the questions of how
and to what extent the terms of trauma theory and psychotraumatology can
be transferred onto the social sphere,34 as well as how this is reflected in
trauma films. Recent clinical studies have shown that experiences of harsh
violence do not necessarily result in “post-traumatic stress syndrome” or
the collapse of narrative memory. Evidently, the ability of the individual
and societies to cope with immeasurable violence and traumatizing acts
can vary stunningly from case to case, depending on the factor of
resilience. To what extent can this be detected in film? Which meaning
does the filmic medium take on in this process? In which specific films
does the trauma notion turn out to be productive in the revelation and
discussion of social conditions and problems that transcend the question of
‘trauma?’
Horror Cinema and Trauma

Adam Lowenstein states that the pain in cinematic horror “has
everything to do with the world in which we live in” (THE AMERICAN
NIGHTMARE 2000).35 Following Linnie Blake, one can say that horror
films allow international audiences to both reflect on and cope with the
horrors of recent history – from genocide to terrorism, war to persecution,
nuclear catastrophes to natural disasters. Blake considers horror movies a
disturbing, yet highly political and therapeutic genre that capacitates its
audience to deal with the traumatic legacies and horrific incidents of
reality in a productive way, on both an individual and collective level.
34
Jeffrey C. Alexander et al. (eds.), Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004); José Brunner, Holocaust und
Trauma: Kritische Perspektiven zur Entstehung und Wirkung eines Paradigmas.
Tel Aviver Jahrbuch für deutsche Geschichte/Tel Aviv Yearbook for German
History 39, co-edited with Nathalie Zajde (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2011); José
Brunner, Die Politik des Traumas: Gewalt, Gesellschaft und psychisches Leiden
(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2014 forthcoming).
35
Cf. Adam Lowenstein, Shocking Representation: Historical Trauma, National
Cinema, and the Modern Horror Film (Columbia University Press, 2005). The
documentary, THE AMERICAN NIGHTMARE (USA, UK 2000), dir.: Adam Simon, an
examination of horror films of the 1960’s and 1970’s, involved artists’ reflections
of the horrific experiences of contemporary society.
14 Introduction
Blake sees horror films as a unique medium to “re-open” national wounds

that have been suppressed, overlooked or only superficially addressed:
[H]orror film […] is uniquely situated to engage with the insecurities that
underpin […] conceptions of the nation; to expose the terrors underlying
everyday national life and the ideological agendas that dictate existing
formulations of ‘national cinemas’ themselves.36
From this perspective, the process of turning ‘trauma’ into film

becomes a productive moment in dealing with haunting pasts.
The horror genre in many cases embodies subgenres like body horror,
hillbilly, supernatural, fantasy, vampire, and zombie movies, each with its
discrete creatures, tropes and various political and social issues. For
example, what is the legacy of the undead as the personification of the
aggressive, consumption-oriented US-American, or that of the Godzilla-
monster as an embodiment of Japanese dread of natural catastrophes?
Thus, as can be seen in the present anthology, popular and cult horror
movies do not necessarily contain distinct figures of horror. In fact, in
contrast to filmic environments set, for example, in the American
backcountry, the ‘horror’ in horror movies may also derive from ‘normal’
milieus, like the familiar nuclear family of white, US-American suburbs,
unalarming, per se, at first glance from the outside.
This volume traces the question: in what way can the term “horror” be
applied as an analytical category to explore the history of “trauma
cultures” and narrations? Can “horror” be seen as an ingredient or an
effect of “trauma” or, conversely, “trauma” as a (horrifying) subject that
recounts the unspeakable horrors of history? Can the “horror of trauma” be
seen as the result or the beginning of the triad: traumatizing event, phase
of non-representability, filmic images or: violence-void-visualization?
Does the filmic horror or display of horror in film initiate, increase or
generate cultural traumas (like a perpetuum mobile)? Are the “horrors of
trauma” rooted in the need to constantly repeat and vary traumatic
figurations on an individual, inner-psychic or cultural/collective level?
Why are filmic horror scenarios a beloved dramaturgical form of trauma
knowledge? How can the interconnections between traumatic and horrifying
histories and their filmic adaptations in horror movies and other film
genres – like melodramas or documentaries – be described? Which narrative
and aesthetic characteristics can be detected as simple representational
practices in national cinema traditions relating to and coping with
36
Blake, The Wounds of Nations, 8-16, 9.
experiences of ‘trauma’ and horror, as well as actions of terror and

violence? How does the cultural engagement with ‘traumata’ in horror
films affect the question of self-definition and the ‘othering’ of collective
identities? What role does the metamorphosis of ‘traumatic energies’ into
moving images play regarding national ways of self-perception and self-
reflection?
Structure of the Anthology

The first section of the anthology pertains to the nexus between trauma
and horror in movies. The second to fifth sections examine various foci in
the depiction of ‘trauma’ as they appear in four distinct national trauma
(film) cultures, namely the United States, Germany, and Israel/Palestine
and their coproducing countries. What impact have the nations in which
the movies were produced had on the filmic depiction of the
interconnection between traumatic catastrophes and filmic visualization?
What do their interfaces with the notion of ‘trauma’ look like? The
trajectory of such questions as related to these diverse fields can be
demonstrated in the following passages.
I – Horror in Trauma Cinema

The first part of the anthology deals with descriptions of the
interconnections between the logic, powers and horrors of trauma
language and film language. Is there a specific affinity of the film medium
to represent (inner-psychic) structures, especially post-traumatic stress or
psychotraumatological disorders and their specific time structure of
latency, delay and reiteration? Which aesthetic features and narrative
shapes are produced while making a film about trauma notions and
‘trauma nations?’ Which genre-specific characteristics can be found in
melodramas, history movies, thrillers, documentaries, and horror movies
that bear a connection to ‘trauma?’
Since violent experiences are, without a doubt, represented most
strikingly in the horror genre, this section will trace the connection
between historical traumata, the “wounds of nations,”37 trauma depiction,
and horror movies by means of two essays: Thomas Weber’s text on
director Michael Haneke’s CACHÉ (2005) and Michael Elm’s contribution
on Roman Polanski’s film oeuvre. As one might deduce from the topics of
these two essays, in this anthology, ‘horror films’ are not conceived solely
37
Blake, The Wounds of Nations.
16 Introduction
as films commonly associated with the genre of horror, but also include
films that make feelings of horror, persecution and haunting trauma their
main concern. By incorporating the insights of studies that deal with the
“classic” horror genre, new and important understandings of a broad array
of filmic depictions can be gained. Weber’s article is concerned with the
representation of media in CACHÉ within an aesthetic of uncertainty and
alienation linked to precarious, repressed traumatic memoirs in the
cinema. In Weber’s eyes, Haneke not only manages to reorganize
traumatic memories, but also to uncover how they are repressed and
repudiated in and by the social body. He detects the symbolic connection
of CACHÉ’s protagonists and characters to the French Resistance and the
Algerian War. In CACHÉ, Haneke’s fascination with horror is detached
from his personal and national context.
Elm traces Polanski’s characterization of the world as an “uncanny,”
absurd, dangerous and traumatized place. The plots of films like THE
FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS (1967), ROSEMARY’S BABY (1968) and THE
NINTH GATE (1999) can be seen as an acting-out or reenactment of painful,
traumatic experiences (of persecution), drawing also on Polanski’s own
pool of traumatic experiences and cultural critique of Western societies.
The last section of the article investigates the sophisticated narrative and
visual structure of staging the transition process from an authoritarian to a
post-authoritarian regime through the conflict of the main characters in
DEATH AND THE MAIDEN (1994).
Both articles ask what the rather weird and distressing atmospheres and
psychological constellations of figures in these horror movies tell us about
the relation between violence and social trauma in (Western) culture –
decades before mirroring issues like the ‘War on Terror’ in Afghanistan
and Iraq. Real life horror echoes in artistic horror.
Concluding the first part of this volume, Christiane-Marie Abu Sarah
examines how Hollywood horror movies such as SHE DEMONS (1958),
FLESH EATERS (1964), BLOOD CREEK (2009), and RATLINE (2011), have
since the 1940s staged the figure of the Nazi in ever-changing ways.
Throughout the previous century, the Nazi villain and Nazi iconography
have become master signifiers that not only denote social deviant
malevolence in its purest form, but can be loaded with diverse and even
antagonistic symbolical contents. In the author’s opinion, horror film plays
a prominent role in the memorialization and fluid rewriting of national
traumata – the Nazi monster is a dynamic sign in the grammar of horror
cinema.
While the tropes of the horrors of trauma and/or filmic horror are
embraced throughout this anthology, the following three sections delve
into the reverberation of historical and social traumata on diverse national

film cultures.
II – Nazism and War

US-American Cinema offers a broad supply of representations of
experiences of violence, horror and ‘trauma.’ From Martin Scorsese’s
TAXI DRIVER (USA 1976) to Kathryn Bigelow’s THE HURT LOCKER
(2008),38 recent North-American Cinema opens a wide filmic space for
coping with violence. Almost forty years after the end of the Vietnam War
and more than ten years after 9/11, this section focuses on diverse national
and global ‘traumata’ and their filmic staging mirrored in heterogeneous
American film cultures. Which developments can be described according
to different filmic modes of representation? In the wake of the 9/11
attacks, does the vernacular of “collective trauma” need to be verified?39
Or does it make sense to speak rather about a next episode in the long
“history of violence” that only affects specific groups and classes?
Dania Hückmann concentrates on the nexus between rage and trauma
as presented in INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS (2009) by Quentin Tarantino. She
shows how the female Jewish protagonist Shosanna, together with her
black collaborator-friend, performs a fictive Jewish revenge against the
perpetrators of the “Third Reich.” Hückmann refers to Sigmund Freud’s
and Josef Breuer’s notion of “revenge” from the end of the 19th century
and compares it to the way in which Tarantino stages female vengeance
within the context of the Holocaust. She shows how INGLOURIOUS
BASTERDS succeeds in reimagining the notion of revenge by presenting its
potential to unleash a fantastical alternative course of historical events
marked not by justice but by resistance.
By analyzing Duncan Jones’ SOURCE CODE (2011), Daniel Müller
traces narrations of individual trauma that originate in amnesia and loss of
identity. This constitution of the protagonist is mirrored in the non-linear
plot of the movie, whereby the exposition is dislocated to a moment that
precedes the narrative, like a backstory wound needing to be diagnosed
and dissolved. The article shows how the film’s focus on the protagonist’s
amnesia as standing at the heart of his trauma contributes to the further
38
Köhne, Trauma und Film.
39
Marike Korn, “Filmic Healing Scripts. (Re)Negotiating the Trauma Paradigm
after 9/11,” in: Köhne, Trauma und Film, 351-363.
39
Elsaesser, Melodrama and Trauma.
18 Introduction
marginalization of the war in Afghanistan, the very event that caused this
‘trauma.’
Kerstin Stutterheim concentrates her article on the topic of traumatized
heroes and the nexus of war and distraction by analyzing SHUTTER ISLAND
(USA 2010) and IVAN’S CHILDHOOD (USSR 1962). She does so by looking
at (the difference between) the explicit story of the filmic texts and the
implicit dramaturgy. The article focuses on the poetic figure of the war
hero presented as an archaic figure and on the open structure of both
movies, whereby they arouse emotionality and a feeling of authenticity.
III – Memory and Trauma

This section of the anthology engages on one hand with ‘trauma’
scenarios in the context of National Socialism and the Holocaust/Shoah
and, on the other, analyzes modes of coping with “histories of violence” in
German movies regarding the Federal Republic and DEFA movies of the
former GDR.40
Pablo Fontana sheds light on the shadows between memory and
propaganda by looking at two examples of DEFA’s so-called “Thaw”
films that premiered in 1965. The term “Thaw” refers to the period in
Soviet history, after Stalin’s death, in which eastern European regimes
experienced cultural liberalization that allowed for a more complex
representation of ‘trauma.’ The article examines the tensions in these films
between attempts to represent individual trauma during the Second World
War and the political instrumentalization of these depictions as part of the
Cold War.
Jeanne Bindernagel focuses on the precarious relationship between
historiography, memory and film language in WUNDKANAL (1984),
directed by Thomas Harlan, son of infamous Nazi director Veit Harlan,
and NOTRE NAZI (1984), featuring Thomas Harlan himself. Bindernagel’s
text shows the films’ inability to engage meaningfully with the
psychological and socio-cultural trauma that lies in the nation’s past and in
individual (perpetrators’) pasts. Through an analytical lens of aesthetics,
40
Thomas Elsaesser, Terror and Trauma. Zur Gewalt des Vergangenen in der BRD
(Berlin, 2007); Wulf Kansteiner, In Pursuit of German Memory: History,
Television, and Politics after Auschwitz (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2006);
Wulf Kansteiner, The Politics of Memory in Postwar Europe, co-edited with
Claudio Fogu and Ned Lebow (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006); Wulf
Kansteiner, Historical Representation and Historical Truth (History & Theory
Theme Issue 47), co-edited with Christoph Classen (Oxford: Blackwell, 2009).
Bindernagel stresses the films’ potential to depict transgenerational

compulsions of repetition.
Hinderk M. Emrich examines the tension between trauma and fiction
in the photofilm FIASCO (2010), created by the filmmakers Janet Riedel,
Katja Pratsche and Gusztàv Hámos. FIASCO, based on Imre Kertész’s
book, deals with a 50-year-old survivor of the Auschwitz concentration
camp living in the early 1950s. He writes a novel about a hero damned to
relive and repeat his own horrific experiences. Are the visual horrors of
the Holocaust still beyond representation, glued to the often cited “crisis of
representation?” Is there a red line connecting these filmic representations
of violent acts or do discontinuities and asynchronicity dominate?41 Is the
speech of a perpetrator’s trauma (Tätertrauma) concerning German and
Austrian history justifiable and convincing?42 What are the characteristics
of this specific form of ‘trauma?’ Does it abet self-victimization?
IV and V – Israeli-Palestinian Film: Spaces and Experiences

This divided section traces the question how representations of
violence have changed in the face of diverse Israeli wars and military
interventions, e.g., the Yom-Kippur-War, the Lebanon wars, as well as
experiences of violence in the 1948 Nakba and of the on-going Israeli-
Palestinian conflict.
Danielle Schwartz explores the repressed, veiled depiction of ruins of
former Palestinian buildings in Judd Ne’eman’s 1977 canonical movie
PARATROOPERS and in HILL 24 DOES NOT ANSWER (1954), by Thorold
Dickinson. Schwartz detects an ignorance of the filmmakers themselves,
as well as among journalists and scholars reviewing this movie, towards
the significance of the remarkable traces of erased Palestinian lives, homes
and histories of suffering. Instead of seeing filmed Palestinian ruins as
post-traumatic appearances in terms of the Nakba, their context and
history is painted-over by symbolic signification.
41
Anton Kaes has asked this question concerning the impact of World War I on the
visualization of trauma and shell shock: Shell Shock Cinema: Weimar Culture and
the Wounds of War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011).
42
Bernhard Giesen and Christoph Schneider (eds.), Tätertrauma: Nationale
Erinnerung im öffentlichen Diskurs (Universitätsverlag Konstanz, 2004); Kurt
Grünberg and Jürgen Straub (eds.), Unverlierbare Zeit. Psychosoziale Spätfolgen
des Nationalsozialismus bei Nachkommen von Opfern und Tätern (Tübingen:
edition discord 2001); Kurt Grünberg, “Schweigen und Verschweigen. NS-
Vergangenheit in Familien von Opfern und Tätern oder Mitläufern,” Psychosozial
20 (1997), 9-22.
20 Introduction
Isaac (Itsik) Rosen examines what he calls “urban paranoia” as

depicted in Haim Bouzaglo’s DISTORTION (2004). The movie sketches
spatial memories of traumatized experiences in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv
following years of the devastating and terrorizing second Palestinian
Intifada. Amidst the pervasive anxiety of two cities under surveillance, the
film stages the historical reference by depicting both as territories of
traumatization and devastation, as “panoptical labyrinths” and urban
mazes.
Peter Grabher fathoms the liminal space between Israel and Palestine
by taking a close look at films by Ula Tabari and Elia Suleiman.
According to Grabher, both filmmakers struggle to represent traumatic
traces and invent new but still fragile film identities in the face of the
current political situation. Taking into account Gilles Deleuze’s notion of
“becoming revolutionary,” he explores the professional and personal
dilemma of both filmmakers as Israeli citizens of Palestinian descent
residing in Paris. In Grabher’s eyes, Tabari and Suleiman succeed in
creating multi-layered aesthetic strategies, giving their own struggles with
identity unique artistic expression. They respond to ‘trauma,’ but at the
same time transgress the intolerable – inventing or preferring an identity-
position of “becoming” rather than being.
Grabher’s text is accompanied by a spirited conversation conducted
with the Israeli-Palestinian documentary filmmaker Ula Tabari, which
occurred after the premiere of JINGA 48 (2009). It has been condensed for
the present publication, enriching this volume’s spectrum by offering a
perspective from the filmmaking discipline.
Tabari’s documentaries PRIVATE INVESTIGATION (France/Germany
2002) and JINGA 48 imply a search for redefining the given liminal
Palestinian spaces of living, thinking and dealing with issues of the post-
colonial, segregation, terror and war. The conversation lends intimate
insight into Tabari’s challenging work as a filmmaker for, amongst others,
the Arab television channel Al-Jazeera.
The second part of this section explores the category of ‘experiences’

and is based, inter alia, on the following questions: should pre-modern
religious anti-Judaism like modern racist anti-Semitism be seen as a
historically persisting ‘Jewish’ experience of violence? If amalgamated
within the discourse of anti-Israelism, does it make sense to speak of a
‘Jewish-Israeli’ trauma in this context? The Israeli discourse indeed
features references to anti-Semitism that may be considered a political
instrumentalization of this topic. How can the demarcation line between a
shocking, fearful, reality-wise, or instrumental way of processing traumata
be identified? Which specific forms of filmic modes of “working through”

or mourning (Trauerarbeit, Freud) can be found in Israeli film culture?43
Corresponding with these difficult questions, Sandra Meiri’s article
focuses on the depiction of traumata passed on to the next generation by
Holocaust survivors who experienced sexual violence and Nazi
dehumanization in National-Socialist camps. She examines the Israeli
movie BURNING MOOKI (2008), in which the female protagonist re-enacts
her sexualized trauma within an incestuous relationship with her son. The
film shows how trauma originating in sexual violation during the
Holocaust also severely affects members of the “second generation.”
Raya Morag deals with the trauma of the female perpetrator in New
Israeli Cinema, created from 2007 to 2013, e.g., the documentary TO SEE
IF I’M SMILING 2007. Within this new, pioneering thread of Israeli cinema
– and even before (e.g., the short drama SOB’ SKIRT 2002) – focus is
shifted from the trauma of victims to that of perpetrators, namely Israeli
soldiers traumatized while involved in human rights violations and
atrocities during their encounters with the civilian Arab population. Morag
sees film characters that embody female delinquency as a powerful,
critical, and ethical intervention in the discourse on the ongoing
Occupation.
Marcella Simoni analyzes three documentaries, WASTED (2007),
CONCRETE (2011), and TESTIMONY (2011), which give attention to trauma
narratives and testimonies of mainly (secular male) soldiers in a context of
violent war operations in Israel, in which (mostly Palestinian) civilians are
involved, hurt or killed. Simoni’s article tries to place a piece in a
traumatic puzzle that offers intimate insight into suppressed, unsettling
facets of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
These two sections are especially dedicated to the traumatic
repercussions of the Holocaust/Shoah and to the question of a post-colonial
trauma in the ‘occupied territories.’ In relation to Israeli trauma culture,
the Palestinian discourse structurally resembles the latter concerning the
interconnections between experiences of violence, their political
instrumentalization, and social ‘reality.’ To wit, there is a history of
violent experience on both ‘sides’ of this enduring conflict culturally and
43
Boaz Hagin, “‘Our Traumas’: Terrorism, Tradition, and Mind Games in Frozen
Days,” in: Raz Yosef and Boaz Hagin (eds.), Deeper Than Oblivion: Trauma and
Memory in Israeli Cinema (New York and London: Continuum, 2013); Boaz
Hagin, Meiri Sandra et al. (eds.), Just Images: Ethics and the Cinematic
(Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011); Raz Yosef, The Politics of Loss and
Trauma in Contemporary Israeli Cinema (New York and London: Routledge,
2011).
22 Introduction
socially coded and incorporated into the political, national and, last but not
least, film discourse. Ella Shohat and Robert Stam describe their opinions
and views about nations taking on crystalline shape in the form of histories
and anecdotes. In accordance with their thesis, film is the story-teller par
excellence; it transports projected narrative and orchestrates cultural
constellations in a complex way:
Narrative models in film are not simply reflective microcosms of historical

processes; they are also experiential grids or templates through which
history can be written and national identity created. — [In film] time
thickens, takes on flesh.44
Horrific experiences of violence are often used to justify acts of

counter-violence and politically motivated ‘rage’ transferable to both
“sides” of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. How do Israeli-Palestinian film
productions relate to this circular structure of experiences of violence,
counter-violence and their representation?45
Conclusion
With this anthology, we strive to widen a space for debate on the
numerous ways of representing, staging, articulating and criticizing
‘trauma’ in and via film – traumata deriving from various historical
periods, national contexts, mentalities and directors. We hope that it
contributes to an elucidation of the long and labyrinthine shared story of
historical traumatic experiences, trauma theory, and traumatic film
aesthetics. As explained above, this anthology comprises an up-close
examination of international trauma cinema as a reaction to and critical
reflection upon the violence of mankind. Trauma cinema is not merely a
psychoanalyst’s couch for the masses, but tries foremost to re-form the
history of violence in a post-traumatic context and, second, to wake and
politicize people and communities. In its function as the “eye of history”
44
Ella Shohat and Robert Stam (eds.), Multiculturalism, postcoloniality, and
transnational media (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2003), 10; Ella
Shohat, Israeli Cinema: East/West and the Politics of Representation (London: I.B.
Tauris, 2010 [1989]).
45
Nurith Gertz and George Khleifi have done significant research on this question.
Nurith Gertz and George Khleifi, Palestinian Cinema: Landscape, Trauma and
Memory (Traditions in World Cinema) (Edinburgh, 2008 [Tel Aviv, 2005]).
(Georges Didi-Huberman),46 it – like a huge, often grey mirror – makes

atrocities, wounds and immutable pain visible, reflecting and transforming
their impact and contents into a piece of creative art. David J. Skal put it
this way: “Cataclysmic junctures in history usually stir-up strong imagery
in the collective mind.”47
The compilation of articles at hand demonstrates how diverse films
negotiate historical and social traumata, as well as the aesthetic strategies
involved in illuminating the core issues of societies afflicted by traumata.
As will become clear in the following, trauma cinema destabilizes
reassuring and homogenizing narratives of nationhood, imagined nations
and obsessively constructed identity in a unique way. Film is the
quintessential medium for a proper response to complex social traumata
because in it, the ‘trauma’ or traumatized human beings may scream back
at the viewer to awaken the horror. By reactivating the “horrors of
trauma,” the historically silenced can be heard, revised and reevaluated.
Acknowledgments
We would like to express our warmest regards to our English editors,
Alana Sobelman, Yehuda Mansell and Mark Thomas who had the skills,
intelligence and careful attention to review, revise and improve the
‘sound,’ style, and grammar of the articles of this anthology. We would
also like to thank Astrid Istratescu for her diligent transcription of the
conversation between Peter Grabher and Ula Tabari added to this volume.
Last but not least, we would like to express our warm gratitude to the
Rosa-Luxemburg Foundation in Tel Aviv and its team, Dr. Angelika
Timm, Mieke Hartmann and Tariq Habbashi for their excellent
organizational support and generous funding of the conference and
resulting anthology.
Literature on the Interface of Trauma and Film

Alexander, Jeffrey C. et al. (eds.), Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004).
46
Didi-Huberman, Georges, “Im Auge der Geschichte,” in: Bilder trotz allem.
Translation Peter Geimer (Munich, 2007) [Images malgré tout, 2003], 53-65, here
65.
47
David J. Skal, The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror (revised edition,
Macmillan, 2001), 114.
24 Introduction
Alexander, Jeffrey C., Trauma. A Social Theory (Cambridge: Polity Press,

2012).
Antze, Paul/Michael Lambek (eds.), Tense Past: Cultural Essays in
Trauma and Memory (New York/London: Routledge, 1996).
Assmann, Aleida, “Three Stabilizers of Memory: Affect-Symbol-Trauma,”
in: Hebel, Udo J. (ed.), Sites of Memory in American Literatures and
Cultures (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 2003), 15-30.
Apfelthaler, Vera/Köhne, Julia B. (eds.), Gendered Memories.
Transgressions in German and Israeli Film and Theater (Vienna:
Turia+Kant, 2007).
Auchter, Thomas (ed.), Der 11. September. Psychoanalytische, psychosoziale
und psychohistorische Analysen von Terror und Trauma (Gießen:
Psychosozial, 2003).
Bohleber, Werner, Die Entwicklung der Traumatheorie in der
Psychoanalyse (Stuttgart, 2000).
—. Trauma, Gewalt und kollektives Gedächtnis (Psyche ed. Stuttgart:
Klett-Cotta, 2000).
Bronfen, Elisabeth/Birgit R. Erdle/Sigrid Weigel (eds.), Trauma. Zwischen
Psychoanalyse und kulturellem Deutungsmuster (Köln/Weimar/
Vienna: Böhlau, 1999).
Bronfen, Elisabeth, Specters of War: Hollywood‘s Engagement with
Military Conflict (Rutgers University Press, 2012).
Brosch, Matthias/Elm, Michael/Geißler, Norman/Simbürger, Brigitta
Elisa/von Wrochem, Oliver (eds.), Exklusive Solidarität. Linker
Antisemitismus in Deutschland (Berlin: Metropol, 2007).
Brunner, José, Die Politik des Traumas: Gewalt, Gesellschaft und
psychisches Leiden (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, forthcoming
2014).
Caruth, Cathy (ed.), Trauma. Explorations in Memory (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1995).
—. (ed.), Unclaimed Experience. Trauma, Narrative, and History
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996).
Dallmann, Antje (ed.), Picturing America. Trauma, Realism, Politics, and
Identity in American Visual Culture (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2007).
Elm, Michael/Kößler, Gottfried/Fritz Bauer Institut (eds.), Zeugenschaft
des Holocaust. Zwischen Trauma, Tradierung und Ermittlung (Berlin:
Campus, 2007).
—. “Man, Demon, Icon: Hitler’s Image between Cinematic Representation
and Historical Reality,” in: Machtans, Karolin/Ruehl, Martin A. (eds.),
Hitler – Films from Germany: History, Cinema and Politics since 1945
(London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 151-167.
Elsaesser, Thomas, “Postmodernism as mourning work,” in: Radstone,

Susannah (ed.), Trauma and Screen Studies: Opening the Debate,
Trauma Dossier, Screen 42,2 (2001), 188-216.
—. Terror and Trauma. Zur Gewalt des Vergangenen in der BRD (Berlin:
Kadmos, 2007).
—. Melodrama and Trauma. Modes of Cultural Memory in American
Cinema (London: Routledge, 2009).
Elsaesser, Thomas/Hagin, Boaz, Memory, Trauma, and Fantasy in
American Cinema (Ra’anana: Open University of Israel, 2012).
Felman, Shoshana/Laub, Dori, Testimony: Crisis of Witnessing in
Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History (New York: Routledge, 1992).
Fischer, Gottfried/Riedesser, Peter, Lehrbuch der Psychotraumatologie
(München, 1998, 2003).
Freud, Sigmund: “Jenseits des Lustprinzips [1920],” in: Freud, Anna [et
al.] (eds.), Gesammelte Werke, vol. 13, (Frankfurt am Main, 1999), 9-
45.
Gertz, Nurith, Myths in Israeli Culture (London: Vallentine Mitchell,
2000).
Gertz, Nurith/Khleifi, George, Palestinian Cinema. Landscape, Trauma,
and Memory (Edinburgh: Edinburgh U.P., 2008).
Guerin, Frances/Hallas, Roger (eds.), The Image and the Witness: Trauma,
Memory, and Visual Culture (Nonfictions) (London: Wallflower Press,
2007).
Hagin, Boaz, “‘Our Traumas’, Terrorism, Tradition, and Mind Games in
Frozen Days,” in: Yosef, Raz/Hagin, Boaz (eds.), Deeper Than
Oblivion: Trauma and Memory in Israeli Cinema (New York/London:
Continuum, 2013).
Hagin, Boaz/Yosef, Raz, “Sweet on the Inside: Trauma, Memory, and
Israeli Cinema,” in: Yosef, Raz/Hagin, Boaz (eds.), Deeper Than
Oblivion: Trauma and Memory in Israeli Cinema (New York and
London: Continuum, 2013).
Hagin, Boaz/Meiri, Sandra/Yosef, Raz/Zanger, Anat (eds.), Just Images:
Ethics and the Cinematic (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars
Publishing, 2011).
Hartmann, Geoffrey, Holocaust Remembrance. The Shapes of Memory
(Cambridge, Mass., amongst others: Blackwell, 1994).
Herman, Judith Lewis, Trauma and Recovery. The Aftermath of Violence.
From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror (New York: Basic Books,
1992).
Hirsch, Joshua, Afterimage: Film, Trauma, and the Holocaust (Philadelphia:
Temple University Press, 2004).
26 Introduction
Huyssen, Andreas, Present Pasts. Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of

Memory (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003).
Jameson, Fredric R., The Geopolitical Aesthetic: Cinema and Space in the
World System (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992).
Jones, Edgar/Nicola T. Fear/Simon Wessely: Shell shock and Mild
Traumatic Brain Injury: A Historical Review,” in: The American
Journal of Psychiatry, 164:11 (2007), 1-5.
Kabalek, Kobi, “Unheroic Heroes. Re-Viewing Roman Polanski’s The
Pianist in Germany and Israel,” in: Apfelthaler, Vera/Köhne, Julia B.
(eds.), Gendered Memories. Transgressions in German and Israeli Film
and Theater (Vienna: Turia+Kant, 2007), 61-82.
—. “Das Scheitern und die Erinnerung: Über das Nicht-Retten von Juden
in zwei deutschen Nachkriegsfilmen,” in: Bolyos, Lisa/Morawek,
Katharina (eds.), Diktatorpuppe zerstört, Schaden gering: Kunst und
Geschichtspolitik im Postnazismus (Vienna: Mandelbaum, 2012), 92-
103.
Kaes, Anton, Shell Shock Cinema. Weimar Culture and the Wounds of
War (Princeton, 2009).
Kantsteiner, Wulf, In Pursuit of German Memory: History, Television, and
Politics after Auschwitz (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2006).
—. The Politics of Memory in Postwar Europe, co-edited with Claudio
Fogu and Ned Lebow, (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006).
—. Historical Representation and Historical Truth (History & Theory
Theme Issue 47), co-edited with Christoph Classen (Oxford:
Blackwell, 2009).
Kaplan, Elizabeth Ann/Wang, Ban, Trauma and Cinema. Cross Cultural
Explorations (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2004).
Kaplan, Elizabeth Ann, Trauma Culture: The Politics of Terror and Loss
in Media and Literature (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press,
2005).
Koch, Gertrud, Die Einstellung ist die Einstellung. Visuelle
Konstruktionen des Judentums (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1992).
Köhne, Julia B. (ed.), Trauma und Film. Inszenierungen eines Nicht-
Repräsentierbaren (Berlin: Kadmos, 2012).
—. Gendered Memories. Transgressions in German and Israeli Film and
Theater (Vienna: Turia+Kant, 2007) (with Vera Apfelthaler).
—. Kriegshysteriker. Strategische Bilder und mediale Techniken
militärpsychiatrischen Wissens, 1914-1920 (Husum: Matthiesen,
2009).
—. “Let it bleed. Der Konnex von Blut und Trauma in Brian de Palmas
Carrie (1976),” in: Biedermann, Claudio/Stiegler, Christian (eds.),
Horror und Ästhetik. Eine interdisziplinäre Spurensuche (Konstanz:

UVK Verlagsgesellschaft, 2008), 50-71.
—. “Splattering Bride. Konfigurationen von Trauma und weiblicher Rache in
Quentin Tarantinos Kill Bill (2003/4),” in: Ballhausen, Thomas/Friesinger,
Günther/Grenzfurthner, Johannes (eds.), Schutzverletzungen. Legitimation
von medialer Gewalt (Berlin: Verbrecher, 2010), 55-110.
—. “Militärpsychiatrisches Theater. Französische Kinematographie der
Kriegshysterie, 1915 bis 1918,” in Borck, Cornelius (ed.), Berichte zur
Wissenschaftsgeschichte, vol. 36 (2013), 29-56.
—. “Ein träumender und ein traumatisierender Computer. Repräsentationen
des Unbewussten in Donald Cammells Demon Seed (1977),” in:
Braun, Christina von/Dornhof, Dorothea/Johach, Eva (eds.), Das
Unbewusste. Krisis und Kapital der Wissenschaften. Studien zum
Verhältnis von Wissen und Geschlecht (Bielefeld, 2009), 414-440.
—. “Verstellte Sichten. Die falsche Fährte als Weg in den eigenen Tod in
Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now (1973),” Maske und Kothurn.
Internationale Beiträge zur Theater-, Film- und Medienwissenschaft
an der Universität Wien, vol. 53, issue: Falsche Fährten. Von
Täuschungen und Enttäuschungen in Film & Fernsehen (Vienna,
2007), 81-97.
LaCapra, Dominick, Representing the Holocaust. History, Theory,
Trauma (Ithaca, NY, amongst others: Cornell University Press, 1994).
Lacan, Jacques, “Tyche und Automaton,” Lacan, Jacques: Die vier
Grundbegriffe der Psychoanalyse (Weinheim/Berlin: Walter, 1987),
59-70.
Landsberg, Alison, Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American
Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture (New York: Columbia UP,
2004).
Le Roy, Frederik/Stalpaert, Christel/Verdoodt, Sofie (visiting eds.),
“Performing Cultural Trauma in Theatre and Film,” arcadia.
International Journal of Literary Culture (Berlin, 2010), vol. 45, issue
2, 249-427.
Leys, Ruth, Trauma: A Genealogy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2000).
Lowenstein, Adam, Shocking Representation: Historical Trauma,
National Cinema, and the Modern Horror Film (New York: Columbia
University Press., 2005).
Luckurst, Roger, The Trauma Question (London, New York, Routledge,
2008).
28 Introduction
Milch, Wolfgang/Hartmann, Hans P./Kratzsch, Siegbert, Terror, Gewalt

und Trauma. New York, 11. September 2001 (Frankfurt am Main:
Brandes und Apsel, 2002).
Morag, Raya, “The Living Body and the Corpse – Israeli Documentary
Cinema and the Intifadah,” Journal of Film & Video (Fall/Winter,
2008).
Morag, Raya, Defeated Masculinity: Post-Traumatic Cinema in the
Aftermath of War (Brussels: P.I.E. –
Peter Lang, 2009).
Prince, Stephen R., Firestorm: American Film in the Age of Terrorism
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2009).
Radstone, Susannah, “Trauma and Screen Studies: Opening the Debate,”
Screen, vol. 42/2 (2001), 188-193.
Ram, Uri, Israeli Nationalism: Social conflicts and the politics of
knowledge (Abingdon/Oxon: Routledge, 2011).
Rothe, Anne, Popular Trauma Culture. Selling the Pain of Others in the
Mass Media (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2011).
Sachsse, Ulrich: Traumazentrierte Psychotherapie (Stuttgart/New York,
2004).
Schivelbusch, Wolfgang, The Culture of Defeat: On National Trauma,
Mourning, and Recovery (Picador, 2003).
Seidler, Günter H./Eckart, Wolfgang U. (eds.), Verletzte Seelen.
Möglichkeiten und Perspektiven einer historischen Traumaforschung
(Gießen, 2005).
Seltzer, Mark, “Wound Culture. Trauma in the Pathological Public
Sphere,” October 80 (1997), 3-26.
Shohat, Ella, Israeli Cinema: East/West and the Politics of Representation
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989, new edition 2011).
Stern, Frank/Moser, Karin/Ballhausen, Thomas/Eichinger, Barbara/Köhne,
Julia B. (eds.), Filmische Gedächtnisse. Geschichte – Archiv – Riss
(Vienna: Mandelbaum, 2007).
Sznaider, Natan, Jewish Memory and the Cosmopolitan Order
(Cambridge: Polity Press, 2011).
Turim, Maureen: Flashbacks in Film. Memory and History (New York,
London, Routledge, 1989).
Van der Kolk, Bessel A./McFarlane, Alexander C./Weisaeth, Lars (eds.),
Traumatic Stress: The Effects of Overwhelming Experience on Mind,
Body and Society (New York, Guilford Press, 1996).
Van der Kolk, Bessel A., “Trauma and Memory,” in: idem/McFarlane,
Alexander C./Weisaeth, Lars (eds.), Traumatic Stress – The Effects of
Overwhelming Experience on Mind, Body, and Society (London/New

York: Guilford Press 1996), 279-302.
Volkan, Vamik D., Killing in the Name of Identity. A Study of Bloody
Conflicts (Charlottesville: Pitchstone Pub., 2006).
Walker, Janet, Trauma Cinema. Documenting Incest and the Holocaust
(Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 2005).
Yosef, Raz, The Politics of Trauma and Loss in Contemporary Israeli
Cinema (London: Routledge, 2011).
PART I
HORROR IN TRAUMA CINEMA

CHAPTER ONE
CACHÉ (2005), OR THE ONGOING REPRESSION

OF TRAUMATIC MEMORIES
THOMAS WEBER
This essay will explore the cinematic representation of trauma in the

context of Michael Haneke’s film, CACHÉ (France, 2005). I will focus on
the relationship between the individual experience and a collective
memory of history created by cinema as a lieu de mémoire.
My argument will consist of four central points. First, I would like to
depict the representation of media in Haneke’s film as a kind of aesthetic
of alienation. Second, I try to reconstruct a historical development of the
aesthetic of precarious memoirs in the cinema. Third, I analyze the
mechanism of repression of traumatic memory in CACHÉ as an ongoing
societal repudiation. Fourth, I locate this mechanism in the context of a
new aesthetic of the cinema, which deals with the uncertainty of the
relation to the audience.
Three advance remarks are needed: (1) The meaning of the notion of
trauma has been marked by a certain shift in the last decades. Trauma as a
notion was first applied in a medical and later a psychological context, but
since the opening of debate regarding the victims of the Holocaust, and
especially the Vietnam War, the term has been broadened as a cultural
depiction of precarious experiences of historical forms of violence (i.e. not
individual experiences; e.g., of an accident). Since the 1990s, the term
trauma has been used in the contexts of history, memory, and testimony in
the arts, cinema and literature, as Susannah Radstone has demonstrated.1
(2) If we talk about the representation of collective trauma, we have to see
* I would like to thank Rebecca M. Stuart for translating the text from the German
language into English.
1
Susannah Radstone, “Trauma Theory: Contexts, Politics, Ethics,” Paragraf 30:1
(March 2007), 9-29.
Caché (2005), or the Ongoing Repression of Traumatic Memories 33
that in films, it is mostly shown as an individual trauma. Contrary to

written history, which is able to represent an abstract dimension of history,
film as a medium is not fit to do so because it always observes individuals.
Thomas Elsaesser, for example, attributes to the cinema the ability to give
2
a daily life history a form, text and voice. (3) Via its sensual qualities, the
representation of history in cinema is always concrete and turns into a kind
of history from below. History becomes a narration of individual stories
and after World War II, it comes across as the story of a subject, which
means it is narrated by a single protagonist in a subjective focalization,
who is sometimes disturbed in a certain way to indicate traumatic
experiences.
The focus of these films is on the victims in the first decades after
World War II—on the survivor as witness. But in recent years we can
observe a certain change of perspective or, in other words, a shift from the
trauma of the victims to the trauma of the perpetrators. We can observe
another shift or better yet, an ongoing transformation of our media system
marked by the multiplication of media and the mutual remediatization of
everything; even traumatic memories become media events. Subjective
forms of narration are part of the new conventions of “the society of the
spectacle,”3 which creates a kind of immersion but also a repression of
traumatic experiences and a dulling of social problems and collective
traumata, or simply a repudiation of the problems of the individual to be
accepted by society.
Observing the transformations of the cinematographic representation of
trauma is also to look at certain artistic practices, which reflect not only
the aesthetic dimension of the representation, but also the relation between
a certain aesthetic of a medium and the relation of the audience to the
media. This shift is not necessarily linked to a change in political interests,
but to a change in our media situation. We see a reflection of this situation
in film itself, for example, in recent films by filmmakers such as Gaspar
Noé or Michael Haneke. This leads me to a discussion of Haneke’s film
CACHÉ.
The Mediatized View

The film CACHÉ—in English entitled, HIDDEN—opens with a memorable
five-minute sequence (see Fig. 1.1).
2
Thomas Elsaesser, Terror und Trauma: Zur Gewalt des Vergangenen in der BRD
(Berlin: Kulturverl, Kadmos, 2007), 198.
3
Guy Debord, Die Gesellschaft des Spektakels (Berlin: Tiamat, 1996 [1967]).
34 Chapter One
Fig. 1.1 CACHÉ 00.00.09
It is a static shot of a family house in Paris; the camera does not move.
It is only when we see passers-by moving through the frame that it
becomes clear we are watching moving pictures. Here, Haneke is throwing
his audience a red herring, as is made apparent from the soundtrack. First
we hear what we expect from the shot—street sounds and the twittering of
birds. Then, suddenly, two voices are heard off-camera. The first says,
“And?” as if to ask what the shot is intended to tell us. The second voice
answers helplessly, “Nothing.”
The two sound planes indicate a shift in perspective that is intensified
by the director’s use of media difference (00.04.20). The frames begin to
move faster and there are “streaks” of the kind seen when fast-forwarding
a videotape (see Fig. 1.2).
This disruption of images introduces the difference between film and
video. The film later cuts to an interior scene (00.05.03), where we see
Anne and Georges Laurent talking about the video. They are a happily
married couple who live with their 12-year-old son in a middle-class
neighborhood of Paris. She works for a large publisher; he is the presenter
of a popular literary TV show about newly released fiction. To the
audience, Haneke poses the question: why are the two worried about the
anonymously delivered videotape, which shows nothing more than the
exterior of their apartment? It is no accident that the opening scene is
reminiscent of David Lynch’s LOST HIGHWAY (France/USA, 1997), which
also deals with the way in which media attributes a balance of power.
Fig. 1.2 CACHÉ 00.04.20
In Haneke’s hand, the story quickly takes a completely different turn

towards a suppressed chapter in French history mirrored in the personal
fates of the protagonists. What might at the beginning seem like a
promising thriller or police procedural remains in CACHÉ a persistent state
of disturbing, ambiguous suspense. And despite the couple’s forensic
investigation into the origins of the video, the situation remains unresolved
right until the end of the film. Under Haneke’s direction, this becomes a
subtle study of the abyss faced by a family trying with all available funds
to protect its putative arcadia.
CACHÉ begins at the point at which conflict breaks out behind the
bourgeois facade of the protagonists, a conflict with origins in historical
events and believed long since forgotten and, ultimately, repressed. But
Haneke does not depict it as the reemergence of repressed material—not
as individual, subjective memories of historical events. Rather it is an
additional act of repression of a suppressed chapter in recent French
history—the massacre in Paris on October 17, 1961, at the height of the
Algerian War, when as many as 200 Algerian demonstrators were beaten,
shot, murdered by police, or thrown into the river Seine.
36 Chapter One
Film as a Model for Cultural Memory

Haneke takes a rather late turn toward historical subjects, with such
works as CACHÉ and his 2009 film, THE WHITE RIBBON (France). But the
director seems less interested in the historical events themselves—or the
shape of individual memories—than in collective forms of repression.
Thus he dispenses with a common tendency towards ‘memory cinema,’
which has become characteristic of modern film. Elsaesser and Malte
Hagener4 argue that, in modern cinema, the film’s characters are also
observers; that is to say, they are the vehicles for a certain point-of-view
and perspective. But in the films of a recently established ‘second modern’
period, which includes filmmakers such as Haneke or Noé, this appears to
be changing; the films no longer plumb the depths of the victim’s or
perpetrator’s perspective, but rather that of the audience to the onscreen
depiction.
If we compare closely the aesthetic of the cinema before and after
World War II with the representation of traumatic experiences, we see
completely different approaches. As late as the early 1930s, traumatic
historical events were portrayed in a very specific way. As one example,
we can look at WESTFRONT 1918 (Germany, 1930), directed by G.W.
Pabst and considered by the conservative powers of the era to be a
provocation. The film deals with the subject of World War I by showing
four simple soldiers who are brought to a field hospital either dead,
severely injured or mentally confused. In what is undoubtedly the most
vivid scene in the film, the ‘field hospital scene,’ the traumatized soldiers
are shown as broken, delirious individuals who can no longer cope with
the memories of the horrors they have experienced (see Fig. 1.3).
The camera always remains in an external, ‘observer’ relationship to
the figures. At the time, this was taboo and Pabst was accused of depicting
members of the German army in an unheroic way. This led to the film
being censored shortly thereafter.
After World War II, we can see a changed aesthetic of film, which is
characteristic of modern or, later on, post-modern cinema and which was
considered a lieu de mémoire—a place for the popular dissemination of
history. Particularly following World War II, this aesthetic became part of
a ritualization of memory and commemoration—a process that Jan and
4
Thomas Elsaesser and Malte Hagener, Filmtheorie zur Einführung (Hamburg:
Junius, 2007), 321.
Aleida Assmann describe as the transition from communicative to cultural

remembrance.5
Fig. 1.3 WESTFRONT 1918—sickbay scene“
That transition grows in importance as fewer contemporaneous witnesses

are alive and available to personally communicate and verify events.
Discourse about historical memory is thus managed by experts, including
the media. The media develop rituals based, above all, on a recognizable
repetition of memories of the past, therefore contributing to the growth of
a visual code. This code enables a rapid identification of subjects that a
community can use as connective material to come to a timely
understanding of the past. The problem of dealing with the past ritually,
however, is that the rituals tend to wear out. Repetition without innovation
and transformation inures us to the past, and even renders its portrayal less
credible. Thus, the modern age’s problem in the mediatization of historical
events is innovation. New forms of mediatization must be constantly
5
Aleida Assmann, Geschichte im Gedächtnis: Von der individuellen Erfahrung zur
öffentlichen Inszenierung (München: Beck, 2007); Jan Assmann, Das kulturelle
Gedächtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen
(München: Beck, 2007); Thomas Assheuer, Nahaufnahme Michael Haneke:
Gespräche mit Thomas Assheuer (Berlin: Alexander, 2007).
38 Chapter One
found and tried out—forms that in the creative arts field present
themselves as negations of prior forms of expression, as well as aesthetic
provocations to their contemporaries.
This is how we must view the first films after World War II depicting
the traumatic experiences of war. There were the shock-inducing
confrontations with images of horror from the concentration camps in
documentary films (among others, DEATH MILLS (USA, 1945, Wilder) and
NIGHT AND FOG (France, 1955, Resnais). But above all, it was
contemporary narrative films, as the direct and subjectively portrayed
memories of a single protagonist, that stirred emotion.
Such portrayals owed a great deal to new technical capabilities (in
particular, improvements in sound technology) and a transformed
understanding of cinema in the modern age that produced a new aesthetic.
Not only was the protagonist no longer represented as an undisputed hero,
the unreliability of his perceptions was also on display. The films fall back
on filmic conventions for portraying subjectivity that developed gradually
in the decades after the introduction of sound films—for instance, voice-
over, soft-focus, subjective camera (usually used only in individual shots),
and point-of-view shots (a semi-subjective set-up, in which the person
whose perspective is depicted is still visible on camera), as well as
associative forms of montage.6
It was Alain Resnais’ 1959 film HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR (France/
Japan) that depicted traumatic historical events in an entirely different
manner. Resnais focuses on a suffering subject. History is no longer
portrayed as a collective process, represented by several protagonists, but
is rather concentrated in a single figure and shown from a radically
subjective point-of-view. Resnais presents it as subjective recall, the act of
remembering itself, for which he devised his own filmic, largely
associative, non-linear form of expression. In the film, Emmanuelle Riva,
a French actress visiting Japan, is asked by her Japanese lover how she
experienced World War II. At first, Riva does not want to answer. Then
she starts to reminisce about the small French town of Nevers where, as a
young woman, she fell in love with a German soldier. It was a forbidden
love that ended with the soldier being shot to death as the German troops
withdrew. She herself had her head shaved in the central market square
and was locked in the cellar by her shame-filled parents. As she recounts
her memories, associative montage images from her past appear—details
6
Christine N. Brinckmann, Die anthropomorphe Kamera und andere Schriften zur
filmischen Narration (Zürich: Chronos, 1997).
such as a comb, a cat, the cellar and so on—that disrupt the rhythm of the
narrative flow.7
The moment at which ‘the sayable’ and ‘the visible’ intersect is a
typical effect in modern cinema. Following Gilles Deleuze, what we are
dealing with in HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR is a crystal image in which ‘the
sayable’ and ‘the visible’ in film develops via montage into a
discontinuous form that transcends the temporal flow.
Repression as Repudiation
Compared to other films of the ‘memory cinema’ genre, in CACHÉ,
Haneke is not interested in depicting traumatic memories, but rather the
repression of memories—inurement, forgetting and repudiation in the
broadest sense.
In psychoanalysis, repression is a defense mechanism by which taboo
or threatening experiences are excluded from the consciousness or banned
from memory. The mechanism—often linked to peer-pressure— can
function even for the mundane, if such events threaten a person’s concept
of self. Repression can be used not only to describe a psychopathological
process in the individual psyche, but also a collective, societal process that
conforms to a specific ideological pattern. Repression can also be defined
by the exclusion of memories linked to people one feels close to or
otherwise keeping them at arm’s length, as these individuals might
likewise be in conflict with one’s own self-image.
The first scene—as the couple watches the video of their apartment—
already triggers not so much curiosity as an unease that is to be countered
at any cost and as quickly as possible. Even media, portrayed outside
established, societal norms—in particular via the television—is
experienced as threatening, though no threat or extortion attempt has been
made. The only clue is the paper in which the video was wrapped—a kind
of child’s drawing of a head with what looks like blood pouring from the
mouth (see Fig. 1.4).
7
Thomas Weber, “Cinéma comme lieu de mémoire,” in: Louise Merzeau and
Thomas Weber (eds.), Louise Merzeau and Thomas Weber Mémoire & Médias,
(Paris: Editions Avinus, 2001a), 38-50; Thomas Weber, “Zur Konstruktion von
Erinnerung in den frühen Filmen von Alain Resnais,” in: Ursula Heukenkamp
(ed.), Schuld und Sühne? Kriegserlebnis und Kriegsdeutung in deutschen Medien
der Nachkriegszeit (1945-1961), (Amsterdamer Beiträge 1, 2001), 395–405.
40 Chapter One
Fig. 1.4 CACHÉ 00.12.27
The video recordings are continuously deposited on the Laurents’

doorstep, eventually leading the couple to go to the police, who are
nonetheless unable to help them. Upon leaving the police station, Georges
crosses a street without paying attention and is almost hit by a black man
on a bicycle. Instead of apologizing for his own carelessness, Georges turns
angrily on the cyclist. Only Anne’s intervention prevents an escalation of
the argument. In Haneke’s analytical portrayal, this seemingly harmless,
mundane episode is a clear indication of a deadened attitude toward other
people and therefore, repression of a sense of responsibility.
One might say that the film is not the story of an investigation, but
rather a continued defensive posture, a refusal to admit guilt, a story of
leveling things out and playing them down. Repression is not only a
defense mechanism against memory, it is also a form of social defense, a
repudiation in every sense, visualized in CACHÉ in various forms. Haneke
observes those defense mechanisms subtly, sometimes casually. For
instance, when Georges visits his mother in the countryside, we discover
that he has had so little contact with her he was unaware of the fact that
she has come to require care.
The film reveals, partially in dream sequences, Georges’ childhood
memories of his adoptive brother, Majid. Georges’ parents took Majid in
after the boy’s parents were killed in the demonstration massacre. But
unable to tolerate having to share everything with this unexpected brother,
the 6-year-old Georges lies to malign Majid, claiming that he spit blood or
that he once hacked off a rooster’s head and threatened Georges, although
it was actually Georges who had incited Majid to violence (see Fig. 1.5).
Fig. 1.5 CACHÉ 00.37.45–00.38.00
In the end, Georges’ parents have no choice but to send Majid to a

juvenile home. The adult Georges suspects that this is Majid’s motive for
taking revenge on Georges and his family with the peculiar video
recordings.
Additional sequences, usually introduced with more videos left
anonymously, heighten the theme of repudiation. Georges gets a tip that
leads him to Majid’s apartment and goes to confront him. Majid’s
insistence that he has nothing to do with the recordings is believable, yet
Georges threatens him, accusing him of blackmail. Georges does not listen
to what Majid is saying and refuses to pay attention to his feelings.
Georges’ and Anne’s way of blaming others—their refusal to accept
responsibility—escalates when their son, Pierrot, fails to come home one
night. It turns out that Pierrot has spent the night at a friend’s house, but by
the time his friend’s mother drops him off the next morning, Georges has
already seen to it that Majid and his son have been taken into custody by
the police.
Finally, Majid feels betrayed for a second time by Georges. He asks
Georges to come to his apartment to talk and, in full view of his visitor,
slits his own throat with a knife. Violence at this point is sudden,
unexpected, auto-aggressive and self-destructive (see Fig. 1.6).
Even after this event, Georges does not see reason. When Majid’s son
asks to speak to him, Georges uses an excuse to stall him. In fact, Georges
goes even further, threatening Majid’s son and accusing him of being
responsible for the videos, which the son denies. Once again, there is no
way for a conversation to take place.
42 Chapter One
Fig. 1.6 CACHÉ 01.26.35
The Aesthetic of Audience Uncertainty

In CACHÉ and before it in CODE UNKNOWN (France/Germany/
Romania, 2000), Haneke makes characters’ inability to communicate with
each other a central theme. The repression and repudiation of others—not
listening or paying attention to them—follows an established, practiced
societal ritual that is intensified by the media. In Haneke’s portrayal, the
omnipresence of the mass media, especially television, deadens people. It
is no accident that the Laurents are both media professionals—he even
anchors a TV program that, ironically, presents books against a backdrop
of faceless, blank book spines (see Fig. 1.7).
The mindless, constant stream of television, which is always switched
on in the background at the Laurent home, leads to a desensitization of
people, to a certain kind of unconsciousness, also concerning past events.
Haneke’s film is less about a particular aggravation—in this case the
absence of the media at the massacre of Algerian demonstrators—than the
current and ongoing situation of a continual repression and leveling of a
media society and its concomitant uneasiness (see Fig. 1.8).
Haneke does not counter that tendency with feeble criticism of the
media. Rather, his portrayal aims to undermine the perspective of the
audience by withholding clarity. He uses two methods to do this. The first
begins with seeming trivialities. For instance, Juliette Binoche, who plays
Anne, was given specific direction to play one scene as if she had a
relationship with a family friend and another as if she had no relationship

with him (see Fig. 1.9).
Fig. 1.7 CACHÉ 00.12.59
Fig. 1.8 CACHÉ 01.07.45

44 Chapter One
Fig. 1.9 CACHÉ 01.07.01
And Georges’ declaration that he does not remember Majid sometimes

seems genuine yet, at times, insincere. The role of the media in particular
becomes a key subject for reflection, since it is left unclear to the audience
from which perspective and in which medium the portrayal is occurring.
This is particularly evident in the manner of dealing with the videos, the
origins of which remain a mystery until the end. At the conclusion of the
film, there is a static shot of the entrance to Pierrot’s school that could be a
still shot. As a viewer, one may feel familiar with the shot, waiting for the
camera to pan or for another indication of fast-forwarding; one thinks it is
another video recording. But nothing happens; at that point, the film
simply ends.
The second method consists of staging ‘negating interventions,’
meaning disruptions of the usual media reception, which—if you follow
Dieter Mersch’s “negative media” theory—leads to the appearance of the
mediality of the media. Even the opening scene is set up to cause the
viewer to feel uncertain about his or her own media experience—the effect
is an uncertainty of the perspective of the audience. The fast-forwarding
effect raises the issue of whether we are watching a still shot, the start of
the actual film, or a video recording. With that shot, Haneke not only
wants to sensitize the audience, he also aspires to call into question the
audience’s way of viewing. He wants each viewer to choose his or her
own point-of-view. If we compare his approach with other, epoch-specific
forms of creative innovation in portraying traumatic historical events,
something new becomes visible. In a film such as WESTFRONT 1918, the

traumatization was made visible with the strictly objective view of the
broken heroes; in HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR, through the depiction of the
individual process of remembering as the construct of a radically
subjective way of viewing. But in CACHÉ, Haneke stages a media
difference that denies the viewer an immersive viewing experience.
Audience members are unequivocally confronted with the fact that they
are viewing a media product.
The consequence of this aesthetic of audience uncertainty is a
confrontation with the incommensurable, something closed off to viewer
reception, which can only be perceived as a provocation. Making a central
theme of the relationship to the viewer and the viewing relationships
themselves shows a new understanding of the artistic agenda in cinema.
While post-modern cinema stakes itself on the remediatization of past
myths and genres or playful deconstruction, the relationship of portraying
to viewing is now subject to a novel moralization.
As Haneke once stated in an interview, the viewer is “raped into
thinking for himself.”8 Haneke’s critical view of mindless media
consumption and damaged societal relationships in the sense Theodor W.
Adorno describes,9 is expressed here by calling into question the viewer’s
reception. The strategy not only aims for a post-modern rejection of the
unambiguous, but also demands that the viewer choose a method of
viewing, which becomes an issue not only of an aesthetic but also of a
moral attitude. In this respect, CACHÉ tries not simply to organize
traumatic memories, but also to expose current forms of repression and
societal repudiation.
8
Georg Johann Schmitt, Die Allmacht des Blickes: Die Debatte um Mediengewalt
im zeitgenössischen Film (Köln: Ed. Nadir, 2001), 25.
9
Haneke often cites Adorno, see Assheuer Nahaufnahme Michael Haneke.
CHAPTER TWO
SCREENING TRAUMA:
REFLECTIONS ON CULTURAL TRAUMA
AND CINEMATIC HORROR
IN ROMAN POLANSKI’S FILMIC OEUVRE
MICHAEL ELM
In recent years, it has become quite common to talk about traumatized

societies. After the attacks on the towers of the World Trade Center, it
became a widespread assumption that a whole nation can be traumatized
through the live-broadcasting of an event. Obviously this assumption
implies a widening of the psychological dimension of the trauma term to a
collective and cultural level, which may be regarded as problematic with
reference to the much more severe consequences for persons directly
involved. This article investigates the relation of cultural and
psychological traumas and their transformation into horrifying images and
frightening narratives.
The notion of cultural trauma is highly dependent on the iconographical
depiction of catastrophic events and their narrativization in cinema. Not
only can films help to bridge the gap between individual suffering and
public awareness by presenting shocking fictional or documentary images
to a wider audience, they promote narratives which influence whether and
how individuals, a society or affected groups regard themselves as
traumatized. Through Roman Polanski’s cinematic oeuvre, especially his
adaptation of Ariel Dorfman’s theatre play DEATH AND THE MAIDEN,
which stages a traumatic constellation of victims and perpetrators in a
post-authoritarian society, I want to show how this intricate relation can be
drawn. Before I come to Polanski’s oeuvre, I will briefly discuss some
recent developments in trauma and cinema studies.
The expression “cultural trauma” was coined by the American
sociologist Jeffrey C. Alexander in his influential article, “Towards a
Screening Trauma 47
Theory of Cultural Trauma.”1 According to his definition, cultural trauma

occurs:
“When members of a collective feel they have been subjected to a

horrendous event that leaves indelible marks upon their group
consciousness, marking their memories forever and changing their future
identity in fundamental and irrevocable ways.”2
Alexander emphasizes that cultural trauma indicates social responsibility

and political action of groups, national societies, collectives or even entire
civilizations. This includes “taking on board” a certain responsibility for
the others, who do not belong to their collective. Alexander distinguishes
this understanding from a “lay trauma theory” by highlighting the artificial
side of “cultural trauma.” Trauma is “constructed by society” and nothing
that naturally exists. The fallacy of the lay trauma theory stems from
everyday experience whereby when natural boundaries of an individual or
a society are broken, trauma occurs as an automatic result. This lay trauma
approach exists in two versions. In the first version, it is assumed that
people react according to their rootedness in Enlightenment and religious
traditions, which causes them to perceive violent acts as repelling and
harmful. Instead of investigating the delicate relation between individual,
social and cultural preconditions in response to violence, a quasi-natural
reaction is assumed. The psychoanalytic approach in its lay-trauma-
theory-version claims that there is a period of silence and bewilderment
before a belated reaction occurs. “Only after two or even three decades of
repression and denial were people finally able to begin talking about what
happened and to take actions in response to this knowledge.”3 Alexander’s
criticism of this approach points again to the lack of understanding of the
social and cultural repercussions in dealing with violence.
Psychoanalytical approaches to trauma have heavily influenced cinema
and film studies. The Israeli film scholar Raya Morag, for instance,
transfers the concept of belatedness to her analysis of “New German
Cinema” and American post-traumatic Vietnam films. She argues that, in
the context of Germany’s collective memory, the more remote the films
are from their historical reference, the more they display trauma as
“defeated masculinity.” Similarly, film scholars like E. Ann Kaplan and
1
A reprint of this article has recently appeared in his latest book; see Jeffrey C.
Alexander, Trauma. A Social Theory (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012).
2
Alexander, Trauma, 6.
3
48 Chapter Two
Raz Yosef have used and enlarged the concept of belatedness in their
works to combine film and trauma studies.4
However, the central cinematic narrative of how to trace trauma in film
was established long before scholars analyzed it. The psychoanalytic
approach in its lay-trauma-theory-version became highly popularized
through some of Alfred Hitchcock’s movies, which transferred the
psychological structure into a cinematic narrative. Films like SPELLBOUND
(USA, 1945), with the famous drawings of Salvador Dali depicting
distorted nightmare memories that have to be read by a psychoanalyst
(Ingrid Bergman) and with its topos of working through childhood
memories—similar to the compulsively stealing and men-hating female
protagonist in MARNIE (USA, 1964)—established psychoanalytic narratives
of trauma for a wider audience. VERTIGO (USA, 1958) and PSYCHO (USA,
1960) use neurotic or psychotic character traits for building up suspense,
clearly offering popularized versions of psychoanalytic tropes in their
cinematic narrations.
It should be noted that Alexander does not refute the obvious fact that
belatedness is a relevant category when it comes to trauma nor to reject the
importance of everyday life experience, but to realize that social agents
and “carrier groups” are needed to trigger the “traumatic process.” His
central claim is that “for traumas to emerge at the level of collectivity,
social crises must become cultural crises.”5 A new master narrative must
be forged. This includes several steps from individuals or groups who
claim to be traumatized or have witnessed a traumatic event, which may
originate at any point of the social strata to the routinization and memory
politics of an established narrative.
Television and cinema certainly have an important function in this
respect. Striking examples for the formation of a “cultural trauma” are the
American Holocaust television series from 1978 and, in the Israeli context,
WALTZ WITH BASHIR (Israel, 2008, Folman). The American series helped
to coin a term for the industrial murdering of the European Jews during
World War II and was seen by 70 million people in the US alone.6 In
Germany, the melodramatic narrative broke the barrier between the
official, state-regulated memory, with its strong cognitive approach to
4
E. Ann Kaplan, Trauma Culture: The Politics of Terror and Loss in Media and
Literature (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005); Raz Yosef, The
Politics of Loss and Trauma in Contemporary Israeli Cinema (New York:
Routledge, 2011).
5
6
Peter Reichel, Erfundene Erinnerung. Weltkrieg und Judenmord in Film und
Theater (München Wien: Carl Hanser Verlag, 2004), 253.
Screening Trauma 49
history and a more emotional, family-driven memory, thus opening up an

investigation into local, often biographic history.7 Although its
melodramatic narrative was widely criticized for simplifying the genocide
by telling it as the story of the Jewish Weiss family and the non-Jewish
Dorf family, the long-term consequences can hardly be underestimated.
The way the extensive and incredible crime is medially contained is to this
day influenced through this melodramatic approach.8
Another more recent example, which is also closer to the claim of a
functional “cultural trauma,” can be traced in Ari Folman’s WALTZ WITH
BASHIR. The film tells the story of a group of Israeli soldiers who
participated in the first Lebanon war. At the center of the animated
documentary is the quest of the character of Ari Folman, who cannot
remember certain experiences from the war, particularly those related to
the massacre at Sabra and Shatila by the Christian Phalangist in Beirut.
The story of this quest for memory unfolds in a classical way of working
through by also telling the stories of his war comrades. Although each
story is quite different from the others, it becomes clear that the
consequences for all veterans are grave. The implicit claim is that a whole
generation of soldiers became traumatized without wider public
recognition. Accordingly the reception of the film was quite controversial
in Israel.
In a recent article, Raya Morag analyzes a shift in current Israeli film
about the Lebanon war films “from the Intifada to the first Lebanon war
and from the figure of the victimized Palestinian to that of the (heroic)
7
I would argue that in particular, the impact of the cultural aspect on German
identity formation is not fully understood. Apart from (much needed) political
speeches on the occasion of commemorations and anniversaries, it is quite
demanding to integrate the barbarous genocide against the European Jews into the
German identity. At the end of the day, it requires a reconciliation between
thoroughly challenged aspects of German culture and society with biographical
history in light of current problems. Accepting historical responsibility is just the
first step in this endeavor. Cf. Bernhard Giesen, “The Trauma of Perpetrator. The
Holocaust as the Traumatic Reference of German National Identity,” in: Jeffrey C.
Alexander et al., Cultural Trauma (2004), 112-154 or Ilka Quindeau,
“Schuldabwehr und nationale Identität. Psychologische Funktionen des
Antisemitismus,” in: Matthias Brosch and Michael Elm et al. (eds.), Exklusive
Solidarität. Linker Antisemitismus in Deutschland, (Berlin: Metropol Verlag,
2007), 157-165.
8
Additional films from the US-American context that exemply the formative
function for the perception of cultural trauma in other social fields include: ‘body
snatchers’ – cold war era and the communist threat; Taxi Driver/Deer Hunter and
the Rambo films – Vietnam War; and Shivers – sexual revolution.
50 Chapter Two
victimized Israeli soldier.”9 Morag argues that trauma cinema studies have
focused much more on the victims than on the figure of the perpetrator.10
Furthermore, she claims that a new configuration of wars in the twenty-
first century, where soldiers are more likely to be drawn into confrontations
with civilians, threatens to increase the number of such atrocities. Though
I am not quite sure about Morag’s militaristic assessment of contemporary
warfare in her analyses, since such wars have also been known throughout
the 20th twentieth century, I consider her brilliant investigation of
perpetrator trauma in Israeli cinema very helpful for my own endeavor.
Morag distinguishes between five crises related to the aftereffects of war
atrocities in cinematic narratives:
The first is the crisis of evidence, which attests to the epistemological

impasse of confronting the epistemic dynamics of horror with evidence of
the horror. The second is the crisis of disclosure, represented in the films
by various types of concealment. The third is the crisis of gender, ingrained
in internal masculine and feminine self-definitions as well as in inter-
gender power relations. The fourth is the crisis of audience — the absence
of an imaginary supportive community. The last is the crisis of
narrativization, which reveals the unbridgeable gaps between prewar
identity and the perpetrator’s confession.11
I consider this categorization helpful in understanding the inherent

tensions of cinematic narrations in dealing with trauma and here especially
with perpetrator trauma. In the last section of this article, I will apply these
crises to Polanski’s DEATH AND THE MAIDEN (USA, 1994). The
underlying assumption is that the way in which these crises are addressed
contributes decisively to the formation of a cultural trauma in a post-
dictatorial society.
Before turning to Polanski and his cinematic oeuvre, we must
incorporate a general concept of how the relationship between horrifying
images, cinematic narrations and the audience can be drawn. Building on
Noel Carroll’s insightful work, “The Philosophy of Horror,” I follow his
sketching of the connection between cinematic fright and horror. Carroll’s
9
Raya Morag, “Perpetrator Trauma and Current Israeli Documentary Cinema,”
Camera Obscura 27, 2, (2012), 95.
10
She takes a closer look at this new trend in the examples of: TO SEE IF I’M
SMILING (dir. Tamar Yarom, Israel, 2007), WALTZ WITH BASHIR (dir. Ari Folman,
Israel/France/Germany/US/Finland/Switzerland/Belgium/Australia, 2008), Z32
(dir. Avi Mograbi, France/ Israel, 2008).
11
Morag, “Perpetrator Trauma,” 7.
Screening Trauma 51
understanding of monsters is also linked to Sigmund Freud’s notion of the

“uncanny.” That is, monsters are not wholly “other” but rather
“contortions performed upon the known.”12 In horror movies, an actor
performs the appalled affect directly against such horrifying creatures.
Conversely, the suspense effect in a thriller is usually motivated by a
drastically different stance of the actor towards the action. The hero or
heroine might stay calm or even courageous while enduring his or her
ordeal. Even if this might not be true for all films (for instance, in the case
of the African-American hero in George A. Romero’s NIGHT OF THE
LIVING DEAD), the horror movie clearly favors the shocking effect, leaving
the hero—and with him, according to the identificatory logic of illusionary
cinema, the spectator—exposed to overwhelming fear (or at least an
appalling feeling of disgust). The classical characters rank from Mary
Shelley’s Frankenstein to H.R. Giger’s Alien. Since most cinematic
narratives inspire identification with the hero, one can assume that
something of the shock is passed on to the audience. “For in horror the
emotions of the characters and those of the audience are synchronized in
certain pertinent respects, as one can easily observe at a Saturday matinee
in one’s local cinema.”13 In Polanski’s movies, it is not the occurrence of a
monster that conveys the horror effect, but rather the involvement of the
characters in an unsettling narrative, which at times includes the use of
appalling objects on a pictorial level. I think Carroll’s approach provides
useful insights to mise-en-scéne, acting, cinematic narration, and the
response of an audience, which comprise the emotional structure of the
horror movie. This structure sheds light on the kind of fear that is
provoked in Polanski’s movies, which I will scrutinize in the following
sections.
The Presence of Evil: Polanski’s Cinema of Disturbance

Most of Polanski’s movies are obviously not horror movies and even
those which might be classified within this genre, such as ROSEMARY’S
BABY (USA, 1968), REPULSION (UK, 1965), THE TENANT (France, 1976)
or The Fearless Vampire Killers (UK, 1967), do not follow the classical
logic of horror movies, e.g., whereby an alien intruder endangers the social
order and will be removed by the end of the film. Polanski’s characters
12
Noel Carroll, The Philosophy of Horror or Paradoxes of the Heart (New York
and London: Routledge, 1990).
13
Caroll, Horror, 166.
52 Chapter Two
mostly suffer from a “horror from within.”14 It becomes difficult for them
to distinguish between internal and external dangers (like in the first three
films I have mentioned). Alternatively, the normality of everyday life is
indeed disintegrating, like in DEATH AND THE MAIDEN (UK, 1994),
CHINATOWN (USA, 1974), or THE PIANIST (USA, 2003). The horror in
Polanski’s movies might be better described using Freud’s notion of the
“uncanny,” something strangely familiar that becomes predominant in the
life of a person. It is perhaps not by mere chance that Polanski is linked to
Hitchcock’s horror of everyday life experience.15 These films convey a
feeling of disquietedness, which includes the audience as addressees.
Thus, Polanski’s films participate in a coding process to depict the world
as an absurd, dangerous or traumatized place. The viewers are drawn into
an uncanny atmosphere that puts their moral values to the test. It is
important to keep in mind that Polanski’s films not only display moral
dilemmas, but actually perform them by addressing the audience in a
specific way. Not surprisingly, this requires horrifying elements in the
cinematic narration. In this respect, the narratives can be understood as an
acting-out or a reenactment of a traumatic experience, whereas the
traumatic causes, as in THE TENANT and REPULSION, sometimes remain
outside the cinematic frame. Describing the three different endings of THE
FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS, ROSEMARY’S BABY, and DEATH AND THE
MAIDEN, I would like to explore the way Polanski passes a frightful
experience on to his audience, claiming that evil is living alongside and
even amongst us.
Let me start with a personal experience. When I was ten or twelve, I do
not remember exactly, I watched Polanski’s THE FEARLESS VAMPIRE
KILLERS. The film is, without a doubt, a brilliant horror/comedy of the
vampire genre. At that time, I felt somehow compelled to watch these
movies that featured bloodsucking vampires and which frightened me a
great deal. People were depicted being buried alive or, worse, being bitten
and transformed into ‘undead,’ vampires, or werewolves. Certainly the
film triggered fear in me; I am not talking about trauma here.
Nevertheless, there was an anxiety that made me examine my room to
ensure the window was securely closed. After having taught several
14
Toni Mc Kibbin, “Polanski and the Horror from Within,” in: John Orr and
Elzbieta Ostrowska (eds.), The Cinema of Roman Polanski: Dark Spaces of the
World (London: Wallflower Press, 2006), 51-61. For a profound introduction to
Polanski’s oeuvre, consult John Orr’s essay, “Polanski: The Art of Perceiving” in
the same volume.
15
Ewa Mazierska, Roman Polanski: The Cinema of a Cultural Traveller (London:
Tauris, 2007), 188.
Screening Trauma 53
courses at university about the phenomenon, I have come to understand

that most people have experienced something similar in a certain period of
their lives. Generally, this seems to happen at the beginning of puberty, a
time when one indeed morphs into something different—a child into a
teenaged man or woman; such a transformation is no doubt quite
frightening. There must be a strong relation between film and cultural
trauma, since the coming of age process is nowadays very much
moderated through film. It is likely that teenagers try to use such films as
guidance in the maturation process, bringing on a strong urge to watch
them. Conversely, these films leave their mark on young people by
passing on all of the wisdom, achievements, fear and dark heritage a
culture has to offer. One could describe this cinematic guidance of
teenagers as a part of a modern initiation process.
But what exactly happened to me while watching this Polanski movie
and what is so special about Polanski’s movies in general? I think the final
scene of THE FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS gives some indication. In this
scene, we see Polanski featured as the young assistant of Professor
Abronsius (Jack MacGowran), who has attempted to vanquish the evil
Count Dracula. Although the professor and his assistant managed to free
the daughter of the innkeeper (Sharon Tate) from the castle of Dracula, has
unfortunately already turned into a vampire. While we see her biting the
young assistant and hear the jingling bells of their sliding carriage
traversing the picturesque landscape, the voiceover conveys the following
lines: “That night, fleeing from Transylvania, Professor Abronsius never
guessed he was carrying away with him the very evil he had wished to
destroy. Thanks to him, this evil would at last be able to spread around the
world.” This is not exactly the happy ending defined by the agencies that
rate movies in order to avoid harm to children. In any case, it is a
sophisticated ending, since it plays with the rationalistic attitude of science
and conveys that an uncontrolled evil exists. The film avoids the usual
narrative closure, where evil is eliminated or at least banned. Instead, it
passes on something of the fear attributed to the collective imagination of
vampires and creatures alike. Cinematically, it uses the identification of
the audience with the sidekick and most innocent character, played by
Polanski himself, who is destined to live the life of a vampire. Since the
young assistant is certainly the character closest to the situation of a young
adolescent, this can be regarded as a frightening message.
I argue that this narrative structure—avoiding closure of the narrative,
revealing the world to be an unsafe place and insertion of the spectators
into this narrative—can be found in almost every Polanski movie. It also
functions as a coding and claim-making agent for cultural trauma in
54 Chapter Two
society and, as I will show in the last section of the article, for the
problems of society in transition after the fall of a dictatorship.
Even Polanski’s first feature film, KNIFE IN THE WATER (NÓZ W
WODZIE) (Poland, 1962) tells a story of violence and death-threats between
two men and a woman on a sailing turn in the Masurian Lake District. On
a subliminal level, the film shows the disorientation and rage of a young
man, whose development of his capabilities is restrained by society. The
Polish censorship recognized this, demanding that the characters be made
less ambivalent and the end of the story much clearer.16 Already here,
Polanski managed to tell his story against the convention of the thriller
genre—and certainly against the conventions of Polish cinema at that
time—since no murder takes place.17
Polanski’s latest films, CARNAGE (USA, 2011) and THE GHOST
WRITER (USA, 2010), perform this narrative structure (exposing evil as an
elementary structure of a society and its individuals) in a more
conventional manner. While CARNAGE is more or less a chamber play
(almost all of the action takes place in a single room) that exposes various
forms of internalized violence between two married couples, THE GHOST
WRITER follows the logic of a political thriller, which reveals political
structures executed at the expense of an individual life’s and liberty. It has
been argued that Polanski’s later films (since DEATH AND THE MAIDEN)
are closer to genre conventions than those preceding them.18 I disagree
slightly with this observation; for Polanski, genre conventions and their
transgression are not an end in themselves but rather are related to the
transmission of his disturbing narratives.19 For genre in cinema is
comparable to genre or style in literature, both usually have to carry the
story. Genre conventions are certainly important for the reception of the
plot, amounting to an unwritten contract between film and audience, as we
are guided by the expectations they arouse or promise to fulfill. Therefore,
any film that seeks to shatter our certainties must reflect upon these ever-
changing conventions.
I mention this because in the context of cultural trauma, it is decisive to
deviate from the norm in order to arouse fear and shatter expectations. If
one wishes to understand horror cinema and its relation to trauma from a
16
Roman Polanski, Roman Polanski (München: Heyne, 1985), 153.
17
Cf. Mazierska, Polanski, 164.
18
Cf. Morrison, Polanski, 27-28.
19
I have shown this for THE PIANIST in another article. Michael Elm, “Gurkendose
auf Piano. Zeugenschaft bei Roman Polanski,” in: Michael Elm et al. (eds.),
Zeugenschaft des Holocaust. Zwischen Trauma, Tradierung und Ermittlung,
(Frankfurt and New York: Campus Verlag, 2007), 246-259.
Screening Trauma 55
more sociological point-of-view, he or she has to take the unwritten

contract of genre conventions into account. My analysis shows that
Polanski’s cinema participates in such a process by confronting
expectations and triggering an effect of disquietedness. Traces of unsolved
conflicts are exposed on psychic and social levels. Polanski’s horror seems
to be rooted in more fundamental layers of the psyche. It is applicable to
various situations and genres, but cannot simply be linked to a political
situation or era.
At the same time, a theory about cultural trauma and cinema must also
take into account that the setting of the cinema is a strong antidote to the
direct transmission of a traumatic shock. Cinema is indeed a semi-public
institution—we still pay an entrance fee—where people can share
intensive experiences about remote (and not-so remote) places, characters
and events not usually shared publicly. And since this experience is
situated in a dark room with other people (sometimes eating popcorn or
other nutritionally unhealthy foods), the controlled publicity and secured
setting of this experience decisively shapes the reception of horrifying
images and narrations. Hence the cinema can be rendered a public
discourse for the communication of audio-visual artefacts. 20
Obviously, the reception and transgression of social norms in
Polanski’s movies is not morally neutral; indeed, it can be shown that the
influence of evil is nearly ubiquitous in his films. In the following section,
I will give two examples of how this connection is realized with regard to
religious evil.
Polanski’s Treatment of Horror and Evil

in ROSEMARY’S BABY and THE NINTH GATE
While in ROSEMARY’S BABY, a well-situated New York apartment
turns into a vestibule of hell whose neighbors seem to be members of a
satanic cult, THE NINTH GATE frames the occult sect merely as a group of
socially-awkward, esoteric people. In the latter film, the Satanists are not
the ones who make the devil appear; they even fail notice the devil—
portrayed as “The Girl” (Emmanuelle Seigner)—walking among them.
More than the sinister pathos of evil’s self-appointed followers, it is the
sober and secular “book detective” (Dean Corso/Johnny Depp), a bachelor
20
For a further elaborated argument about cinema as a cultural institution that
promotes theoretical insight, see Heide Schlüpmann, Öffentliche Intimität. Die
Theorie im Kino, (Frankfurt am Main and Basel: Stroemfeld Verlag, 2002), 90-
123.
56 Chapter Two
appraiser of antique books with rather poor moral values, who attracts the
devil. The halfhearted innocence of Johnny Depp’s character is
reminiscent of Ewan McGregor’s part in THE GHOST WRITER. These
personifications of talented and ambitious young men have little to defend
themselves against the lure of power and in THE NINTH GATE, the hero
falls prey to the attraction of evil. Their everyday life experiences have not
equipped them to withstand such a fight. Thus, the plot is drafted along the
lines of a negative Bildungsroman. Step by step, the hero slides into the
arms of the devil. His intentions are not bad and his actions are in
accordance with the logic of instrumental rationality, which also means
that they never reach a social or metaphysical point beyond their
subjective attitude. In one scene, Corso is surprised that his employer
(Boris Balkan, played by Frank Langella) does not suspect he might steal
the precious satanic book handed over for the conduct of his investigation.
Balkan answers, “There is nothing more reliable than a man whose loyalty
can be bought for hard cash.” In the movie, both characters are displayed
as openly disliking each other. But their relationship contains much more
than that. At the end, the gates of evil will open for Dean Corso and not his
rival Boris Balkan, who goes up in flames while trying to conjure an
appearance of the devil. The inclinations of Balkan’s character towards
metaphysical evil put him far too close to the opposite, a divine notion of
grace and goodness, to be interesting for the mocking of secular normality
Polanski seems to have in mind. The film renders the process of both
characters’ mutual self-destruction in an aesthetically low-key style. When
Corso finally manages to enter the Ninth Gate, the old castle is gleaming
in an auspicious sunset. Polanski tends to avoid horrifying effects in his
mystery thrillers; only occasionally does the angelic beauty of The Girl
become uncanny, bordering on bestial.
I think it is rather obvious that in both films, the representation of
normality as morally sane is called into question. In ROSEMARY’S BABY,
we have a Doris Day-like opening scene of a young couple in their new
apartment, which at least in the beginning, is threatened only from the
outside. The process of moral deterioration in THE NINTH GATE, on the
other hand, comes mainly from the inside. Rosemary’s decline is usually
understood as a highly ambiguous process. The story seems to play with
several possibilities to read the film, “whether she is hallucinating or there
is really a conspiracy going on.” The claim is mainly backed by an
interview with Polanski, who stated that it was important for him to give
the character of Rosemary ambiguity.21 For my understanding of
21
Cf. Rosemary’s Baby Retrospective Interviews, Part 2,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OtY3vtoJkw, 5:50-6:40,
Screening Trauma 57
ROSEMARY’S BABY, the cinematic narration questions mainly the moral

stability of Rosemary’s environment. Aesthetically and also in relation to
the plot, the suspense is provided through the conspiratorial narrative and
does not derive from psychological insanity. All aesthetic motives and
narrative elements like the stinking talisman, the old couple next door, or
the husband who shares all the secrets with the old couple instead of his
wife, bolster the conspiracy plot. Certainly more important than the
perception of the storyline is the disclosure of the fragility of a person and
her social environment, which we can witness towards the end of the
movie.
In the final scene of ROSEMARY’S BABY, the audience can experience
the decline of a person under hostile circumstances. Rosemary was told
she had lost her child during birth, but then suddenly hears the crying of an
infant from the adjacent apartment. Suspicious about the disappearance of
the infant, she tries to reclaim her baby and enters the apartment of the old
couple through a secret doorway. There she finds the coven, celebrating
the birth of their new master (her husband is also present). Even more
appalling than the devilish eyes of the baby or the eccentric coven, is her
husband, who admits having collaborated with the influential sect for
careerist reasons. Again, the narration elicits the strong statement that
secular normality can be worse than lunacy. When the baby starts to cry
and nobody manages to calm it down, Rosemary agrees to become the
mother of the devilish infant, who indeed seems to be hers.
The lullaby at the end of movie is the distortion of its promising
opening—a canticle indicating a nightmarish experience. The sensitive
Rosemary, who ends up subjugating herself to the rules of the satanic
coven because of her motherly instinct, could be any mother or loving
being. The narrative shows the vulnerability of an open-minded person to
her surroundings. Most frightening might be that we understand
Rosemary’s capitulation and cannot really blame her. Individuality and
self-determination in an urban environment as guiding principles of
modern man are brought to their limits.
James Morrison has argued in his book that Polanski’s films criticize
utilitarianism or a certain kind of instrumental rationality that appeared
with western modernity.21 Although Morrison certainly has a point in
describing Polanski’s narratives, it seems to me far-fetched to subsume
Polanski’s films within the camp of social criticism as if they were
(Accessed November, 7, 2012)

21
James Morrison, Roman Polanski, (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois
Press, 2007), 5.
58 Chapter Two
political manifestos. I consider it worthwhile to take a closer look at how

the psychotic atmosphere is realized in his films and how the narratives are
embedded in their social contexts.
The disquieting effect in Polanski’s films stems from the ambivalence
in and beyond the characters. A social environment that cannot be trusted
corresponds with an unstable psychic condition. A horror from within and
a horror from without are contained in a narrative structure that conveys
tension to the audience. In her monograph about Polanski’s films, Eva
Mazierska has described this condition as an inner discord with a socio-
critical component, which has been most famously illustrated in
REPULSION and THE TENANT.22 Both characters here, Carol and
Trelkovsky, are immigrants who suffer from alienating and sometimes
hostile environments that push them to their psychic limits. Schizophrenia
is less a clinical condition than a cinematic narrative, as Mazierska writes,
“Someone who is unable to lead his life in the way he wants to, starts to
‘hide himself’ in a different, imaginary person and invents narratives
which allows him to lead a parallel life. However, becoming schizophrenic
does not bring a new cohesion to the lives of Polanski’s characters, but
fragments them even further. It eventually leads them either to a literal
death, like in the case of Trelkovsky, or to states similar to death: catatonia
(Carol) or animal-like behavior (some characters in The Pianist).”23
Certainly we could add here the story of Rosemary and her baby.
Interestingly, the sources for psychotic inclination in REPULSION and
THE TENANT are not revealed. The catalysts of evil, therefore, remain
extra-diegetic or, more precisely, are delegated to the audience, whose
spectators should find the answer for themselves. In this sense, the stories
transfer the traumatic events as a crisis of the audience and as a crisis of
the narrativization. Who will support the claim of the victims, who will
bear witness and what exactly is there to testify?
In his later films, DEATH AND THE MAIDEN, THE PIANIST, OLIVER
TWIST and THE GHOST WRITER, we can see that political and social
conditions are more relevant as a source of evil, but not necessarily
dissolved by the end of the movie, as I will show in my last example.
The motif of dealing with trauma and passing on the shock of
violence—not only on screen—is certainly an important part of Polanski’s
own life. A child victim of the Holocaust whose mother had been deported
to Auschwitz in wartime Poland, he survived with a false identity under
22
Mazierska, Polanski, 37.
23
Mazierska, Polanski, 43.
Screening Trauma 59
harsh conditions in a rural area. His father and sister survived various
work and concentration camps. After the war, he lived with his father in
Poland, then under a Stalinist regime, where he was again confronted with
brutal violence. He studied film at the well-known Polish academy in Lodz
and due to his cinematic success, managed to leave the country. In 1969,
members of the Charles Manson Gang murdered his pregnant wife Sharon
Tate. Many in the American press immediately suspected Polanski to be
involved in this crime. We also know from his autobiographical account
and other sources that he frequently had sex with teenagers and raped a
thirteen-year-old girl in 1977 at the estate of his friend Jack Nicolson.24
His own traumatic experiences should not be taken as an excuse for his
later deeds. Conversely, nor should his cinematic treatments of violence,
which include scenes of rape or allusions to rape (in ROSEMARY’S BABY,
REPULSION, DEATH AND THE MAIDEN, WHAT?), be simply taken as
evidence of an inclination to such behavior in real life. A work of art may
be distinguished from crime in that the act of violence is embedded in a
cinematic narrative that makes it part of a public discourse; it is not in
reality acted out against a helpless victim.
DEATH AND THE MAIDEN: Memory, Revenge, and Identity

in a Post-Authoritarian Society
In the last section of this article, I want to elaborate on the example of
DEATH AND THE MAIDEN by showing how Polanski’s disquieting
narratives are applied to a society after a dictatorship. The film, an
adaptation of Ariel Dorfman’s theatre play of the same title, deals with the
political and social situation in a post-authoritarian society “somewhere in
South America.” Given Dorfman’s background, the allusion clearly points
to the political circumstances in Chile after the fall of the regime of
Augusto Pinochet in the early 1990s. At stake is how a society can
overcome the divide after a civil war, leaving perpetrators and victims in
the same “social room.” Every neighbor might have belonged to the
military regime or the secret police. Dorfman called this period a time of
“uneasy transition to Democracy.” At the time of writing the play,
Pinochet was still in control of the Armed Forces and the old elite
continued to rule many segments of Chilean society. The threat of a coup
d’état remained vivid, if people seemed “unruly, or, more specifically, if
attempts were made to punish the human rights’ violations of the outgoing
24
Polanski, Roman Polanski.
60 Chapter Two
regime.”25 Concurrently, the newly elected president, Patricio Aylwin,

convened the so-called Rettig Commission to inquire into the recent past.
In Polanski’s adaptation, Sigourney Weaver (as Paulina Escobar) plays
the wife of a lawyer (Stuart Wilson as Gerardo Escobar). The latter is
nominated by the new president to head a commission tasked to find a
solution for the “transition to democracy.” The couple fought as political
activists during the time of the regime, when Paulina was kidnapped,
raped and tortured. The recently appointed commission for reconciliation
was to deal only with cases that led to the deaths of victims. The “minor”
perpetrators were to be granted a pardon.26 Due to these circumstances,
Paulina is furious with her husband because she considers the work of the
commission to be a silencing of crimes. In one scene, she throws the meal
she had prepared for Gerardo into the garbage bin. At least two crises
regarding trauma and how to deal with it cinematically are involved here:
a crisis of representation that encompasses the disclosure of a certain
group of perpetrators, and a crisis of public acknowledgment of the
suffering of survivors. This is expressed in a gendered way, since Paulina
represents women who were raped and who will find no public appeal.
Polanski frames this social situation brilliantly. Firstly, one can realize that
the husband and wife are on good terms, though they are having a harsh
argument. This highlights the arguments rather than the personalities. The
heated discussion between the couple ends with preliminary reconciliation.
But something remains unresolved in their relationship and in their life
together. To give it visual expression, Polanski adds a chicken wing to
their love scene, which the hungry Gerardo had scavenged from the
garbage bin. An appalling object, an “abject”—referring to Julia
Kristeva’s concept—is signifying the indigestible part of their relation and,
maybe more, of victims who are left behind without a public recognition
of their horrors.
In this situation, Gerardo brings a doctor—who had helped him with a
flat tire—along with him to his house. Paulina is convinced that she
recognizes this doctor as her main torturer. Since she was blindfolded
throughout her abduction, her sole evidence are the voice she remembers,
the smell of his body, and some pet phrases and affectations, such as
Schubert’s Death and the Maiden, which happens to be one of her most
loved arrangements. Again, the cinematic narration displays a crisis of
disclosure from the perspective of the victim. Throughout the film, we
25
Dorfman, Death, 57.
26
The plot closely follows the historical circumstances in Chile.
Screenin
ng Trauma 61
cannot be suure whether Paaulina is right in her accusaation or if her traumatic

memory missleads her.
Fig. 2.1: Paullina (Sigourneyy Weaver) and Chicken

C Wing
Fig. 2.2: Geraardo (Stuart Wiilson)

62 Chapter Two
Is she ‘hysterical,’ suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and an

understandable urge for revenge? Does she confuse the private with the
political, projecting her personal disappointment with her husband onto
somebody else? Obviously the gendered dimension resurfaces in these
questions, since Paulina and her affections become part of the political
process. Polanski manages to balance the complicated post-traumatic
situation by shifting the perspective between the main characters. At first
we tend to believe Paulina’s view. She is more central than any other
character, speaking and acting from the position of the victim, which gives
her additional credibility. But soon one can understand that Gerardo’s
perspective also holds strong arguments. As her loving husband, he begs
her to listen to his advice. Her evidence would not be sufficient for any
court, her memory might fail her, and she is inclined to attempt to find
anyone who will act out her revenge for her. Last but not least, she might
turn her anger against him or another person.
Finally, there is the position of the delicate and funny Doctor Roberto
Miranda,27 who does not give the impression of a rapist or torturer. In the
scene in which he is forced to confess, his acting gives no clear indication
as to whether or not he is guilty. According to the hard evidence, Gerardo
tends to believe him rather than his wife. Even when he manages to free
himself for a short while, he does not seek revenge but simply to flee from
the crazy couple and “their sick love games.” The constant shifting of
perspective is imperative because it emphasizes a decisive point in the
transition to a democratic society. The narrative can be read in multiple
ways, including a variety of positions that lead to the question: is the new
leadership becoming like the former regime through the torturing of
innocent people? In my view, it is the cinematic exposition of this question
that distinguishes an emancipatory narrative from an authoritative one.
Only in the final scene does Polanski add the confession of Roberto,
which does not exist in the play. It is certainly a decision to strengthen
Paulina’s struggle, although the aesthetical depiction hints to the
possibility that we see only a fantasy of her. In the play, the truthfulness of
her claim is indicated through mistakes made in Roberto’s earlier forced
confession. The final confession, which implies a clarification of the crisis
of knowledge and disclosure, has become a classic on the video-sharing
27
The casting of the actors adds subtle irony to the perception of the story. At the
time, most of the audience would have recognized Ben Kingsley from his role as
Mahatma Gandhi and Sigourney Weaver as the tough space lieutenant in Ridley
Scott’s ALIEN.
Screening Trauma 63
website YouTube.28 Its iconographical status is probably due to the rare

expression of a mindset of a fictional perpetrator. The scene shows a
credible statement of how an average person gets involved in the torture of
a military regime and makes it a part of his personality. Again we find
here Polanski’s motif to focus on the evil inclinations of ‘ordinary’ people.
The confession, however, is not the end of the story, but merely a shift
to another trauma-related crisis in a post-authoritarian society, namely that
of the missing audience. Though Paulina has received some recognition of
her suffering through the confession of Gerardo, the questions remain:
who will bear witness for the victims in general, and what will the
consequences be for the perpetrators after confession? Polanski manages
to address these questions by deviating from the generic mores of a
political thriller. At the end of the confession scene, Polanski demonstrates
to the viewer how 1990s Hollywood cinema would have solved the
problem of the villain. When the camera pans over the cliff, after Roberto
has made his confession, the screen becomes white. Usually, this
aesthetical allusion is used to signify a character’s suicide. If the villain
would kill himself, justice would be restored without further guilt taken on
by the heroine—the couple could live happily ever after. But the story
does not end here either. In the next and final scene, during a concert, we
see a much more realistic post-authoritarian social constellation.
The bystanders and victims have to live with the perpetrators in the
same society—the threat remains and stays in hierarchical order. In the
staging of this final scene, Roberto is sitting in the upper level of a theatre,
patting the hair of his son, looking down upon Gerardo and Paulina, the
childless couple, indicating the personal and generational loss of the
victims. This notion of generational loss is strengthened by Paulina’s
earlier statement, wherein she declares that she wants to have a child and
live like “suburban idiots.”
Nonetheless, something has been redeemed and changed. Paulina can
once again listen to the most beloved music of her earlier years. The
confession has brought about a relief from her traumatic experiences.
Nevertheless, reconciliation is far from achieved and might anyway be
impossible. It remains to the viewer to read and interpret how the
exchange of glances unfolding between the three persons in the final
scene. Is Roberto remorseful or does he just regret that the political
circumstances have changed as stated in his confession? On the other side
of the exchange, neither Paulina nor Gerardo bear a joyful expression.
28
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ls3WG8kNvw, (Accessed October 15,
2012).
64 Chapter Two
They have learned to live with the situation, each in their own (gendered)
way. It might be a bit too much to ask for a happy ending, while the threat
of evil in a post-authoritarian society lingers on.
Fig. 2.3 – Exchange of glances, Roberto (Ben Kingsley)
Fig. 2.4 – Exchange of glances, Paulina

Screening Trauma 65
Fig. 2.5 – Exchange of glances, Gerardo and audience
Fig. 2.6 – The couple listening to the concert

66 Chapter Two
The cinematic narration directs the attention to the calamities of being

the audience.29 Not only do we see an audience in this final scene, but by
not receiving solutions to the problems raised, we are addressed as one.
The threat of violence remains in an uncanny constellation at the end of
the film. Polanski highlights the various crises that accompany the post-
traumatic situation in the aftermath of regime change. With regard to his
films in general, it makes sense to attribute to them a claim-making and
coding function, declaring the world as a traumatized and traumatizing
place that prompts the audience to question their relationship to it.
Conclusion
From a biographical perspective, it could be argued that Polanski is
expressing his own traumatic experience as a child survivor in wartime
Poland and later in life. His cinematic world is an absurdist place, where
evil usually triumphs over the good intentions and the naiveté of its heroes
and heroines. In psychoanalytical terms, these films can be simultaneously
regarded as a means of working through individual trauma by creating for
it images and stories, and an acting-out of trauma by confronting the
audience with terrifying and transgressive narratives. More important than
the biographical perspective is the impact of these cinematic narrations on
a post-authoritarian world. If societies want to retreat from the path of
violence, they need narratives that strongly acknowledge the perspective
of the victims, their loss, and their fears, but also their hopes and
achievements. In addition, these narratives need to address the perpetrators
as an integral part of history, as is shown in Roberto’s confession in
DEATH AND THE MAIDEN. Only if the motivations and decisions of the
perpetrators become part of the picture can a process of transitional justice
succeed. Otherwise, a society easily becomes stuck in an admiration of
victimhood, where the perpetrators are more likely to hide their stories or
try to adapt them to narrative structures of victim stories—like those at
least partially observable in West German attitudes towards the
Holocaust.30 The sociologically and politically distinct post-civil war
situation does not allow for such escapism. In Chile, South Africa and
many other countries, attempts were made to overcome stark divides in the
29
In the theatre play, Dorfman suggested lowering a big mirror facing the audience
while the music plays on and on (Dorfman, Death, 55.)
30
Harald Welzer, Sabine Moller and Karoline Tschuggnall, ‘Opa war kein Nazi’.
Nationalsozialismus und Holocaust im Familiengedächtnis (Frankfurt am Main:
Fischer, 2002).
Screening Trauma 67
aftermath of violence. Polanski’s adaption of Death and the Maiden

emphasizes this crisis of narrativization and the fact that there is no way
back to a past identity. In this case, it is achieved through an open
narration that participates in the formation of a cultural trauma by
addressing the audience as witnesses and bystanders. The narration points
to the ongoing existence of a cultural and social divide, difficult to achieve
and even harder to overcome. It leaves behind a society united only by a
song about death. Still, the narrative offers a path towards exposing the
divide, tearing it from the dark corners of memory and thereby creating
new opportunity.
CHAPTER THREE
HORROR, HISTORY AND THE THIRD REICH:

LOCATING TRAUMATIC PASTS
IN HOLLYWOOD HORRORS
CHRISTIANE-MARIE ABU SARAH
It is a story most American moviegoers have seen before. On the side

of a dark country road, a group of Satanists try to flag down passing
motorists. They are looking for a Good Samaritan who will become their
next victim, using the pretense that a member of their group is injured and
needs help. No cars take the bait, however, until an overweight, middle-
aged man named Frank decides to pull over and lend his assistance. The
gang has its victim. As the horror mounts, the cult members take Frank
hostage and transport him to an abandoned school, where they prepare to
sacrifice their struggling captive in a satanic ritual.
This opening horror plotline from the 2011 film RATLINE seems
headed in a predictable direction, until the nondescript Frank escapes. In a
sudden turn of events, he decapitates a female captor, and then violently
murders the remaining cult members. As he stands over the bloody scene,
Frank has flashbacks of giant swastikas and decapitated bodies, and the
film takes a new path. Frank, it turns out, is an ageless Nazi scientist in
pursuit of the Blutfahne (blood flag), a Nazi relic with alleged occult
powers that could potentially help him “spawn the next Reich and govern
the world.”1 RATLINE thus departs from one commonplace horror plotline
and descends into another, that of the heinous Nazi scientist scheming to
conquer the world.
Scholars of American cinema have frequently noted the prevalence of
Nazis and Nazism as villains and symbols of evil in Hollywood films, a
popular trope that appeared in the 1930s soon after Adolf Hitler’s
assumption of the German Chancellery. Almost eighty years have passed
1
RATLINE, dir. by Eric Stanze (USA, 2011, Wicked Pixel Cinema, DVD).
Horror, History and the Third Reich 69
and Nazi antiheroes are as popular as ever in film fiction. RATLINE is a

recent entry in this litany of splatter horror, hardly what one would
describe as ‘highbrow’ cinema. Nevertheless, as the film suggests, just
when the American public seems to have grown tired of goose-stepping
ghouls and moved on to other monsters, another swastika-loving savage
reappears to haunt cinema screens.
The saturation of American cinema with Nazi stock characters prompts
important questions: why study the depiction of Nazis in American film
and more specifically, why investigate their place in the horror genre? A
number of scholars have already examined the role of the Third Reich in
mainstream cinema, and horror films occupy a market niche that critics
tend to dismiss as irrelevant and “aesthetically and/or morally inferior” to
other film genres. As Adam Lowenstein has pointed out, for much of the
twentieth-century, horror films were not even considered part of the
official corpus of American national cinema. Rather, art films were
“earmarked for export and thus doubled as the country’s ‘national cinema’
in terms of international visibility, while its genre cinema [including
horror films] often (but not always) remained a matter of domestic
distribution.” 2 By its harshest critics, horror has even been called an
unsophisticated “body genre,” more akin to pornography than drama.3
While these arguments may seem reason enough to ignore horror film
in academia, scholars such as Lowenstein, Rick Worland, and Steffen
Hantke have demonstrated that the horror genre is worth examining as it
provides insight into American history, culture and society. I would argue
further that it is precisely within these “genre films” that one finds
‘national’ elements—produced and distributed within a national context
and written in a symbolic language easily decoded by domestic audiences.
In other words, American horror cinema is not so much a discourse aimed
at giving outsiders a particular vision of American society, but a discourse
among Americans about “who we think we were/are, who we wish we’d
never been, who we really are, and who we might become.”4
Nor should historians shy away from horror simply because it is a
“body genre” aimed at eliciting specific emotions and reactions. On the
2
Adam Lowenstein, Shocking Representations: Historical Trauma, National
Cinema, and the Modern Horror Film (New York: Columbia University Press,
2005), 11.
3
Philip L. Simpson, “The Horror ‘Event’ Movie,” in: Steffen Hantke (ed.), Horror
Film: Creating and Marketing Fear (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi,
2004), 86-87.
4
Cynthia Weber, Imagining America at War: Morality, Politics, and Film (New
York: Routledge, 2006), 5.
70 Chapter Three
contrary, the viscerality of horror film affords unique insight into

collective trauma, which involves physical and emotional reactions as
much as cognitive ones.
Among recent crises in American history, the United States’ participation
in World War II is an ideal subject for investigating this link between
horror and history. A trauma that continues to shape American national
identity, the Second World War spawned a political monster (the Third
Reich) that still runs amok on cinema screens more than half a century
later. Representations of Nazis in Hollywood horror thus invite us to
subject these films to “thick description,” reading beyond the cinematic
shorthand that uses Nazis and Nazism as expedient emblems representing
evil and depravity. Such investigation becomes imperative when we
consider Kendall Phillip’s observation that, “Every monster is, essentially,
a political entity […] our production of monsters is always part of our
broader political understanding of the world and of notions of good and
evil.5 As national objects of horror, Nazis in horror films thus provide a
window through which one can witness the collision of history, trauma,
memory, and nation.
The following essay surveys American horror films released between
1942 and 2011 that feature members of the Third Reich as prominent
subjects. While the study addresses a few films that involve Nazis and
Nazism only as subtext, it deliberately excludes horror films whose
antagonists are American neo-Nazis. This is both because neo-Nazis
appear less frequently in horror films than their full-blooded German
counterparts and because neo-Nazis in American film tend to reflect a
different typology: lower class, rural whites (often with no German
ancestry) who espouse a racist ideology that may or may not draw on the
history and iconography of the Third Reich (e.g., NIGHTMARE AT
BITTERCREEK, 1988).
To decipher the use of Nazism in horror films, this study utilizes an
interdisciplinary approach that builds on scholarly material in history, film
studies, psychology, and sociology. In particular, it scrutinizes the
relationship between traumatic histories and their representations in horror
films by asking a number of important questions: are violent films the
consequence, the limit, or the beginning of a cycle consisting of shocking
events, images, and reenactment? Can this continuous loop be interrupted
or redirected? As this essay argues, the Nazi figure in American horror
film simultaneously fulfills two roles in the traumatic cycle: the role of
5
Kendall R. Phillips, Projected Fears: Horror Films and American Culture
(Westport: Praeger, 2005), 6.
traumatic image, wherein the collective narrative concerning World War II

is reenacted and reinforced, and the role of an open signifier, whereby new
historical traumas that have not yet been fully assimilated into the national
narrative are encoded. These roles have particular implications for the
future of Nazi imagery in American film and can aid scholars in better
understanding the nexus between cinematic representations of history and
cinema as history.
Locating Horror between History and Trauma

The United States has undergone its share of collective traumas in the
last century. The Cuban missile crisis fuelled national fears of a Cold War
nuclear holocaust, while the first World Trade Centre, Oklahoma City, and
9/11 attacks solidified domestic terrorism as an ever-present threat. The
list of traumatic events could go on, encompassing wars and disasters like
the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906, Pearl Harbor, the Vietnam War, the
Columbine massacre, and Hurricane Katrina. Despite this litany of
suffering, however, perhaps no collective trauma has been more represented
in horror films than the American encounter with the Third Reich. So what
is it about Nazis and Nazism that inspires continued treatment in horror film
and what do these representations reveal about the relationship between
traumatic histories and their cinematic interpretations?
In his exploration of cultural trauma, Jeffrey Alexander argues that the
experience of collective trauma “can be understood as a sociological
process that defines a painful injury to the collectivity, establishes the
victim, attributes responsibility, and distributes the ideal and material
consequences.”6 Horror films concerning the Third Reich demonstrate
characteristics remarkably similar to this sociological process of trauma
formation. For instance, one of the first things one notices in American
horror cinema is the narrative insistence that Nazi terrors were a shared
experience—average citizens on the home front were victims of Nazi
aggression just as American soldiers fighting abroad. In these films, Nazis
terrorize French artisans, American soldiers, and American vacationers
abroad (SHOCK WAVES, 1977, PUPPET MASTER III: TOULON’S REVENGE,
1991, HORRORS OF WAR, 2006), but there also exists an understanding that
the Third Reich violated the safety of the American homeland during
World War II. The Nazi scientist in REVENGE OF THE ZOMBIES (1943)
6
Jeffrey Alexander, “Toward a Theory of Cultural Trauma,” in: Jeffrey Alexander
et al. (eds.), Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2004), 22.
72 Chapter Three
lives in a mansion in Louisiana, for instance, and his violence is directed

entirely against US Americans: he murders his American wife and turns
American men into zombie foot soldiers for the Third Reich.7
BLOOD CREEK (2009) provides a recent example of how American
films establish Nazism as a collective trauma and temporally locate it vis-
à-vis historical events. The film begins with a backstory depicting the
horrors inflicted on a fictional American family in West Virginia in 1936.
Professor Wirth, a Nazi scientist visiting the United States, takes the
family captive and through an occult ritual prevents them from aging.
Over time, the family restrains Wirth by locking him in the cellar of their
home, but the ritual keeps the hapless family locked in a cycle in which
they are periodically forced to bring Wirth fresh human victims whose
blood gives both the family and their Nazi captor immortality. This
process continues until 2007, when the family kidnaps an Iraq War
veteran. The veteran and his brother become the film’s protagonists and
the story begins in earnest as the brothers attempt to break the bloody
cycle sustaining both the Nazi and the American family he has taken
hostage.
The backstory of BLOOD CREEK implies that Nazi atrocities were a
collective experience that ravaged average US Americans on the home
front. However, the film also brings these historical traumas into the
present, asserting that the Third Reich continues to terrorize the American
nation. Defeated but not destroyed, the lingering Nazi presence repeatedly
forces the nation to relive its traumatic past. As the father of the family
confesses, “We thought Wirth was a scholar…. We let him into our lives,
[now] we can’t leave here.”8 This cyclical reliving of the Nazi trauma
performed in BLOOD CREEK is markedly similar to Alexander’s process of
trauma formation, presenting the American nation as victim in both the
past and present tenses.
The observation that American horror movies generally do not
appropriate the historical traumas of other groups is another indicator that
Nazi villains in films like BLOOD CREEK, CRAWLSPACE (1986), and
REVENGE OF THE ZOMBIES represent an interpretation of the Nazi trauma
as a collective event. There are no horror films in which Serb monsters
murder American college students, for instance, or movies in which Hutu
Interahamwe chase American campers with machetes. Instead, American
films choose villains rooted in American history. An equally notable trend
7
REVENGE OF THE ZOMBIES, dir. by Steve Sekely (1943; Monogram Pictures,
DVD).
8
BLOOD CREEK, dir. by Joel Schumacher (2009; Gold Circle Films, DVD).
is the absence of references to the Nazis’ Jewish victims in American

horror films: both Jewish characters and Holocaust imagery are
conspicuously absent. While part of this silence can perhaps be attributed
to the perceived sacrality of Holocaust trauma, one could also speculate
whether the absence of Jewish characters in these films represents a forced
division between World War II and the Holocaust as separate historic
events, an appropriation of Jewish victimhood, or a cultural bias that still
views the American nation as distinct from Jews as individuals and as a
community. Whatever the case may be, such narrative silences betray a
shared belief that the United States was a direct victim of Nazi aggression.
To borrow from Alexander’s model of trauma formation, American horror
films thus reiterate the nation’s collective status as victim, an important
step in the construction of a collective trauma.9
Having established a victim, the narrative practices of American horror
cinema further mirror Alexander’s model of trauma formation by helping
define the injury inflicted upon the collective. How did the Third Reich
traumatize the American homeland according to these Hollywood horrors?
Since trauma and fear are closely linked, answering this question involves
asking what is supposedly ‘horrifying’ about the Nazi figures in these
movies. Watching BLOOD CREEK, one might find a response to this
inquiry obvious: the villainous character Professor Wirth transforms from
an attractive, muscular academic to an undead super-soldier whose scarred
and rotting flesh inspire dread and disgust. However, physical appearance
is clearly not the only fearsome attribute of Nazi antagonists in horror
film, nor is it the primary characteristic that makes them terrifying. For
instance, if Wirth’s character was sympathetic, his appearance would be
shocking but not necessarily horrifying (See Fig. 3.1).
Overall, Nazi villains in these films appear as horrific subjects both
with and without physical deformities. In Shock Waves and Horrors of
War, the Nazis have physically horrifying attributes: Shock Waves
features pallid, undead Nazi soldiers that emerge from the ocean, while
Horrors of War depicts a disfigured, fanged Nazi scientist whose
superhuman strength and dark eye sockets reinforce his role as a fearsome
being.10 In contrast, REVENGE OF THE ZOMBIES, ILSA: SHE WOLF OF THE
SS (1975), and MURDER-SET-PIECES (2004) feature Nazi antagonists that
9
Jeffrey Alexander, “Toward a Theory of Cultural Trauma,” in: Jeffrey Alexander
et al., (eds.) Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2004).
10
SHOCK WAVES, dir. by Ken Wiederhorn (1977; Zopix Company, VHS); HORRORS
OF WAR, dir. by Peter J. Ross and John Whitney (2006; Hollywood Wizard, DVD).
74 Chapter Three
are physically attractive. Thus, it is not necessarily the Nazi’s physical

form that is terrifying. Visible defects may be used to heighten the
perception of Nazis as repulsive, but these visual cues are not all that make
the Nazi figure monstrous in horror cinema.
Fig 3.1: The Role of Appearance: Professor Wirth from the film BLOOD CREEK.
The undead Nazi professor from BLOOD CREEK (2009) has a scarred, decaying
appearance that makes him repulsive, but not necessarily fear-inducing. If he were
only physically disfigured, Wirth’s character could be considered sympathetic; his
actions and attitudes, however, clearly position him as an object of terror.
Similarly, Nazi iconography cannot be considered the seat of fear for

these films. No Nazi uniforms, swastikas, Totenköpfe or flags appear in
REVENGE OF THE ZOMBIES, and a few lines spoken in German are the only
manifestations of Dr. Max von Altermann’s affiliation with the Third
Reich. Instead, it is von Altermann’s actions that mark him as a Nazi.11
The character, Willy, in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1944 thriller LIFEBOAT
likewise portrays no visible Nazi characteristics, although his coldness
toward human suffering (indicated by his torpedoing of a passenger ship
and dismissive yawn amidst a grieving mother’s lament for her baby)
identifies him as socially deviant.12 As with physical deformity, however,
11
REVENGE OF THE ZOMBIES, dir. by Steve Sekely (1943; Monogram Pictures,
DVD).
12
LIFEBOAT, dir. by Alfred Hitchcock (1944; Twentieth Century Fox, DVD).
Nazi iconography serves to reinforce the atmosphere of threat. In

HORRORS OF WAR, for example, a swastika does not appear until the
film’s climax, when it is used to signal that the protagonists are
approaching the final confrontation with their enemy (See Fig. 3.2).
Fig. 3.2: Mise-en-Scène and Nazi Iconography in HORRORS OF WAR. Nazi

iconography may not be the seat of fear for horror films about the Third Reich, but
elements such as the swastika do reinforce the atmosphere of threat. In the 2006
film HORRORS OF WAR, for example, no Nazi symbols appear until the film’s
climax, when a Nazi flag (pictured in the still above) is used to signal that the
protagonists are approaching the final confrontation with their enemy.
Despite being used as symbols of evil, then, Nazis in American horror

cinema are interpreted as fearsome primarily because of their actions and
attitudes. Lester Friedman’s research has confirmed this trend for monsters
as cinematic and literary figures in general, writing that,
“The ‘monster’ who threatens normality in [Robin] Wood’s basic formula

does not necessarily have to possess supernatural powers or appear in
outlandish situations: instead, he may be a human being whose actions and
philosophy remove him from what respectable society deems normal, so
that his very existence comes to represent a threat.”
As Friedman further explains,

76 Chapter Three
“Any character far enough removed from acceptable society’s vision of

right and wrong almost automatically becomes a monster that threatens
normality. The civilized world received its most vivid examples of socially
deviant malevolence in the form of [Adolf] Hitler and his Nazis.”13
Borrowing Friedman’s thesis that Nazis endure as civilization’s most

extreme example of removal from “respectable society,” the question
remains: what makes Nazis “socially deviant” (and therefore horrifying)
according to Hollywood convention? While the answer to such a question
might seem obvious, what makes the Third Reich socially deviant in
cinematic narratives is not necessarily the same as what historians,
ethicists, or the general population might consider when answering such a
query. In fact, horror films of the last half-century answer this question in
a surprising way: more than the mass murder of millions of people,
American horror films emphasize the Nazi adulteration of science and
utilitarian use of the human body as the primary deviant characteristic of
Nazi antagonists. This conclusion may be surprising considering the
renown the American horror genre has gained for graphic violence and
even mutilation. Both the narratives and narrative silences of American
horror films bear out this observation, however: every film addressed here
contains Nazi science or medicine as an element of horror, while none
portray Nazis as fearsome for their targeting of particular ethnic
populations. Moreover, the number of people killed is also either ancillary
or completely absent from the narrative.
Instead, Nazi medical science plays the leading role in these cinematic
morality plays. In SHE DEMONS (1958), for instance, a group of US
Americans are shipwrecked on a remote island, upon which the Nazi
doctor Karl Osler has been turning local tribeswomen into hideous
monsters and developing thermal energy as an alternative to oil and coal-
based power. THE LUCIFER COMPLEX (1978) centers on an outpost in
Brazil, where Nazis are conducting cloning experiments on captive
women. In CRAWLSPACE, the creepy landlord Karl Gunther is revealed to
be an ex-member of the Hitler Youth who became a euthanasia doctor
after the war and who now derives pleasure from murdering his young
female tenants.14 Even ‘historical’ depictions of the Third Reich in
American horror films also interpret the primary threat of Nazism as
13
Lester D. Friedman, “The Edge of Knowledge: Jews as Monsters/Jews as
Victims,” MELUS 11, no. 3 (1984), 56.
14
THE LUCIFER COMPLEX, dir. by Kenneth Hartford and David Hewitt (1978; Gold
Key Entertainment, DVD); CRAWLSPACE, dir. by David Schmoeller (1986; Empire
Pictures, DVD).
scientific in nature. In PUPPET MASTER III: TOULON’S REVENGE, Nazis in

1941 Berlin emerge as a threat because of their willingness to go to
extreme lengths to realize the science behind Toulon’s animation of his
puppets. Far from being depicted as a credible threat, Hitler, as the leader
of the Third Reich, appears as a bumbling, laughable marionette easily
trounced by the American cowboy puppet, “Six Shooter.” Similarly, the
premise of the 2006 film HORRORS OF WAR involves Nazi experiments
aimed at creating super-soldiers; the German army, on the other hand,
poses little or no threat to the American soldiers on campaign.15
When Nazis themselves are not present in these films, Nazi science
still appears as a corrupting force in the narrative tradition of American
horror films. The 1964 horror film FLESH EATERS is a prime example: the
villain is Professor Peter Bartell, an American marine biologist with a
German accent who spent time spying for the United States government in
order to collect information on Nazi biological weapons experiments. His
character is ambiguous, neither American nor German, and no Nazi
iconography appears in the film. However, in Bartell’s case, his proximity
to Nazism has corrupted him, causing him to utilize the information he
gathered to conduct his own atrocious experiments.16 He is thus set apart
ideologically and morally from the other characters in the film, and his
‘otherness’ is confirmed by his Germanic accent and uncertain origins.
UNHOLY (2007) operates on a similar premise, though in this case,
science has tainted the United States government itself. As the plot
unfolds, the filmmakers reveal that American leaders allowed a Nazi
scientist to escape prosecution for war crimes, bringing him instead to
work on occult experiments in the United States. To keep the project a
secret, the female American scientist heading the project gives herself
amnesia, and as a result, her alter-ego, an unassuming single mother,
becomes the movie’s main protagonist. It is only at the film’s climax that
other characters uncover the woman’s involvement, through her son’s
dying indictment of his mother: “It’s you—you’re the Nazi.”17 Nazism, the
film asserts, has corrupted even the most innocuous parts of American
society.
The fear of infiltration and contamination appears as a prominent
theme in RATLINE as well. In redirecting viewers from a ‘goth’ threat to a
15
PUPPET MASTER III: TOULON’S REVENGE, dir. by David DeCoteau (1991; Full
Moon Entertainment, DVD); HORRORS OF WAR, dir. by Peter J. Ross and John
Whitney (2006; Hollywood Wizard, DVD).
16
THE FLESH EATERS, dir. by Jack Curtis (1964; Vulcan Productions, DVD).
17
UNHOLY, dir. by Daryl Goldberg (2007; Anchor Bay, DVD).
78 Chapter Three
Nazi one in its opening scenes, the film declares that the Nazi menace is
not fully vanquished. Rather, it is concealed within mainstream American
society, waiting to reemerge as soon as US Americans shift their focus to
other concerns. Director Eric Stanze confirms this reading of the film,
explaining, “To me what makes Frank so terrifying is that he is so average;
he’s a chameleon who could acclimate into any community and no one
would have any idea what kind of monster was living there.”18 Frank’s
history as a Nazi scientist further indicates that this threat is primarily
scientific, although in the film this scientific threat is detached from its
historic link to racism. This closely mirrors the premise of UNHOLY, which
also asserts the presence of a scientific threat with no overt ties to racism
or eugenics. Such a particular narrative of Nazi crimes seems to suggest
that the nagging fear in American film that, “We’re the Nazis,” is coupled
with a firm repudiation of the idea that the nation is guilty of the scientific
racism embedded in the ideology of the Third Reich.
In the narrative practices of American horror cinema, one thus finds
the trauma of Nazism grounded not so much in racism or the loss of
human life as in the destruction Nazi actions wrought on Enlightenment
culture. It is this horror and identity dislocation that haunts American film
nightmares: man cannot be entrusted with science and man’s greatest
scientific achievements have produced equally great human catastrophes.
The use of Nazi science in horror films reflects this traumatic demise of
science as a cultural item of faith and helps explain the often-ambivalent
relationship between the Nazi monster and his American prey. The
popularity of the ILSA: SHE WOLF OF THE SS franchise, with its mixture of
Nazis, horror, and soft-core pornography is one example of how this
relationship between American cinema and the historical trauma of
Nazism goes beyond simple revulsion. While Kendall Phillips has
suggested that, “Nazi medical experiments and the pseudo-science of
eugenics provided one nightmarish vision of science gone too far,” the
American nightmare also expresses a desire for physical perfection and
power. As Isabel Pinedo explains, “The horror film is the equivalent of the
cultural nightmare, processing material that is simultaneously attractive
and repellent.”19
18
Eric Stanze, Interview by Heather Wixson, “Indie Horror Month Interview:
Ratline’s Eric Stanze,” Dread Central,
http://www.dreadcentral.com/news/53291/indie-horror-month-interview-ratlines-
eric-stanze. (Accessed March 5, 2012)
19
Phillips, Projected Fears, 43; ILSA: SHE WOLF OF THE SS, dir. by Don Edmonds
(1975; Aeteas Filmproduktion, DVD); Isabel Pinedo, “Recreational Terror:
Overall, the consistent use of Nazi science as a seat of fear and

loathing in American cinema indicates that in defining an injury to the
collectivity, horror films have reached a consensus: the Third Reich has
traumatized the American nation by corrupting the role of science as a
cultural article of faith. Significantly, many horror plotlines also link the
Third Reich’s science with its forays into the occult. Such a narrative
choice serves to further represent Nazi science as a deviation from
Enlightenment values. The mutilation of minorities is not the horrifying
element in these films, then, but rather the mutilation of science.
Interestingly, by defining the nature of the Nazi crime in this way,
American horror films thereby allow the nation to assume the role of
victim in American collective narratives of World War II, bringing
together two important steps (defining the injury and defining the victim)
in Alexander’s process of collective trauma formation.
Charting the Role of Horror Film in the Traumatic Cycles

Having examined the function of collective victimhood, fear and
traumatic dislocation in these films, the question becomes one of
identifying the role these elements play in the traumatic cycle. Particularly,
if one envisions the traumatic loop as consisting of a traumatic event,
images and representation/reenactment, clear patterns emerge. American
horror film narratives generally define the trauma in question as Nazi
science and then provide and interpret ‘images’ of this aberration.
Accordingly, in a process of collective trauma formation, horror films thus
serve to reflect and reinforce the process by which the nation defines the
injury or trauma (Nazi science) and establishes a victim (American
citizenry) in the traumatic loop (Fig. 3.3).
This process illuminates Ron Eyerman’s ideas that trauma is a
reflective process, “link[ing] past to present through representations and
imagination,” and that media mediates such representations.20 When
visualizing the relationship between horror films and historical trauma, it
is thus possible to view cinema as mediator and interpreter in the
sociological process by which nations form collective traumas. The
narration of Nazi science as an object of fear in this process helps the
Postmodern Elements of the Contemporary Horror Film,” Journal of Film and

Video 48, 1-2 (1996), 26.
20
Ron Eyerman, “Cultural Trauma: Slavery and the Formation of African
American Identity,” in: Jeffrey Alexander et al. (eds.), Cultural Trauma and
Collective Identity, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 62.
80 Chapter Three
collective identify the victim, define the nature of the trauma, and bring
the traumatic past into a continuous national present in order to formulate
contemporary understandings of the nation’s identity. In the words of
Bernhard Giesen, this “transformation of the repressed trauma into a
national discursive universe is a story of disembodiment and
externalization […] It may even be described as the transformation of a
collective nightmare into a myth of commercial entertainment.”21
Fig. 3.3: Nazism as Collective Trauma in the Traumatic Cycle. Depictions of

Nazism in horror films suggest that Nazi scientific experimentation is a primary
example by which American horror cinema defines the collective trauma inflicted
during World War II. In the traumatic loop, horror cinema thus shows ‘images’ of
Nazi science and interprets them as evidence of the American nation’s collective
status as a victim of Nazi aggression.
Further observations about horror films involving the Third Reich

illuminate other links between cinema and trauma in the traumatic cycle.
One notices areas of both continuity and contestation in American horror
narratives about Nazis and Nazism, for instance. This chapter has already
explored Nazi scientific experimentation as one area of thematic continuity
in horror cinema. Allegorical interpretations of Nazism in horror films are
21
Bernhard Giesen, “The Trauma of Perpetrators,” in: Jeffrey Alexander et al.
(eds.), Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2004), 143.
far more dynamic, however, and tend to shift with changing zeitgeists.
THE WHIP HAND (1951) and SHE DEMONS, for instance, compare Nazism
with the Cold War threat of Communism, while FLESH EATERS (1964)
juxtaposes the discipline and rationality of Nazism with Hollywood
depravity and the naiveté of ‘beatniks’ or hipsters.22 Moreover, in the past
decade, Nazism has frequently appeared as a foil for post-9/11 America
and the Iraq War (e.g., MURDER-SET-PIECES, 2004, HORRORS OF WAR,
BLOOD CREEK and RATLINE).
The two prequels to THE EXORCIST (1973), entitled EXORCIST: THE
BEGINNING (2004) and DOMINION: PREQUEL TO THE EXORCIST (2005), are
particularly interesting, as they represent competing visions of the war on
terrorism. In Paul Schrader’s DOMINION, the film opens with a Nazi
general executing an innocent woman in order to force the town priest to
identify the killers of a German officer stationed in the village. In a later
scene, a British general stationed in Africa similarly kills a local woman in
order to extract information about the deaths of two British officers. The
scenes explicitly juxtapose British imperialism and German fascism, and
implicitly link American imperialism in Iraq and Afghanistan with
Nazism. The only difference in the comparison is that the British general,
plagued with guilt by his actions, commits suicide after ominously
proclaiming, “There’s no way out.” The film’s climactic battle between
good and evil similarly condemns imperialism, depicting a war between
British troops and local tribesmen as demonically inspired.23
DOMINION’S production studio, Morgan Creek, did not appreciate
Schrader’s historical allegories and their response lends insight into the
process by which the meanings of traumatic events are negotiated through
film. According to Morgan Creek CEO James G. Robinson, Schrader’s
version of the film was “too introspective,” so the studio parted ways with
Schrader and hired a new director, Renny Harlin. Harlin, of DIE HARD 2
(1990) and CLIFFHANGER (1993) fame, substantially reworked the film and
released it under the title, EXORCIST: THE BEGINNING.24 In the revised
version, Harlin replaced Schrader’s exploration of trauma and guilt with
more traditional horror fodder: severed heads, objects that move on their
22
THE WHIP HAND, dir. by William Cameron Menzies (1951; RKO Radio Pictures,
VHS); SHE DEMONS, dir. by Richard Cunha (1958; Screencraft Enterprises, DVD).
THE FLESH EATERS, dir. by Jack Curtis (1964; Vulcan Productions, DVD).
23
DOMINION: PREQUEL TO THE EXORCIST, dir. by Paul Schrader (2005; Warner
Bros, DVD).
24
Laura M. Holson, “Enough Trouble to Make Your Head Spin,” New York Times,
22 February 2004; George Kouvaros and Paul Schrader (Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 2008), 110-111.
82 Chapter Three
own, rotting flesh, and copious amounts of blood. Harlin also removed the
text and images that juxtaposed Nazism and modern imperialism. Most
tellingly, in the film’s climax, Harlin exchanged Schrader’s dialogue
inferring that all war is demonically inspired for scenes suggesting that
disunity and treachery to one’s countrymen during times of war are the
true evidence of evil.
DOMINION and EXORCIST: THE BEGINNING demonstrate that while
certain images in the traumatic loop may remain relatively static over time
(both films allude to Nazi forays into the occult), their meanings for
national identity can vary widely. Lowenstein calls these variations in
interpretation “allegorical moments,” places where film, spectator and
history collide in a flash of recognition that unifies past and present.25
These moments in horror films are collective but contested, and are part of
the process of identity revision that occurs in the wake of a national
trauma. Thus, Alexander’s and Eyerman’s understanding of collective
trauma as involving a crisis of national identity is borne out through film,
though what that revision means continues to be negotiated through a
cinematic cycle of traumatic collectivizing. This process of remembering
allows the trauma to become mythologized, enshrined and reenacted as
reminders of the group’s collective past.
Besides the use of allegorical moments in horror cinema, silences in
the narrative discourse of these films also offer information as to the
relationship between horror and trauma. Specifically, one observes that
while Nazi monsters are plentiful in horror cinema, other historical
antagonists from American history are noticeably absent. For instance, an
American moviegoer would be hard pressed to find a film featuring North
Vietnamese zombies or terrorists-turned-superhuman monsters, despite the
fact that the United States has experienced national traumas linked to both
groups. In other words, the use of the Nazi trauma as a horrifying subject,
as opposed to other traumatic events or perpetrators, reveals something
about the nature of the traumatic loop in American cinema.
David Schmoeller, director of the 1986 horror film, CRAWLSPACE,
sheds light on why certain villains are left out of the traumatic loop in
American film. As Schmoeller told an interviewer about his experience
working on the film:
“Originally, Crawlspace was an anti-Vietnam War story. The first draft of

Crawlspace featured an MIA survivor who returned home to discover that
his parents had died and his wife had left him. This MIA survivor recreated
25
Lowenstein, Shocking Representation, 2-15.
his Prisoner-of-War camp in his attic and subsequently built bamboo traps
to ensnare his enemy. When I turned in the first draft… Charlie [Band] felt
that America was not ready for a Viet Nam story… He suggested we make
the protagonist a Nazi! (I couldn’t believe what I was hearing!) I said:
‘You don’t think America is ready for a Viet Nam story – but you DO
think they want to see yet another Nazi story?’”26
Despite Schmoeller’s skepticism about American interest in another

film about Nazis, CRAWLSPACE was indeed produced with a Nazi villain
as its primary character and any references to the Vietnam War were
relegated to subtext (See Fig. 3.4).
While a few horror films have in fact tackled the Vietnam War and
other recent traumas, like the war in Afghanistan (e.g., JACOB’S LADDER,
1990, RED SANDS, 2009), rarely does one find Vietnamese, American
veteran, or Afghan ‘monsters.’ What the producer of Empire Pictures,
Charlie Band, told Schmoeller can thus be more accurately described by
the following claim: American viewers are ready for a Vietnam story, but
perhaps not as ready for a Vietnamese villain. This is key to interpreting
the traumatic loop that repetitively calls upon Nazis and Nazism as
symbols of evil in horror scripts. Vietnamese irregulars and American
veterans are seldom featured in horror films; the Japanese enemy of World
War II, once featured in thrillers such as BLACK DRAGONS (1942),
vanished from theatre screens by the late 1950s, and British loyalists from
the Revolutionary War and Korean troops have never been prominent
features of filmic horror plots. Yet Nazis have remained, despite the
rehabilitation of Germans (like the Japanese) on movie screens. This has
less to do with the depth of the trauma inflicted by each group than with
the peculiar post-war political separation of Germans from Nazis, leaving
Germans in the position of a redeemable ally and Nazis as an eternal evil.
When combined with a mythologizing traumatic cycle such as described
above, the Nazi monster is “removed almost completely from its historical
context […] becom[ing] a free-floating signifier.”27
26
David Schmoeller, interview by Raechel L. Carter, “Please Kill Mr. Kinski – an
Interview with Film Director David Schmoeller,” Du Dumme Sau – a Kinski Blog,
02 March 2011, http://dudummesau.com/2011/03/02/please-kill-mr-kinski-an-
interview-with-film-director-david-schmoeller/.
27
Maartje Abbenhuis and Sara Buttsworth, “The Mundanity of Evil: Everyday
Nazism in Post-War Popular Culture,” in: Sara Buttsworth and Maartje Abbenhuis
(eds.), Monsters in the Mirror: Representations of Nazism in Post-War Popular
Culture (Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2010), xxii.
84 Chapter Three
Fig. 3.4: Nazism as Allegory in CRAWLSPACE (1986). Nazism often serves as a

free-floating signifier for recent traumas that cannot be represented on their own.
CRAWLSPACE reflects this process: the film’s villain was originally a Vietnam
veteran who builds a bamboo cage in his attic. The film’s producer felt the
character was too controversial, however, and had the veteran replaced with a Nazi
doctor, played by Klaus Kinski.
As an open signifier, Nazis can be inserted into other traumatic cycles

as images and representation used to interpret new events and wounds.
Allegorical representations of Nazis in American horror therefore use
Nazism as an assimilated historical trauma to encode new traumas. This
process is effective because the familiarity and lack of ambiguity of the
Nazi villain makes him a ‘safe’ nightmare that can be used as a buffer
against more horrifying subjects. In addition, a broad public acceptance of
a national war narrative concerning World War II may be found, pitting
‘Us’ as US Americans against the Nazi ‘Other.’ Conversely, subsequent
wars, whether in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan, have not produced
the same kind of Manichean narrative that lends itself to the
unidimensional monsters found roaming horror universes. Cynthia Weber
argues that this unanimity means American narratives that call attention to
national self-definitions and sentiments “often get charted through our
WWII past,” because it was a “seemingly simpler time when bad guys
were bad guys (Fascists, Nazis) and we were the undisputed good guys.”28
Fig. 3.5: Nazism as Open Signifier in the Traumatic Cycle. In horror cinema,
Nazism plays a second role in the traumatic loop as an open signifier. As part of
this process, Nazis are used allegorically to interpret contested national traumas,
such as the Vietnam War and the Iraq War. In this triangle of representation, the
shocking event is too alarming or divisive to be completely represented, so its
images are reenacted allegorically.
This allegorical use of Nazis in horror cinema fits into a traumatic loop
that is distinct from the cycle created by filmic representations of Nazi
science. Whereas the portrayal of Nazi science is consistent with a loop
based on the mythologizing of a trauma-based identity, the adaptation of
Nazism as an allegorical device is more indicative of a traditional
traumatic cycle in which an individual or a collective obsessively relives
an event until its meaning can be determined. In this cycle, Nazism does
not play the role of original trauma, but of a sign that stands in for more
difficult subjects. Ultimately, this means that the Third Reich in horror
film is part of at least two distinct cycles: a traumatic cycle based on a
World War II trauma whose meaning has been agreed upon and
mythologized and a secondary traumatic cycle (or cycles) based on more
recent national dislocations (See Fig. 3.5).
28
Weber, Imagining America at War, 117.
86 Chapter Three
Understanding depictions of the Third Reich as part of multiple

traumatic loops complicates any discussion of the possibility of
terminating these cycles or extracting Nazi archetypes from horror films.
Bypassing for the time being the desirability of removing Nazism from
these traumatic loops, any such extraction of Nazi symbolism from horror
film is bound to be incredibly difficult because of Nazism’s diverse
functions. One must first interrogate the repetitive elements of the World
War II trauma narrative in order to determine which aspects of the trauma
have either 1) passed into national identity as myth and have become part
of an identity-based traumatic cycle, or 2) become locked in a traumatic
cycle where they are compulsively repeated and relived as elements yet to
be resolved. Moreover, one must recognize where Nazism is being used as
a stand-in for more recent collective traumas through displacement or
transference.
Each type of cycle presents its own challenges for resolution. For
cycles in which Nazism is used allegorically, Nazism will naturally exit
from each traumatic cycle as the trauma it signifies comes closer to
cultural synthesis and can thus be represented (and eventually mythologized)
on its own. This process is documented in Piotr Sztompka’s study of
trauma and healing in groups; he labels the final step of overcoming
trauma as the “consolidation of a new cultural complex.”29 However, even
as old traumas are resolved, new traumas are likely to be encoded using
the Third Reich as an interpretive discourse. This process will undoubtedly
continue until a new trauma and symbolic language replaces World War II
and its constituent villain—the Nazi—as an expedient tool for translating
new events.
Ending cycles in which Nazism is directly linked to the trauma of
World War II may prove equally challenging. For identity-based loops,
extracting Nazis from the grips of Hollywood likely requires a complete
revision of collective identity, for as long as an element is part of national
identity it can be expected to appear in national film discourse. Without
such a revision, the Nazi villain can be expected to play a continuing role
in both American identity and American cinema, although over time, its
potency will likely weaken and join older national traumas that reappear
only periodically in horror film (see for example the 1986 Civil War
horror THE SUPERNATURALS, which features Confederate zombies run
amok; also, GREY KNIGHT, 1993, DEAD BIRDS, 2004).
29
Piotr Sztompka, “The Trauma of Social Change,” in: Jeffrey Alexander et al.
(eds.), Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2004), 169.
The Nazi figure, it may be concluded, is prolific in the horror genre

because it serves at least two purposes. First, as part of the traumatic loop
of the World War II trauma, the Nazi villain reenacts and reinforces the
national identity that has sprung from the ashes of that collective
experience. Second, as an old, assimilated trauma whose familiarity is
enough to make him cliché, he is a sign that can be used to interpret
fresher wounds. Further study may revise our understanding of how these
processes work or otherwise bring to light additional functions played by
monstrous historical figures in cinematic discourses. Either way,
continuous interrogation of the role played by villains of horror cinema in
the creation and representation of collective national trauma is vital. Can
cinematic horrors shed light on the horrors of history and fears of the
present? I contend that horror cinema as an “emotive genre” is particularly
fit for this interpretive role and represents an integral part of a nation’s
traumatic cycles rather than an expression of its limits. Horror films play a
prominent role in the memorialization of national traumas and as such,
their meanings are continually constructed and reconstructed as national
identity shifts and evolves. This fluidity is similar to the horror genre
itself, a genre that Thomas Sipos has called “a terrifying blob that absorbs
new story conventions from every historical/societal shift.” 30 Like the
character of Frank in RATLINE, the Nazi monster is also “a chameleon,” a
dynamic sign in the grammar of horror cinema.31 For historians, this
presents a unique and exciting interpretive challenge that will continue to
generate future debate about the relationship between the nation and the
nightmares of its citizens.
30
Thomas M. Sipos, Horror Film Aesthetics: Creating the Visual Language of
Fear (Jefferson: McFarland and Co., 2010), 6.
31
Eric Stanze, interview by Heather Wixson, “Indie Horror Month Interview:
Ratline’s Eric Stanze,” Dread Central,
http://www.dreadcentral.com/news/53291/indie-horror-month-interview-ratlines-
eric-stanze (Accessed March 5, 2012).
PART II
NAZISM AND WAR

CHAPTER FOUR
VENGEFUL FICTION:
(RE-)PRESENTING TRAUMA
IN INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS (2009)
DANIA HÜCKMANN
The injured person’s reaction to the trauma only exercises a completely

“cathartic” effect, if it is an adequate reaction – as, for instance, revenge.
But language serves as a surrogate for action; by its help, an affect can be
abreacted almost as effectively.1
The following reading of Quentin Tarantino’s INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS2

is prompted by the surprising way in which Sigmund Freud and Josef
Breuer relate trauma and revenge in Studies On Hysteria (1895). A
conception of revenge as an “adequate,” that is, appropriate—or even
compensatory—reaction to trauma, perhaps sounds scandalous. This view
suggests that the avenger is a figure whose acts are justified. While
revenge shares the legal system’s goal of implementing justice, as René
Girard points out,3 the act of taking vengeance has a bad reputation for
missing the mark, for trying to achieve justice by unjust means. Revenge
seeks payback, but runs the risk of excessive violence in its fulfillment.
Tarantino’s movie offers numerous examples of such excesses of
vengeance.
1
Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud, “On the Psychical Mechanisms of Hysterical
Phenomena. Preliminary Communication (1893),” in: James Strachey (transl. and
ed.), Studies On Hysteria (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 8 (italics in the original;
translation altered, D.H.).
2
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, dir. by Quentin Tarantino (2009; Universal City, CA,
DVD).
3
See: Réne Girard, Violence and the Sacred, transl. Patrick Gregory (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979).
Vengeful Fiction 91
The idea of reaching a kind of balance, i.e. equivalence, through

revenge appears even more paradoxical when we consider that Breuer and
Freud regard revenge as an adequate response to ‘trauma,’ which often
does not have a quantifiable value against which something can be deemed
adequate. Psychiatrist and theorist Dori Laub describes trauma as
characterized by an “absence of categories,” taking place “outside the
parameter of ‘normal’ reality, such as causality, sequence, place and
time.”4 As an event that escapes categorization and thus breaks with
common notions of one’s ability to understand, experience and remember,
trauma seems to resist the very possibility of measurement and
compensation through a calculated response. How can the adequacy of
such a reaction be measured and, furthermore, by whom? Or, to
contextualize and accentuate this question: how can revenge for an event
such as the Holocaust5 even be conceptualized?
The implications of equivalence borne by the language of vengeance
are echoed not only in Freud and Breuer’s formulation of an “adequate”
reaction, but also in trauma theorist Judith Hermann’s description of the
revenge fantasy as a “mirror image of the traumatic memory.”6 Similarly,
psychologist Nina Thomas cautions that the act of revenge may lead to an
equivalence between victim and perpetrator—that is, by inflicting what
one has suffered onto the perpetrator, one takes up the role of victimizer.7
Thomas differentiates, however, between a “revenge fantasy,” which
allows one to conceptualize the possibility of answering violence with
violence in order to regain control while allowing for a revision of one’s
reaction, and an “act of revenge” through which the “equality between
4
Dori Laub, “Bearing Witness, Or the Vicissitudes of Listening,” in: Shoshanna
Felman and Dori Laub (eds.), Testimony. Crisis of Witnessing in Literature,
Psychoanalysis, and History, (New York: Routledge, 1992), 69.
5
Each of the terms “Holocaust,” “Shoah,” and “Auschwitz,” insufficiently convey
the scope and depth of the horrors that transpired during National Socialism. To
use “Auschwitz” as a chiffre for all concentration camps and the events in
Germany seems problematic due to the geographic specifity of the term. While
“Shoah” refers specifically to the genocide of the Jewish people, “Holocaust”
refers to all people that were persecuted and murdered. Although the Greek origin
of the word holócaustos, meaning a completely (holos) burned (kaustos) sacrifice
also carries problematic connotations, I use it here as an auxiliary term.
6
Judith Herman, “Remembrance and Mourning,” in: Trauma and Recovery: The
Aftermath of Violence – From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror (New York:
Basic Books, 1997), 189.
7
Nina K. Thomas, “An Eye for an Eye: Fantasies of Revenge in the Aftermath of
Trauma,” in: Danielle Knafo (ed.), Living With Terror, Working With Trauma: A
Clinician’s Handbook, (Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2004), 303.
92 Chapter Four
victim and victimizer becomes concretized.”8 Thomas thus pinpoints a

problem essential to the terminology of perpetrator and victim with regard
to avenging the Holocaust—the mechanisms of revenge seem to invite a
simplifying and thus falsifying comparison between the two that betrays
the singularity of trauma. In the context of the psychoanalytical theories
about revenge outlined thus far, a fantasy of revenge is always contrasted
with acting upon it, because the former is open to revisions. Film may
serve the same function as a “surrogate for action,” which Freud and
Breuer attribute to language. While film would thereby present a
sublimated form of vengeance, every portrayal of revenge through the
medium of film is also haunted by the danger of visually concretizing a
comparison and thus cancelling out the difference between crime and
response. I will return to this issue later.
Conceiving of revenge as a form of ius talionis, Jean Améry pinpoints
the absurdity of the idea of avenging the Holocaust; he calls it “nonsense,”
since the Nazi criminals “don’t have enough eyes and teeth” to allow any
kind of justice through retaliation. “The guilt was too immense to make
adequate atonement even thinkable,” Améry continues, “[t]heir actions,
their crimes were too monstrous to allow the term revenge to make even
the slightest sense.”9 Améry’s statement highlights a tension between the
incalculability of trauma and the lexicon of revenge as one of measuring
and calculating, of counting and trying to account for loss. He asserts that
the monstrosity of the crimes exceeds all modes and registers of measure,
unhinging the very concept of revenge.
In general, INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS is as uninterested in measuring
trauma and a ‘proper’ response to it as it is in discourses of justice. Instead
of featuring a vision of justice, INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS imagines an
alternative course of events; it presents us with a revenge fantasy. Whether
the act of revenge can be understood as an act of justice or not is one issue
addressed in this essay. In the following arguments, I will not attempt to
make broad claims about the relation of revenge, film and the Holocaust,
in general, but will rather examine the fantasy of revenge depicted in
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS and the ways in which this particular film
unsettles common ideas about revenge. For the act of revenge to appear as
a possible response to the Holocaust at all, the film alters the concept in
8
Thomas, “An Eye for an Eye: Fantasies of Revenge in the Aftermath of Trauma,”
303.
9
Jean Améry, “Das Unverjährbare,” in: Stephan Steiner (ed.), Aufsätze zur Politik
und Zeitgeschichte. Werke, vol. 7 (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2005), 127 (my
translation).
Vengeful Fiction 93
two key aspects. INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS imagines revenge apart from

categories of equilibrium and introduces a specific timeframe: revenge is
acted out during World War II. My analysis will focus on the opening
scene (the brutal murder of Shosanna Dreyfus’ family ordered by Colonel
Hans Landa) and the closing sequence (the climax of revenge in which the
Nazi elite are killed), as well as on the film’s configuration of victims,
perpetrators and avengers. Deviating from standard revenge narratives,
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS employs not one avenger, but multiple agents of
revenge: Shosanna and the Basterds are perhaps the most obvious
avengers among the film’s characters. The movie further upsets the
common narrative of revenge as the culmination of minute planning by
making the final revenge scene in the theater in part a product of
coincidence. Shosanna, who does not actively seek revenge at first, instead
becomes an avenger by chance. She is not the lonely avenger with
elaborate plans and ample training that we encounter in Beatrixe Kiddo
(KILL BILL, USA, 2003/4), but rather an accidental collaborator with the
Basterds. Ironically, it is the Nazi war hero and movie star Frederick
Zoller who turns her theater into the ideal site for her revenge.
Before analyzing the use of visual narration and framing in the opening
scene of INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, I will address the question of how and
whether the film’s enactment of revenge can be viewed as a reaction to a
trauma at all. The trauma theories quoted above conceive of revenge as the
reaction of an individual to a traumatic loss. How does an individual’s loss
and fantasy of retaliation translate into the collective trauma of the
Holocaust and a filmic revenge fantasy? Does it translate at all? To avoid
gestures of shorthand generalization, I will not attempt to unravel the
complex relation of the individual to collective trauma. My focus, rather,
is on the representation of World War II. As a trauma in 20th century
history, the Holocaust alienates depictions of the war from common modes
of understanding and representation. The inflexible nature ascribed to
individual trauma is, I suggest, echoed in standardized modes of
representing World War II, ranging from documentaries to heroic war
epics.10 In this context, INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS can be read as a reaction
to—and breaking from—the conventions of World War II depictions
10
For a detailed analysis of the depiction of the Holocaust in German television,
see Wulf Kansteiner, In Pursuit of German Memory: History, Television, and
Politics After Auschwitz (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2006). Kansteiner focuses
particularly on the construction of documentaries and the new aesthetic that Guido
Knopp introduced; he points to a decisive disinclination to represent perpetrators
and bystanders as part of the normative representations of the Holocaust.
94 Chapter Four
through, as John R. Leo candidly puts it, “an iconoclastic breaking and
exiting from the rules, the logics and expectations of genres in order that
other things, becomings and potentials for embodied historical subjects be
limned or imagined.”11 One of the crucial iconoclastic breaks found in
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS is that of conventional plot. As a film about
(Jewish) vengeance in response to the Holocaust, INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS
violates what Drehli Robnik calls the “implicit ethos of the medialization
of the Holocaust” that prescribes to Jews the role of the passive victim.12
While INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS does include the familiar trope of revenge
as a reaction to a personal loss through the figure of Shosanna, who
avenges the murder of her family, her narrative constitutes only one strand
in the network that avenges Nazi crimes. The ‘collective’ we encounter in
the film is constituted through a shared determination to avenge, yet it is
unaware of its members. The movie lays no claim to presenting either a
victim’s testimony or a historical reenactment but instead intends to
deviate from standard representations of the Holocaust and the narrowness
of its visual and narratological lexicon.
“Once Upon a Time…”

In the opening scene of INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, the perspective of the
victims is only alluded to through images, namely through one brief
camera shift from the living room where Colonel Landa interrogates
Perrier LaPadite to the space underneath the floorboards, where a Jewish
family is hiding. Leo describes the camera perspective as one that
“‘documents’ from a roving third-person point-of-view the absent pan-
ocular ‘witnessing historian’.”13 The family’s view is subject to significant
constraints. Since they are only filmed either from the side or from above,
the viewer can observe how the victims’ view is restricted to the cracks
between the planks; yet the scene is never actually filmed from their
perspective. The way the viewer’s perspective is thus directed and
constricted undercuts his or her ability to identify with the victims’
11
John R. Leo, “Mod High Low Sub Cultural Basterds: Tarantino’s Wars,
Sideways,” in: John R. Leo and Marek Paryz (eds.), Projecting Words, Writing
Images: Intersections of the Textual and the Visual in American Cultural Practices
(Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011), 19.
12
Drehli Robnik, “Wendungen und Grenzen der Rede von Trauma und
Nachträglichkeit: Filmtheoretische Bemerkungen zur Geschichtsästhetik (am
Beispiel von Tarantinos Inglourious Basterds),” in: Helmut Konrad et al. (eds.),
Terror und Geschichte (Wien/Köln/Weimar: Böhlau, 2012), 252 (my translation).
13
Leo, “Mod High Low Sub Cultural Basterds,” 41f.
Vengeful Fiction 95
perspective; the method by which the scene is filmed rather invites what
critic Dominick LaCapra calls “empathic unsettlement,” meaning a
“virtual, not vicarious” emotional response to encountering an account of
trauma that does not take the form of occupying or identifying with the
position of the victim.14 The framing of this scene signals that the
perspective of the victim is off limits; we are denied access to it.
What is remarkable about this opening scene, however, is not only the
access denied to the viewer, but the representation of the limited access
that the victims have to their own experience. This exclusion is
demonstrated the moment that Colonel Landa switches from French to
English at the beginning of the scene. Only at the end of the interrogation
do we learn what he assumed all along, the family hidden below does not
understand English. The traumatic dimension of their experience is
reflected in the way their visual and auditory comprehension of what is
happening to them––the immediate yet incomprehensible threat to their
lives––is constrained. Considering that trauma is often registered not as
semantic memory in the form of an integrated narrative sequence, but
rather on a somatic level in the form of sounds, images and smells, films
such as INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS are particularly conducive to depicting
trauma, as they allow for narratives that rely more on visual than verbal
storytelling.15 The movement of the camera in this film creates a parallel
visual narrative of the traumatic position of the victim as one who is
denied access to the comprehensibility of events.
This exclusion is further underscored when the camera zooms in on the
faces of Colonel Landa and LaPadite respectively, right at the moment
when Colonel Landa gets LaPadite to admit that Shosanna’s family is
hiding under the floorboards. The close-up and continuous zooming in on
14
Dominick LaCapra, Writing History, Writing Trauma (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2001), 40. LaCapra is careful to differentiate between different
modes of witnessing and ways of being traumatized in order to counteract the
tendency toward a conflation of the terminology of trauma that would be applied to
victims and perpetrators, bystanders and commenters alike.
15
According to Bessel van der Kolk, trauma entails a “failure of semantic
memory” that leads to an “organization of memory on somatosensory or iconic
levels.” Bessel Van der Kolk, “Trauma and Memory,” in: Bessel Van der Kolk,
Alexander C McFarlane, and Lars Weisaeth (eds.), Traumatic Stress – The Effects
of Overwhelming Experience on Mind, Body, and Society (London and New York:
Guilford Press, 1996), 286. I do not intend to suggest a preference for visual over
verbal representation of trauma but merely want to highlight that film works with a
toolbox and limitations to represent trauma that are distinct from, for example,
texts.
96 Chapter Four
their faces is set against a now-blackened background, which channels all

attention to their faces and urges the viewer to read precisely what the
victims are excluded from: their facial expressions. The shift in their
countenances—LaPadite’s dwindling composure and the cooling of
Colonel Landa’s face—supersedes the words that are uttered. This
interrogation is as much visual as it is verbal. In grasping this situation,
reading these close-ups is tantamount to listening to the words—the
victims are excluded from both. This scene comprises the film’s central
depiction of the horrors of persecution and murder during the Holocaust. It
exemplifies how film, particularly the visual dimension of its narrative,
allows for a depiction of trauma as one in which the victims (in this case
the family hidden below) are denied access to their very own experience
while the viewer is kept at a distance that denies first-person identification
with the victims.
The opening scene provides us with Shosanna’s background story, the
survivor who will turn into an avenger by chance. The scene unfolds as a
realistically possible chain of events that cannot simply be relegated to a
fantasy dependent upon supernatural intervention. This distinguishes
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS from previous depictions of retaliation for the
Holocaust, which were generally confined to the genre of science fiction—
often as a form of haunting that targets a particular perpetrator.16 THE
TWILIGHT ZONE episode entitled, “Deaths-Head Revisited,”17 for example,
depicts an SS officer who is tried and sentenced by the ghosts of the
people he tortured and murdered in the Dachau concentration camp. The
perpetrator is condemned to suffering all the pain he inflicted, which leads
to his insanity. As part of a genre that often employs utopian narratives,
this episode of THE TWILIGHT ZONE envisions a utopian justice that
actually goes into effect. INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS can only project a
fantasy of revenge that is injected into history as it happens and––as we
will see––refrains from conceiving of a notion of justice in relation to the
Holocaust.
As a fictionalized rendering of World War II, INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS
neither crosses the border into sci-fi nor coheres with standard depictions
of the war; rather, it introduces a flexion in representation by including the
16
See: Florian Evers, “Gerechtigkeit und Rache – Phantastik in der Darstellung
von Opfern der Shoah,” in Vexierbilder des Holocaust. Ein Versuch zum
historischen Trauma in der Populärkultur (Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2011).
17
Rod Serling, “Deaths-Head Revisited,” THE TWILIGHT ZONE, season 3, episode
74, dir. by Don Medford, aired November 10, 1961 (Chatsworth, CA: Image
Entertainment, 2006, DVD).
Vengeful Fiction 97
fantasy of revenge. In depicting a revenge fantasy as a response to

historical trauma, the film ponders the possibility that events could have
transpired differently, allowing for a flexion within the historical trauma’s
frozen, inassimilable structure. This resiliency takes the form of a
‘reimagining’ of events that appeals to our imaginative faculties. The
slapstick elements in scenes of excessive violence are one example of how
a viewer is constantly reminded that he or she is watching an artificial
world, a collage of fragmented, rearranged and reimagined historical and
filmic references. INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS treats both history and the
history of film as a trove of material that can be cited, shuffled, and
rearranged at will, and is not bound by any standard or authority.
Tarantino selects an interesting temporality for his story of vengeance:
revenge is depicted as a response to a trauma that is still taking place. The
choice of this particular temporality is a crucial component of Tarantino’s
re-conceptualization of revenge, because it allows for a vengeance that is
not a belated response, but instead an immediate reaction to the crimes that
constitute the historical trauma itself. INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS does not
offer an alternative depiction of historical events, but rather a fictional
alternative to history, thus demonstrating the “power of film to liquefy
actual spatiotemporality with illusion and fantasy.”18 This, I suggest, is the
catharsis of the film, one that does not refer to a cleansing or purifying
effect, as the Greek etymology of the term suggests, but should be read in
the psychoanalytical sense as a surfacing and expressing of repressed
aggression and/or counter-violence. The film unleashes a potential
counter-violence through the flexibility that fantasy permits.
The Inglourious Basterds

The acts of revenge take place in the film as the atrocities are still
occurring and thus become––in much the same way the Basterds enter
France––an invasion of history, a reconfiguration of events as they unfold,
and a punishment that is simultaneous to the crimes being committed. In
this simultaneity, the act of revenge is figured as a resistance movement
rather than as a belated act of vengeance or justice. Fiction resists history
on two accounts: just as a fictional band of vengeful resistance fighters
enters France, so too fiction enters a historical frame of reference and
bypasses the frozen historiography.
Yet, can we speak here of an ‘act of revenge?’ I suggest that we
encounter a constellation of revenges that consists of the convergence of
18
Leo, “Mod High Low Sub Cultural Basterds,” 22.
98 Chapter Four
the revenge of an individual (Shosanna avenging the murder of her family)

and of the Basterds19 (a hybrid of a military subdivision of Jewish
American soldiers and the Resistance, with the sole aim of killing as many
Nazis as possible). This group grows more heterogeneous as it expands to
include other figures fighting against the Nazis, such as the deserter, Hugo
Stiglitz, and the actress, Bridget von Hammersmark.
Identifying THE DIRTY DOZEN (USA, 1967) and PATTON (USA, 1970)
as main references for Lieutenant Aldo Raine’s introductory speech to his
Basterds, Robnik describes the relation of Tarantino’s movie to its filmic
ancestors as one that evokes them by breaking with them, namely by
omitting both “Patton’s charisma of a patriotic war genius” as well as THE
DIRTY DOZEN’s appeal to “deserters and underdogs as re-evaluated
experts.”20 In contrast to their filmic precursors, the Basterds are
“ostentatiously lacking in identity and creativity.”21 As their limited
facility with foreign languages exemplifies, the Basterds have no particular
skills, and they are not sworn to any state symbol but to a rather dubious
Apache code.22 While we are privy to the personal history—or rather
criminal record—of each member of the Dirty Dozen, the background
story of Lieutenant Raine’s eight American Jews remains largely
unknown. The personalities of the Basterds do evoke an array of possible
referential footnotes,23 yet these associations almost never materialize into
19
The complexity of the constitution of the Basterds––for instance Brad Pitt cast
as their white, Southern lieutenant carrying orders from an unspecified military
source––cannot be addressed sufficiently within the scope of this essay. The closer
one looks at the makeup of the Basterds, the more filmic, as well as problematic
historical citations appear, which makes it nearly impossible to settle on a
characterization. Though part of the strength of the conception of the group, it has
deeply unsettling implications. For an outline of the significance of the figure of
the bastard in film history in general and for Tarantino in particular, see Georg
Seeßlen, Quentin Tarantino gegen die Nazis Alles über INGLOURIOUS
BASTERDS (Berlin: Bertz+Fischer, 2009), 34-50.
20
Robnik, “Wendungen und Grenzen der Rede von Trauma und Nachträglichkeit,”
251 (my translation).
21
Ibid.
22
In this essay I will not be able to address the complexity of the question as to
whom the Basterds represent, but note that the reference to an Apache code and the
cruel rhetoric evoking an array of racist imagery, as well as American imperialism
and genocide, open an eclectic patchwork of controversial references to victim-
perpetrator relations within American history.
23
The long scar around Lieutenant Raine’s neck can, as Seeßlen points out, be read
as a filmic reference to the Western, HANG ‘EM HIGH, or as a historical notation to
the torturous way the would-be assassins of the July 20 plot were killed, which
Vengeful Fiction 99
a concrete story and thus we cannot trace their actions to any personal
motive. The lack of background information about the Basterds is part of a
reconfiguration of revenge at play in the film. By withholding the evidence
for a clear causal or biographical motivation for vengeance, INGLOURIOUS
BASTERDS aims to undercut the specular pairing of revenge as a repetition
of the crime to which one was victim. This limited character development
has a profound effect on the possibility that (a representation of) revenge
could concretize the link between victim and victimizer as Thomas
cautions. By employing different agents of vengeance, INGLOURIOUS
BASTERDS does not focus on one heroic figure or a single victimized group
but rather depicts the collaborative efforts of a group of agents who are not
all aware of one another. Colonel Landa, for instance, escapes Shosanna’s
revenge in the theater; yet he is marked by the Basterds before he starts his
new life in America. The film thus creates a slippage between the avenger
and the acts being avenged and thereby disrupts the language of revenge as
one of calculation, equivalence and mirroring.
If understood as seeking payback, does revenge not only appear prone
to but also virtually aimed at turning victims into perpetrators? Or, more
pointedly, does the Basterds’ violent revenge match that of the Nazi
crimes? Some critics have harshly criticized the Basterds’ use of violence,
claiming, for example, that the movie “turns Jews into carboncopies of
Nazis,” and into “‘sickening’ perpetrators.”24 I suggest that the close
attention Tarantino pays to divorcing the Basterds’ vengeance from
personal motives as well as to the heterogeneity of the group undercuts the
basis of such interpretations, which collapse the difference between crime
and revenge all too quickly. Robnik pointedly remarks that this very “talk
turns Raine into a “revenant of the hanged assassin, a gestalt out of a ghost-western
like PALE RIDER projected onto the history of World War II.” Seeßlen, Quentin
Tarantino gegen die Nazis, 135f. (my translation). Yet we never discover the story
behind the scar.
24
Daniel Mendelsohn, “‘Inglourious Basterds’: when Jews attack,” in Newsweek
Magazine, August 13, 2009. Web. 19 August 2012. This critique of INGLOURIOUS
BASTERDS as a misrepresentation of history escalates in the view that it entails a
form of Holocaust denial. Unable to provide an in-depth presentation of this
critique and its counterarguments, I want to refer to Leo, who argues against the
charge of Holocaust denial as including a shorthand dismissal of postmodern
representations of history. Leo states that normative visualizations of the history of
World War II merely serve to “restate emphatically the truism that history, the past,
is a store-house of representations, images, epics, myths, and fables, and more;”
therefore, such “postmodern representations will be increasingly necessary […] to
make history a ‘practical’ part of the ‘conversation’ that includes it in the
‘present’.’’ Leo, “Mod High Low Sub Cultural Basterds,” 20 et seq.
100 Chapter Four
of symmetryy,” that is, an interpretationn of the highlyy aestheticized

d violence
of the Bassterds as a mirror
m imagee of Nazi crrimes, diminiishes the
monstrouslyy horrific actioons of the latteer.25
Undermiining the viewwer’s ability too grasp and chharacterize thee Basterds
injects a cert
rtain ambivalennce into their portrayal thatt is symptomaatic of the
movie’s chharacters in general. INGLOURIOUS
N BASTERDS unsettles
stereotypes, for examplee, by depictin ng Jews as avengers (an nd not as
passive victtims), and byy making the Nazi hero Z Zoller, a hybrrid of “a
charming yooung man andd a murdering monster.”26 A Another exam mple is the
opening seqquence of the film where ColonelC Landda is equipped d with an
exuberant ccontrol of lannguage and gestures and aan oversized Sherlock
Holmes-stylle pipe for ann ironic prop,, which Leo reads as “eviidence of
Tarantino’s deliberately contrapuntal iconoclasm, his jarring cinematicc
parody of H Hollywood annd generic rep presentationall conventionss of Nazi
subjugation..”27 (See Fig. 4.1)
4
Fig. 4.1: Still from INGLOUR

RIOUS BASTERDS
S, Christoph Wa
alz as Col Hanss Landa
INGLOUR RIOUS BASTERRDS employs multiple

m figurres and tropess not only
of vengeancce but also of survival and d thereby intrroduces a bew wildering
testimonial variant: Nazii testimony too vengeance directed at their
t own
crimes. The Basterds alwaays keep one Nazi
N alive in order for him to testify
to and propagate the grooup’s legacy. This witness has a swastik ka carved
into his foreehead. The sym
mbol and its location
l alludde to the mark
k of Cain,
25
Robnik, “W
Wendungen undd Grenzen der RedeR von Traumma und Nachträglichkeit,”
258 (my transslation).
26
Seeßlen, Quuentin Tarantinno gegen die Naazis, 75 (my trannslation).
27
Leo, “Mod High Low Subb Cultural Basteerds,” 35.
Vengeful Fiction 101
which has both a punitive and a protective function—it signifies that

anyone who kills Cain will suffer God’s vengeance sevenfold (Genesis
4:15). More importantly for the present discussion, however, this stamp of
guilt marks Cain as the murderer of his brother. This legibility of the
perpetrator’s guilt recalls a scene in THE TWILIGHT ZONE episode
mentioned above in which the ghost of a former prisoner tells the SS
officer who insists that the past be done with, “The uniform you wore
cannot be stripped off. It is part of you, part of your flesh, part of your
body. It was a piece of your mind. […] Captain, the skull and crossbones
burned into your soul.”28 While in THE TWILIGHT ZONE, the perpetrator’s
identity is described as coming from an inner marking, as “burned into
[the] soul,” the Basterds literalize this mark of identity by carving it into
the Nazis’ foreheads. The swastika thereby freezes the individual’s
identity as a perpetrator and insists on the permanent legibility of the
crimes committed by its bearers. This is part of the powerful fiction of
Tarantino’s movie: the false notion that the perpetrators are forever
identifiable as perpetrators. The Basterds’ ritual parodies Nazi iconography
by using it as punishment, thereby destabilizing the symbol. This act of
marking reconfigures the swastika from a symbol of Nazi pride and
belonging in the present into a symbol that will signify guilt in the future.
The carved swastikas can be seen as one form of testimony to the crimes
inflicted by the Nazis—a memorial or Mahnmal—a mark of warning.
This visibility of perpetration is the closing image of the movie. In the
final scene, Colonel Landa and Lieutenant Raine switch places: the jailor
becomes the prisoner. Colonel Landa, who ordered the murder of
Shosanna’s family, escapes her vengeance, thereby signifying the
limitations of revenge and demarcating the impossibility of summoning
the perpetrators, of circumscribing the locus of trauma. In the final
sequence, Lieutenant Raine carves the swastika into Colonel Landa’s
forehead, remarking, “I think this might just be my masterpiece.”29 In the
last shot of the movie, the Basterds look straight down into the camera,
such that the viewer’s perspective coincides with that of Colonel Landa’s.
(See Fig. 4.2)
28
Rod Serling, “Deaths-Head Revisited,” THE TWILIGHT ZONE, season 3, episode
74, dir. by Don Medford, aired November 10, 1961 (Chatsworth, CA: Image
Entertainment, 2006), DVD, 10:00.
29
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, dir. by Quentin Tarantino (2009; Universal City, CA:
Universal, 2009), DVD, 2:29:25.
102 Chapter Four
Fig. 4.2: Stilll from INGLOUR

RIOUS BASTERD
DS, Brad Pitt ass Lt. Aldo Rain
ne and B.J.
Novak as Pfc. Smithson Utivvich
This partticular framinng, I suggest, is

i less about th
the identificatiion of the
viewer withh the positionn of the perp petrator than it is intercep pting and
disrupting oof the viewerr’s identificatiion with the Basterds. The camera
angles counnteract both iddentification with the posiition of the victim,
v as
exemplified in the openinng scene and any identificaation with thee position
of a resistannce movementt composed of avengers. R Raine’s final reemark, “I
think this m
might just be mym masterpiecce,” further coollapses the difference
d
between a chharacter comm menting on the situation andd a commentaary on the
movie itselff. The film thhus ends with h the mark oof vengeance inscribed
upon the N Nazi officer anda a remark k about the fictive naturee of that
vengeance.
“Revvenge of thee Giant Facce”

INGLOUR RIOUS BASTER RDS works thrrough an asse embly of testimmonies—
from the testimony enabbled by the su urviving perppetrators who bear the
Basterds’ mmark, to the keey testimony of o the movie:: Shosanna’s speech
s in
the theater. In the final theater scenee, Shosanna bbecomes the vengeful
survivor, thee face of an alternate historry. I read the ccinema not, as
a Manuel
Köppen prooposes, a realm m of “uncheccked affects aand bodily reeaction,”30
but rather arrgue that the theatrical settting serves too contain the excess of
30
Manuel Kööppen, “Das Wissen
W des Film
ms,” in: Soren R. Fauth, Kassper Green
Krejberg annd Jan Süsselbeck (eds.), Repräsentaationen des Krieges:
Emotionalisieerungsstrategieen in der Litera
atur und in den
en audiovisuelleen Medien
vom 18. bis zuum 21. Jahrhunndert (Göttingen
n: Wallenstein, 2012), 71.
vengeance released in the scene. The central containment strategy is the

theater-as-frame itself: it not only localizes vengeance in the circumscribed
space of the theater but more importantly stages it explicitly as fiction. The
employment of clearly filmic conventions––the action-movie score, the
accelerated arming montage, the exaggerated movement of the combatants–
–declares its artificial nature: this is fantasy. This self-conscious
aestheticization is the opposite of the aestheticization at work in, for
example, Knoppian documentaries or other films based on historical
events, which strive to generate an ‘authentic’ effect in their representations
of history. While INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS presents a fantasy of
vengeance, SCHINDLER’S LIST, for example, blurs—as many have
criticized—“the line between film and history, fostering a fantasy of
witnessing” the Holocaust.31
The line dividing representations of World War II that claim to remain
within the limits provided by historical material from those that take
fictional liberties may not be as clear as my description of INGLOURIOUS
BASTERDS as a fantasy of vengeance has suggested thus far. As Leo
argues, our understanding of history has for decades been visualized,
mediated and thus formed by the medium of film. In this sense, Leo
describes INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS as a “critique of post-World War II
movies, television and popular culture [that] turned the war into a cultural,
mythologized ‘monument’ with epic historiography.”32 INGLOURIOUS
BASTERDS addresses the fact that history is always constructed from a
biased perspective and thus includes varying degrees of fictional elements,
most pointedly through “Stolz der Nation,” the Nazi propaganda movie
that serves as a film-within-a-film in INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS and
presents Zoller as a Nazi war hero who kills hundreds of enemy soldiers.33
This fictional propaganda movie serves as a reminder of how the Nazis
31
Gary Weissman, Fantasy of Witnessing: Postwar Efforts to Experience the
Holocaust (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004), 167. Weissman gives a detailed
account of the reception of SCHINDLER’S LIST and elaborates on how Steven
Spielberg strives to construct authenticity in his movie, for instance by filming at
historical sites. A quote from Spielberg, “I re-created these events, and then I
experienced them as any witness or victim would have. It wasn’t like a movie,”
explicates a problematic generalization of what it means to be a witness and to
participate in a reenactment of the Holocaust that reflects a troubling conflation of
the terminology of witnessing and testimony. Quoted in Weissman, Fantasy of
Witnessing, 167.
32
Leo, “Mod High Low Sub Cultural Basterds,” 23.
33
The Nazi propaganda film within the film was directed by Eli Roth, who also
plays the so-called “Bear Jew.”
104 Chapter Four
used film to write and transmit their version of history. The complex
network of references to other (war) movies in INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS
gestures towards the effect of the history of movies on our concept of war
and violence in general. In short, Tarantino’s film mobilizes images and
motifs from depictions of the past that aspire to authenticity—as can be
found in SCHINDLER’S LIST—in order to construct a fantasy of revenge. It
thereby destabilizes a severely clear-cut distinction between fact and
fiction, enforcing the notion that representations of the past are all, by their
very nature, deliberately constructed.
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS parodies the role of (propaganda) film in the
narrative of history by making revenge reliant upon film in every aspect of
its set-up and execution: it is the scene of the film premiere of “Stolz der
Nation,” which creates the circumstances for the entire Nazi elite to be in
one place with explosives disguised as film reels, thus enabling the turning
of entertainment into a weapon. The movie of the supposed war hero,
Frederick Zoller, serves as a cloak for the onset of revenge; the massacre
on screen covers the shots that kill its hero in ‘real life.’ Set within the
theater, the lines between the film’s reality and that of the film-within-a-
film begin to intersect. The theatrical frame constitutes a comment on the
potential of fiction and yet at the same time exposes it—precisely through
its stylized excess of violence—as a staging, a play.
The pinnacle of re-imagining both the historical reality and filmic
depiction of the Holocaust in INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS is the moment
when the film-within-the-film cuts from Frederick’s close-up to
Shosanna’s––it becomes clear that we are now watching a different movie
altogether. This visual caesura cuts off the Nazi propaganda movie and
presents Shosanna’s film, namely the speech she recorded as a literal
response to Frederick’s rhetorical question, “Who wants to send a message
to Germany?” She replies, “I have a message for Germany. That you are
all going to die. And I want you all to look deeply into the eye of the Jew
who is going to do it”34 (See Fig. 4.3).
With her movie, Shosanna breaks the chain of command—Hitler and
Goebbels’ orders to stop this, to turn off the projector, are addressed
essentially to no one; at this point, the movie proceeds on its own, as
Shosanna and Frederick are both already dead. Shosanna’s response to
Frederick is followed by an excess of violence that not even the agents of
vengeance could have foreseen, as it combines Shosanna’s revenge with
that of the Basterds. The fire set by Marcel joins forces with the bombs
that the Basterds have smuggled into the theater and the Nazi elite who
34
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, 2:23:20.
Vengefu
ul Fiction 105
accompany Hitler in his box

b are gunned down in a blaze of macchine gun
fire. The cathartic climaax of the moviem is also its ultimate fictional
moment. In the end, we see
s the movie theater explo de, destroying g the sign
for “Stolz der Nation,” annd literally tak
king the pridee of the Germ
man nation
with it.
Fig. 4.3: Still from INGLORIO

OUS BASTERDS, Mélanie Lauren
nt as Shosanna
The imaage of burningg flames, the quintessentiaal historical chiffre

c for
the Holocauust, is reimagiined as a weaapon that utilizzes the historry of film
itself.35 Wheen the film reeels are ignited, Shosanna iidentifies hersself: “My
name is Shoosanna Dreyfuus and this is the t face of Jeewish vengean nce.”36 As
we hear the lines, her proojected face hash just gone up in flames;; thus the
“face of Jewwish vengeancce” takes the form of a vo ice that lacks concrete
face, a voicee that cannot manifest itsellf as an imagee apart from th hat of the
flames. Whhile pronouncing her nam me signifies Shosanna’s singular
testimony, tthe shift to “JJewish vengeaance” has, grrammatically speaking,
an unclear referent. The adjective
a couldd refer to her or to the colleective, an
oscillation thhat implies thhat the collective, whom thee plural is sup pposed to
signify, cann neither be completely
c diifferentiated ffrom the sing gular nor
clearly circcumscribed. WhenW Shosannna’s face reeturns again and her
35
Tarantino hhas referred to “the
“ idea that cinema can brinng down the Th hird Reich”
as a “really juuicy metaphor that you can do d a lot with” aand points to th
he fact that
this very mettaphor undergooes a literalizatiion: “It’s not a metaphor at all.
a It’s the
reality of thhe movie.” Quuentin Tarantin no, cited in G Glenn Whipp, “Quentin
Tarantino’s ‘B Basterds’ is a Glorious Mash h-Up,” Los Anngeles Times, August
A 16,
2009. Web. 199 August 2012..
36
INGLOURIOU US BASTERDS, 2:24:20.
2
106 Chapter Four
laughter fills the theater, she appears on a screen of smoke that now
replaces the destroyed film screen. Shosanna’s laughter not only recalls
the proverb of vengeance, “She who laughs last, laughs best,” but also
demonstrates the decomposition of the Nazis’ authority. The destruction of
the theater and of the history of film thus creates a new screen on which
Shosanna’s face appears as a “medial apparition, not a fantastic”37 one.
The flames become the vehicle for avenging the dead, allowing them to
appear implicitly in the metonymic form of Shosanna’s face. And yet, it is
only in the form of a recording that we can hear Shosanna’s voice at all.
Both faces we see on screen––Frederick and Shosanna’s––are the faces of
the already deceased. The film-within-a-film sequence is essentially a final
appearance of people who are already dead––the hero of the Nazi movie as
much as the heroine of vengeance. The theater serves not only to stage the
fantasy of revenge, but also to contain it within the space of the fiction that
is ‘the movies’––revenge is only possible in and through the movie
theater, which is also where it ends.
Concluding Remarks
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS is by no means a simple celebration of
revenge. Rather, by breaking the rules of history and the standard
representation of vengeance itself, the film demonstrates that the rules are
already broken. The very categories that form the basis of vengeance have
been ruptured through the historical breach of the Holocaust and call for a
reframing of the very concept. INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS offers such a
reimagining, not only by telling a different story of World War II, but in
doing so also depicts a different type of vengeance––a revenge fantasy that
unleashes the potential for an alternative course of historical events.
Moreover, by invoking neither ideas of justice nor of getting even, of
counting or calculating, INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS figures revenge neither
as a sort of ersatz for an absent justice nor as a ‘breaking even,’ but rather
as a resistance that has not one but multiple agents. Yet by
reconceptualizing revenge apart from categories of equivalence or any
vision of justice, the very concept is itself in danger of coming undone.
Revenge, it seems, can never be precisely mapped onto the history of the
Holocaust but is rather and quite literally recalled in the final scene when
Shosanna declares her own face that of Jewish vengeance, with all the
ambivalence that this gesture entails.
37
Evers, “Gerechtigkeit und Rache,” 122 (my translation).
Gesturing once again to the absence of a vision of justice and thus to

the limitations of reimagining history through a fantasy of vengeance, the
film concludes with the voice of an unexpected narrator—Colonel Landa.
When he exclaims, “What shall the history books read?” (2:10:30) he
rewrites the history depicted by the film, in which he appears as
perpetrator, and positions himself as a key avenger. Thus the film
questions the reliability of any narrative of the war, including its own. Not
even the movies can outline a notion of justice after the Holocaust. The
Basterds’ revenge becomes a figure of resistance, but not of justice.
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS is careful to abstain from engaging in any
discourse of justice, thereby gesturing to the absence, and the impossibility
of justice after the Holocaust pronounced by Améry. While the fiction of
vengeance as resistance can be visualized, justice fails to manifest itself,
even as a fantasy.
CHAPTER FIVE
NARRATIONS OF TRAUMA
IN MAINSTREAM CINEMA:
FORGETTING DEATH IN DUNCAN JONES’
SOURCE CODE (2011)
DANIEL MÜLLER
Introduction
Imagine that one wakes up not knowing where he is. Looking into a
mirror, he does not recognize the face he sees. Something has happened to
him, but he does not know what. This is the premise of various movies
released in recent years, especially in the thriller and science-fiction
genres.1 The protagonist’s amnesia has become a thematic staple in a
considerable number of films, many of which explicitly depict symptoms
of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) to motivate formal experiments
and non-linear plots. Memory loss highlights the precarious nature of the
protagonist’s identity (in some cases even his identity as a hero)2, which is
often in need of reaffirmation.
In this essay, I will assess the effect of this theme on the form and
structure of Duncan Jones’ SOURCE CODE (USA, 2011). I will argue that
while its specific way of confronting amnesia and trauma is singular, it
1
A full list would exceed the limits of these pages. Suffice it to mention films such
as Wolfgang Petersen’s SHATTERED (1991), Renny Harlin’s THE LONG KISS
GOODNIGHT (1996), Alex Proyas’ DARK CITY (1998), David Fincher’s MEMENTO
(2000), Doug Liman’s THE BOURNE IDENTITY and Paul W.S. Anderson’s RESIDENT
EVIL (both 2002).
2
IN RESIDENT EVIL (2002), Alice’s role is complicated by a catastrophic betrayal
preceding the narrative. Because of her amnesia, even Alice herself is unsure
whether she is responsible. In MEMENTO, Leonard Shelby uses his amnesiac
condition to unconsciously prepare a murder (in revenge for the death of his wife).
Narrations of Trauma in Mainstream Cinema 109
nevertheless allows a better understanding of contemporary narrative

strategies of other films with similar thematic preoccupations.3 I will posit
that amnesia, used as a narrative device, is a substitute for both the
exposition and goal of classical Hollywood storytelling. Amnesia
dislocates the exposition to a moment that precedes the narrative,
necessitating movement towards a reconstruction, or disclosure, of that
preceding moment. Such (re-)construction is hardly new in the context of
classical storytelling, but is consciously accentuated by the use of amnesia
as a plot device. We can observe a shift in emphasis from the construction
of a narrative through the relatively inconspicuous workings of causality in
classical narration to a more self-aware reconstruction of narrative
meaning in contemporary films.
Those formal considerations have a significant impact on how trauma
is narrated and—more importantly—on the coping mechanisms the film
offers as a response to that trauma. While film is most definitely not a
cure,4 it nevertheless reaffirms cultural stereotypes about what kind of
reaction, or which way of coping is the most adequate response to a
trauma. Such response is not only mediated through a movie’s themes and
content. Its formal design is a much more powerful device to construct
reactions to traumatic experience. Deviating from the classical model in
which trauma was sutured into a cohesive narrative fabric, new narratives
of trauma not only rework some of the basic mechanisms of classical
narration, but also allow for a different form of coping. Therefore, I will
assess the formal inventions of SOURCE CODE as an attempt to offer a new
response to a trauma that permeates the thematic, formal and stylistic
levels of the film.
3
The reverse chronology of Memento and the increasingly frequent use of
flashback as a narrative device, as well as the grandiose fabrications of narrative
substitutes for real memories in Scorsese’s SHUTTER ISLAND (2010) and
Amenábar’s THE OTHERS (2001), are all instances of the formal confrontation with
amnesia and trauma.
4
Though some claim it can be helpful in psychotherapy, cp. e.g., Wedding and
Niemiec, “The clinical use of films in psychotherapy.” Journal of Clinical
Psychology, 59.2 (2003), 207 et seq. See also the recent discussion about “positive
psychology” in film, cp. Carrie Rickey, “Perfectly Happy, Even Without Happy
Endings.” The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/ 2012/01/15/
movies/lindsay-doran-examines-what-makes-films-satisfying.html (Accessed
January 13, 2013).
110 Chapter Five
Story
SOURCE CODE tells the story of Colter Stevens, played by Jake
Gyllenhaal, an American soldier who served as a helicopter pilot in
Afghanistan. In the film’s opening sequence, Colter awakes in a commuter
train, totally unaware of where he is or how he got there. The face he sees
reflected in the window and, later, in a bathroom mirror, is not his own.
The woman sitting opposite him on the train, Christina Warren, does not
seem to see his “real” face. As it turns out, he is indeed trapped in another
man’s body. Only minutes later, the train and all of its passengers,
including Colter, are blown up in an explosion. Rather than dying,
however, he wakes up in an unfamiliar place, strapped to a chair in a dark
and narrow capsule. There, he gradually learns (through video
communication with Officer Colleen Goodwin and her superior, Dr.
Rutledge) that what he experienced was not just an explosion but a
terrorist attack, which he witnessed through the eyes of a victim. His
changed perception is facilitated by a device called the “Source Code,” a
machine that is able to send him into the memories of a dead man. As Dr.
Rutledge, the inventor of the machine, is careful to emphasize, “Source
Code is not time travel. Rather, Source Code is time reassignment.”
(0:34:30). According to his argument, common notions of time travel such
as the ‘Butterfly Effect’ do not apply in the context of the Source Code,
for in this case changes in this relived past cannot affect the present.
Colter’s mission is to enter the memories of Sean Fentress in order to
identify the terrorist responsible for the bombing. At the same time, he
begins to wonder what really happened to him. Why does he have no
memory of having left Afghanistan and what is the strange capsule he
wakes up in after each repetition of the train sequence? Why is his contact
Officer Goodwin so reluctant to provide information in response to these
questions?
The narration switches back and forth between the repetitive memory
sequences on the train and the episodes in the capsule, thus complicating
chronological and spatial continuity. However, the overall narrative
development remains intact and is fuelled by such classical devices as the
deadline, the double-causal structure of romance and action, and an
increasing knowledge about the diegetic world and its rules. Colter
ultimately succeeds in saving the day, getting the girl and understanding
his own situation—as well as rewriting the space-time-continuum. In the
last repetition of the train sequence, Stevens is not only able to identify the
terrorist, but also to hinder him from igniting the bomb, thereby saving the
train’s passengers. Due to his intervention, the course of history changes
and a parallel universe is created in which his mind survives in another

man’s body.5
Continuity of the Classical Paradigm?

In the paragraphs above, I have argued that the classical form of
Hollywood storytelling might help us to better understand SOURCE CODE’s
narrative structure. Before moving on to an analysis of the film, I will
introduce in appropriate brevity what I consider relevant aspects of
classical narration.
The fundament of the classical form is its preoccupation with order and
stability;6 through tight symmetric relations between its parts, stability is
achieved and contingency is excluded. In such closed construction,
nothing is without meaning. The form of classical stability was outlined by
Stephen Heath as the succession of situation, action and a variation of the
initial situation, or as “S-X-S.”7 This very basic formula of the classical
model allows us to understand the movie’s movement as one towards
constructing the initial situation “S” as meaningful. The narrative process
stabilizes the situation’s function in the diegetic order. Raymond Bellour
has argued that “[t]he principle of classical film is well known: the end
must reply to the beginning; between one and the other something must be
set in order; the last scene frequently recalls the first and constitutes its
resolution.”8
In a counterintuitive way, the element “X,” or action, is necessary for
that stabilizing process and, indeed, for the narrative as such. According to
the classical paradigm, action is a prerequisite for the homeostasis of the
whole. At the same time, each action is already a (potentially traumatic)
5
In his blog entry on Source Code, David Bordwell discusses the pop-science
background of this rewritten history, cp. David Bordwell, “Forking Tracks: Source
Code.” 13.05.2011. http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2011/05/03/forking-tracks-
source-code. (Accessed September 16, 2012).
6
“The watchwords in virtually all analyses of classical Hollywood cinema are
stability and regulation.” Murray Smith, “Theses on the philosophy of Hollywood
history,” in: Stephen Neale and Murray Smith (eds.), Contemporary Hollywood
History (London: Routledge, 1998), 3.
7
Stephen Heath, “Film and System: Terms of Analysis Part I.” Screen 16.1 (1975),
48.
8
Raymond Bellour, The Analysis of Film (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
2001), 238.
112 Chapter Five
violation of order.9 Stability—narrative or otherwise—can always only be

partial. Or, as Gilles Deleuze has claimed, “[E]verything which is closed is
artificially closed.”10 Through the action, an otherwise stable form is
transformed into a progressive narrative that moves through the phases of
“an undisturbed stage, the disturbance, the struggle, and the elimination of
the disturbance.”11 In other words, the static structure is hidden behind the
movement towards a goal. Causality has a central function in this
movement:
“In fabula terms, the reliance upon character-centered causality and the
definition of the action as the attempt to achieve a goal are both salient
features of the canonic format. At the level of the syuzhet, the classical film
respects the canonic pattern of establishing an initial state of affairs which
gets violated and which must then be set right. […] The characters’ causal
interactions are thus to a great extent functions of such overarching
syuzhet/fabula patterns. In classical fabula construction, causality is the
prime unifying principle.”12
In classical narration, we often find two complementary ‘plot lines’

which are ultimately synthesized in the conclusion, one involving
romance, the other, adventure.13 While each of these plot lines has rather
obvious goals, (getting the girl and saving the day), another line of
development moves towards a less clearly defined conclusion. This is
what David Bordwell has described as the “tendency of the classical
syuzhet to develop toward full and adequate knowledge.”14 This
knowledge refers to both the protagonists and the audience. It is
knowledge about the diegetic universe and the workings of causality
within that universe.
9
“A beginning […] is always a violence, the violation or interruption of the
homogeneity of S.” (Heath, “Film and System,” 49)
10
Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 1: The Movement-Image (NY, London: Continuum
International, 2005), 10.
11
David Bordwell, Narration in the Fiction Film (Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press, 1985), 157.
12
Bordwell, Narration, 157.
13
“Usually the classical syuzhet presents a double causal structure, two plot lines:
one involving heterosexual romance (boy/girl, husband/wife), the other line
involving another sphere-work, war, a mission or quest, other personal
relationships. Each line will possess a goal, obstacles, and a climax.” (Bordwell,
Narration, 157).
14
Bordwell, Narration, 159.
Returning to the model introduced by Stephen Heath, goal-orientation

and causality both work towards eliminating or suturing the disturbance
that threatens stability.15 The same is true with regard to the progression of
knowledge, as it allows for the understanding of every element within the
diegetic universe.
Coherence and Closure: Convergences between Film

and Psychoanalysis
The stability constructed in the course of a classical story tends to be a
reaffirmation of the status quo. It lends itself to being read as a denial of
reality, not just in its often escapist contents, but through its formal
exclusion of significant change. If it is to be read as a model for how we
assess and cope with traumatic experiences or the violent character of its
action,16 the classical model tends towards offering illusions of strength or
even delusions of grandeur, foreclosing the possibility of ‘real’ suffering
(especially when combined with a happy ending). Modern societies’
preoccupation with strength has been variously read by psychoanalysts
and sociologists as an attempt to come to terms with the effects of
modernization, either in the form of a God-complex (Richter), as an
inability to mourn (Mitscherlich), or as a passing on of victimhood and a
subsequent identification with the aggressor (Gruen).17
While such artificial compensation for, or even repression of, weakness
and instability certainly has its dangers, we must not forget that the
tendency of the classical film to integrate violence within a coherent
narrative is also a viable way to cope with traumatic experiences. In this
regard, the classical model might even be compared to the psychoanalytic
process in that it moves from a situation that has not yet realized its
inherent violence, through a confrontation with that violence, to a
15
“The narrative transformation is the resolution of the violence, its containment –
its replacing – in a new homogeneity” (Heath, “Film and System,” 49).
16
By taking up Heath’s terminology, I stress the violence inherent in the classical
narration’s action. Bordwell has called this part of the narrative inventory a
“disturbance.” I do not argue, however, that classical film always deals with
trauma or even with violence.
17
Cp. e.g. Alexander and Margarethe Mitscherlich, Inability to Mourn: Principles
of Collective Behavior (New York: Grove Press, 1984); Horst Eberhard Richter, All
Mighty: A Study of the God Complex in Western Man (Alameda: Hunter House,
1984); Arno Gruen, The Betrayal of the Self (New York: Grove Press, 1988).
114 Chapter Five
resolution that has integrated and worked through that violence.18 The
most important step in the process of removing repressions and
remembering what was repressed is the analyst’s construction of the
patient’s past, which should lead to:
“the patient’s recall; but it does not always take us that far. Often enough it
fails to lead the patient to recall what has been repressed. In lieu of that,
through the correct conduct of the analysis, we succeed in firmly
convincing him of the truth of the construction, and therapeutically this
achieves the same result as regaining a memory.”19
In other words, the narratives that are created in psychoanalysis construct

the integration of repressed memories, just as classical storytelling
constructs closure by integrating violence into its plot. Both fictional film
and “the talking cure” are ultimately narrative coping techniques.
SOURCE CODE and the Classical Paradigm

After these explorations into theoretical territory, we can now return to
have a closer look at SOURCE CODE’s structure and its relation to the
classical heritage. The film’s complex temporal structure and lack of spatial
continuity obscure the functional adherence of its overall structure to the
classical model.20 Despite its digression from chronological order, the basic
18
“It is well known that the object of analytical work is to bring the patient to the
point of removing the repressions – in the widest sense of the term – of his early
development, to replace them with reactions more in keeping with a state of
psychological maturity. To do this he has to recall certain experiences and the
emotional impulses they gave rise to, which he has now forgotten. We know that
his present symptoms and inhibitions are the result of such repressions; in other
words, they operate as surrogates for what he has forgotten.” (Sigmund Freud,
“Constructions in the Analysis” (1937), in: Adam Phillips (ed.), The Penguin
Freud Reader (London: Penguin Books, 2006), 77-78.
19
Freud, Construction in the Analysis, 85. Consequently, psychoanalysis itself, as
well as psychiatry and psychotherapy have been charged as techniques to remove a
patient's most plying feelings (cp. Gruen, Betrayal). This is also one of the key
arguments of Deleuze and Guattari in their Anti-Oedipus: “But we should stress
the fact that Oedipus creates both the differentiations that it orders and the
undifferentiated with which it threatens us.” (Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus:
Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1983), 78-79.
20
David Bordwell makes a similar point in his blog entry on the movie: “More
than we often admit, today’s trends rely on yesterday’s traditions. Quite stable
narrative lines of the classical model remain intact: the movie demonstrates
that character growth, progression of knowledge and goal-orientation do not
depend on chronological order or spatial coherence. Taking into consideration
only the broad strokes of narrative development, we find a protagonist who,
confronted with a violation of an initial situation (the explosion on the train),21
attempts to contain the violation and set things right. His role in this narrative
is first that of a soldier (that is, of a professional), and second of a man trying
to rescue his love interest. In the course of the narrative development, he—
along with the audience—learns about the diegetic world and its rules. While
such a sweeping summary of many mainstream films would produce similar
results, it nevertheless elucidates whether the classical model remains valid in
our assessment of contemporary films.
The continued importance of the classical paradigm, however, is not
uncontested among film scholars. David Bordwell argues that the
principles of classical filmmaking, such as continuity editing, have not
been discarded, but on the contrary, have been intensified in contemporary
Hollywood movies.22 Others have declared the end of the classical
paradigm altogether and its succession by either the spectacular23 or neo-
baroque (Cubitt). Using the term “post-classical,” Thomas Elsaesser takes
a moderate approach: without negating the changes in contemporary
cinema, he sets out to explain them through their relation to the classical
and concludes that:
“The post-classical does not oppose the classical, but emphatically re-
centers it, precisely by making the marginal genres the dominant ones,
pulling an unusual time structure, a novel sound practice or an expressive
visual style into focus and dead center, without thereby neutralizing their
unsettling aberrance.”24
strategies of plotting, visual narration, and the like are still in play in our movies.”
(Bordwell, “Forking Tracks”).
21
In his essay on Film and System, Stephen Heath used another famous film
explosion to develop his model of the classical narrative: In Orson Welles’ Touch
of Evil (1958), the explosion initiates the narrative development.
22
Cp. Bordwell, “Intensified Continuity: Visual Style in Contemporary American
Film.” Film Quarterly 55 (2002).
23
“[W]e witness a kind of unexpected return to the early ‘cinema of attractions’ –
big blockbusters have to rely more and more on the wild rhythm of spectacular
special effects...”(Slavoj Žižek, The Fright of Real Tears (London: BFI Publishing,
2001), 16.
24
Thomas Elsaesser, “Specularity and Engulfment: Francis Ford Coppola and
Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” in: Neale and Smith (eds.), Contemporary Hollywood
History, 201.
116 Chapter Five
This is not a merely aesthetical choice. The classical model has been
deeply internalized as a transnational lingua franca of film, thus demanding
explanations for every aberration from the model: “When a movie does
innovate in its storytelling, it needs to do so craftily. The more daring your
narrative strategies, the more carefully, even redundantly, you need to map
them out. The game demands clarity through varied repetition.”25 The
rules of classical continuity remain fundamental, especially in a
mainstream cinema economically obliged to tell stories easily accessible to
international audiences.
Let us now have a closer look at the microscopic structures governing
the narrative of SOURCE CODE. As observed, the sequences alternated
between the memory loop and dark capsule. Their cyclical recurrence
defines the first hour of the movie and the contrast between both is clearly
accentuated; while the lighting in the capsule is low-key, lighting and,
congruously, the color palette of the train sequences are much brighter.
Spatial orientation is most challenging in the capsule, where ‘up’ and
‘down’ are never satisfactorily defined; the place and position of the
capsule in the world is likewise never clarified. The train, conversely, is a
mundane, everyday place (even if Colter does not know how he arrived
there).
Each conclusion of a memory loop is accompanied by footage of
unclear origin; blurry pictures of the Cloud Gate in Chicago’s Millennium
Park and Christina Warren's face foreshadow the film’s resolution. With
each repetition, these scenes become clearer and longer. Oscillating
uneasily between flashback and dream, they are at first incoherent bits,
unconnected to the rest of the film. They are tied back into the film only in
the final scenes. These sequences further the disorientation of the viewer
and problematize the reality of Colter’s experience. This problem of what
is real is also implicit in the stark contrast between the train and capsule. If
one is real, the other must be a dream and, indeed, what is more colorful
and vivid to Colter is also less real—the memory loop can be activated by
the pushing of a button. Still, the train sequences are much more inviting
and rewarding (for Colter and the audience) due to the clarity provided by
a defined goal. By the third repetition of the train sequence (at the latest),
Colter has come to terms with the situation on the train and takes
advantage of the little knowledge he has accumulated about that scene.
When Colter learns of his ‘real’ fate, the distinction between the two
previously separated segments breaks down; after Christina tells him of a
25
Bordwell, “Forking Tracks.”
news report about his death in Afghanistan (0:47:07), her face begins to
blur in a way reminiscent of a digital graphics error (See Fig. 5.1).
Fig. 5.1: An error in the Source Code contorts Christina’s face.
While still inside the Source Code, Colter hears Goodwin’s voice
before he fades out. Colter’s search for knowledge is rewarded with a
crack in the Source Code; for the first time, the memory loop is neither
interrupted by the explosion and inescapable fate, but by his action. For a
short moment, both spaces collapse into one. He breaks down and novel
flashback sequence begins. Images of the war in Afghanistan interrupt the
movie’s narrative progression as they surface in Colter’s memory. The
images are uncanny in their resemblance to actual war footage; soldiers
look into a camera, their faces out of focus. Flashes of light against a dark
background show nocturnal air-ground combat (See Fig. 5.2). In other
words, while the narrative itself repeatedly subverts the reality of the
narrative universe, this short sequence offers us a glimpse of the real
beyond the movie.
Mediality, Space and the Real

The 22-second sequence of war footage described above shows that the
real is not only contested on a thematic level, but stands as an incision into
a filmic body that deviates markedly from the mise-en-scène of narrative
cinema. The question introduced by this sequence is that of the mediality
of the real. The very fact that the war footage remains isolated in the film,
118 Chapter Five
Fig. 5.2: A glimpse of the ‘real’ – A short flashback sequence is all we see of the
Afghanistan war.
Fig. 5.3: Colter’s disfigured body is only revealed in the final minutes of the film.
that it is not integrated through repetition, emphasizes the unique

ontological status of that real memory. While it is integrated narratively
through verbal explanation, its representative form is never reconciled
with the rest of the movie. Unlike the later scene in which the ‘real’ of the
war and its effects are exposed through the image of Colter’s destroyed
body, the war footage is never mitigated through the cinematic mise-en-
scène (See Fig. 5.3).
So far, we have differentiated between train and capsule, two separate
realms that are of the most immediate importance to the structural
progression. A third room is associated with, but distinct from the capsule,
namely, the control room from which Colleen Goodwin and Dr. Rutledge
operate and monitor the Source Code machinery, and from which the
notions of what is real and what is imaginary are controlled. This
normative space is connected to the imaginary spaces only through media
transmission; Colleen Goodwin and Colter Stevens communicate through
video. In the first capsule episode, we only become aware of Goodwin and
the existence of a control room through the image of Goodwin on a
monitor within the capsule (0:08:11). In this first sequence, the camera
remains with Colter within the capsule. It is only at a later point (the
second capsule sequence, 0:17:30) that the control room is ‘invaded’ by
the camera. The effect is to establish the room as a third, intermediary
space not quite outside (or real), but which nevertheless controls reality.
The actual, outer ‘real’ is only present in TV footage depicting the
evacuation of Chicago (0:35:55) and arrest of the terrorist (1:04:52).26
The interconnection between the different spaces is most precarious;
train and capsule are only held together through the interference of
explications from the third room and the presence of Colter in both
sequences.27 The capsule can only be seen from within; in the control
room, there is no monitor presenting an image of Colter. All Goodwin sees
are Colter’s vital signs and train of thoughts reproduced on a computer
screen. The short scene revealing the asymmetry of interaction between
the two spaces is interesting in that it is deliberately framed as a revelation.
First, the camera focuses on the small camera used by Goodwin to
communicate with Colter (1:08:00), which we have already seen a number
of times. Only then does the frame move downward to show the ‘true’
means of their interaction. The computer screen and monitor showing his
vital signs do not bear any resemblance to Colter Stevens. Colter is, in
other words, denied the possibility of adequate representation. With
26
The movie is not quite coherent in this regard: first, a long shot taken from a
helicopter shows the terrorist’s van with what seems to be the pilot’s commentary.
Aesthetically, this long shot that precedes the actual news footage exceeds the
possibilities of television footage.
27
This is the most obvious flaw in the narrative construction: why do we
constantly see Colter Stevens when he is in the body of Sean Fentress, and why is
Fentress only seen in mirrors and reflections? Where, we might add, does Fentress
go when Colter hijacks his memory to create an alternate reality?
120 Chapter Five
neither face nor voice, his representation within the real of the control
room is severely limited. This misrepresentation makes it easy for Dr.
Rutledge, the scientist who developed the device, to dismiss Colter’s plea28
for another return into the Source Code. Colter is indeed used as a “test
case” for the Source Code, but the “ruthlessness” David Bordwell ascribes
to Rutledge29 is only possible due to the asymmetry of representation—in
the same way that the notion of a ‘surgical strike’ is meant to alienate
pilots from their targets.
The revelation that (the person) Colter Stevens is merely an imaginary
manifestation of his (mostly free-floating) mind comes at a point in the
film in which the alignment of the audience’s point-of-view with Colter is
already strong. In other words, Colter’s ‘realness’ is irrelevant; the
empathetic alignment to his representation on the screen is strong enough
to deny alienation from even an imaginary character. Moreover, according
to the logic of the film, he is indeed real—only his representations are not.
The memory of the train is revealed to be a “shadow,” his body in the
capsule is merely a manifestation of his mind’s attempt to cope with his
condition, his presence in the control room is limited to words on a
computer screen and yet he becomes more real to Goodwin, a
development that culminates in the revelation of his real body (1:17:18
and 1:22:29). Similarly, the final twist of SOURCE CODE shows how the
imaginary repetition of the train sequence is expanded to become a real,
parallel universe affecting the supposedly real world of the control room.
Colter is able, in his final run through the train sequence, to eradicate the
version of history in which the train bombing takes place at all, enabling
him to live on in the body of Sean Fentress alongside the beautiful
Christina Warren (See Fig. 5.4).
Happy Ending
The twist of SOURCE CODE, of course, is its treatment of the happy
ending. While common sense and the rational logic governing the Source
Code both work against such a happy ending (how can a dead man live
happily ever after?), the movie nevertheless succeeds in this construction.
The complex fluctuation between spaces and different degrees of reality
end as the opposition between capsule, train and control room breaks
down. This breakdown is initiated when Colter becomes aware of his own
28
“I’m asking you to have the decency to let me try [to save the people on the
train]” (1:04:40).
29
Bordwell, “Forking Tracks.”
death and re-experiences his war memories in a flashback. As I have

discussed above, the capsule is revealed to be a manifestation of his
attempts to make sense of his condition. It is thus an inadequate
construction incompatible with reality,30 akin to what Slavoj Žižek calls
the “place between two deaths,” an illustration of the “difference between
real (biological) death and its symbolization, the ‘settling of accounts,’ the
accomplishment of symbolic destiny.”31 Colter Stevens is not allowed to
die properly, his funeral rites left incomplete.32 More specifically, he is
restricted from finding peace with his father.
Fig. 5.4: Christina and Colter stand before the Cloud Gate after he has undone the
explosion.
30
Dr. Rutledge seems slightly amused when Colter asks him where the capsule is:
“A capsule? Is that where you are right now?” (0:32:40).
31
“The place ‘between two deaths,’ a place of sublime beauty as well as terrifying
monsters, is the site of das Ding, of the real-traumatic kernel in the midst of
symbolic order. This place is opened by symbolization/historicization: the process
of historicization implies an empty place, a non-historical kernel around which the
symbolic network is articulated.” All quotations: Slavoj Žižek, The Sublime Object
of Ideology (London: Verso, 1989), 150.
32
“[W]hy do the dead return? The answer offered by Lacan is the same as that
found in popular culture – because they were not properly buried, i.e., because
something went wrong with their obsequies. The return of the dead is a sign of a
disturbance in the symbolic rite, in the process of symbolization, the dead return as
collectors of some unpaid symbolic debt.” Slavoj Žižek, Looking Awry: an
Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press, 1991), 23.
122 Chapter Five
While the Source Code project has denied him immediate death, it also
offers him the opportunity to settle his accounts. The Source Code’s
repetitive narrative sets manageable goals and obstacles that can be
overcome. Colter’s failure in reality is transferred to an imaginary, purely
narrative space that allows for the construction of closure. Here, Colter is
able to ‘rewrite history,’ as it were, to create a symbolic network that
ultimately surpasses the confines of the possible and integrates even his
own death. In this respect, SOURCE CODE embodies and demonstrates
classical narration’s métier, offering a hallucinatory regulation of trauma.
In the movie’s ‘real’ domain, Colter is allowed to die when Goodwin turns
off his life support. In the movie’s imaginary domain, he lives on after
resolving the conflict with his father and fulfilling the goals set in this
realm. Moreover, his success in the imaginary confines of the narrative
seeps back into the realm of the real and changes it.
Post-structuralist theories of trauma have persistently argued that
trauma resists its incorporation into a narrative fabric. Cathy Caruth
maintains that trauma “conveys the impact of its very incomprehensibility.
What returns to haunt the victim is not only the reality of the violent event
but also the reality of the way that its violence has not yet been fully
known.”33 While this pessimistic assessment of the possibilities of
overcoming trauma is not completely discarded in SOURCE CODE—there
remains, after all, the impressive representative exclusion of the real
experience of war—the movie offers a more optimistic perspective on
resilience, achieved through giving oneself over to (in certain cases,
hallucinatory) narration. It does so by utilizing a key symptom of PTSD—
the repetition compulsion—as a narrative device that ultimately allows
undoing the deadlock of traumatic repetition and retraumatization. The
repetitions are reframed as rooms in which consequential action is
rendered possible. SOURCE CODE is only able to succeed in its movement
towards closure by embracing and foregrounding the model of classical
33
Cathy Caruth, Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History
(Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP, 1996), 6. Others have argued that the “closure
model” still remains viable: “Although the idea that traumatic experience can be
expressed effectively in narrative is unacceptable among many trauma and
narrative theorists, equally important theorists suggest a need for a reconsideration
of that position. For example, studies of the cognitive, physiological,
psychological, and behavioral implications of expressive writing corroborate what
readers of literature have long suspected: writers often turn intuitively to writing as
a way of confronting and surviving trauma suffered in their own lives” (Jane
Robinett, “The Narrative Shape of Traumatic Experience,” in: Literature and
Medicine 26 (2007), 291).
film as a willful construction or symbolization that can contain the

trauma—or otherwise excrete it in the form of an ‘other’ representative
dimension altogether.
This leads us, finally, to a more abstract assessment of what I call the,
‘double murder’ committed in SOURCE CODE: the death of Colter Stevens
through symbolization and the figurative death, or exclusion, of the reality
of his suffering and death through this successful symbolization.34
Moreover, the exclusion of his ‘real’ fate also coincides with the rejection
of any discussion or representation of the war in Afghanistan. In this case,
the focus on the traumatized individual leads to a blindness of the
historical circumstances that generated the trauma in the first place.
Conclusion
As argued throughout this essay, SOURCE CODE assertively utilizes the
model of classical narration to tell its highly complex story of death and
resurrection. Incapable of remembering his death in Afghanistan, the main
protagonist finds himself transferred into a generic narration in which his
‘real’ death finds substitutions via repetitions of a different death. In the
realm of this narrative, his actual death can be acknowledged and
symbolically integrated. SOURCE CODE foregrounds the capacity of
narration—and specifically that of fiction—to facilitate such integration. It
comes, however, at a price: in this process, the real trauma of war is
eradicated, unreconciled by the 22-second-fragment of war footage. The
success of fictional closure can only be hallucinatory and is ultimately
fulfilled through escape from reality.
The main reason for this is the movie’s focus on its protagonist’s
subjectivity—it is almost impossible to distinguish between the
fabrications of the protagonist and the reality of the diegetic universe. In
this regard, the protagonists of SOURCE CODE, but also of RESIDENT EVIL
(USA, 2002, Anderson) and SHUTTER ISLAND (USA, 2010, Scorsese), can
be accurately described as paranoiacs; their amnesia has separated them
34
“It is commonplace to state that symbolization as such equates to symbolic
murder: when we speak about a thing, we suspend, place in parentheses, its reality.
It is precisely for this reason that the funeral rite exemplifies symbolization at its
purest: through it, the dead are inscribed in the text of symbolic tradition, they are
assured that, in spite of their death, they will “continue to live” in the memory of
the community. The “return of the living dead” is, on the other hand, the reverse of
the proper funeral rite. While the latter implies a certain reconciliation, an
acceptance of loss, the return of the dead signifies that they cannot find their
proper place in the text of tradition.” Slavoj Žižek, Looking Awry, 23.
124 Chapter Five
not only from their former selves, but from the ‘real’ of their worlds. Any
connection they attempt to construct remains tinged by this potentially
hallucinatory subjectivity.
CHAPTER SIX
TRAUMATIZED HEROES:
WAR AND DISTRACTION
KERSTIN STUTTERHEIM
Throughout history people have been traumatized by war. This trauma

is not the exclusive domain of the obvious victim but also makes its mark
on the lives of those considered to be heroes. Movies, with their poetic
reflection of reality, give us insight into the ultimate effects of war-like
distraction. This enables us—the audience—to view heroic figures in ways
that can transcend one-dimensional heroic perspectives.
In this essay, two different poetic movies will be discussed, each
focusing on traumatized war heroes. The protagonists of both epic stories
are archaic figures represented as individual characters. The cinematic
representation of these two individuals will be the main focus of this text.
Therefore, aspects of the explicit story and of the implicit dramaturgy will
be extracted and explored. Thus, the essay will analyze and discuss how
aspects of film language can be used to tell a touching story that attracts
the audience.
For a better understanding of the following analysis, a short definition
of dramaturgy should be given here: dramaturgy is a branch of aesthetics.1
It is a practice-based, as well as practice-related discipline following a
long tradition in Europe. Dramaturgy is a rule, schemata or recipe, but also
a tool to create a well-built screenplay and for the dialectical analysis of a
narrative-performative work. One might say that dramaturgy is the
dialectics of performative storytelling. It includes the explicit level of
storytelling, what is well known and often discussed or explained, and
means an interaction of structure, plot construction, narration, character
design, and rhythm. Additionally, dramaturgy refers to the less-known
1
Kerstin Stutterheim and Silke Kaiser, Handbuch der Filmdramaturgie (Frankfurt
am Main: Peter Lang, 2te erg. Auflage, 2011).
126 Chapter Six
implicit level that includes the use of cultural knowledge, art history,
Zeitgeist, and references by the artists to their own work and famous
works of others.
Watching post-modern movies2 (like SHUTTER ISLAND, USA, 2010),
the implicit level of dramaturgy can provide a link to the history of film.
Since the advent of the DVD, many directors began to refer to well-known
films by utilizing scenery, adapting situations, ideas, motifs, and quoting
from famous dialogues. For example, Spike Lee used DOG DAY
AFTERNOON (USA, 1975, Lumet) as a blueprint for INSIDE MAN (USA
2006), additionally referring to SERPICO (USA, 1973, Lumet) and other
movies. In the same vein, Martin Scorsese’s SHUTTER ISLAND refers to
DAS CABINET DES DR. CALIGARI (Germany, 1920, Wiene), SHOCK
CORRIDOR (USA, 1963, Fuller), and TITTICUT FOLLIES (USA, 1967,
Wiseman), to name only a few. Dramaturgy can also explore models of
storytelling. All elements of film language are involved here: dialogue,
cinematography, set design, montage, sound, and rhythm. With knowledge
of classical to modern dramaturgy, it is possible to discuss all kinds of
modern contemporary film productions. The knowledge of aesthetics and
dramaturgy gives one an opportunity to analyze a movie in a more detailed
and specific manner.
My first example is IVAN’S CHILDHOOD by Andrej Tarkovsky (USSR,
1962). It is the story of a young boy of about twelve years, whose mother
was shot dead in front of him. The narrative of this traumatic event is told
through flashbacks, embedded in a chronological, epic story, taking place
during the final months of World War II. Due to the death of his mother
and the occupation of his country by the Germans, Ivan is acting as a spy
for a Soviet army division. In this role, he is tasked with swimming across
the river to collect intelligence on the Germans, pretending to be an
innocent child. Back at the headquarters, he is able to report to his Soviet
friends the number and location of the German soldiers, their armament,
and other relevant information. Tarkovsky invented for Ivan a special
memory system, visual and cinematic, which enables its metaphoric use by
the director in a sense of “open form” dramaturgy.3 Despite his young age,
the character Ivan is depicted as driven by his trauma. On another level,
some of the officers at the headquarters become father figures of different
kinds to him.
2
Kerstin Stutterheim and Christine Lang, Come and Play with us – Ästhetik und
Dramaturgie des Kinos der Postmoderne (Marburg: Schüren, 2013)
3
See Volker Klotz, Offene und geschlossene Form des Dramas (München: Karl
Hanser, 10. Auflage, 1980, c1964), 104-106; Stutterheim/Kaiser, 194-204.
Traumatized Heroes: War and Distraction 127
They respect him for his bravery, for his dangerous task entails great
risk. A new young officer who was at first skeptical about Ivan becomes a
friend as well. In the end, when the Soviet Army has successfully liberated
Berlin, the young officer is the only member of this fatherly group
remaining alive. He then discovers that the Germans have captured Ivan
and murdered him. Hence this young officer is obliged to fulfill the task
Ivan and the other father figures started. In addition to this, it is his task to
remember the events and symbolically preserve the memory of all who
lost their lives during the war.
Tarkovsky was interested in the cinematic potential of the novel by
Bogomolov—on which his film is based—as the story enabled him to
show the monstrosity of war. Tarkovsky said of the film:
It opened up possibilities for recreating in a new way the true atmosphere

of war, with its hyper-tense nervous concentration, invisible on the surface
of events but making itself felt like a rumbling beneath the ground. A third
thing moved me to the bottom of my heart: the personality of the young
boy. He immediately struck me as a character that had been destroyed,
shifted off its axis by the war. Something incalculable, indeed, all the
attributes of childhood, had gone irretrievably out of his life. And the thing
he had acquired, like an evil gift from the war, in place of what had been
his own, was concentrated and heightened within him.4
The other example I wish to examine is Martin Scorsese’s SHUTTER

ISLAND. The protagonist, Teddy/Andrew, also fought during World War
II—as a member of a division that liberated the German concentration
camp, Dachau—and represents a traumatized person. After the war, he
became a US Marshal, married and had three children. His wife also
suffering from depression, Teddy/Andrew fought against his own
nightmares with the help of alcohol and was unable to help her. They
moved from New York to a house somewhere in the countryside, a
seemingly peaceful place near a lake. One day, he returns home to
discover his wife has drowned their three children; in response, he shoots
her. With the character’s resulting post-traumatic stress disorder leading
him into insanity, he becomes the most dangerous and violent patient of a
special clinic-prison on an island near Boston. To cure him, the doctors
initiate a role-playing game, which is the starting point and first narrative
level of the film.
4
Andrey Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time: Reflections on the Cinema. The Great
Russian Filmmaker Discusses His Art (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press,
2003), 17.
128 Chapter Six
This genre-related level operates along the lines of a thriller, with the
main character acting as a detective (the person he had been before the
second traumatizing event, that is, the death of his children and his
reaction to it). As director, Martin Scorsese5 used the aesthetics of an open
form and post-modern cinema6 or “stylish style” cinema, as David
Bordwell has put it.7 Using the visual level for aspects of implicit
dramaturgy, Scorsese makes clear references to IVAN’S CHILDHOOD,
which will be discussed later in this article. As we shall see, the audience
can find numerous correlations as a kind of correspondence between these
two movies.
Both directors sought to show the effects of war and trauma on human
beings. The main characters of both movies are broken heroes on the
explicit level, characterized as individuals who struggle. They are depicted
as heroes of World War II, though each fought in a different way. Ivan and
Teddy/Andrew have been traumatized by their specific personal
experiences, in both cases unexpected and unforgettable.
Nevertheless, these are archaic situations, not only experienced by
these two persons; these situations are embodied in these two characters
and developed in very specific poetic film aesthetics. The characters’ fate
enables the movies to follow an open form or poetic structure. Thus, a
director can tell the story on two red threads, one the so-called “private
thread,” told through the story of an exceptional character given an
extraordinary fate. He is the personal embodiment of war experiences. In
addition we have on the ground the so-called “universal thread,” the
theme. This latter thread is given with implicit dramaturgy and inscribed in
the metaphoric activation of space and set design, editing, subtext of
dialogues, and references to religion or art history iconography. For
Tarkovsky, the power is the tragic motive,8 the intensely dramatic quality,
given by “a hyper-tense nervous concentration, invisible on the surface of
events, but making itself felt like a rumbling beneath the ground.”9
The characters of Ivan and Teddy/Andrew are “…outwardly static, but
inwardly charged with an overriding passion.”10 As Tarkovsky also wrote,
passions reach the highest possible pitch, and manifest themselves more
vividly and convincingly in a non-developing character with a constant
5
Screenplay by Laeta Kalogridis based on a novel by David Lehane.
6
Stutterheim and Lang, 2013.
7
David Bordwell, The Way Hollywood Tells It: Story and Style in modern Movies
(Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2006), 115.
8
Tarkovsky, Sculpting, 16.
9
10
Ibid.
state of tension, rather than in a gradual state of change. Characters, which

are revealed in the gradual process of developing through classical
dramaturgy of conflict and clashes of principles, usually lack the archaic
element Tarkovsky wants to emphasize.11
With a story based on this complex interaction between narrative and
aesthetic levels, both directors gave their movies aesthetic intensity. Their
intention was to create an idea of truth endorsed by life, rather than an
illusion mirroring reality. Thus, the aesthetic design—the visual
dramaturgy of these movies—gives the audience an idea of the frightening
experience of war and violence. These aesthetic factors cause affects and
feelings by a dramaturgically perfect narrated film, using all opportunities
given through film language and visuality.
How is the traumatizing war experience transformed in films like
IVAN’S CHILDHOOD and SHUTTER ISLAND? What does this mean for the
main character, the hero, and the cinematic performance? As already
mentioned, the central character in Tarkovsky’s movie is the boy, Ivan.
The young boy is acting as a guerrilla-scout for the Soviet army with the
task of investigating the German frontlines for the headquarters. He is
driven by a trauma that gives him a sense of mission as well as the passion
and strength to spy for his new fathers in the Soviet army.
At the beginning of the movie, we are shown a sequence of a happy
child rejoicing in nature, which “effectively evokes an idyllic pre-war
childhood and also leads directly into a dream-like depiction of the
wartime landscape.”12 At the end of the sequence, his mother is shot dead
in front of him on a beautiful summer day—this is his trauma. This
specific situation not only shatters the young child, it also evokes our
emotions. It is a poetic representation of a universal theme—the shock of
seeing a beloved mother killed in front of her child on a warm summer’s
day, the mother lost forever. There is no visible enemy, no fighting nearby,
no signs of war; it is the nightmare that becomes reality.
Ivan’s individual fate is a primal, as well as universal fear. The viewer
as witness to Tarkovsky’s film feels the intensity of Ivan’s shock. Trauma
as such is based on a real event, manifested in excessive pressure on the
mind and soul of the individual. The person goes through an extreme
situation for which he or she is unprepared, leading to the feeling of
collapsing into a deep and dark hollow. The trauma is unforgettable. The
memory of the situation that caused the trauma can be deeply buried in a
dark corner of the mind, but it will be there forever. One can learn to deal
11
Ibid.
12
Ian Christie, "Ivanovo Detstvo," Monthly Film Bulletin (July, 1988), 215–216.
130 Chapter Six
with it, to encapsulate it, but it is engraved in the body’s memory. In

addition to having undergone an extreme trauma, Ivan is surrounded by a
world at war, a distracted landscape and visual translation of his emotional
status.
Neuropsychological research contends that pictures of a traumatic
event are unchanging. Tarkovsky shows this traumatic situation to us, the
audience, as flashbacks in dream sequences at the end of each of the first
four acts. This gives the movie its theme, main character, backstory,
motivation, and rhythm.
This idea of a constant picture of horror is the nucleus of Ivan’s dream
images of his mother’s violent death. Though this traumatic remembrance
is presented in every sequence from slightly different angles, all scenes
culminate in the same fatal result. Each time Ivan is afflicted by this
memory, he wakes up and thus begins a new task to fight the murderer, as
well as earn the respect of his adoptive father figures.
As Tarkovsky wrote in Sculpting in Time Bogomolov’s Ivan for three
main reasons attracted him. First, suspense in the novel is based on
aesthetic quality and emotion, not on the question of how the hero will
reach his goal. Second, with the blueprint of tragedy, it is most likely that
Ivan will fail and die. Typically in tragedy there is lingering hope, but at
the same time, fate is almost inescapable. Third, the character of Ivan is at
the same time a hero and a victim of destiny. The audience is shown no
actual attack against Ivan, which allows Tarkovsky to perform a more
poetic viewpoint, a complex picture of the atmosphere of war. For him, the
logic of the poetic mode, the open form, is closer to actual life than the
classical structure. With a poetic catenation, a movie can cause more
intense emotionality by having active audience participation. The
cinematic narration encourages associations in the minds of the audience.
The poetic mode enables Tarkovsky to bring complexity and truth
together. A more fragmented narration of a film using an open dramatic
structure demands an active (thinking) audience that, conversely,
experiences a specific relationship to reality by watching the movie.13
To achieve this complexity, Tarkovsky works with two levels of
narration: first, the level of dreams and fear; and second, the war experience.
As mentioned earlier, an interaction of these two levels of narration,
these two threads of narration provides, in terms of dramaturgy, a different
way of performing a conflict. Tarkovsky and Scorsese both utilize a
dramaturgical structure apart from the hero-driven, classical Hollywood
form, but their way of storytelling is neither unusual nor novel. The
13
Tarkovsky, Sculpting, 16-21; Stutterheim/Kaiser, Handbuch, 194 f.
tradition of narrative-performative work is not only based on the

Aristotelian tragedy of myth, which is the initial text for the traditional,
closed-form of storytelling—the so-called ‘Hollywood structure.’
Furthermore, Aristotle’s Poetics refers to three additional, though
structurally and aesthetically distinct versions of tragedy: the tragedy of
pathos, the tragedy of character and ḗthos, and the tragedy of diánonia.14
These three forms, which serve to focus modes of thinking and
communicate variations of tragedy and myth, have had the same important
use and influence from the theatre of Hellenism through the whole history
of European theatre and performative arts.
The tragedy of character and ḗthos lends itself to epic storytelling,
which as Hegel wrote, is ideal for situations of war and life during or
influenced by the experience of war. Epic storytelling is also the best form
for dealing with natural disasters and other catastrophes.15 The dramaturgy
for an epic work is different from the myth-related tragedy of a hero who
is confronted with a personal enemy out of private, personal or biographical
circumstances. The conflict in an epic work is based on a historical
situation, geographical circumstances, or factors such as societal or
political conflicts. The stories told in Tarkovsky’s and Scorsese’s films are
based on the main characters’ war experiences. Thus, epic storytelling is
the basic dramaturgical layer for both movies. Visuality, cinematography
and montage give the movie a poetic character. The visuals used by
Tarkovsky are iconographic and very often based on the Russian-
Orthodox Church, while Scorsese utilizes visual memory of art and
cinema history.
Ivan is a ‘midpoint character’—the central figure in an epic or poetic
narration—not a classical hero, even though the movie is based on aspects
of a classical tragedy. A midpoint character is not asked to fight a personal
battle or accomplish a private task, the main dramaturgical aspect in
closed-form narrations. No desire or goal is needed, as based in desire and
goals; a victim of historic events, one’s living conditions are changed in a
way that compels a reaction. Thus, he or she can be seen as a symbolic or
archetypical character forced into action at the center of a historic event or
catastrophe. Bertolt Brecht introduced the concept of a midpoint character
by modifying traditions in European theatre. His theory became a staple
for modern playwrights.
14
Aristoteles, Poetik, transl. Arbogast Schmitt (Berlin: Akad.-Verl., 2009), 25.
15
G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik, Band 3: Die Poesie, (Stuttgart:
Reclam, 2003), 134.
132 Chapter Six
To make the story more metaphoric and not reduced to a single person
and his or her private life, Tarkovsky chose the poetical mode of a film
form with an epic structure. Typical of poetic and epic cinema is a main
character, who is not, due to his own actions, responsible for the events
going on around him. He is part of a group facing a shared threat. Hence,
his individual fate, not based on personal fault, is symbolic of the
historical situation. He is the center of an ensemble of characters with
similar dramatic power. In poetic cinema and in epic stories, landscape
and space always bear metaphoric meaning. Often an epos goes along with
the concept of tragedy. Thus, with IVAN'S CHILDHOOD, the death of the
main character is foreseeable and unavoidable; it is “the fate of the hero,
which we follow right up to his death.”16 The end of a tragedy generally
restores hope to the community and broader society to which the main
character belongs. The movie tells Ivan's story embedded in a picture of a
group of different people experiencing the same historical event.
A war-related narrative can be shown and told through key fragments
from the life of the central figure—the midpoint character—and in
particular, the interaction of this figure’s conflict with the story arc. In this
case, we are shown the fate of Ivan and the fear of Teddy/Andrew. This is
how we recognize the protagonist in an epic movie. The conflict between a
central figure, the protagonist—like Ivan or Teddy/Andrew—and their
adjacencies can be rendered visually as an aesthetic conflict. In epic and
poetic movies, the antagonist is the situation in time and society, not a
personal enemy. To make this specific kind of relationship visual, space
and environment are used as metaphors too.
According to Sergeij Eisenstein, an aesthetic conflict can be developed
through the designing and sequencing of visual fragments. There can be a
conflict between montage fragments, as well as between the shots. This
approach echoes the thoughts of Béla Balász about the importance of a
shot and the relationship between shots in film.17 Eisenstein lists various
forms of aesthetic conflict:
1. Graphic conflict;
2. Conflict of planes;
3. Conflict of volumes;
4. Spatial conflict;
5. Light conflict;
6. Tempo conflict;
16
17
Béla Balázs, Der Geist des Films (c1929) (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2001),
42.
7. Conflict between matter and viewpoint (achieved by spatial distortion

through camera angle);
8. Conflict between matter and its spatial nature (achieved by optical
distortion by the lens);
9. Conflict between an event and its temporal nature (achieved by slow-
motion and stop-motion); and finally,
10. Conflict between the whole optical complex and a quite different
sphere.18
This final concept of an aesthetic conflict is of course well utilized by

Tarkovsky in IVAN’S CHILDHOOD, as well as by Scorsese in SHUTTER
ISLAND. Tarkovsky often does this by arranging actors within a particular
space, i.e. landscape or environment. At the start of the film, Ivan is
depicted as almost hovering while playing in a summery landscape flush
with butterflies and sunbeams. Tarkovsky often has a bright point of
light—the sky above Ivan's head—juxtaposed with a deep, dark area (see
Fig. 6.2). Scorsese often makes use of over-exposed or artificial colors to
create a sense that the action shown is cinema, not reality; he wants to
ensure the audience remembers they are watching a movie. Sometimes
Scorsese juxtaposes different kinds of space within a picture or
environment. In the example below (see Fig. 6.1), we have a character (the
wife) looking out from an apartment window in New York City, yet her
view is that of someplace rural by a lake. For Scorsese, the conflict of
space in relation to the window and view is insufficient; the woman’s back
is also burning.
To visualize the atmosphere of life during the war, Tarkovsky uses
time-breaks, negative material in the sequences of Ivan remembering life
with his sister before war began. A flying or dancing camera incorporates
other types of aesthetic conflict Eisenstein has already defined. The
conflict in IVAN’S CHILDHOOD is transformed in the visual contrast based
on the basic conflict structure between the dreamland of a lost childhood
and the destruction and disaster of war.
18
Sergeij Eisenstein, “The Dramaturgy of Film Form” (1923), transl. Jay Leyda,
Film Form. Essays in Film Theory, (London: Dobson 1949).
134 Chapter Six
Fig. 6.1: Conflict in time and space
Fig. 6.2: Poetic visuality and aesthetic conflict in IVAN'S CHILDHOOD.
Experiencing the horror of the war, Ivan’s trauma and fear culminates
in a sequence at the end of the third act, when Ivan is alone in the Russian
headquarters, role-playing a war scenario to overcome his fear. His ‘play’
turns into a frightful fantasy that builds until he collapses. The fear and the
dream sequence are, from a dramaturgical point-of-view, not only a
hallucination, but also a foreboding, thus an intelligent use of the
dramaturgical device of a ‘double-take’ to prepare the viewer for the final
sequence. The catharsis of the action connects these sequences despite the
gap in time and place. Ivan fears his own death and in his horror, he sees
visual and iconographic elements of being murdered in the near future.
This arc leads us, the audience, from his fear to his death, and we conclude
that both were probable and even unavoidable. In a clear reflection of what
Ivan saw in his fears, we are shown visual elements of the specific final
sequence situated in Berlin right after the end of the war. Mirroring visual
elements shown in both of these highlighted sequences, we are prepared to
bridge the gap in time and space, to sense the connection between Ivan’s
fear and his death—similar to a hero in a classical tragedy.
In the last sequence of IVAN’S CHILDHOOD, a connection is forged to
Scorsese’s SHUTTER ISLAND via a visual similarity. As already mentioned,
the sequence is situated in war-defeated Berlin. The Soviets have won, but
both officers fatherly to Ivan are dead. Only the young officer, his new
friend, has survived. The young officer’s face is marked with scars, a
reflection of the landscapes we were shown earlier, hence landscapes of
war experiences. In this Berlin-sequence, we see a cathedral-like building
with a high nave, from which symbols of the Nazi regime dangle above
the scenery. Soviet soldiers are collecting the files of the murdered
guerrilla-fighters; one of them appears to be Ivan’s. Flakes of ash are
falling down symbolically, unattached to any clear event. (See Fig. 6.3).
Fig. 6.3: Papers and ashes falling—reference in SHUTTER ISLAND to IVAN’S

CHILDHOOD
In an imagination sequence in SHUTTER ISLAND, Teddy/Andrew's

memory and fear are linked to produce a rather remarkable impression of
what may have happened, recalling aspects of his time at war that he has
tried to forget. We watch Teddy/Andrew as an American soldier liberating
Dachau near Munich. The Kommandantur is bedecked with objects similar
to those used by Tarkovsky in his film—rooms filled with easily identified
Nazi iconography. The US soldiers are collecting files, flipping through
them. Flakes of ash are falling down on the scenery, symbolic, though
again, not based on any clear event. In this way, Andrew’s first imagining
related to his time as soldier is a reference to the final sequence of IVAN'S
CHILDHOOD and contextualizes Teddy/Andrew’s first trauma experienced
136 Chapter Six
as a young man. As part of the liberating Allies, Andrew becomes a war

hero. Nevertheless, he is deeply shocked. Innumerable dead bodies are
strewn about the concentration camp; for them, the Allies have arrived too
late. All of the other prisoners have been found in terrifying conditions.
Furthermore, the American soldiers must encounter the few remaining
German soldiers, who understood the creation of that horror as their duty.
In general, Andrew is fighting like Ivan against Nazi Germany, against
German soldiers, but he is a different hero than Ivan the child—an adult
soldier. After World War II, returning heroes were not treated as wounded
or damaged souls, as PTSD was not yet recognized or understood. The
damaged character Teddy/Andrew therefore self-medicated with alcohol;
heroes do not have traumas, they won the war after all.
After World War II, the atmosphere in the United States was soaked
with fear, suspicion and paranoia. This reality is likewise reflected in the
bestselling novel, Shutter Island, written by David Lehane.19 In an
interview, Lehane said he wrote the book to reflect the paranoia caused by
the trauma of September 11th.20 To put this feeling into an appropriate
story, he was looking for a specific time and character for the present,
something comparable to today, but amidst circumstances more distanced.
Lehane’s translation of these two historical events attracted the interest
of producers Chris Brigham and Bradley J. Fischer, who then asked Laeta
Kalogridis to write the screenplay. Asked to direct the movie, Scorsese
was immediately interested; SHUTTER ISLAND has become his best-selling
movie to date.
In short, the main theme of the movie is Bedeutungsfazit—a type of
vanishing point: that which happens to a man who is forced to deal with an
experience of trauma on his own, when a second, compounding tragedy
leads to a mental and emotional breakdown. In SHUTTER ISLAND,
Teddy/Andrew is confronted with an additional traumatic shock: his wife
has drowned their three children, two boys and a girl, in the lake. By
killing her, his PTSD is transformed into madness.
Madness can be described as a mechanism that is steadfast in its
resolve, unchanging in its dissonance with reality. This leads to the mad
person’s paradox: sticking to a personal conclusion concerning reality, the
mad person is unable to accept or embrace as real a situation or argument
contradicting what she or he believes. The given situation or argument can
19
David Lehane, Shutter Island, (New York: HarperTorch 2004, c2003).
20
David Lehane, Shutter Island. Interview, (Bonus Material, DVD Shutter Island,
Concorde, 2010).
be as obvious as proving the opposite of said assumption—in any case, the

mad person will find a reason to reject this opposing viewpoint.
The mind of Andrew denied what actually happened. Thus, he is split
into the two personalities Teddy and Andrew, fighting against each other
and the prospect that he is trapped in a time-loop situated before the
second trauma. By imagining a better version of the person he was—he
has assumed an anagram of his real name—he transforms himself.
What is universal or symbolic in SHUTTER ISLAND and how is it
transformed into film aesthetics? First of all, it is a postmodern movie,
with Leonardo Di Caprio playing the main character and traumatized hero,
Teddy/Andrew. Postmodern cinema is characterized by combining
elements and styles of so-called high and low culture, ignoring the gap
between them. Additionally, it entails questioning, with the author no
longer performing the role of omnipotent extra-diegetic narrator. Thus,
postmodern movies often have multi-perspective narration. The audience
is invited to think about the situation and to follow different points of
view. In postmodern films, directors play with quotations from art history
and cinematic history, as well as pop-culture references. Therefore, movies
of this kind are full of quotations and allusions. Another important aspect
of post-modern aesthetic is avoidance of the illusion of reality.
Postmodern movies and other works of art are necessarily designed to
signal they are artificial.
Fig. 6.4: Opening sequence
With the very first sequence of SHUTTER ISLAND, the white screen and
slowly appearing form of a ship, in addition to specific music, a clear hint
is given: the director is playing a game with us (See Fig. 6.4). He invites
us to find references and links to other movies and art history, to think
about the movie as cinema and not to expect an illusion of reality or drama
138 Chapter Six
based on an actual event or person. To make sure we understand that we

are watching an artificial reflection of reality, the protagonist is introduced
as a double-faced person, a split personality. The very first portrait of the
protagonist is of his reflected image. According to cinematic tradition, a
person in dialogue with his or her mirror image is in psychological trouble
or worse. Several visual hints are given within the first few minutes of the
film, leading one to conclude that there is something different going on
than in a traditional thriller. The visual level of the narration contains
details and information in addition and contrast to what is conveyed on the
basic level of a thriller. Mark Ruffalo, who plays the doctor introduced as
a Marshal, Teddy/Andrew’s new partner, said in an interview, the biggest
challenge for him was to simultaneously portray a Marshal and doctor
observing his patient.
At the core of the movie’s implicit dramaturgy is war. Also, the story
deals with the resulting difficulty of coping with everyday life, balancing
duty and family. The main aspect attracting the audience is precisely the
relationship between a trauma caused by the experience of war atrocities
and the challenge of finding a way back to one’s everyday life after such
experiences. This is wrapped in a nucleus of American culture and
Hollywood cinema: a man has to fight for his family and protect them
from all evil. To do so, he has to be sane and powerful. To come back as a
war hero and be concurrently unable to act like a man is horrifying. In the
end, this is Andrew’s reason for accepting surgery. Being a monster cursed
with the memory of his loss, he would never again have a family.
So many soldiers have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan—or places
like Somalia, Libya, and other conflict zones—with PTSD. Like young
Ivan, the Teddy/Andrew-character is a symbol of more than a single
former soldier or the combatants of historical conflicts. He is a character
who, having experienced a specific trauma caused by war and male
violence, has become mad as a result.
Interestingly, from a dramaturgical point-of-view, the film also works
as a closed-form, such as a traditional genre thriller, but people who seek a
classical movie with a simplistic story are not generally happy with this
film. For an active audience with a sense of the main theme, implicitly
given, open to all the visual hints and cultural references, this is a great
and entertaining movie. As noted earlier, references to film history, art
history or world literature are a common device in postmodern movies;
inviting the audience to solve a riddle or participate in a game are further
criteria for postmodern cinema. In SHUTTER ISLAND, Scorsese references:
DAS CABINET DES DR. CALIGARI, SHOCK CORRIDOR, and TITTICUT
FOLLIES. In addition to this—as is common for postmodern movies—the
film exposes violence. Violent situations or the results of violence are

superimposed, not hidden. This is typical of postmodern aesthetics,
reinventing a carnivalesque gesture and referring to traditions of the
grotesque. Superimposing violence can also be seen as a parody of
violence, a reaction to a long tradition of avoiding the showing of naked or
wounded bodies or other forms of sexuality; it is a kind of reaction to the
long-hidden parts of life. To provoke the common sense but avoid
censoring, depictions of violence were superimposed or aesthetically
highlighted in a way to make them surreal. For example, a German officer
is shot in the face and shown in a pool of blood searching for his gun. The
audience has to take the point-of-view of Teddy/Andrew as he watches the
dying officer. In another instance, in a special area of the prison to which
the most violent patients are confined, a patient presents his beaten face to
Teddy in order to illustrate the violence he had experienced there. The
camera again aligns with Teddy/Andrew's point-of-view and we too must
look closely upon the beaten prisoner’s face.
In SHUTTER ISLAND, violence is all the more a part of the theme, the
problem rumbling beneath the surface of the story. To cite Hegel again,
war and the experience of war is the ideal theme for an epic story.21 War
and catastrophe give an author the opportunity to show the best as well as
the worst parts of a character, the full spectrum, from bravery and
helpfulness to fear, hate and desperation in a society.22
The model of epic storytelling used by Tarkovsky, entitled ‘poetic
cinema,’ is, like nearly all models of storytelling, different from the myth-
based, hero-driven narrative of Hollywood’s classic style. With the
aesthetic of postmodern cinema, the poetic mode raises film to new
heights, using distinct visual references, including specific colors and
iconic imagery, but most of all, it makes use of clear references to
historical cinema. A fragmented and multi-perspective story can be told on
more than one or two levels. A story is no longer required to be told
chronologically; time can be arranged and rearranged on different levels
and in various directions. Events taking place at different places and at
different points in time can be connected simply because they are linked in
the mind of the character whose point-of-view we are following.
Therefore, in SHUTTER ISLAND, Scorsese is telling the story on
different levels—we have the basic story, structured like a thriller, of two
detectives traveling to an island to investigate an institution for criminally
insane patients. A woman is missing and they have to find her. Teddy is
21
Hegel, Poesie, 134.
22
Hegel, Poesie, 118.
140 Chapter Six
introduced as an experienced detective, accompanied by a new partner

from Seattle. These two men meet for the first time on the boat en route to
the island. Teddy steps onto the deck from the inner rooms of the boat
where prisoners are usually handcuffed for travel. Once on the island, a
group of armed and highly concentrated guards give them a grim
reception. The two marshals are introduced to the director of the
institution. Discussing the question of treatment or permanent
imprisonment, they are hosted by one of the more modern psychiatrists, a
doctor who desires treatment free of violence or shock or brain surgery.
His German opponent prefers lobotomy, a terrible procedure practiced in
the United States from the late 1940s till the mid-1970s that destroys
nerves in the brain of the patient. When first introduced by a Portuguese
doctor, the lobotomy procedure was highly acclaimed and used in
hundreds of thousands cases in the United States to cure many types of
abnormal behavior, from restlessness to epilepsy and alcoholism. But it
was essentially trial-and-error, not based on knowledge of the function of
specific nerves in the brain. Many lobotomized patients were thus
handicapped for the rest of their lives.
While the action progresses on the thriller level, Teddy/Andrew has
imaginings, not flashbacks. He has a memory of his wife, of a warm and
intimate situation they experienced together, but also an imagination, a
picture recalling one of the most horrible days he ever experienced. These
short sequences at first look like flashbacks, but the aesthetic and other
details hint that these are the product of imagination, such as the green
necktie—something he likes to wear while thinking of her—seen in the
first sequence of Teddy and his wife. Another hint is the appearance of the
same gramophone in the scenes with the doctors and in the
Kommandantur, linking the hospital-prison with the concentration camp.
By minute eight, we become clearly informed that he had been an
American soldier during World War II and involved in the liberation of a
concentration camp, but we do not know in the exact events of that
scenario. Given the scope of this essay, I will not go into the details of the
composition in-depth, save only to reference specific colors and elements
that appear in the world of the dissonant flashback-like sequences. We see
a striking example of this in the liberation sequence. Among the dead
bodies in prisoners’ garb at the concentration camp scenery lie a girl and
woman in colored, floral-designed dresses. Though each of the bodies in
the sequence is covered in a thin layer of snow, these clothes are still
visible. The hand of the little girl in the colored dress is reaching out to the
viewer. This early sequence gives a number of artistic hints that cinema
lovers will recognize, including background references to IVAN’S
CHILDHOOD, COME AND SEE (USSR, 1985, Klimov), SAVING PRIVATE

RYAN (USA, 1998, Spielberg) and other movies.
With the information given in the sequence of Anagnorisis and
Peripeti (the moment of awareness and the central turning-point) we
discover that Scorsese also mirrored the universal constellation of IVAN’S
CHILDHOOD. In Tarkovsky’s movie, the mother was killed in front of her
son Ivan. In SHUTTER ISLAND, the situation is mirrored, with the father
suffering the unexpected murder of his daughter. In Russian culture, the
mother is the most important figure of a family; as mentioned earlier, in
American culture—as well Hollywood Cinema—it is the father. So, like the
construction scheme of the main characters in SHUTTER ISLAND, one can see
Teddy/Andrew and his daughter here as an anagram of Ivan and his mother.
The murder of his daughter evokes the second trauma, resulting in
Andrew’s madness and causing him to forge a new personality, Teddy. In
Teddy's imagination, his daughter, Rachel, is associated with the dead in
Dachau. We know this as Teddy places her among the bodies in his
imaginations, not memories.
Using mirroring as a tool for developing a story is not unique to
SHUTTER ISLAND, but is one of the secrets of a skilled screenwriter. Here
the idea of mirroring is combined with the principle of an anagram.
Everyone is given two characters or two different aspects of a character to
fulfill. (See Fig. 6.5)
So as Teddy/Andrew is split, by playing a role game, his doctor is also
split into two characters. Doctor Sheehan plays also a marshal; the
‘missing’ Rachel Solando is actually a nurse with the same first name as
his daughter and an additional anagram character for Teddy/Andrew’s
wife, Dolores Chanal, who murdered their children.
Fig. 6.5: Anagram and dramaturgical construction

142 Chapter Six
The use of the anagram is partially explained within the Peripeti-

sequence at the Lighthouse, wherein the doctors make it clear they have
engaged in an elaborate role-playing game to bring Teddy/Andrew back
into reality. The letters of his name, US Marshal persona Edward (Teddy)
Daniels are shown to be the anagram of his real name, Andrew Laeddis. In
the same way, the anagram of Rachel Solando/Dolores Chanal is revealed.
Particularly interesting here is the hero as the main character in this
story design. With the hero fighting against his own wounded, emotionally
out-of-control side, he is a classical hero. Because he cannot find a
personification of an enemy, of the power who has wounded him, he
becomes his own counterpart. Like Ivan, the character Teddy/Andrew
follows the rules of a classical tragedy, adapted to contemporary
circumstances situated in the 1950s in the United States, as well as to the
archaic model of American dramaturgy. Family comes first—a man has to
work and fight for his family; do not trust the state or its agents; be as
independent as possible; be successful.23
The basic story line deals with the fate of the main character,
Teddy/Andrew. This gives the movie a fundamental adherence to the
classical model of storytelling. The basic plot is the story and fate of
Teddy/Andrew and his family. This is underlined by the motivation of the
main character. The first dialogue between him and the medical director of
the institution provides insight into his morality, his internalized values.
Thus, when he decides to get a lobotomy at the end, his fate is revealed as
foreseeable and consistent with his character. He did not believe in the
new, more intellectual, European-style treatment, but in a hands-on-
approach: physical, medical surgery. He is traumatized in more than one
way or, because of his traumatic situation, his decisions are caught-up in
his old-fashioned, traditional values, his socialization as a “man of
violence,”24 a man who is (was) an agent of power and has to fulfill the
traditional role of a father and husband. That goes along with an old
cultural understanding in United States, the ideal of a man who should be
ready for forceful intervention, to take the law into one's own hand.25 As a
result of all these traditional social rules, Teddy/Andrew becomes the hero
of a tragedy; he is the person who distrusts the new, who is afraid of
change. The situation, related to the tradition of tragedy, is different for the
other characters in the story, given that in the end, there is no new stage
for the community to which Teddy/Andrew belongs; no actual progress is
23
Hans-Dieter Gelfert, Typisch amerikanisch (München: C.H. Beck, 2006, c2002).
24
O-Sound, SHUTTER ISLAND, 00:22.
25
Gelfert, Typisch amerikanisch, 108/109.
ultimately achieved. The changing of habits and practice will be long and
difficult for American society. To stick rigidly to old concepts gives little
hope in this story to either the hero or the other people involved. Movies
like this, using postmodern gestures, do not offer solutions or utopian
ideas. Rather, they reflect on subjective and individual experiences of
contemporary society.26
I believe that both IVAN’S CHILDHOOD and SHUTTER ISLAND are
examples of the extent of the trauma suffered by the characters of heroes
during war. Through their portrayal of the individual experience of trauma
and its consequences, they are made iconographic. This is not so in movies
like BLACK HAWK DOWN (USA, 2001, Scott) and REDACTED (USA, 2007,
De Palma), in which victims are shown as soldiers but with no perspective
on the ramifications of their trauma as individual men or to the society
around them. Both Tarkovsky and Scorsese give us an idea of the extent to
which a trauma experienced during war can thereafter influence the hero.
This can manifest itself as an individual driven by a mission till the very
end of himself. Or it could bring a couple together in a different way,
suffering with the trauma, unable to talk to each other about it, creating an
illusion of happiness and then collapsing in violence and desperation.
Tarkovsky filmed in 1961 in black and white, composing together with
his cinematographer, Vadim Yusov, pictures that concentrate our view and
deal with aesthetic conflict in order to open our eyes and minds, to attract
us, to raise affections and emotions, as well as catalyze intellectual
response.
Martin Scorsese and his cinematographer, Robert Richardson, set
designer, Francesca Lo Schiavo, and the art directors, also dealt with the
concept of aesthetic conflict to evoke in us discomfort, the feeling and
understanding that ‘something is wrong here.’ The use of aesthetic conflict
sharpens attention. In the discussed movies, SHUTTER ISLAND and IVAN'S
CHILDHOOD, it creates an irritation, an atmosphere of a movable and
disconnected reality. With the opportunities afforded by the dramaturgical
tool of poetic or postmodern cinema, aesthetic is not limited to an illusion
of reality. The cinematic reflection of war and destruction in an openly
structured modern or postmodern style creates more emotional power,
evoking deeper emotions in the audience than a classical, closed-form
example drawn from an affirmed reality with a hero fighting toward a
26
Utz Riese and Karl-Heinz Magister, “Postmoderne/postmodern,” in: Karl-Heinz
Barck, Ästhetische Grundbegriffe (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2010), 1-39.
144 Chapter Six
personal goal. As Tarkovsky wrote about poetic cinema, the audience, as

well as he, the director, can receive “authenticity and inner truth.”27
The movies discussed in this essay offer an emotional, philosophical
understanding of a problem. Viewing these films may help us, as
neighbors, loved-ones, families, friends and foreigners to identify the
traumatized heroes, both men and women, in our sphere. Once we are able
to sense these wounded characters, we can begin to develop an
understanding of how their personalities and emotional stability have been
changed by the nightmarish experience of war and the subsequent trauma
they deal with, whether as victors or victims.
27
PART III
MEMORY AND TRAUMA

CHAPTER SEVEN
SHADOWS BETWEEN MEMORY

AND PROPAGANDA:
WAR AND HOLOCAUST TRAUMA
IN DEFA’S ‘THAW’ FILMS
PABLO FONTANA
In the decade between the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party

of the Soviet Union in February 1956 and the Soviet intervention in
Czechoslovakia in August 1968,1 the cinema of the socialist countries of
Eastern Europe was marked by an approximation to the Holocaust2 and
other traumatic experiences of the Second World War with unprecedented
intensity.
The difficulty in approaching the Holocaust under Stalinism was due,
among other reasons, to anti-Semitism during the anti-cosmopolite purges
and the omission of the Jewish identity of the Nazis’ victims in the Soviet
Union. Other traumatic experiences in Eastern Europe could likewise not
be represented to the direct or indirect complicity of the Soviet
government. For example, the 1944 uprising of Warsaw3 was represented
in Polish cinema only after 1957.4 Moreover, under Stalin’s emphasis on
narratives of heroism rather than victimhood, in the Soviet Union,
1
The Six Day War in June 1967 was also important in marking the end of this
process.
2
Hanno Loewy, “Schwarze Ironie der Frühe: Osteuropäische Holocaust-Satiren
und Anti-Tragödien der 1960er Jahre,” in: Claudia Bruns, Asal Darban and Anette
Dietrich (eds.), “Welchen der Steine du hebst,” Filmische Erinnerung an den
Holocaust (Berlin: Bertz+Fisher, 2012), 263.
3
The Polish anti-German uprising of Warsaw in October 1944 (not to be confused
with the Jewish Ghetto Uprising of April 1943).
4
The Warsaw uprising was represented in the film KANAL (Poland, 1957) by
Andrzej Wajda.
Shadows between Memory and Propaganda 147
traumatic experiences of the Second World War—such as the extermination

or return of Soviet POWs —were portrayed in Soviet cinema only in 1959
and could not be extensively approached.5 These changes, produced by de-
Stalinization and the relative liberalization of cultural policies at that time,
known as ‘The Thaw,’ are clearly observable in the cinema of the Soviet
Union—particularly in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. In contrast,
the very short cinematographic ‘Thaw’ of the Deutsche Film-
Aktiengesellschaft (DEFA), the state-owned film studio in the German
Democratic Republic (GDR), is considered to have had practically no
place in the cultural liberalization experienced in the Soviet Union during
that period.
The period of DEFA’s flexibility in cinematographic censorship took
place between the Sixth Congress of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany
(SED) in January 1963 and the Eleventh Plenary of the Central Committee
of the SED in December 1965. This brief period of liberalization that we
will call ‘DEFA’s Thaw’ was not contemporary with the Soviet period,
beginning only when the Soviet Thaw was already coming to an end.6
Taking these observations into consideration raises the question of
whether, like in some of the countries of the ‘Eastern Bloc,’ this relative
liberalization of cultural policies had an impact on the cinematic
representation of traumatic experiences, even allowing the expression of
elements previously forbidden by the SED, especially during Stalinism. To
answer this question and to determine in which ways the flexibility of
those years of censorship influenced the representation of these topics in
the GDR’s cinema, this work will analyze two DEFA movies from this
period about the traumatic experiences suffered by the German society
during the Second World War and the Holocaust.
The films are full-length fiction films shot at the same time and
released in February 1965. In the analysis of these films, a special
5
It was represented in the film FATE OF A MAN (Sudba Cheloveka, Soviet Union,
1959) by Sergey Bondarchuk. A reason for this problem is due to the fact that
many of the Soviet POWs were sent to Gulags when they returned.
6
In fact, the term ‘Thaw’ is usually applied to a period of cultural liberalization in
the Soviet Union after the XX Congress of the Communist Party in February 1956
and is generally considered to end with the dismissal of Khrushchev or, in some
cases, until the Warsaw Pact intervention in Czechoslovakia. In the case of GDR,
some historians refer to a very short period of soft cultural liberation in the DEFA
in 1956 as ‘Thaw,’ because it coincided with the Soviet ‘Thaw,’ which is the
original bearer of the expression. But in this work it refers to the period between
1963 and 1965 because those were the years of the strongest liberation in the
DEFA.
148 Chapter Seven
emphasis will be given to the relation between the construction of national

identity and the representation of trauma due to the particular situation of
the GDR among the countries of the ‘Eastern Bloc,’ as a nation divided
between a socialist and capitalist state. The issue of GDR national identity
and the representation of trauma acquires a major importance in a
particular moment of tension during the Cold War, after the building of the
Berlin Wall and the Cuban missile crisis.
The Adventures of Werner Holt

The first film to be discussed here is THE ADVENTURES OF WERNER
HOLT (Die Abenteuer des Werner Holt), directed by Hans-Joachim Kunert
with the Group of Artistic Work Red Circle (Roter Kreis), released on
February 4, 1965. The film, which is based on the first volume of the
homonymous novel by Dieter Noll, published in 1960, was a great success
in the GDR.7 Like the main character of his book, Noll had served in his
adolescence as an anti-aircraft warfare helper (Flakhelfer) and then in
1944 as a soldier, finally becoming a POW in US Army custody. His
coming-of-age story (Bildungsroman) was compulsory reading in schools
in the GDR and the movie was awarded the Soviet Committee for Peace
award at the Fourth Moscow International Film Festival in 1965. The film
has a structure of raconteur: during one of the last battles of the Second
World War, young soldier Werner Holt recalls diverse episodes, which
had occurred in the last years of his life, particularly those related to his
friendship with his classmate Gilbert Wolzow, who is now his
commandant. Both were supporters of the Nazi regime, but especially
Gilbert, with his fanatic militarism inherited from an aristocratic and
traditional family. During the last battle of the war fought by his unit,
Werner disobeys his old friend’s order to fight till the last man; he rebels
and goes to the rear guard. But on his way Werner discovers that the
Schutzstaffel (SS) are going to execute Gilbert because of his having
captured an SS officer who had deserted the front. Werner returns to help
Gilbert but arrives too late; he takes revenge for Gilbert’s murder, killing
the SS men. Finally he goes unarmed to the Soviet lines.
In the film Werner recalls a series of violent experiences accrued as a
teenager during the war. He remembers how, as a young anti-aircraft
warfare helper, his comrades died in front of him from US Air Force
bombs. He also recalls the execution of partisans and concentration camp
7
Dagmar Schittly, Zwischen Regie und Regime: Die Filmpolitik der SED im
Spiegel der DEFA-Produktionen (Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag, 2002), 121.
prisoners by the SS during his time as a soldier. However, what makes the
strongest impact on him is the relationship between Gilbert and the SS.
The flashbacks focusing on this relationship become shorter as the film
proceeds and increasingly focused on episodes of heightened violence or
at least, the most violent aspects in isolation. These scenes show that
although Werner despises and rejects the excess of violent events in his
life, those episodes accumulate into a trauma related to his friend Gilbert
and the SS, especially with relation to the crimes they perpetuated. At the
end of the movie Werner succeeds in overcoming this trauma by
renouncing his subordination to Gilbert, facing the SS, and abandoning the
Nazi war. This personal overcoming is meant to indicate a ‘post-traumatic’
growth, also known as ‘thriving.’ Werner’s ‘thriving’ is consistent with his
resilience, which is accentuated in most of the violent experiences that he
remembers, with the bombing scene standing out among them. Here we
clearly observe some of the components that characterize resilience:
resistance to destruction, a capacity to protect man’s own integrity under
pressure, and the ability to forge positive vital behavior despite difficult
circumstances.8 We should take the following semantic difference into
account: French authors state that resilience consists of the capacity to
come out unharmed from an adverse experience, learning from it and
improving, while US American authors limit the term to the homeostatic
return of an individual to a previous state. They employ the term ‘thriving’
to refer to the acquisition of benefits or to an improvement after the
traumatic experience.9 This present work makes use of the US American
conceptualization of resilience.
The dramatic ending of the film erupts as a reaction to the constant
harassment of memory through flashbacks. Werner decides to confront his
friend—who is ordering his soldiers to fight till the end—abandons him
and goes towards rear guard. But at this point one last flashback arises
when Werner notices that Gilbert is going to be executed by the SS; the
flashback is about his beloved Gundel, a symbol of anti-fascism, who asks
him to return. Only with the murder of the SS men who had executed
Gilbert can Werner stop the harassment of his violent memories. This is
his personal ‘zero hour,’ not only as soldier that abandons the fight in the
8
Stefan Vanistendael, “Resilienz und Suizid: eine Einführung,” in: Hans-Balz
Peter and Pascal Mösli (eds.), Suizid: Aufgaben und Perspektiven für die Praxis
(Bern: Institut für Sozialethik des SEK, 2003), 33.
9
Joseph M. Carver: “Generalization, Adverse Events, and Development of
Depressive Symptoms,” Journal of Personality 66 (1998), 607-619; Virginia E.
O’Leary, “Strength in the Face of Adversity: Individual and Social Thriving,”
Journal of Social Issues 54–2 (1998), 425-445.
150 Chapter Seven
service of the Third Reich, but also undergoes an anti-fascist turn that
allows him to overcome his trauma and that constitutes his ‘post-
traumatic’ growth.10
Werner develops a sort of trauma that corresponds to the Lacanian
interpretation of the Freudian concept of “afterwardness” (Nachträglichkeit),
described as a retroactive attribution of traumatic meaning to earlier
events.11 According to Jean Laplanche, Freud uses this concept in three
forms: the first two imply a determinist conception that progresses from
the past to the future; the third is a retrospective or hermeneutic
conception.12 The latter is the form interpreted here and applied to
Werner’s trauma. The advantage of such a process in the ideological
construction of a new national identity in the GDR is that through the
retarded character of the trauma and the resulting ‘post-traumatic’ growth,
it is possible to legitimize all those GDR citizens who fought in the
Werhrmacht throughout the war, were witness to crimes, and at its end
acquired an anti-fascist stance.
Among the experiences that Werner recalls throughout the film,
different kinds of memories appear. Some are related to pleasure, mostly
referring to love at the beginning of the story; others are violent. His
father’s narration about the industrial extermination and the deaths in the
gas chambers surfaces in his memory but he is reluctant to accept it. The
memories of what he witnessed: the bombardments, combat and massacres
committed by the SS men are, of course, violent. But the especially
shocking memory for him is when the SS kill his comrade Peter for hitting
an SS man because the latter executed a concentration camp prisoner. An
old friend of Werner, Peter was a musician who had only recently been
recruited. After this last flashback Werner decides to abandon the battle
and Gilbert, who had recently killed a young man from the Hitler Youth
who was running away from battle in panic. Of these two extremely
violent situations—Peter’s death and the murder of a member of the Hitler
Youth by Gilbert—one is in the present and the other recalled in Werner’s
memory. They are connected due to the fact that both depict Germans
killing fellow countrymen, as occurs in the last scene when the SS kill
10
A similar change might be observed in MY ZERO HOUR (Meine Stunde Null)
(GDR, 1969) by Joachim Hasler, as well as STARS (Sterne) (GDR/Bulgaria, 1959)
and MOTHER, I LIVE (Mama ich lebe) (GDR, 1976), both by Konrad Wolf.
11
Jacques Lacan, “The function and field of speech and language in
psychoanalysis,” in: Bruce Fink, Héloïse Fink and Russell Grigg (eds.), Écrits: A
selection (New York: Norton, 2004), 48.
12
Jean Laplanche, Essay on the Otherness (London: Routledge, 2003), 261.
Gilbert. These experiences are the limit of Werner’s capacity to undergo

violent experiences and constitute the breaking point for his attitude.
Among the memories, the massive Royal Air Force incendiary
bombing of Wattenscheid is one of the most extreme situations depicted
and is of particular interest because of the symbolism employed in the
sequence.13 Other scenes in the film are violent too, but they lack symbolic
elements. When the alarm sounds, people run to a basement shelter. One
shot shows the transparent ceiling of a shopping center, which effectively
functions as a screen; there we can see the billboard of an optician with an
eye drawn on it. The scene should be understood as an attempt to visualize
the material base of what the survivors were listening to and suffering. The
use of mediation through symbols, the transparent ceiling and the eye,
expresses the difficulty in depicting what those symbols represent in a
direct form, not just because of their violent content but also because of
their traumatic character. Time and space are distorted symbolically
through the fragments of glass that reflect the flames and the characters,
deforming their image, as well as through the image of a burning clock
with a compass rose. Sound is distorted as well through the image of a
melting record with the word “glory” written on it, and while the
soundtrack also suffers from distortions, the music is the same that Werner
used to enjoy at parties. The experience turns out to be so traumatic that it
disrupts the coordinates of the depicted reality. At the end of the sequence
Werner rescues his lover and a little girl. Once they are safe, an insensitive
doctor informs him that the little girl was already dead and they then lay
her body amongst the other casualties. Werner leaves, the only one
walking among the other survivors, who remain in shock and are unable to
move.
This bombing scene contains plenty of details about the techniques
employed during the incendiary bombardments and could be interpreted
also as anti-NATO propaganda. The film was released on the February 4,
1965, nine days before the twentieth anniversary of the incendiary
bombing of Dresden that was established as a central commemorative
event of Cold War GDR propaganda.14 During that year the book Dresden
13
The symbolisms utilized in this scene are not present in the book when
describing the same events. Dieter Noll, Die Abenteuer des Werner Holt (Berlin:
Aufbau, 2009), 287-292.
14
In the DDR the memory of the victims was wielded against the British and
Americans. Gilad Margalit, “Der Luftangriff auf Dresden: Seine Bedeutung für die
Erinnerungspolitik der DDR und die Herauskristallisierung einer historischen
Kriegserinnerung im Westen,” in: Susanne Düwell and Matthias Schmidt (eds.),
Narrative der Shoa: Repräsentationen der Vergangenheit in Historiographie,
152 Chapter Seven
Hell (Inferno Dresden) by Walter Weidauer was also published in the

GDR. Weidauer uses the memory of the bombing with a clear anti-
American and anti-British intention.15 In this flashback about the bombing,
the shot of the little girl is of special interest because of its similarity with
the most iconic figure of the bombing victims. It alludes to a famous
Republican anti-Francoist poster of 1937 picturing the bombing of
Madrid.16 The broken glass that reflects the flames and fleeing victims
could be interpreted along the same lines, as a fragmented and chaotic
image that resembles the famous painting Guernica by Pablo Picasso
about the bombing by the Condor Legion of that city. Through the
reference to these two art emblems, the bombardment of cities by the
forces of Franco and the German Legion Condor are associated with the
bombings of the British and US air forces.
In another flashback, the first death caused by the bombing is clearly
presented in order to show the victimization of Werner’s friend, a young
anti-aircraft gunner. The death of the young and childish gunner is
characterized as the death of an innocent making use of Christian
symbolism. His body is shown with a full high-angle shot over a white
cross, used for identification from planes. This victimization is exerted in
the film only to the victims of the Nazis and the Western Allies, but not
the victims of the Red Army attacks.
Story of a Murder
The second movie to be discussed here is STORY OF A MURDER
(Chronik eines Mordes) by Joachim Hasler and the Heinrich Greif Group
of Artistic Work, released on February 25, 1965. Hasler had already
Kunst und Politik (Padeborn: Schöning, 2002), 189 – 207. Matthias Neutzner,
“Vom Anklagen zum Erinnern: Die Erzählung vom 13. Februar,” in: Oliver
Reinhard (ed.), Das rote Leuchten: Dresden und der Bombenkrieg (Dresden:
Edition Sächsische Zeitung, 2005), 128-164.
15
B. R. von Benda-Beckmann, A German catastrophe? German historians and the
Allied bombings: 1945-2010 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2010),
109. Weidauer refers to these countries as “the imperialist powers of the NATO...
that are preparing for an atomic war.” Walter Weidauer, Inferno Dresden (Berlin:
Dietz Verlag, 1987), 6.
16
Through the montage, in different shots, the same elements of that famous poster
are revealed: planes in the clouds, the face of a sleeping child, and after the
bombing, his dead body under a blanket shown among other corpses. The name of
the poster is “Madrid, the ‘military’ practice of the rebels. If you will tolerate this,
your children will be next.”
approached the subject of the Holocaust in his 1961 movie, THE DEATH
HAS A FACE (Der Tod hat ein Gesicht) and the topic of Nazi war criminals,
trials, and anti-NATO propaganda using the experimental visual style of
his previous 1963 film entitled, FOG (Nebel). STORY OF A MURDER is a
film adaptation of Leonhard Frank’s 1947 book, The Young Jesus (Die
jünger Jesu), by the Bulgarian script author Angel Wagenstein. According
to Elke Schreiber, this film was not about pamphleteer propaganda against
West Germany, but was rather part of the DEFA long-fiction films of the
early sixties wherein schemes were broken, dramaturgy was released of
pathos, and the characters were more human and differentiated.17
The film structure possesses a large number of flashbacks and
flashbacks within flashbacks, to represent memories that the main
character recalls within another memory. The flashback is used to
represent a memory in which the character remembers another episode in
the past, depicting three distinct narrative time frames. The story begins
when the young German-Jew Ruth Bodenheim kills Zwischenzahl, the
mayor of the city of Würzburg in West Germany. Both her husband,
Doctor Martin, and prosecutor Hoffmann, who takes the case, try to
convince Ruth to escape abroad; she refuses, however, because she has
decided to make her case public in order to expose Zwischenzahl’s
criminal Nazi past. While she is in prison, through the use of flashbacks,
the film shows her father’s execution by the Sturmabteilung (SA), led by
Zwischenzahl, and her forced enslavement and prostitution in a Nazi
brothel. Ruth’s husband cannot understand her sense of justice and tries to
make her forget her past and accept state compensation, while West
German authorities who are in a close relation with former Nazi members
try to declare her mentally insane during the trial.
From the end of the fifties—more precisely from the Ulm (West
Germany) Einsatzgruppen Trial in 1958—Nazi crimes were being
represented in cinema through juridical scenarios. In the case of GDR
fiction cinema one could cite the film, THE PROCESS WAS POSTPONED (Der
Prozess wird vertagt) from 1958, directed by Herbert Ballman and based,
as well, on the story Michael Rückkehr by Leonhard Frank. This film is
about taking justice into one’s own hands, albeit involuntarily in self-
defense. The Eichmann Trial (1961) and the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials
17
Elke Scheiber, “‘Vergesst es nie – Schuld sind sie!’ Zur Auseinanderstzung mit
Völkermord an den Juden in Gegenwartsfilmen der DEFA,” in: Cinematographie
des Holocaust: Die Vergangenheit in der Gegenwart: Konfrontationen mit den
Folien des Holocaust im deutschen Nachkriegsfilm (Frankfurt am Main: Deutsches
Filminstitut, 2001), 40.
154 Chapter Seven
(from December 1963 until August 1965) reinforced this tendency. The
first case served as the beginning of the plot in the movie, NOW AND IN
THE HOUR (Jetzt und in der Stunde meines Todes) by Konrad Petzold, shot
in the GDR and released in 1963. In these films the judges were no longer
the Allies and the trials consisted, at least in West Germany, of the search
for guilt in their own society. Following the words of Hanno Loewy, the
films reconstruct courtroom episodes in which with the presence of the
criminal and victim turn past into present, awakening fantasies, as well as
new and disturbing questions about the morality and political integrity of
the present.18 Nevertheless, as Loewy states, in the GDR there was an
attempt to distance criminals and overcome the past by projecting guilt
onto the capitalist West.19
In STORY OF A MURDER the traumatic experience that the character
suffers is triggered by witnessing her father’s murder by the members of
the SA, her captivity in Auschwitz (which is not depicted in the film) and
her experience as an imprisoned sexual worker in a Nazi brothel. After the
war she is able to slowly recover from the experiences she suffered. The
film shows her gradual return only to functional normality, instead of
maintaining a stable psychological balance during the process.20 But the
silence and the forgetfulness she is exposed to in West Germany regarding
the crimes to which she and her family fell victim generate new disorders
in Ruth’s psychology. The absence of justice transforms this young
woman from a sweet teenager into someone who takes the law into her
own hands and kills in cold blood.
The traumatic aspects of Ruth’s experiences are represented by an
important change in her life. Due to the pain she experienced and the
destruction she witnessed in Germany, Ruth lost any capacity for
expressing joy and, due to having been sexually exploited during the war,
could not have sexual intercourse with her husband.21 In her paintings, we
can see her young brother wearing a Star of David, pointing out the
significance of the Holocaust experience and loss in her life. This painting
is a light cinematographic version of the paintings described in the book
18
Loewy, Schwarze, Ironie der Frühe, 266.
19
Loewy, Schwarze, Ironie der Frühe 282.
20
Georg A. Bonanno, “Loss, Trauma and Human Resilience: Have we underestimated
the Human capacity to thrive after extremely aversive events?” American
Psychologist 59 (2004), 20-28.
21
Trauma might be considered an experience so intense that it overwhelms the
person’s ability to process it. Martin Ehlert-Balzer, “Trauma,” in: Wolfgang
Mertens and Bruno Waldvogl (eds.), Handbuch psychoanalytischer Grundbegriffe
(Berlin: Kohlhammer, 2002), 727.
by Leonhard Frank, in which Ruth depicts the most disturbing images of

the Holocaust that she had witnessed during her captivity in Auschwitz.22
In STORY OF A MURDER flashbacks are also used to express trauma, in
some scenes as a representation of intrusive, compulsive thoughts with a
high frequency of occurrence, in which the memory of the traumatic or
highly distressful episode is recalled. In this way the past finds its place in
Ruth’s life, following the pattern of a traumatic experience and reliving.
The first flashback begins when the prosecutor asks Ruth to forget her past
and she breaks into tears saying she would never be able to forget it. The
flashback here does not return to a violent experience, but rather to a
moment after the war when her husband likewise asks her to forget the
past and accept compensation from the state. In this flashback she and her
brother visit their parents’ graves, triggering a new flashback recalling
violent experiences under Nazism: the fear of the Nazis’ violence towards
Jews and finally the murder of her father, a teacher who refuses to stop
teaching his young Jewish students. The narration subsequently returns to
the intermediate time, and again to the narration’s present. This structure,
consisting of one flashback within another, expresses two related traumatic
experiences. Intended to further propagandistic goals, they attempt to
relate Nazi Germany to West Germany. These experiences are the causes
of Ruth’s double trauma: the violence she faced during the war and the
silence imposed about it by the West German state. Only after this first
memory does the violent past come directly in the form of a flashback of
her experience in the Nazi brothel in Poland and her return to Germany.
It is important to notice that Ruth recalls the memory of her captivity
and her return in wakefulness, which is a typical feature of ‘post-
traumatic’ stress. This scene deserves a detailed description because it
allows for a symptomatic interpretation of the film or an Aesopian
interpretation. Nevertheless the film does not possess the subversive
meanings embedded in the cinema about the War and Holocaust of other
East European countries produced during this period, especially in
Czechoslovakia. The flashback begins with Ruth lying on a sofa, evidently
in poor shape, in a Nazi brothel. On the streets below German troops
retreat from advancing Soviet tanks; in the brothel we see a woman who
dances joyfully, but falls down and cries. One of the captives in the
brothel, who is Russian, kills a German soldier through the window and
breaks into tears; when asked by one of the girls why she is crying on the
verge of returning home, the crying woman answers, “No” in Russian,
goes to the next room and shoots herself. Ruth enters the room and picks
22
Leonhard Frank, Die jünger Jesu (Berlin: Aufbau, 1977), 131-132.
156 Chapter Seven
up the gun. The shot sets a frame that shows, along with the dead woman,
a statue of Psyche and Eros, while the cannons of Soviet tanks pass
through the axis of the sculpture. In the following shot, we can see Ruth
wearing a Red Army jacket; she walks in the opposite direction to the
Soviet soldiers, whose faces are not shown. As in the story of Psyche and
Eros, in which Psyche does not see the face of her lover, here the faces of
the Soviet soldiers are not shown. In the back of the shot we can see baby
trolleys and the boots of marching Soviet soldiers, and we hear the sound
of triumphant Soviet music that we can recognize as diegetic because of
the loudspeakers installed on the streets. The music suffers a time lag from
the exterior shots.
In the attempt to understand this scene we should remember that
during the war, Red Army soldiers not only raped German women but also
Soviet and Polish women, especially the forced workers they found in
Poland.23 This situation led a large number of victims to commit suicide.24
Soviet soldiers knew the women had survived German captivity as
‘German dolls’ and were viewed with contempt for having sold
themselves to the enemy.25 It is possible to consider this scene a symbolic
expression not only of a Jewish trauma, but also of a German trauma
related to war, like the mass rape of women committed by the Red Army,
the displaced and expelled Germans in the East, and the bombings of
German cities.26 Ruth plays the role of a witness to these traumas and the
whole film is precisely about her fight to become a “trial witness.”
The following scene refers to displacement. On her way back from
Poland to Germany Ruth finds a well close to a country house; she goes to
the well to drink some water. A child shouts, “Jew!” and throws a stone at
her. The mother of the boy stops him and asks Ruth to forgive him in
German. Mother and son go away carrying their belongings in a
wheelbarrow, which was typically used by German expellees (Vertriebene).
The scene clearly conveys the dramatic situation of German expellees in
Poland. Following that scene we can see Ruth being transported among
US soldiers in a jeep. We can hear American Patrol by Glenn Miller as
additional diegetic music, interlaced with camera pans of documentary
23
Antony Beevor, Berlin: The Downfall 1945 (London: Viking, 2002), 65, 67, 107-
109. Another source: the unpublished notebooks of Vasily Grossman.
24
Beevor, Berlin, 107.
25
Beevor, Berlin, 109.
26
The German expelled had already been shown in films immediately after war
like FREE LAND (Freies Land, Germany, 1946), by Milo Harbich and THE BRIDGE
(Die Brücke, Germany, 1949), by Artur Pohl, but not in a traumatic way and with a
propagandist objective to contribute to their assistance.
footage of burning and ruined German cities. During one of the

documentary clips the swing music stops, replaced by the sound of metal
being struck, after which we see the shot of an old man hitting a broken
beam as if it was a bell of a church in ruins.27 The images of bombing in
contrast with the sounds of swing music have a propagandistic, anti-
NATO function; the film was released precisely during ceremonies
commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the Dresden bombing.
However, the scene that shows the Soviets, the baby trolleys, and the
diegetic epical music of the amplifier transforms the scene into a stage set
by the Soviets, allowing a critical interpretation of the epic of ‘liberation.’
Trauma, Propaganda and National Identity

The characters of Werner and Ruth do not play the role typically built
by the official statements of the East German ruling party, the SED, which
depicted the GDR as carrying the legacy of the communist resistance and
the Federal Republic as a collaboration of former Nazis with capitalist
businessman. Ruth is a West German Jewish victim of the Holocaust
(neither SS nor a Nazi capitalist or criminal) and Werner is a former
soldier of the German army, who supports the regime (neither an anti-
fascist from the beginning nor a communist of the resistance suffering
from the war). They had both been teenagers at the beginning of the war,
Nazi crimes and Holocaust meant a fast and painful step towards their
adulthood, and their sexual initiations are in one way or another related to
war.28 Alongside his war experiences, Werner experiences sexual
discovery in a close rapport with pleasure. In accordance with the film
title, sex and war are in a way adventures for the young Werner, even
though in the end they turn out to be dangerous. For Ruth, however, sex
represents a violent, traumatic experience and crime. War and sexual
initiation serve here as metaphors for a part of these societies not typically
portrayed in the films of the time and which do not align with DEFA
stereotypes concerning the dominant groups of the two states.29
27
In the book, Ruth returns differently. A bomb destroys part of the brothel and a
Soviet official rescues her nearly naked and takes her to the rear guard. After that, a
Russian doctor drives her to Berlin and from there, an American official drives her
to Frankfurt am Main. Leonhard Frank, Die jünger Jesu, 31.
28
The directors of both films share this generational feature due to the fact that
both were born in Germany in 1929.
29
Detlef Kannapin makes an excellent analysis of THE ADVENTURES OF WERNER
HOLT together with THE BRIDGE (Die Brücke) (FRG, 1959) by Bernhard Wicki,
considering the war as a social foundation experience of both German states.
158 Chapter Seven
Conversely, in these films the persistence and overcoming of trauma

are strongly related to the image constructed in East Germany about the
two German states. The East German defensive strategy of guilt
externalization towards West Germany plays a crucial role in the
construction of the image of the two German states in the GDR.30 Trauma
is not employed here as a defensive externalization from the point-of-view
of a scapegoat, but in the defensive manner of saying, “It wasn’t us, but
they who carried it out.”31 In both cases the use of flashbacks aims to
legitimize the killing of Nazis. In Werner’s story the audience is prepared
for his killing of the SS men at the end of the film and in Ruth’s story it
justifies the murder she perpetrates at the beginning of the film.
THE ADVENTURES OF WERNER HOLT shows not the constructed image
of the West German identity, but of the East German. Werner’s trauma can
only be overcome when he changes political sides and fights against the
fascist Germans. This suggests that political loyalty should take
precedence over national loyalty; it is the psychological and ideological
‘post-traumatic’ growth that constitutes the film’s main topic. The
flashbacks of Werner’s memory began with his disappointment concerning
Gilbert’s decision to continue the battle, thus sacrificing the lives of the
members of his unit. Remembering the beginning of their friendship,
Werner’s flashback ends when he rebels and kills the SS men. The film is
the medium of expression of this tension between the national loyalty to
the regime and moral rebellion against it. In one of the first flashbacks
Gilbert’s moral authority is shown in a heroic manner, as he defends a
Soviet POW who is going to be killed by an SS man; when an SS man
points his gun towards Gilbert, he says in contempt, “Germans who shoot
Germans!” Gilbert’s own moral authority becomes obsolete when he kills
the young-man from the Hitler Youth, an action that produces real shock
in Werner, formally expressed through a close-up of Werner’s distressed
face. Another flashback shows Werner’s friend Gomulka trying to
Detlef Kannapin, Dialektik der Bilder. Der Nationalsozialismus im deutschen

Film: Ein Ost- West- Vergleich (Berlin: Karl Dietz Verlag, 2005), 134-168.
30
The implementation of Holocaust propaganda of the GDR against West
Germany started at the end of the forties. A good example of it is the film, THE
COUNCIL OF THE GODS (Der Rat der Götter, GDR, 1949), by Kurt Maetzig. With
the ‘anti-cosmopolitan’ purges in the USSR, the appropriation of the Holocaust in
anti-West Germany propaganda was less applied, only to start again after the de-
talinization but in a more virulent form in 1958 with the pamphlet documentary, A
DIARY FOR ANNE FRANK (Ein Tagebuch für Anne Frank) by Joachim Hellwig.
31
Aleida Assmann, Der lange Schatten der Vergangenheit: Erinnerungskultur und
Geschichtspolitik (München: C. H. Beck, 2006), 171.
convince him to surrender to the Soviets, to which Werner answers, “I

can’t go with the Russians. I am still German!” In the film the SS lose any
legitimacy not only because of their crimes against partisans and civilians
but also and especially because of the murders of Peter and Gilbert, both
German soldiers. When Werner kills the SS men shooting from a
basement, he overcomes his trauma of Gilbert and Nazism, which is
formally expressed with a low angle shot of Werner coming out of the
dark basement towards the daylight. He then seemingly surrenders to the
Red Army, an action that could be interpreted as his acceptance of the
GDR’s representative orientation in which national identity follows a
‘post-traumatic’ growth into anti-fascism.32 A predecessor of the character
of Werner can be found in the figure of young Helmut from the film,
ROTATION (Rotation) (East Germany, 1949) by Wolfgang Staudte. The
difference is that Helmut did not need to kill his fellow fascist countrymen
to end their ‘post-traumatic’ growth process because the message in those
years was predominantly pacifist and anti-militarist. Despite this, German
soldiers’ overcoming of trauma with ‘post-traumatic’ growth, who in their
‘zero-hour’ became anti-fascist, should be differentiated from the
resistance, psychologically speaking, of communist fighters and political
prisoners. In these films the characters do not show a ‘post-traumatic’
growth—they do not develop trauma at all despite undergoing violent
experiences—because they possess an almost superhuman capacity for
resistance. This is the case of the prisoners in NAKED AMONG WOLVES
(Nackt unter Wölfen) (GDR, 1963) by Frank Beyer and the female
character performed by Hildegard Knef in the famous film, MURDERERS
AMONG US (Die Mörder sind unter uns) (Germany, 1946) by Wolfgang
Staudte, which is the most extreme and non-credible case. This character,
a prisoner of a concentration camp, returns without having suffered any
consequences at all.
Additionally, THE ADVENTURES OF WERNER HOLT presents another
kind of externalization of guilt also used in the Federal Republic. This
externalization transfers to the SS the blame for all the crimes in
32
In the novel, the principal characters fight against and surrender to American
troops, while in the movie, they surrender to the Soviet Army. Showing the Nazis
fighting against the Americans as a negative aspect, this could lead in the Cold War
context to an identification of the Soviets with the Nazis, and to represent
surrendering to the Americans as something positive. This would run counter to
anti-American recruitment during the Cold War. Referring to the post-war period,
in the novel, Werner goes first to his mother’s house in the West-allied occupied
territory but after being disappointed, he settles in the area occupied by the Soviets
along with his father and Gundel.
160 Chapter Seven
concordance with the “clean Wehrmacht myth.” In West Germany this

externalization was contemporary with the creation of the Federal Army
(Bundeswehr) and in the GDR with the creation of the National Popular
Army (NVA, Nationale Volksarmee). This phenomenon is present in
Dieter Noll’s book and could be qualified as the East German version of
the “clean Wehrmacht myth.”33 In addition, the weak anti-war rhetoric and
the way in which some of the combat scenes are depicted, generating more
fascination than rejection, were potentially functional elements for NVA
recruitment.
In STORY OF A MURDER, Ruth seems to overcome her trauma during
the post-war period, but the unexpected appearance of the Nazi criminal as
a mayoral candidate reactivates her memory and halts her healing process.
The structure of flashbacks within flashbacks shows how the amnesia,
foisted upon her by the West German state and society, along with the
absence of justice, deepens her trauma. The authorities arrest Ruth and try
to send her to a mental asylum in order to dismiss her accusations. The
film director’s strategy is to show that in West Germany an attempt to
achieve justice and overcome trauma was understood as pathological. The
guilt of the state of West Germany regarding the impossibility of Ruth
overcoming her trauma is reinforced in comparison with the story of her
younger brother, David. In the flashback showing the tragic death of
Ruth’s father, David is presented as the main witness affected by the
dramatic scene. However, after the war he is sent to Paris in order to
receive a better education than in the ruined Germany. David reappears
years after having completely overcome his trauma, transformed into a
successful pianist; this might aim to show that in France David did not
have to live with former Nazis in the government, injustice or the
imposition of silence.34
The thematic of the Jewish victim prostituted by force is present in
other films of the time, including Gilo Pontecorvo’s KAPÒ (Italy, France,
Yugoslavia, 1960) and Zika Mitrovic’s WITNESS OUT OF HELL (Die
Zeugin aus der Hölle; FRG, Yugoslavia, 1967). The body of the woman
becomes the field of a moral battle where corruption is represented
33
Martin Straub, “Die Abenteuer des Werner Holt oder die Sehnsucht nach dem
gefährlichen Leben,“ in: Annette Leo and Peter Reif-Spirek (eds.), Helden Täter
und Verräter: Studien zum DDR-Antifaschismus (Berlin: Metropol, 1999), 212.
34
This is easily understood in the context of Charles de Gaulle’s France and its
policy of taking distance from the USA and NATO. The message here should be
interpreted as follows: it is possible to overcome the trauma of the Holocaust even
in a capitalist country as France, but impossible in West Germany, where Nazis
remain in government and the state is a full member of NATO.
through the system of terror.35 Some interesting conclusions arise from the
comparison between STORY OF A MURDER and WITNESS OUT OF HELL.
Shooting of the latter started in August 1965, six months after the premiere
of the East German film. In WITNESS OUT OF HELL the prosecutor, also
called Hoffmann, insists that the main character, a young Jewish woman
named Lea, who was also prostituted during her captivity in Auschwitz,
will testify against the Nazi criminal doctor of the camp. As in the other
film, the veracity of her testimony is questioned and the jury seems
uninterested in her story. One difference between these films is that while
Ruth fights to testify, the silence into which she is forced awakens her
trauma and she reacts by killing the Nazi criminal. Lea, on the other hand,
is almost forced to testify; this situation awakens her trauma and leads her
to suicide. The imposition of silence in West Germany portrayed from the
view of the GDR finds contrast in its West German counterpart and
exposes the danger of invoking memories of the traumatic past. Despite
the fact that Ruth is not a communist character she resembles some DEFA
anti-fascist archetypes in her determination to achieve justice, while Lea
succumbs to the pressure of her trauma; unbeholden to a propagandistic
imperative, these filmmakers chose non-epic endings.
In the two films analyzed, THE ADVENTURES OF WERNER HOLT and
STORY OF A MURDER, we observe how trauma and its overcoming are
related to the construction of an image of national identity in West and
East Germany in DEFA films. The GDR is identified with the characters
that can withstand violent experiences of war and the Nazi terror. And
when the overcoming of trauma is coupled with ‘post-traumatic’ growth, it
takes the shape of an ideological shift, pushing the characters to confront
their fellow countrymen and adherents to the National Socialist
Movement, especially the SS. This is clearly not only an expression of
national identity presented by the SED but also a definitive propaganda
operation used to reinforce this national identity. It was part of a political
attempt throughout the period to generate national-political loyalty, which
would override national-ethnic identification in the context of the Cold
War.
West Germany, in contrast, is shown as a place where those traumatized
by their war experiences are unable to overcome their trauma. If they
attempt it, they are to be imprisoned or considered insane. Furthermore,
35
Hanno Loewy, “Schwarze Ironie der Frühe: Osteuropäische Holocaust-Satiren
und Anti-Tragodien der 1960er Jahre,” in: Claudia Bruns, Asal Darban and Anette
Dietrich (eds.), Welchen der Steine du hebst: Filmische Erinnerung an den
Holocaust (Berlin: Bertz + Fischer, 2012), 266.
162 Chapter Seven
West Germany is, in these narrations, a place where Nazis are embedded
in the political power structure and where anti-Semitism is still alive. It is
a place of injustice and without memory. Even the dramatized rapid-
reconstruction allows us a glimpse of that negative side, where traces of a
recent traumatic past are hidden. The analysis of these two films shot
during this short period of flexibility in the cultural policy of the
cinematographic industry shows an interest by their creators to go deeper,
especially through the use of flashbacks,36 into the specific traumas of the
Second World War and the Holocaust, as well as in the subjectivity of
their victims. However, these traumas are politically appropriated, creating
a victimization of the German population under fascism and the West
Allied bombings, and legitimizing violent action, if necessary, against the
Nazis and their ‘heirs’ in the West German state.
36
The flashbacks previously described are an exclusive feature of cinematographic
media since the books, on which films are based, hold a lineal structure.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THOMAS HARLAN’S STORIES OF FATHERS:

ABOUT THE PRECARIOUS RELATIONSHIP
BETWEEN HISTORIOGRAPHY, MEMORY
AND FILM IN WUNDKANAL AND NOTRE NAZI
(1984)
JEANNE BINDERNAGEL
Introduction
Thomas Harlan’s film, WUNDKANAL (1984)1 (“Wound Canal”) is a
film about settling a score. “It is a film about fathers,”2 as Harlan, son of
the influential Nazi propaganda-director Veit Harlan, summarizes.
According to Thomas Harlan, to be his parents’ son was the catastrophe
that determined the course of his life. (Self-)positioned at the mercy of
one’s origin, the particular and exceptional connection of artistic, archival,
and political practice in the cinematic and theatrical works of Thomas
Harlan comprise the basis of the following essay. I will examine the return
and passing-on of guilt and will explore the possibilities for coping with
the past as presented in the film WUNDKANAL and its accompanying
documentary, NOTRE NAZI,3 directed by Robert Kramer.
1
Thomas Harlan, Wundkanal: Hinrichtung in vier Stimmen (FRG and France
1984), DVD: 107 min.
2
Thomas Harlan, Hitler war meine Mitgift: Ein Gespräch mit Jean Pierre Stephan
(Hamburg: Rowohlt, 2011) 67.
3
Notre Nazi (FRG and France 1984), dir.: Robert Kramer (DVD: 116 min.).
164 Chapter Eight
The ‘At Least’ Double Father-Figure

In the multiple entanglements of historical storytelling in Harlan’s
film, the father-son relationship functions as a paradigm understood as the
personal horizon of experience of an entire generation of Germans.4
Harlan’s works, written for stage, screen, and as literary texts, not only
evaluate his complex and often contradictory connections to his father’s
artistic and ideological legacy, but are also autobiographical and
transgenerational, illustrating an emotional linkage between himself and a
past that horrifies him. Harlan’s father is at the same time the point of
reference for his need for hostile distance, as well as the object of
projection for childlike phantasms of reconciliation. Harlan deals with his
father as a monstrously unique figure in a highly artistic form. But he also
trivializes this figure to emphasize its prototypical Nazi perpetrators,
sympathizers and ideologists.
A double image of the father figure is apparent in Harlan’s works,
which may be linked to the Lacanian concept of the “name of the father.”5
On the one hand, the father denotes the actual family background in
German post-war society. The guilt of the parents has to be borne by the
children and must be turned into a narrative of the children’s own
biography and responsibility, which includes the absence of a role model.
On the other hand, the father also partakes in the “symbolic,”6 which—as
an authority to create identity—produces the subject and its self-
experience within the precarious but powerful order. Therefore, the
position of the son becomes a social one through which the past reaches
into the present and demands a way of coping. This coping strategy seems
doomed, however, because it is neither able to accept nor overcome its
basic condition of double heredity.
Harlan’s father figure is coined by the experience of this symbolic
order in language, as well as in the figure’s becoming language itself. In
Thomas Harlan’s last prosaic work, VEIT (2011), the biographic
constellation escalates into an appeal to a father who seems to multiply
into several versions of himself. All such forms of the father’s self reveal
themselves and come into effect in an increasingly independent sphere of
language throughout the text. Thomas Harlan writes in the beginning of
the book in capital letters:
4
Interestingly, the question of the binding nature of this experience is not asked in
the daughter’s case.
5
Jacques Lacan, Ecrits III (Paris: Le Seuil, 1966), 67, 200.
6
Jacques Lacan, Ecrits I (Paris: Le Seuil, 1966), 95.
Thomas Harlan’s Stories of Fathers 165
GELIEBTER, WEIßHAARIGER, SCHNEEBEDECKTER, KOPFLOSER,

VERFEMTER, MIT SEINEN OPFERN SICH VERWECHSELNDER,
SEINER EIGENEN GESCHICHTE ENTRATENER, WUNDERBARER,
UNVERZEIHLICH VON SEINEM SOHN MISSACHTETER, […], DER
ICH DEINEN SEGEN SUCHTE, DEINE VERZEIHUNG, DEINE
NACHSICHT, DEINE ANTWORT AUF MEINE ANKLAGEN, DER
ICH DICH ANKLAGTE, DER ICH DICH ALS HERSTELLER VON
MORDWERKZEUGEN ANKLAGTE, DER ICH MICH DER
UNNACHSICHTIGKEIT ANKLAGE, DASS DU BIST DER DU BIST,
SCHÖNSTER, VON SCHULDBERGEN ÜBERFORDERTER, VON
SCHULDGEBIRGEN UNBEZWINGBARER, IM ABGRUND
WINSELNDER, ZUR BEKENNTNIS UNFÄHIGER, LIEBSTER, […],
TATENLOSER GEWALTMENSCH, TADELLOSER GEWALTTÄTER,
IN DAS NICHTS ZURÜCKGLEITENDER, VERFAHRENER,
ALLERLIEBSTER, DU MEIN VATER, DU NICHT ENDEN
WOLLENDE AUFZÄHLUNG, DU UNGEZÄHLTER, DU
VIELFÄLTIGER, DU STERBENDER, […], DU UNGLÜCKLICHER.7
[Beloved, white-haired, snow-covered, headless, banned, confusing

himself with his victims, escaping from his own history, wonderful,
unforgivably disparaged by his son, […], whose blessing, pardon, leniency,
I sought, whose responses to my accusations, whom I accused, whom I
accused of producing killing tools, whom I accuse myself of my severity,
that you are the one, most beautiful, overtaxed by piles of guilt,
impregnable by piles of guilt, pleading in the abyss, incapable of the
confession of guilt, most loved, [...], […], deedless man of violence,
impeccable perpetrator of violence, gliding back into the void, lost, most
beloved, you my father, you never ending enumeration, you uncounted,
you manifold, you dying, […], you unfortunate…].8
In Veit Harlan simultaneously constructs and loses control of his

symbolically effective but not always lucid father figure. This precarious
construction appears to be an analysis of the mechanisms conducted with
the devices of language, which are also apparent in the images found in
WUNDKANAL. Some of these mechanisms shall be further examined over
the course of my essay.
Searching for ways of dealing with this transgenerational constellation,
Harlan refers to the mediums of film, theatre, as well as the archive. The
latter-most medium, the archive, appears as a place, where the presence of
the past—specifically in reference to Walter Benjamin’s concept of the
7
Thomas Harlan, Veit (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 2011), 11.
8
My translation [JB]
166 Chapter Eight
present being affected by an inseparable past9—materializes. For several

years Harlan collected documents in Polish archives, which led to criminal
charges against more than 2,000 Nazi perpetrators. During several
interviews in the documentary WANDERSPLITTER (2009) (“Wandering
Splinter”),10 Harlan describes the demanding attitude in which the mass of
historical material calls for attention. The possibility of editing imposes
itself upon him. The very existence of these materials implies that
something is required of him. Harlan experiences the historic material and
its object-like aspects in its objective physical presence. This presence
affects him via the provocation of its pure existence. In terms of Sigmund
Freud’s “death drive,”11 the material brings itself repeatedly into play just
before it loses its vividness. The title WANDERSPLITTER becomes
conceptually significant for a physical encounter with this material. It
marks the drive of an alien element, which circulates as a constant threat
inside one’s own body and leads continuously back to the internalized
penetration. This corporeal and systematic constellation is semi-related to
the “gridlock,” which Sigrid Weigel described as a form of trauma.12 It
also shows striking similarities to the phantasms of omnipotence and
impotence assembled through the father figures in Harlan’s work. The
living body and the “undead” historical archive material are alike in status.
In WUNDKANAL, the emphasis on these topics is particularly striking.
The Body of Evidential Value

Although the film’s title, WUNDKANAL, follows the metaphor of a
wandering splinter, it also marks a particular point in Harlan’s larger body
of work. Indeed his film about fathers dares to transpose the real father
figure in Harlan’s life unto his film’s protagonist, Alfred Filbert. The
former SS-Obersturmbannführer was convinced to participate in Harlan’s
project precisely because he admired Veit Harlan. Filbert was sentenced to
lifelong imprisonment due to crimes against humanity during the
9
Walter Benjamin, “Über den Begriff der Geschichte,” in: Theodor W. Adorno and
Max Horkheimer (eds.), Walter Benjamin zum Gedächtnis (Los Angeles: Institute
of Social Research, 1942).
10
Christoph Hübner, WANDERSPLITTER (FRG 2007), DVD: 96 min.
11
Sigmund Freud, “Jenseits des Lustprinzips,” Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse
(1920), insert.
12
Sigrid Weigel, “Télescopage im Unbewußten: Zum Verhältnis von Trauma,
Geschichtsbegriff und Literatur,” in: Elisabeth Bronfen et al. (eds.), Trauma
zwischen Psychoanalyse und kulturellen Deutungsmustern (Köln: Böhlau, 1999),
51.
Nuremberg Trials but was later released due to illness, without having
openly expressed regret for his deeds or shown remorse for them. In
Harlan’s scheme, Filbert expects to play the part of a fictive Dr. Silbert,
who is kidnapped by terrorists because of his expertise in feigned suicides
and forced to confess to the killing of RAF-members in the Stammheim
prison. Following a flashback sequence at the beginning of the film, which
implies the kidnapping, the setting shifts to the hideout of the kidnappers.
It serves equally as the courtroom for the vengeance of Dr. Silbert and his
actor, Filbert. Almost all filmic shots focus on Filbert exclusively, who is
questioned about his actual deeds in several languages while being
confronted with historical instruments of evidence by four off-camera
voices.
Even though the filmic use of costumes and the (ostensibly) historical
documents evokes the conditions in Stammheim, Harlan’s interest in the
violent retribution methods enforced by the contemporary German state is
primarily centered on its continuity with its fascist origins. That is why the
tribunal of Dr. Silbert’s invisible kidnappers also gives a verdict about
Filbert’s personal guilt and serves to reveal this perpetrator’s biography.
This process of searching for an identity and jurisdiction is monitored and
accompanied by a French-Israeli film crew behind the camera. Harlan
establishes a cinematic space in which descendants of Holocaust victims
are exposed to a cinematic event of rewriting the balance of power. The
cinematic design strives to compensate for the omission in the real historic
tribunals and creates a cinematic image in terms of Gertrud Koch,13 that is,
a visual construction of the perpetrators—an allegory—to which the rage
and helplessness of their descendants, as well as of their victims, can be
addressed.
These aspects promote a study of Harlan’s film that employs the
historiographical principles of reenactment between fact and fiction. This
approach emphasizes the film’s redefining historiographical intention, by
which it approaches historical conditions in a repetitive manner. In the
case of WUNDKANAL, the descriptive, remembering element of
reenactment steps behind a desire to influence, by which it attempts to
reveal and thereby adopt artistically the traumatic constellation of the
13
Gertrud Koch, Die Einstellung ist die Einstellung: Zur visuellen Konstruktion
des Judentums (Frankfurt AM: Suhrkamp, 1992). Koch discusses the allegory in
German post-war film concerning the images of “the Jewish.” To borrow the idea
of the ideological historiographical function of an allegory to describe one level of
Harlan’s perpetrator’s images is meant to show their creator’s identification with
the status of a non-perpetrator. This comparison is of course appropriate only to a
certain extent and does not intend to equate the two statuses of images.
168 Chapter Eight
perpetrators lacking regret. Corresponding to this desire to control its

object, Obersturmbannführer Filbert, alias Dr. S., is modeled. The filmic
reconciliation of Filbert’s personal biographical guilt, which is the main
subject of the movie, coincides with the construction of the fictive
character of Dr. S. It feeds its representation of the perpetrator in front of a
tribunal of two filmic spheres. The trick used on Filbert, to let him believe
in the fictive character of his own acting and to be able to approach his
‘real’ past inconspicuously, turns into a principle of construction of the
whole filmic montage. This trick also defines the viewing experience of
the audience; in the majority of the filmic sequences and dialogues, neither
the development of the depicted characters nor the relation between roles
and actors, between scripted scenes and impromptu conversations, can be
clearly determined. The interrogation and discussions, which Filbert/Silbert
leads with the off-screen voices, often make impossible a clear distinction
between the different levels of acting and actions depicted in the film. The
prototype of the perpetrator (or of the father), which in the tribunal
situation is needed to come to a legal and fair evaluation, never loses his
escalating, and necessarily fictionalizing, facets. Thereby, it becomes clear
that these facets are responsible for Filbert’s transformation into this
prototype (of a person). There is no basic scene from which the biography
or the deeds of the perpetrator (psycho)logically develop. There is only the
deferred action of interpersonal confrontation, which is not—even in its
explicitly fictive form—free from its overwhelming threat.
Thus, this mode of the perpetrator’s representation develops blanks and
questions, which make Harlan’s film interesting beyond its political,
agitate aspects. These expound the problems of the potential for reenacting
the culpable body (and its historically charged ideological thinking) under
aesthetic categories. The reenactment, which negotiates a real experience
of victimization and guilt, is repeatedly confronted with the possibility of
its own representability of the past, memories associated with that past,
and the evidentiary value of such representations. Therefore, the repetitive
mode is highly centered on the present. In this process, this mode produces
the figures of its remembrance and repeated experience of a historic
situation. In the case of WUNDKANAL, this means that a specific
perpetrator is representatively judged (via film) and the multiplying
images of a culprit have to be endured morally and aesthetically. The
presence of the perpetrator and his views, articulated in conversations,
through campaigns, and via plundering and shootings under his order,
elicit the viewer’s outrage. Because of the banality of Filbert’s
(ideological) justifications, these conversations are especially hard to
endure. The instrumental reason for his self-justification seems to open
rare access to an unbearable way of thinking. In the next cinematic

movement, his words tend to enclose themselves. His unchanged
statements seem approachable only by intellectual abstraction, by
reflecting on the perpetrator’s psychological constitution. In these scenes,
the film shivers between a simplistic illustration and sharp questioning of
critical theory.14
Through this contradictory effect of language, the constitutive gap in
Harlan’s father figure becomes attainable. Recognition and strangeness of
words and arguments depend on each other, while neither offers a
reassuring explanation of the past. They leave the audience in an
overwhelming confrontation with this narrative of the past, whose origin
remains absent but whose alarming strangeness reaches powerfully into
the present.
The image of the perpetrator flaunts itself in front of Harlan’s camera
in word and gesture. It gives place to all the contradictory associations and
feelings connected to them on Filbert’s body. The camera lens, unable and
unwilling to let this body out of sight, observing and documenting every
movement in detail, implies a situation of waiting for the missing
explanation of Filbert’s past in his present gestures. Still, the camera
seems to deviate from any meaningful essence, resting its gaze on Filbert’s
immobile hands, the wrinkles in his neck, his glassy eyes. The focus on
detail should miss nothing, no emotion of the accused, despite these
created images seeming to burst the body, letting it fall to pieces for which
no fetishizing wholeness can vouch (See Figs. 8.1).
The uncertain constitution of this film-body transfers itself into the
medium of his depiction. Filbert’s clumsy acting, his mumbling, uptight
recitation of the part of Dr. S. may perhaps serve as a metaphor for the
actor’s lies. Still, no authenticity can be found behind the crumbling
façade of the character. Filbert puts on his costume in front of the camera,
but this does not create a (Brechtian) distance between character and actor.
The inseparability of the states of beforehand and afterward becomes
apparent. In these, the play itself, with its masking and props, remains the
only dependable act and shows its own aesthetic quality as confusion.
Therefore, on the one hand, the eventfulness of the body is queried by the
mediality of the theatrical. This specific mediality strengthens the power
of its presence in the focus of its materiality and bears witness to the
14
Theodor W. Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel J. Levinson, and Daniel J.
and R. Nevitt Sanford, The Authoritarian Personality (New York: Harper and Row,
1950); Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom (New York: Farrar and Rinehart,
1941).
170 Chapter Eight
uniqueness of its actual presence in the eyes of the victims. On the other
hand, the same point-of-view (filmed by the camera in several shots)
radiates a destructive power, which exhibits the physical beyond any
identitary status as the product of formal structural principles in the filmic
image. It thus demonstrates the ‘createdness’ of its desired object to every
phantasm of physical-natural immediacy. Gilles Deleuze’s concept of
“dramatization”15 of events can be of use to describe Filbert’s peculiar
position between role, allegory and presence of the perpetrator in Harlan’s
film. Deleuze’s philosophical term “event” is fundamentally connected to
the scenic, theatrical staging, which tries again and again to fill the gaping
emptiness of the stage of history.
Figs. 8.1: Close-up on Filbert’s skin: The Body is exposed likewise in its
materiality and artificiality
The stage is a metaphor for a fundamental inactuality, whose quality

shall be transformed into the popular idea of an event as something
historic, revolutionary and clearly recognizable. At the same time, his use
of the term “stage” also resonates in the forced emphasis of the so-called
event. It anticipates the failure of the stage situation, which is only able to
define its scene in an act of repeating, by relying on props left on stage
from prior rehearsals and old courses of action. The stage must also be
15
Gilles Deleuze, La méthode de dramatisation (Paris: Société française de
Philosophie, 1967).
understood in a spatial dimension as the scene of a practice of events no

longer named.
Deleuze attributes a productive turn to the act of constantly yet
inadequately filling and mending as an event. His term provides a
counterpart inherent in the fixed system of the symbolical order of
previous stages and fathers. The moment of acting is equipped with an
almost childlike claim to the effectual power, which unfolds in letting go
the claim of “historical adequacy” and immediacy of the event. The
dramatic act determines an unavoidable prerequisite and necessary
condition of the event. Potentiality and passivity of the physical come
together. In this respect, the body implied in this concept of the event is
constantly in motion; it archives what it finds through its melancholic
structure, but eludes the allocation by expectant looks, “by bringing the
concrete facts back into the play of divergent rows, where every
relationship is transferred into a non-relationship, every place into a non-
place, every movement into a multitude of movements.”16 The urgency or
meaning of the cinematic presence of the perpetrator provoked by Harlan
is not reduced in this conception, which valuates WUNDKANAL as a
practical way of thinking ahead, a specific development of the
philosophical term of dramatization. Thereby, it places the events and the
political effectiveness principally into the sphere of the arts. The
reenactment is not based on an original event, whose political and
psychological influential power could come to an acceptable description or
redesign through its repetition. The film’s depiction of the court in which
Filbert/Silbert finds himself, an evocation of the Nuremberg trials, is in its
motivation strictly bound to the historical situation. Yet, it always faces
history in an insurmountable succession of the historic course. Every
attempt to belatedly alter its course ends in a recall of its overpowering
status. One can clearly see the rage and sadness connected to this fatality
in WUNDKANAL. It descends on Filbert, who functions as the symbolical
body of the unhindered existence of perpetrators in a post-fascist society.
Harlan is provoked and humiliated by an existence that is his own
cinematic construction and stylization.
Despite these fatalistic aspects, the film provides precarious room for
maneuver. It demands the deviation and duplication of father figures and
perpetrators in an aesthetic way through the doubtful capacity of taking an
active role, in which one is aware of compulsive repetitions. This filmic
16
Joseph Vogl, “Was ist ein Ereignis?” in: Peter Gente et al. (eds.), Deleuze und die
Künste (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 2007), 81 (my translation).
172 Chapter Eight
mode “enjoys”17 this role as an experience of self-efficacy beyond intentionality

(in the sense of Jacques Lacan). In this respect, the Deleuzian dramatization,
as extracted from elements of WUNDKANAL, describes the insuperability,
as well as the remaining opportunities, of the traumatized in aesthetical
categories.
The Film and Its Double

The exhibition of the partialized divergence is not only a phenomenon
practiced on the body of the actor. It also concerns the fields of language
and voice, which in the form of the off-camera voices, question Filbert and
comment on his play in front of the camera. The voices—the strongest and
most forceful belonging to Thomas Harlan himself—vary not only
between English, French and German, but also in their volumes. Some
parts of the conversation elude the audience completely. Filbert’s answers
are thereby often disconnected from Harlan’s questions and therefore
become unreadable signs of an understanding about the past. This past
noticeably affects the presence, but remains on the level of a vague
disquiet. “Thomas and the doctor, enclosed in the past,” is how Robert
Kramer introduces his documentary of the shooting of WUNDKANAL. He
refers to the shared secret knowledge, which Harlan and Filbert seem to
exhaust verbally but whose narrative is decomposed and distributed in the
room of voices by the traumatic charge of the subject. The punch line of
this spatialized narrative is a displacement of the traumatic material as an
experience in the present. The phrases exchanged between Harlan and
Filbert do not reconcile past situations of guilt. Instead, they negotiate the
overtaxing meeting of the generations, of perpetrator and prosecutor in an
event-like manner in the present. The acquisition of the past can only take
place by acting out the present relationship, whose explosive force
decomposes and multiplies every filmic act and teleological structure of
condemnation and punishment.
This multiplication becomes particularly interesting when the borders
of its own medium are crossed. The multiplicity drives the constitutive
connection of narrative will, the process of becoming images and the
traumatic gridlock. In respect to this transmedial handling of the traumatic,
the documentary NOTRE NAZI by Kramer is an urgently needed
complement to WUNDKANAL. Harlan himself invited him to accompany
and document the filming process and later insisted on a joint screening of
17
Slavoj Žižek, Enjoy Your Symptom! Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and out (New
York: Routledge, 1992), 70.
both films. But what at first seems an avenue to answer questions raised by
WUNDKANAL concerning the status of the perpetrator in contrast to the
film team and the unclear remaining self-assessment of his own guilt,
feeds from the same pool of filmic images. The question of the historic
claim of truth is merely shifted from one film to the other. Pictorial and
aural materials of both versions overlap and complement each other and
thus pursue the interplay of this biographical portrayal. The depiction
alters between reflection and overdetermination, between coming-to-terms
and constructing by asking for the authority of a medial representation.
The cornerstones of the representability of the past are further doubted in
NOTRE NAZI. The constant transmutation of fact into fiction (and its
inverse) query the audience’s understanding of the documentary form,
hindering a digestible accounting of the historic past as well as of the
filmic present. The visual material of NOTRE NAZI is often familiar to that
of WUNDKANAL, but is additionally accompanied by a distinct audio track
or shot from a different camera angle. Stage directions and the off-camera
interaction between Filbert and the crew are indulged in this filmic
structure. The explanatory, revealing content of this composition often
remains irresolute. Kramer’s version only partly functions to provide
background information. Rather, it creates a gap between the two forms of
depiction, whose sum falls short of a coherent picture. So the doubling
effect, in which both films compete with and depend upon each other in a
constitutive way (a constellation that Harlan’s father-concept seems to
repeat), refers to the problem of depiction and perception in the medium of
film itself. The moral-social problem of the appropriate way of dealing
with Filbert hence becomes a challenge of representation, as it is subverted
by the practice of depiction.
The power of this narrative deriving from a situation of confusion
thereby becomes apparent as a filmic chance. None of these films form an
alliance with the perpetrator, Filbert, but are rather coined by anger and
sadness. Nevertheless, this situation of helplessness permits a growth of
desire to perform, to try—that is, to rehearse—and to stage, which makes
possible an acquisition of an unmanageable past by coping through
reenactment.
One of the great depictional accomplishments of NOTRE NAZI is the
confrontation with the explosive-violent aspects inherent to acting, when
the virtuality of this ‘human event’ escalates into solution. In contrast to
WUNDKANAL, Kramer’s film also expounds the problematic nature of the
interaction with Filbert. It does so in sequences of interviews and in
recordings of the film team’s developing daily routines. Without
contradicting the staging in WUNDKANAL, the body of the perpetrator
174 Chapter Eight
thereby constitutes a benchmark of the search for an attitude. The

challenge of one’s own integrity and identity proves itself among the film
team via a closeness to, or distance from, Filbert. For example, Hertz
Nativ, the makeup artist who works on the film set and is interviewed by
Kramer several times, describes the corporeal nearness to Filbert as a
situation of physical disgust. He can only protect himself from this feeling
by washing thoroughly after work each day, a ritualized way of drawing
the line between the skins. This mediality between skins must provoke a
hardly bearable ‘experience of relationality’ between victim and
perpetrator. The inevitability of the coexistence shows its affect-like and
sensory sphere, to which the sovereignty-striving will is exposed.
Still, this sphere cannot be thought of as a pure immediateness as it
requires a symbolic practice of self-depiction. In a theory of trauma, both
aspects prove to be co-conditions of the other, specifically as they relate to
the exploration of room for maneuver towards one’s own painful
experience. The reaction of disgust seems a necessary effort to dissociate
from this body, whose contradictory appearance fails to account for the
cruelty of his deeds. The disgust reconnects the blurred, disappearing
image with the sought image of the murderer. At the same time, this
process of signification can never be completed. Filbert’s past and present
do not amalgamate into a single coherent impression. The illegibility of his
biographical narrative is not only created in the film, but finds expression
in the immediate interaction.
The difficulty of associating the sometimes naïve, friendly, often
insecure old man with the cold-hearted murderer is not simply part of an
expanded, belated, and traumatic experience, which detached itself of its
“primal scene.”18 It is also an emphatic connection of a victim’s son to the
identity problems of those who do not want to or are unable to see their
parents and grandparents as perpetrators. Nativ’s way of handling the
incoherent impressions is not to yield to rigid distancing, but to strengthen
their ambivalence. In this manner, Nativ’s disgust turns into a doubting of
the filmic process. Later on, he develops a conscious form of dealing with
the odious encounters, in which he considers Filbert’s secret tears and
admissions of guilt beyond the recording. It is this event of destabilized
defense when helplessness and self-empowerment of victims are simultaneously
18
The term is borrowed from its field of application in Freud’s work by not only
signifying the first and traumatic vision of the parental sexual intercourse, but
more generally, an often phantasmatic, fictional or even absent cause of actions.
Sigmund Freud and Josef Breuer, Studien über Hysterie (Wien: Franz Deuticke,
1985), 145.
acknowledged without any melodramatic harmonization. The filmic focus

adjusts from the perpetrator to a historiographical hesitation against,
admission to, and setting of boundaries. The status of the victim changes
within this developing emphasis from passive endurance to room for
maneuver.
NOTRE NAZI maintains this impressive development through narrative
suspense. The chronological order of close and distant moments within
different (interview) sequences remains ambiguous. The succession of
scenes does not contribute to a story of reconciliation, but to a productive
way of handling the impossible. The result is a film that constantly plays
with its own form, and a filmic setting in which human beings become
characters who make the hope for superhuman power imaginable.
Nevertheless, the explosiveness of dealing with space shared by victim
and perpetrator is not absent. NOTRE NAZI presents unused film material of
WUNDKANAL, which reveals Filbert’s confrontation with a document that
proves his command and presence at a mass execution in Belarus. “I think
I just take offence at his happiness. And no charm in the world can wipe
away the stupidness of this happiness,” Harlan tells Kramer at the
beginning of an interview series. Harlan, therefore, cannot tolerate the
ambivalence of the image of the perpetrator he has made visible with his
film. The multitude of his drafts of a father, creating room for maneuver
for the other members of the crew, outlines itself to Harlan as the
monstrous downside of his search for truth. Harlan fights against his own
aesthetic procedure’s developments on the level of social interaction; he
asks survivors, sons, and grandsons of Jews killed in this mass execution
to confront Filbert in the studio. Harlan has been criticized harshly for the
escalation of the ensuing encounter documented in NOTRE NAZI. The main
point of critique by Harlan himself and the film’s recipients is primarily
the game and hunt, in which the director foments his guests against Filbert.
Likewise, the guests’ return to their role as victims becomes apparent.
Harlan’s rage towards Filbert anticipates the failed signification process.
He explains to the guests that they should not consider Filbert a human
being but rather the “remains of humanity,” to which no human criteria
can be applied. Being the only German-speaker on set, Harlan averts a
dialogue between the sides. When the frightened Filbert arrives and the
French-speaking man asks for translation, he shortens Filbert’s babbling to
a clear denial of his guilt and thereby robs his guests of the opportunity to
assess the situation themselves. The violence escalates into a confused
muddle in which Harlan sets himself up as the executor of justice. In
contrast, the image created in this way reproduces the images of injustice:
Harlan tears Filbert’s clothes off and leaves his haggard body defenseless
176 Chapter Eight
in his undergarments. Rather than a defense of humanity, the picture of

this body is reminiscent of Auschwitz. Following the logic of the returning
trauma, Harlan finds no other image for distancing himself from the
perpetrators than that of a victim. He is unable to expound upon the
problems of representing the victims and cannot do justice to their
fundamental claim for singularity.
Conclusion
Harlan’s filmic work shows the precarious status of an aesthetic
handling of past German culpability. The process of coming to terms with
this past exposes itself to a complex and uncertain position that questions
the calming power of a representative model of a perpetrator. This requires
bearing an unfinished past, which reaches into the present. Through their
films, both Harlan and Kramer demonstrate a latitude to maneuver for a
self-determined narrative dealing with the established status of victims
through the handling of (allegorical) images of victims and perpetrators.
But it also proves the inherent potential for violence in an unsatisfied need
to reconcile one’s hated origin as the offspring of perpetrators. It seems
necessary to position a transgenerational concept for the children of the
perpetrators beyond victimization. Taking into consideration the trauma-
like effects on the perpetrators’ offspring, such a concept would have to
make visible the aesthetic and political compulsions of repetition effective
in this generation. However, it should not misjudge the abandonment of
the fathers’ aesthetic and political legacy as impossible.
CHAPTER NINE
TRAUMA AND FICTION –

TRAUMA AND CONCRETENESS IN FILM:
REPRESENTED IN THE PHOTOFILM FIASCO
(2010) BY JANET RIEDEL, KATJA PRATSCHKE
AND GUSZTÁV HÁMOS,
BASED ON IMRE KERTÉSZ’S
HOMONYMOUS NOVEL
HINDERK M. EMRICH
Introduction
This essay explores two aspects of trauma theory: coping with trauma
and trauma’s possible cinematic representations. First, it is hypothesized
that it is primarily the dichotomy between the fictionalized perception of
traumatic events and the perceptual apprehension of the concreteness of
reality after the trauma that manifests in the suffering of and coping with
trauma and their psychodynamic consequences. Second, there exists an
ostensibly counterintuitive and, from a perspective of ‘political
correctness,’ problematic view concerning potential ‘positive’ outcomes of
traumatization.
In this regard, the concept is to establish that within a traumatized
person, the trauma cycle always occurs as an oscillatory process between
two mental worlds. The first comprises the internal reality of traumatic
memories as a representation of something ‘real’ that occurred within the
‘real world,’ actualized within the subjective self of the traumatized
person. The second is the “abstract mentalization” of the trauma
memory—the inner mental fictionality of the past (via symptoms such as
flashbacks or pieces of trauma memory) that intrude into the reality of the
178 Chapter Nine
‘present moment,’ within which the traumatized person attempts to

generate a coherent mode of living. This could be described in
psychoanalytical terms as ‘integration versus splitting.’
The fundamentality of the work of Imre Kertész has to do with the fact
that by recording the internal ambiguity between trauma reality and trauma
fictionality in the mode of autobiographical prose, he was able to
reestablish a coherent self and overcome the “fiasco” of his existence
within his traumatic life history.
The descriptions in Kertész’ novels by may be interpreted such that the
deep ambiguities of trauma reality and its fictionalities represent
exaggerations of something that occurs normally (albiet much less
intensely) within humans and often remains undiscovered in our lives,
which—hypothetically—may also have the beneficial consequence of
inducing deeper insights into existential aspects of our human selves.
It seems legitimate to conclude that a trauma that does not actually
destroy the identity of a person may, under special circumstances, exert
creative forces in the development of identity.
For an understanding of trauma films, psycho-thrillers and disastrous
cinematic worlds, this may indicate that—in the sense of Michael Balint’s
concept of anxiety and “thrill”1—the labeling of a stable identity by means
of dreamlike cinematic experiences may also induce processes of psychic
maturation.2
Trauma and Concreteness in Imre Kertész’ Novel Fiasco

In his groundbreaking novel Fiasco, Imre Kertész3 describes the
impossibility of a traumatized person reestablishing a coherent personal
identity:
I looked about. Everything around me was seething and bubbling, a

chirping twitter of voices from all sides, as if carried by invisible telegraph
wires on invisible telegraph-poles; ideas, offers, plans and hopes jumped
across like flashing electric discharges from one head to another. Yes,
somehow I had been left out of this vast global metabolism of mass
1
Michael Balint, Angstlust und RegressionThrills and Regressions (Stuttgart:
Klett-Cotta, 1991).
2
Hinderk M. Emrich and Werner Barg, “Der metaphysische Psychothriller”/The
Metaphysical Psycho Thriller, Psychopraxis 5 (2006), 22-30.
3
Imre Kertész, Fiasco, transl. Tim Wilkinson (New York: Melville House, 2011).
Trauma and Fiction – Trauma and Concreteness in Film 179
production and consumption, and at that moment I grasped that this was
what had decided my fate. I am not a consumer, and I am not consumable.4
And in another excerpt:
I didn’t have anything to think about. Yet slowly something nevertheless

was taking shape inside me. If I distinguish it from the mild dizziness
caused by walking and from other contingent impressions, I discover a
definable feeling. I suppose my state of affairs was materialising in it. It
would be hard for me to put it into words – and that's exactly the point: it
settles itself in spaces that lie outside of words. It cannot be couched in an
assertion, nor in a bald negation either. I cannot say that I don’t exist, as
that is not true. The only word with which I could express my state, not to
speak of my activity, does not exist. I might approximate it by saying
something like ‘I amn’t’. Yes, that's the right verb, one that would convey
my existence and at the same time denote the negative quality of that
existence – if, as I say, there were such a verb. But there isn't. I could say, a
bit ruefully, that I have lost my verb. […] In a certain sense, it will be
someone other than the person to whom I have grown accustomed until
now. Nor can it be any other way, for he has completed his work, fulfilled
his purpose: he had flopped utterly. He had transmuted my person into an
object, diluted my stubborn secret into a generality, distilled by
inexpressible truth into symbols – transplanting them into a novel I am
unable to read.5
In his famous work, Time and Narrative, French philosopher Paul

Ricoeur explicates that human beings are more or less unable to manifest
some type of absolute, that is to say, “metaphysical” identity. Or in the
words of Franz Kafka in his novel, The Trial, “No one but you could gain
admittance through this door, since this door was intended only for you.”6
Rather, Ricoeur asserts, people are able to manifest themselves as a
“narrative identity,” which, in a specific type of self-referentially, is
molded by way of the telling of their own history of life.7
Fiasco represents a metaphor for the structure of our existence: one’s
life in and of itself represents a ‘fiasco’ insofar as we always appear situated
within an alienated mode of being. From the traumatic experiences of the
protagonist in the novel Fiasco, in a certain understanding the author
4
Kertész, Fiasco, 109.
5
Kertész, Fiasco, 77-78.
6
Franz Kafka, The Trial (London: Penguin books, 1953) 237.
7
Paul Ricoeur, Zeit und Erzählung/Time and Narrative, vol. 3: Die erzählte
Zeit/Narrative Time (Munich: Fink, 1991).
180 Chapter Nine
himself, something has been raised that may accordingly be understood as

a radical metaphor for life itself: the fiasco of the inconceivability and
impenetrability of “existence.” This infathomability represents—in a
manner similar to that in Kafka's The Trial—the work’s nucleus, its
crucial kernel. The following quotation describes a situation at the
beginning of the novel; within a longer series of reflections on fate and
destiny, the protagonist questions under which conditions it might become
possible for him—through autobiographical writing—to establish a
coherent self-identity as a product of creative imagination.
Destiny – since that is nature – would have robbed me of any future which
was definitive and thus could be contemplated. It would have bogged me
down in the moment, dipped me in failure as in a cauldron of pitch:
whether I would be cooked in it or petrified hardly matters. I was not
circumspect enough, however. All that happened was that an idea was
shattered; that idea – myself as a product of my creative imagination, if I
may put it that way – no longer exists, that's all there is to it.8
Kertész refers here to the scattering of his identity in the wake of

surviving genocidal atrocities, which leads within his type of
autobiographical writing to particular observations. But we wonder if a
more general conclusion may be drawn from it. If one considers the
dichotomy between the language of terms and (indescribable) life ‘by
itself,’ one may formulate: We live in an unsolvable situation, in a ‘fiasco’
that our language, terms, thoughts, pure reason, and spirits cannot describe
to us nor save us from—as described by Hugo von Hofmannsthal in his
famous piece, The Lord Chandos Letter. This too, may unfortunately hold
true for our therapeutic work with patients.9
Another quotation from Kertész’ novel:
Perhaps, I mused, one should construct a device, a revolving machine, a

trap; the characters who fall into its grasp would scurry about ceaselessly,
just like electronic mice, on tracks that look labyrinthine but are actually
always unidirectional, pursued by a single automaton. Everything would be
wobbling, rattling, everyone trampling on one another, until the machine
8
9
Hinderk M. Emrich and Wiebrecht Ries, Irrtümer im Sprechen – Beiträge zu
einer “Philosophie des Unsagbaren”/Errors in Speech – Contributions to a
Philosophy of the Unspeakable (Göttingen: Cuvillier Verlag, 2010).
suddenly explodes; then, after a pause for startled, dazed astonishment,

they would all scatter in every direction.10
The “fiasco” has to do with the insight that life is normally in the
foreground, rather than the background of existence, not within the basics,
which would yield safety and substantiality. In this regard, Kertész’ novel
is repeatedly concerned with the central topic of autobiographic writing:
the writing of a novel and thus a representation of coping with questions
concerning one’s identity and thereby of becoming the ‘other.’ Within a
world, within a life more or less absorbed by categories and terms—within
a world of fiction—the existential question arises as to how an ‘initiation’
may be realized so as to come into contact with one’s own ‘real life.’ In
his work, Phenomenology of Mind, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel speaks
about the “natural consciousness.”11 In Duino Elegies, the philosophical
poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, speaks about the “interpreted world,”12 which
again describes the dichotomy between “fictional” constructions and
interpretations and less mediated perceptual realities.
In coming closer to the ‘real reality,’ traumatization can destroy the
alliance between cognition and living, between thoughts and vivid
impressions. In this peculiar, dangerous and often catastrophic psychic
situation, the continuum of self-being in a coherent personal subjective/
objective world is completely destroyed and as a consequence, the
traumatized person’s only solution—as Imre Kertész demonstrates in his
novel of about 150 pages—is to become more accustomed to the
“concrete.”
In describing his repeated attempts to write “his new novel,” the
traumatized author in the novel is unable to do more than experience and
describe the concretizations of his immediate surroundings: “It had been a
long time since he had seen his papers. Not that he wished to see them. He
had even hidden them in the farthest depths of the filing cabinet in order to
avoid somehow catching sight of them.”13 The author’s overcoming of this
hiding and reading of these old documents, which are to do with the
traumatizing experiences of his past, are put forth in an extremely detailed
and precise description of files within files that have been standardized in
a special way (e.g., MNOS5617). This indicates the author’s need of a
10
11
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes/Phenomenology
of Mind (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1973).
12
Rainer Maria Rilke, “Duineser Elegien/Duino Elegies,” in: Die Gedichte/The
Poems (Frankfurt a.M.: Insel, 1998) 627-670.
13
182 Chapter Nine
form of “holding,” via the concrete apprehension of ‘really’ existing

objects in order to cope with the challenge of writing his novel. This
approach to the concreteness of the concrete has apparently to do with the
inevitable necessity of reaching—within the immediate surroundings of
the author—some such kind of “holding,” or stability, and thus to overcome
the extreme difficulty of approaching the traumatic experiences of the
past.
Traumatic memories may be interpreted as containing two aspects:
those that are ‘fictionalized,’ which, driven by associations, can freely
intrude upon the life of the victim, and those which represent psychosomatic
trauma—traces of the reality of the past. Trauma destroys the relationship
between categories of life: languages of life, cognitions, thoughts and
streams of consciousness on the one hand, and on the other—life itself. It
destroys the normal coherence, the rules of parallelism, after which a
person is rendered helpless and requires saving, i.e. salvation—concreteness
within one’s surroundings.14
This novel experience of the concreteness of the concrete exerts
‘therapeutic abilities,’ since the normal relationship between cognition and
object is invaded by trauma-related psychosomatic traces within the self.
The ‘healing’ task achieved by the concreteness of the concrete means
increasing the lost coherence between the sensual perceptions and feelings
of life and the related cognitions, ideas, fantasies and types of understanding.
Cinematic Representation
The cinematic work, FIASCO – FRAGMENTS BASED ON THE NOVEL BY
IMRE KERTÉSZ15 (D 2010, 32'), by Janet Riedel, Katja Pratschke and
Gusztáv Hámos, consists of a photofilm, with photographic sequences,
series and successions forming the visual basis of the work. Hámos
comments,
“By photofilms we understand films that essentially consist of

photographs. Photographs placed in a cinematic context create a filmic
experience. In photofilms, the film medium is dissected into its
components. Photofilm authors experiment with the relationship of text,
14
Hinderk M. Emrich,“Trauma und Konkretheit”/Trauma and Concreteness, in: A.
Marneros and A. Rohde (eds.), Festschrift zum 80. Geburtstag von Uwe Henrik
Peters/Commemorative Issue on 80th Birthday of Uwe Henrik Peters (Cologne:
ANA Publishers, 2011) 231-286.
15
See also: www.fiasko.info.
sound and image, reflecting on the composition of the cinematographic.

They let us ‘think’ cinema.”16
In this media form, the cinematographic language is closer to the

‘literary world’ of the novel than a motion picture would be, since the
power of imagination is challenged much more by the series of
photographs—together with the voiceover of text taken from the novel.
(See Fig 1-12).
The photofilm opens up interspaces: Between the still images in films,

there are potential spaces, fruitful places, which are charged or loaded by
the imagination. ‘This concerns the opening up of space to act and the
extent to which life can be shaped. One can consider this in an artistic
sense as shape-able space, as time-space. And this is characterized in a
unique way in [...] photofilm: This potential space, i.e. the potential space
between the images or frames, is celebrated in photofilm and accorded an
opportunity to unfold there (Siegfried Zielinski).’ The interspaces in
photofilms are just as important as the still images. We sense the absence
of something, the empty places which prove to be available spaces –
vacant spaces – as soon as we fill them with associations.17
In the film, FIASCO, the series of photographs focus especially on

manifestations of the concreteness of outer realities—faces, objects, spaces
in the living environment (living room, offices, factory, prison, among
others)—which simultaneously represent symbolic entities. Here the
question arises: to what extent are these photos essentially ‘trauma
pictures,’ covered by replacements about the reality of the traumatic past?
The filmmakers comment,
“When we first began to study Kertész’ novel more closely and selected
fragments, we made some very conscious decisions about the filmic
adaptation:
1. The protagonists whom Kertész describes would be absent in our
images, but they would be there in spirit. So they would not be
embodied physically by actors. And while Köves is absent from
our photos, we do think him into them, like in a dream playing a
16
Gusztáv Hámos, Katja Pratschke and Thomas Tode, "Schöpferische
Konstruktion – Eine Einführung"/Creative Construction – an Introduction, in: Viva
Fotofilm bewegt/unbewegt/Viva Photofilm – Moving/Non-moving (Marburg
Schüren 2010), 9.
17
Hámos, Pratschke and Tode, “Schöpferische Konstruktion – Eine Einführung,”
15.
184 Chapter Nine
game with us, as though the only single thing we are able to do is
dream of his life.
2. In his novel, Kertész does not define the time in which the events
occur. The observer feels, infers, associates, interprets. We did not
attempt to illustrate Kertész’ novel or describe it in pictures.
Instead we headed off like detectives on a case (study), tracking
down and locating the traces of the ‘crime’ many years after the
events in the novel had occurred.
3. The split screen method was the logical equivalent for conveying
the shifts and reflections given in the novel: The photographs to the
novel were created in the present, the traces of the bygone social
systems reveal themselves in the overlaps, as well as in the
ambivalent concurrences and the strange doublings.”18
In this sense, the photofilm, FIASCO, may represent a transfiguration of

the trauma-past, realized by a transformation of the autobiographical
writing and its symbolic representation. This would mean that there exists
a new concretization, a new coherence between the trauma cognition and
the concreteness of ‘reality’ within this piece of art. Some examples
follow.
The film narrates the novel’s depicted fiction in the present at the
original locations: an airport, stretches of streets, squares, parks,
swimming pools, a stairwell, home, factory, ministry, barracks, prison, etc.
The photographs are arranged in a split-screen format, or as image pairs.
The following quote from Imre Kertész was the inspiration for this, “Even
under dictatorial conditions our personality does not cease to exist, in fact
it actually multiplies itself.” Pratschke and Hámos applied photographic,
filmic and psychological doubling and halving methods to the individual
text fragments: panoramas, stereophotography, mirroring (Rorschach
technique), and the time-image (two different moments in time, made
visible through movement).
Though the photographs were taken in the present, they show clear
traces of the time described in the novel. In the text and image montage, an
overlapping, a superimposition of times, is created—a tense ambiguity of
double meanings, a picture puzzle—a discourse on being human in our
time.
18
Gusztáv Hámos, To Move or Not to Move That is the Question, lecture at Tallinn
Month of Photography, 2011.
186 Chapter Nine
Figures on previous page:

Fig. 9.1: Köves came to with a buzzing in his ears; he had probably fallen asleep,
almost missing that extraordinary moment when they descended from starlit
altitude into earthly night.
Fig. 9.2: Was this their way of showing him which way to go? “Where am I?” “At
home”, came the answer. “Do you wish to turn back?”
Fig. 9.3: He was assailed by a sensation – absurd, of course – that he had passed
that way once before.
Figures on following page:

Fig. 9.4: Köves’s life over there – somewhere into the night, or even beyond that,
in the remoteness of limitless tracts, maybe in another dimension, who knows? –
had, there was no denying it, hit rock bottom.
Fig. 9.5: For Köves had survived his own death; at a certain moment in time when
he ought to have died, he did not die, although everything had been made ready for
that, it was an organized, socially approved, done deal.
Fig. 9.6: Because of that he had been subsequently dogged constantly by a

painful sense of provisional
Figures on pages 188 and 189:

Fig. 9.7: Like someone who is only waiting in a temporary hiding place to be
called to account for his negligence; [...].
Fig. 9.8: In short, he loafed around as a displaced person in his own anonymous
life [...].
Fig. 9.9: There was no getting away from it, he had written a novel, but only in the
sense that he would have flung himself out of even an aircraft into nothingness in
the event of a terminal disaster, if he saw that as the sole possibility for survival.
Fig. 9.10: Köves now started to sink, and he was dreaming before he had even
fallen asleep. What he dreamed was that he had strayed into the strange life of a
foreigner who was unknown to him and had nothing to do with him.
Fig. 9.11: In his room, Köves immediately opened the letter: it informed him that
the editorial office of the newspaper on which he had been functioning up to that
point as a journalist was hereby giving him notice of dismissal. How was this? Did
life here begin with a person being dismissed from his job?
Fig. 9.12: Berg: Because you are not in the least curious about the fuller reality.
188 Chapter Nine
190 Chapter Nine
The film starts with a reference to a scene in the novel in which the
narrator lands in an unknown, mysterious city. To some extent, it represents
the hometown of his hidden past, which appears alienated and obscure to
him. Hámos comments,
“After returning from abroad (from Auschwitz, Buchenwald), Köves walks

along streets which seem as alien as they are familiar to him. Memories
from the city of his birth: Budapest, déjà vus (‘from his dreams, from
movie images, brochures, illustrated travel guides’ (171)) overlap with the
city he is returning to and which has evidently changed radically because
of the war. Unlike the doubly present hero in Chris Marker’s photofilm LA
JETÉE (F 1962), Kertész’s protagonist Köves seems to be doubly absent,
because he dreams himself into a person alien to him, one whom he does
not know and whom he also has nothing to do with: ‘He roams around in
his own nameless life as a person with no home [...]’ (152). This means
that Köves bears a name that is not congruent with his life and he has a
homeland that does not coincide with the place he calls home. The city
which Kertész describes is not congruent either temporarily and
spatially.”19
The photofilm creates a double world within which the identity of the
protagonist exists. The pictorial aesthetic is manifested by a geometrically
strict order—a horizontally divided framing of the double pictures—which
may signify that the trauma reality is simultaneously hidden and present. It
is the trauma reality of the narrator, to some extent, of Imre Kertész
himself,20 thus depicted in its two aspects. Hámos continues,
“Thus the pairs of images in the photofilm FIASCO are also not necessarily
congruent with each other. It is far more the case that they attest to
temporal-spatial shifts, they are the logical equivalence of conveying the
shifts and reflections applied in the novel.
“Köves’ visions of doubling presumably come from the spatial-temporal

oppression he experienced in the concentration camps: when the body
finds itself in extreme spatial, physical and biological distress, the spirit
has to liberate itself from the body, separate from it, in order to be able to
survive. As long as the spirit senses desire, the body can survive
(somehow) regardless of how withered, maimed and mutilated it may be.
19
Gusztáv Hámos, “Zeit-Reise-Bilder”/Time Travel Images, in: Fiasco. Ein
Fotoessay von Janet Riedel und Katja Pratschke/Fiasco. A Photo Essay by Janet
Riedel and Katja Pratschke (Berlin: Revolver, 2013).
20
Imre Kertész supported this film project and was very pleased with the result
presented at the Academy of Arts, Berlin on Jan. 21st, 2011.
The method whereby one removes oneself from physical reality is

omnipresent for Köves, because he is exhausted by life and constantly
sinking into a deep sleep.”21
The trauma world within this film, by being fundamentally what it

essentially is, is simultaneously—in the sense of an almost Hegelian
dialectic—the ‘otherhood of itself.’ What we see is the description of a
seemingly ‘normal world.’ It is, however, within its apparent normalcy—
through its fragility, its porosity—also the dialectic opposite: it always
bears simultaneous reference to the past, the trauma reality of the
protagonist, and to the concrete presence of life. This becomes apparent in
the obvious alienations in the novel and indeed the film. This duplicity of
alienation and concreteness is, on the one hand, a salvation (through the
concreteness of the concrete) and on the other hand, indicates the
possibility of a simultaneous representation of the trauma, which is
‘preserved’ in this way. This means, in the sense of Hegel's term, Auf-
hebung or “sublation,” the integration and representation of a strict inner
contradiction, a phenomenon that is, in my personal view, the essential
condition for any type of coping with the traumatic past.22, 23
21
Gusztáv Hámos, “Zeit-Reise-Bilder”/Time Travel Images
22
Hinderk M. Emrich and Gary Smith, (eds.), Vom Nutzen des Vergessens/On the
Benefits of Forgetting (Berlin: Akademie, 1996).
23
Hinderk M. Emrich, “Identity, Overvaluation, and Representing Forgetting,” in:
J. Straub, J. Rüsen (eds.), Dark Traces of the Past (New York: Berghahn Books,
2010) 45-65.
PART IV
ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN FILM:
SPACES
CHAPTER TEN
HISTORY BEYOND TRAUMA:

RE-VISUALIZING THE PALESTINIAN RUIN
IN PARATROOPERS (1977)
DANIELLE SCHWARTZ
This essay concerns the effects of trauma discourse as a critical

discourse in light of the ‘Nakba’—Arabic for ‘catastrophe,’ referring to the
destruction of Palestinian society and deportation of Palestinian people by
the nascent Israeli state. When analyzing the appearance of ruined
Palestinian buildings in two Israeli films made in the late 1970s, one
possible hypothesis or interpretative strategy would be to understand the
presence of the Palestinian ruins in these movies as post-traumatic
appearances, referring back to a historic trauma that is not represented in
the overt narrative. In what follows, I intend to point out some theoretical
and methodological qualifications regarding this possibility. As I will
explain, the use of trauma discourse as an interpretive vocabulary in this
case fosters an ahistoric reading of the Palestinian ruin, a reading that I
propose to challenge on ethical and theoretical grounds. The relevance of
these considerations exceeds the current case and points to an inherent
threat in the vocabulary of trauma, namely that it might serve an
ideological function by concealing history and replacing it with symbolic
signification.
The end of the 1970s marked the beginning of a new movement in
Israeli cinema, referred to as “political cinema” in Israeli cinematic
historiography because of its “radical critique of Zionism.”1 Historically,
this critical perspective has been associated with political changes in
Israeli society and specifically, with the weakening of the Zionist left
1
Judd Ne’eman, “The Empty Tomb in the Postmodern Pyramid: Israeli Cinema in
the 1980s and 1990,” in: Documenting Israel (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard
College Library, 1995), 120.
History beyond Trauma 195
following the 1967 War, as dramatically manifested in the outcome of the

1977 elections. This social-political change allowed and encouraged the
cultural elite, who generally originated in the Zionist left, to produce
critical texts in the arts in general and in the field of cinema in particular.2
Judd Neeman’s canonical PARATROOPERS (Masa Alunkot) was made in
1976 and screened in Israel in 1977. This movie is a paradigmatic example of
‘political cinema’ in its critique of Israeli nationalism.3 PARATROOPERS
follows an IDF paratrooper brigade’s basic training, focusing on two
characters: the charismatic commander Yair, (played by Gidi Gov) and the
problematic recruit, Weissman (played by Moni Mushonov). Weissman, the
‘soft’ recruit, is portrayed as feminine and weak because he is unable to meet
the military standards.4 He is unable to become the soldier that his
commander, Yair, would like to make of him, the soldier he himself aspires
to be. During an urban warfare drill, Weissman is harried by his commanders.
Pushed into a corner by Yair, he eventually throws himself on a live grenade,
killing himself. Yair is left to deal with the blame and guilt for the fatal
outcome of his attempts to turn Weissman into a soldier and a ‘man.’
Like other instances of ‘political cinema,’ PARATROOPERS addresses
the fundamental codependence of masculinity and militarism in the
context of Israeli nationalism.5 The opposition between Weissman and
Yair reconstructs the fundamental polarity between the ‘old’ and ‘new’
Jew.6 Yair’s attempts to instill his masculinity in Weissman reflect the
Zionist ambition to construct a new masculinity in opposition to its
‘feminine’ diasporic counterpart.7 The tragic outcome of these attempts
can be allegorically read as referring to the oppressive function of the
construction of Israeli masculinity.
At the heart of PARATROOPERS stands the failure of this (oppressive)
transformation. The attempt to turn Weissman into “Yair”—to make him
2
Ne’eman, “The Empty Tomb in the Postmodern Pyramid,” 120.
3
Ne’eman, “The Empty Tomb in the Postmodern Pyramid,” 120. See also: Nurith
Gertz, Motion Fiction: Israeli Fiction in Film (Tel Aviv: The Open University,
1993) [In Hebrew], 189.
4
Raz Yosef, Beyond Flesh: Queer Masculinities and Nationalism in Israeli
Cinema (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2004), 57-62.
5
Gertz, Motion Fiction, 187-194; Yosef, Beyond Flesh, 52-53.
6
For an elaboration on the role of this dichotomy in Israeli and Zionist discourse,
see: Daniel Boyarin, Unheroic Conduct: The Rise of Heterosexuality and the
Invention of the Jewish Man (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997); Yael
Zerubavel, “The ‘Mythological Sabra’ and Jewish Past: Trauma, Memory, and
Contested Identities,” in: Israel Studies 7, 2 (Summer 2002), 115-144.
7
Yosef, Beyond Flesh, 61.
196 Chapter Ten
fit hegemonic masculinity—tragically and ironically leads to Yair’s

transformation into a “Weissman;” After the young soldier’s death, Yair
quarrels with his superiors and, like Weissman before him, is attacked by
the recruits. His masculine façade crumbles and he is pushed into a
castrated position. As critics have shown, this impaired position serves as
the point of departure for a critical perspective on normative national
constructions. Instead of sacrificing himself for the homeland, Weissman
dies an unheroic and unnecessary death, challenging collectivistic norms
and exposing their emptiness instead of complying with them.
The dramatic break with the traditional narrative is hence located in
Weissman’s death. In his profound analysis of this central scene, Raz
Yosef describes the cinematic elements constructing Yair’s and
Weissman’s respective positions and identities. As he points out, in their
final dialog, seconds before the alleged suicide, Weissman is filmed
standing with his back to the dark entrance of the building he is about to
enter (See Fig. 10.1 and Fig. 10.2).
Fig. 10.1: PARATROOPERS

This “dark hole,” says Yosef, is a visual manifestation of the anus, “a

site of sickness, humiliation, castration, bereavement and loss.”8
Weissman’s death by penetrating this “dark hole,” Yosef continues, “is
imagined in the film as anal penetration.” The dark entrance thus serves as
a metaphor for Weissman’s death—“unheroic, unmanly, derogatory and
humiliating”—and as a visual manifestation of his feminized, impaired
masculinity.
Interesting for our discussion is the fact that this “dark hole,” the
building that functions as the site of Weissman’s anti-heroic death and
metaphor for his impaired masculinity, is a ruined Palestinian building.
The urban warfare training takes place in a depopulated Palestinian
building, which serves as a training facility (See Fig. 10.3). According to
Ne’eman, the scene was shot among the remains of the depopulated
village A-Tira northeast of Al-Lidd, today Lod (Lydda).9 This village was
depopulated in early July 194810 and was later partially destroyed on the
order of David Ben-Gurion.11
During the war, but mostly afterwards, hundreds of Palestinian

localities were destroyed on Israeli initiative. Depopulated villages were
commonly used as military training facilities during the 1950s—
8
Yosef, Beyond Flesh, 67-69.
9
Judd Ne’eman, Personal interview, 2012.
10
Noga Kadman, Erased from Space and Conciseness: Depopulated Palestinian
Villages in the Israeli-Zionist Discourse [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem: November
Books, 2008), 148.
11
Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 165.
198 Chapter Ten
apparently also throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s—thus serving
among a variety of practices facilitating the further destruction of most of
the depopulated Palestinian buildings.12 Ne’eman himself remembers
participating in military exercises in such villages, aware that these make-
believe targets were the former dwelling places of Palestinians.13
PARATROOPERS is among the most researched and celebrated Israeli
films. Yet, none of its many Hebrew-language popular and academic
reviews has mentioned the Palestinian ruin or dealt with its role in
interpreting the film. How can we integrate the Palestinian history of ruin
into an understanding of PARATROOPERS, a movie that does not deal with
the Nakba in any other respect? Does the appearance of the ruin refer
PARATROOPERS to the Nakba, and is PARATROOPERS in any way a movie
about the Nakba? What does it mean for a movie to be “about the Nakba,”
and was it even possible for a Jewish-Israeli filmmaker like Ne’eman to
make a movie “about the Nakba” in the discursive conditions of the late
1970s?
The consensual argument regarding representation of the Nakba in
Israeli cinema assumes its suppression at that time and thereafter as a so-
called “national taboo.”14 Ram Levi’s 1979 television film HIRBAT HISE’A
is seen as an exceptional deviation from the proscriptive norm that
prevented the reenactment of these historical events on the screen. Neither
prior to HIRBAT HISE’A nor until years later did any other Israeli film
narrate the events of expulsion during and after the war.15 As the heated
public debate around the broadcast of HIRBAT HISE’A has demonstrated,
explicitly addressing the Nakba in 1977—only a year after the making of
PARATROOPERS—meant breaking a code of silence. Nurith Gertz and Gal
Hermoni have claimed that the cinematic silence about the expulsion is a
traumatic one.16 Following them, I would like to ask: as an interpretive
paradigm, can trauma discourse help us understand the appearance of the
Palestinian ruin in PARATROOPERS? Can it explain why PARATROOPERS
summons the Palestinian ruin, the material trace of the Nakba?
12
Aharon Shay, “The Fate of Abandoned Arab Villages on the Eve of the Six-Day
War and Its Immediate Aftermath” [in Hebrew], Katedra 105 (2002), 152;
Ne’eman, Personal interview, 2012.
13
Judd Ne’eman, Personal interview, 2012.
14
Anita Shapira, “Hirbet Hizah: Between Remembrance and Forgetting,” Jewish
Social Studies 7, no. 1 (2000), 1-62.
15
Nurith Gertz and Gal Hermoni, “The Muddy Path between Lebanon and Khirbet
Khizeh: Trauma, Ethics and Redemption in Israeli Film and Literature,” in: Boaz
Hagin et al. (eds.), Just Visions (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2011), 35-58, 40.
16
Gertz and Hermoni, “Muddy Path,” 48.
In the last decades, “trauma theory”—to use Susannah Radstone’s

terminology and critical perspective—has become a cardinal theoretical
and interpretive tool in addressing an either permanent or temporary
absence in representation of historical events and, specifically in cinema
and screen studies.17 This discourse suggests the possibility of a “cultural
forgetting” of traumatic events, a result of the inaccessibility of the
traumatic event to symbolization. This is based on what Cathy Caruth
refers to as the unknown nature of the traumatic18 or, as Dori Laub
perceives it, “an event without a witness.”19
Gertz and Hermoni follow this line of thought. Referring to
contemporary trauma discourse, they claim that while not narratively
reenacted, the events of 1948 resonate in several Israeli movies in the form
of detached images referring back to what they perceive as “the pivotal
core trauma of Israeli society – the latent, repressed trauma of the
expulsion of the Arabs from Palestine in the 1948 war.”20 The authors tie
these appearances—for example, the motif of mud—to a traumatic split in
the Hebrew-Zionist identity caused by the events of 1948:
“The trauma of people who were raised and educated on the integration
underlying Zionism, […] between Jewish morality and national
redemption. That integration was severed with the discovery of the
disparity between the narrative by which the Jewish people understands
itself […] as a victim […] and the actual narrative of war, violence,
expulsion and occupation.”21
In other words, Gertz and Hermoni claim that these historic events
cannot be represented because they trigger a traumatic conflict in Israeli
self-perception, the incompatibility of victimhood and domination,
standing for two types of masculinity and nationhood. “Trauma created in
this case,” they posit, “originates in a split between two identities – the
17
Susannah Radstone, “Trauma Theory: Context, Politics, Ethics,” Paragraph 30
(2007), 9-29.
18
Cathy Caruth, Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative and History
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 4.
19
Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub, Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature,
Psychoanalysis and History (New York, 1992), 75-92.
20
Gertz and Hermoni, “Muddy Path,” 39.
21
Ibid, 48.
200 Chapter Ten
ethical and the national,”22 also personified by the opposing identities of

the “old” and “new” Jew.23
Gertz and Hermoni do not address PARATROOPERS, but their post-
traumatic reading echoes the film’s thematic dwelling on the conflict
between two opposed models of national male subjectivity, typically
portrayed by Yair and Weissman. From this point-of-view, the presence of
Palestinian ruins can be seen as a symptom pointing to the repressed origin
of the split, because they constitute a trace of the expulsion and
destruction—experienced here from the Israeli perspective. Weissman’s
death in the Palestinian ruin may refer us back to the source of the
repressed trauma, that is, when victimized Jewish identity was obliterated
by its nationalistic, triumphant mirror image.
I have chosen not to adopt this line of interpretation and would like to
present two fundamental justifications for my methodological and
theoretical reproach of trauma discourse in this case. I believe, moreover,
that these objections point to some fundamental difficulties arising from
trauma discourse beyond the scope of this case.
The first objection is an ethical one. As we have seen, PARATROOPERS
offers itself to traumatic interpretation. Together with other “critical Israeli
military films,”24 PARATROOPERS has been taken to mark a “crisis in
Israeli male subjectivity that took place after the 1973 War and accelerated
due to traumatic events, such as the war in Lebanon, and the Intifada.”25
According to Yosef, Yair is traumatized by Weissman’s death and is hence
compulsively driven to reenact past events—becoming a bereft, impaired,
dysfunctional man. Moreover, Yair “experiences an ‘historical trauma’ in
which he is scared by lack that prevents his reentry into Zionist ‘dominant
fiction.’”26
When Yosef talks about trauma, he addresses the trauma experienced
by Israeli men, just like Gertz and Hermoni, who, as we have seen,
perceive the expulsion as the pivotal trauma from the point-of-view of
Jewish-Israeli society. Indeed, the trauma that forms the crux of
PARATROOPERS is the victimization of Israeli men by Israeli militarism—
their violent disciplining by the national order. According to
PARATROOPERS, the primary, if not only, victim of Israeli militarism—of
the construction of Hebrew masculinity through military practices of
22
Ibid, 49.
23
Ibid, 57.
24
Yosef, Beyond Flesh, 52.
25
Ibid, 53.
26
Ibid.
domination and conquest—are Israeli men themselves, victims of their

own violence. The ‘otherness’ of victimhood—the possibility that the
effects of the construction of Israeli masculinity might extend beyond
Jewish men, affecting other men, women, peoples—does not penetrate
PARATROOPERS, even when it is suggestively indicated by the Palestinian
ruin itself, that is the visual remnant of the extra-subjective effects of this
militarism.
Despite the ethical commitment underlying the use of trauma discourse
in the interpretation of PARATROOPERS, this use complies with a certain
blindness in the movie. The identification with the perception of Israeli
men as the sole traumatized victims of Israeli militarism allows
researchers to ignore the visible material history of the Palestinian ruin, a
consequence of that masculinity. It transforms the ruin into a metaphorical
altar for the sacrifice of the Israeli man, the single victim of Israeli
violence that Israeli cinematic discourse locates through both movies and
their interpretations.
I contend that the focus on Israeli trauma, the trauma of the Israeli man
perceived as the victim of Israeli militarism and nationalistic ideals, has
supported, articulated, and elaborated the transformation and appropriation
of the Palestinian ruin into an ‘Israeli ruin,’ a metaphorical wreckage
detached from its visible historical resonance as a trace of the Nakba.
Through the prism of Israeli trauma, the ruin is not seen as a trace of
occupation, expulsion, destruction, and expropriation, but as a site of
internal Israeli conflict. The use of trauma theory in this case serves an
uncritical identification with PARATROOPERS—the cinematic object—and
its ideologically loaded semiotic effects.27 To read the Palestinian ruin as
merely a symptom of a repressed Israeli trauma is to dematerialize it and
convert it into a rhetorical coin.
The second objection I would like to present is a theoretical one. As
Radstone points out, trauma theory has inherited from its theoretical
ancestors—psychoanalysis, deconstruction, and post-structuralism—their
critiques of referentiality, a disbelief in the transparency and directness of
the relations between representation and “actuality,” while at the same
time claiming to move “through and beyond” these theoretical
difficulties.28 As Thomas Elsaesser claims, following Caruth, “If trauma is
the name for an event that does not leave visible traces, these non-traces
27
Christian Metz, The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema
(Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1986), 14.
28
Radstone, “Trauma Theory,” 11-12.
202 Chapter Ten
are nonetheless recoverable by a different kind of hermeneutics”29 that

takes into account the displacements and shifts in perception and meaning
characteristic of the traumatic effect. According to this view, the post-
traumatic text tends to follow the semiotics of the unconscious, rather than
comply with referential credibility. “Trauma,” Elsaesser thus claims, “not
only names the delay between an event and its (persistent, obsessive)
return, but also a reversal of effect and meaning across this gap in time.”30
From the perspective of trauma discourse, shifts of signification can be
understood as traumatic displacements. From this point-of-view, the
positioning of the Palestinian ruin at the heart of a narrative regarding
conflictual masculinity can be understood as traumatic migration and
alteration of meaning, characteristic of the post-traumatic text. The post-
traumatic situation is essentially perceived as a complex code, a cluster of
meanings that one must move through—overcome—in order to restore its
historical significance and reconnect the signifier to its lost signified—the
trauma that has become inaccessible, suppressed, and repressed. Is trauma
not the perfect paradigm to reconnect the ruin to its history?
In his analysis of the ideological function of landscape, W. J. T.
Mitchell warns of giving way to the myths of landscape, its imagined
depth and allegories.31 From his historical-materialist perspective, the
analysis of the meaning of landscape is important, but only insofar as it
allows for the reconstruction of its use—its function under specific
political-historical conditions. According to Mitchell, the (so-called)
“discovery” of the unconscious connotations of landscape may lead to its
reification and thereby serve an ideological function through the
concealment of its history.
I would claim that in the case before us, pointing out the signification
of the ruin—specifically its allegorical meaning in the context of
PARATROOPERS as a visual manifestation of impaired, feminized
masculinity—serves an ideological function by concealing its history and
its historicity. Following Mitchell, I wish to go beyond meaning as
articulated, for instance, in the lexicon of trauma, and explore the
discursive function of this meaning. The allegorical reading of the ruin in
the language of trauma in PARATROOPERS turns the ruin into a “dark hole,”
a sexual aperture, a grave, the anus of the feminized Israeli soldier,
29
Thomas Elsaesser, “Postmodernism as Mourning Work,” Screen 42:2 (2001),
193-201, 196.
30
Elsaesser, “Postmodernism as Mourning Work,” 197.
31
W. J. T. Mitchell, “Holy Landscape: Israel, Palestine, and the American
Wilderness,” Critical Inquiry 26:2 (2002), 193-223, 194-195.
tragically unfit for national manhood and victimized by it. These

qualifications are accurate and highly revealing in terms of their
symbolism, but they conceal the history of the ruin. This (traumatic)
signification allows a de-signification of the ruin, its detachment from its
historical resonance.32
Unlike Gertz and Hermoni, I do not ask to restore historic referentiality
by finding the traces of a repressed trauma and showing how the text
indeed deals with the Nakba, even if it does not seem to on its surface.
Instead, I aim to elucidate how historic referentiality is actually lost—how
the ruin is detached from the Nakba—and how a text that might have dealt
with the Nakba was not constructed and interpreted as such. Following
Mitchell, I do not seek to overcome the inaccessibility of the historical
events to the text, but to describe it—to trace the textual mechanisms that
allow this break in signification and the cultural-historical circumstances
that facilitate it. This interpretive stance also serves to explain the
positioning of the ruin in a narrative overtly detached from the Nakba. The
break between the ruin and its history—the human history of its creation,
inhabitation, and destruction—should not be seen as a traumatic
disintegration of meaning, but as an ideological construction of meaning
internal to Israeli discourse that dispossesses the Palestinian ruin of its
historical value as a marker of the Nakba.
The usage of the Palestinian ruin in this context and this re-
construction of meaning inter-textually draw on the early “Heroic-
Nationalistic” genre, i.e. Israeli cinema made soon after 1948.33 These
movies are occupied with the national redemption of the Jewish people
and the Jewish man by the newborn state, visually manifesting what Ariel
Feldstein called the idea of the “rebirth of the new Jew from the old Jew in
32
Ghazi Falah coins the term “de-signification” to describe the physical
elimination of traces of Palestinian culture and past from the Israeli landscape. See:
Ghazi Falah, “The Transformation and De-Signification of Palestine's Cultural
Landscape,” in: Landscape of Palestine: Equivocal Poetry (Birzeit: Birzeit
Publications, 1999), 97-106. Kadman speaks in this context of “symbolic
marginalization” of the depopulated Arab villages (at tourist sites in Israel), while
Uri Ram uses the term “symbolic forgetting” as one of the mechanisms
facilitating Israeli forgetting of the Nakba. See: Noga Kadman, “Roots Tourism –
Whose Roots? The Marginalization of Palestinian Heritage Sites in Official Israeli
Tourism Sites,” Téoros, Revue de Recherche en Tourisme 29:1 (2010), 55-66; Uri
Ram, “Ways of Forgetting: Israel and the Obliterated Memory of the Palestinian
Nakba,” Journal of Historical Sociology 22:3 (2009), 366–395.
33
Ella Shohat, Israeli Cinema: East/West and the Politics of Representation
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989), 57-114.
204 Chapter Ten
the War of Independence.”34 These movies include Thorold Dickinson’s

1954 film, HILL 24 DOES NOT ANSWER. Towards its end, this movie depicts
a battle between Jewish forces and Egyptian soldiers entrenched in a
ruined church during the 1948 War. Amiram, played by Arik Lavie (Fig.
10.4), is one of the movie’s three protagonists and the only one among
them who is a ‘Sabra’—a native Hebrew speaker born in ‘Erez Israel.’ The
man lying lifeless is Itzik’l (Fig. 10.5), a diasporic ‘Gachal’ soldier born in
Europe. Unlike Amiram, who is an experienced and courageous
combatant, Itzik’l knows nothing about warfare and is hit and killed by the
first shot fired from the ruined church. The battle continues over his dead
body, which lies defeated before the unattained goal, while the Sabra
soldier, Amiram, skillfully enters the very same building—a Palestinian
ruin serving as an enemy fortification.
Fig. 10.4: HILL 24 DOES NOT ANSWER
34
Ariel Feldstein, “Shooting War: Tashach War in Hill 24 Doesn’t Answer and
Kedma” [in Hebrew], Zmanim 113 (2011), 66.
Fig. 10.5: HILL 24 DOES NOT ANSWER
As we can see, the opposition between the ‘old’ and ‘new’ Jew is
rendered here in terms of conquest and utilizes the Palestinian ruin as a
demarcation; while the ‘old’ Jew dies before reaching the ruin, the ‘new’
Jew proves his masculinity by reaching and penetrating it. Subjected to
Zionist thematics, this structure functions as a constituent element in the
visualization of Israeli masculinization: the masculinity of the Israeli
soldier is constituted in the attempt to penetrate and conquer the
Palestinian ruin.
This iconographic scene from early “Heroic-Nationalistic” cinema
resonates inter-textually in PARATROOPERS, wherein the ruin serves
critically and ironically as a site of emasculation. In both instances, the
ruined Palestinian building is a component of an image reflecting on the
construction of Zionist masculinity. But while the avowedly nationalistic
HILL 24 views this process sympathetically, in PARATROOPERS, it is seen
critically. Here, the identification is with the ‘old’ Jew, who refuses to
enter the ruin and dies being forced to do so, in a way that emphasizes the
oppressive, disastrous, and fatal implications of this nationalistic ideal.
Such reframing indeed offers a critical perspective: the demystification of
national myths and a heroic code of conduct. Ironically, the Palestinian
history of the ruin needs to be erased in order for this critical discourse to
206 Chapter Ten
emerge. In this respect, PARATROOPERS is actually consistent with

nationalist cinema.
Deciphering the image of the Palestinian ruin through the prism of
trauma allows critics to ‘see through’ the ruin, to read it as an idiom in a
self-reflective Israeli text. In this respect, trauma discourse functions as
one of many vocabularies and practices that articulate the de-
historicization of Palestinian ruins in Israeli cinema and in the Israeli field
of vision in general.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE ALL-SEEING LENS:

PANOPTICAL REALITY, TELEVISED TRAUMA
AND CINEMATIC REPRESENTATIONS
OF URBAN PARANOIA IN HAIM BOUZAGLO’S
DISTORTION (2004)
ISAAC (ITSIK) ROSEN
Preface – The Cinema of the City: Models, Structures,

Contents and Intentions
Urban cinema in the beginning of the 21st century is characterized by a
fierce sense of the anxious and hysterical.1 This defining quality, integral
to cinematic representations of the urban environment since the early days
of cinema,2 is partially due to the traumatized state of urban societies
around the world, repeatedly altered by experiences of the last 150 years.
This traumatized perception of the urban space can be explained as the
result of major socio-political shifts based upon the transition from
agrarian communal social structures to multicultural, alienating urban
ones.3 Such developments in global socio-political orders have evoked
extreme changes in everyday interactions between individuals, groups,
1
Melinda Guy, “The Shock of the Old,” Frieze Magazine for Cultural Studies 73
(2003), 1.
2
Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New York,
De-Capo Publishing, 1999).
3
Georg Simmel, “The Metropolis of Modern Life” (1903), in: Oded Menda-Levi
(ed.), Urbanism: The Sociology of the Modern City, Hebrew transl. by Miriam
Kraus (Tel Aviv, Resling Publ., 2007), 23.
208 Chapter Eleven
political entities and entire cultures.4 Cinematic representations of the

urban environment that focus on aestheticizing such distinctly urban
emotional conditions like stress, anxiety and alienation can be regarded as
the cinema of the ‘Urban Nightmare.’ This stylization, which operates on
fields of both form and content, also synergizes three key elements: the
city as a spatial object, which undergoes a process of reification5 and
cinematic fetish, the labyrinth as a spatial model applied to the
cinematically represented urban surrounding, and the nightmare as a
guiding emotional state of mind.6
In accordance with such officiating aesthetics, the three most
noticeable formative and narrative models to be found in the basis of this
‘cinema of the urban nightmare’ are an understanding of the post-modern
city7 as a post-modern maze,8 the panoptical dominance in this aesthetics’
spatial comprehension,9 and the intertwinement of separate layers of
duplicated realities.10 Of these three models, the most elaborate and
essential is the comprehension of the urban environment as a panoptical
labyrinth—the urban maze.11 Yet, in the discussion of urban nightmares
we should not address this base element in the simplified sense of a
graphic or geographic labyrinth. Rather, the urban space should be
perceived as the graphically and chronologically inconsistent post-modern
maze. Such a construct can be understood first through an examination of
the existing forms of labyrinthine models.
4
Donald Cuccioletta, “Multiculturalism or Transculturalism: Towards a
Cosmopolitan Citizenship,” London Journal of Canadian Studies 17 (2002), 1-3.
5
Georg Lukacs, “The Phenomenon of Reification” (1920), in: History & Class
Consciousness (London, Merlin Press, 1967), 12.
6
I refer here to a stylization I hypothesized, constructed, and established in my
thesis, entitled, “Horrid City: Urban Nightmares in the New Israeli Cinema,”
submitted September 2011 and judged between October and December, 2011.
7
Frederick Jameson, “Post Modernism and the City,” in: Post Modernism or the
Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Hebrew transl. by Moshe Ron (Tel Aviv:
Resling Publ., 2008), 38.
8
Umberto Eco, “The Encyclopedia as Labyrinth,” in: Semiotics and the Philosophy
of Language (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1986), 80.
9
Jeremy Bentham, “Panopticon,” in: Miran Bozovic (ed.), The Panopticon
Writings (London: Verso, 1995), 29.
10
Jameson, “Post Modernism and the City,” 36.
11
This principle, once applied cinematically, establishes a narrative based on the
notion that everyone involved in the events unfolding on the screen is both
watching everybody around him or her, and is being watched by everybody else.
The All-Seeing Lens 209
According to Eco,12 it is possible to divide the labyrinth structure into

three major categories. The first is the “classic linear labyrinth,” which
features a single possible entry point and exit point. This kind of labyrinth
is a singular, twisting and perhaps even dubious track. Hence, one needs
only to keep moving in the forward direction to eventually arrive at the
labyrinth’s exit. The second category is that of the “modern labyrinth.”
This type of labyrinth contains many curves, intersections, bifurcations
and dead ends. Such a labyrinth structure forces its “challenger” to
undergo a process of trial and error in order to make it to the other side. As
such, it is confined to the limitations of physical regularity and
geographical and chronological consistency. In this respect, in spite of its
inherent complexity, such restrictedness positions the modern labyrinth in
proximity to its classical counterpart.
Further, there is the ‘post-modern labyrinth,’ “Chrono-Morphic” maze.
This labyrinth maintains certain spatial dynamics and is characterized by
geographical inconsistency, turning it into a structural platform that
changes form, either arbitrarily or within a prescribed time-flux:
“[…] [I]t is a moveable labyrinth, with cells and tracks that are neither set
nor permanent, but rather dynamic in their essence. […] [I]n this kind of a
labyrinth, in a certain moment a certain track leads to the much anticipated
and redeeming way out of the maze, and in the next moment that same
track leads to yet another dead end.”13
Therefore, within the framework of the spatial definitions offered

above, it is possible—perhaps imperative—to comprehend the urban
nightmare film’s spatial representation as a post-modern labyrinth. To
illustrate, tentative, somewhat associative, and perhaps even suggestive
examples of films which practice representations of the modern labyrinth
can be found in such early films as Alfred Hitchcock's THE LODGER: THE
STORY OF THE LONDON FOG (1927)14 and Roman Polanski’s REPULSION
(1965),15 whilst examples of films that feature the post-modern labyrinth
would include Polanski's grim psychological thriller, THE TENANT (1976),
Scorsese’s frantic depiction of a maze-like and absurdly disturbed New
12
Eco, The Encyclopedia as Labyrinth, 80.
13
Eco, The Encyclopedia as Labyrinth, 80.
14
Spoto, Dark Side of Genius, Preface.
15
Barbara Leaming, Polanski – A Biography: The Film Maker as a Voyeur
(London: Simon and Schuster Inc, 1983).
210 Chapter Eleven
York City in the run-amok black comedy, AFTER HOURS (1985),16 and of
course, the apocalyptic CUBE (1997), written and directed by the
Canadian, Vincenzo Natali. These examples are representative of but a
few in a vast corpus of films from various times, eras and places that
exercise such representation of the cinematic space in general and the
urban environment in particular.
Utilizing the formative/narrative aesthetic guidelines presented above
as my model, the following study examines post-modern twenty-first-
century Israeli cinema, specifically through a close examination of
DISTORTION,17 created by Haim Bouzaglo. DISTORTION, an independent,
quasi- ‘Dogma-95’ urban melodrama attributed to the wave of films
known as the “new Israeli cinema,”18 was first released in 2004 and is a
perfect example of the aesthetic and narrative techniques based on the
elements described above. By means of textual analysis of Bouzaglo’s
DISTORTION, an example of 21st century Israeli cinema, this essay seeks to
identify utilization of the characteristics and models mentioned above,
which construct the ‘cinema of urban nightmare.’19 Following my analysis
is an exploration into the ways in which Bouzaglo’s film conveys these
characteristics and models in its cinematic language and narrative
foundations.
The concluding stage of this examination will be a delineation of the
socio-political connection between the film and the ‘here and now’ in
which it was made and released. The primary goal of this essay is to
understand the manner in which Bouzaglo’s DISTORTION asserts the urban
space as a traumatized space.20 Such an assertion is validated by the use of
16
Lesley Stern, The Scorsese Connection (Bloomington and London: University of
Indiana Press and the British Film Institute, 1995), 69-114.
17
The film is unconventionally titled with the English word “Distortion,” spelled
with Hebrew characters.
18
Yael Munk, “Inside Space, Out of Time-the New Israeli Cinema,” New Horizons
(Afikim Hadashim) 43 (2008), 1.
19
It is imperative to acknowledge and emphasize that most of the information and
testimony concretizing all conclusions with regard to DISTORTION’S aesthetic
qualities and cinematic expression come as a result of an interview I held with the
film's producer-writer-director and lead actor, Haim Bouzaglo. The interview took
place in Tel Aviv, January 11, 2011, and is the main source of validity and grounds
for many of this essay's hypotheses and final conclusions, specifically those
contentions concerned with the analytical movements performed in the film itself.
20
Yehuda Neeman, “Modernism-stage two: The Sixties,” in: Oded Heilbroner and
Michael Levine (eds.), How Do You Say Modernism in Hebrew? (Tel Aviv: Resling
Publ. and Shenkar School for Engineering and Design, 2010).
different cinematic techniques presented in the film, which together

articulate a filmic syntax based primarily on an aesthetic and narrative
principle of imagery undergoing televised mediation. Upon the basis of
this syntax lie the foundations of perceiving the urban environment as an
inherently trauma-inducing territory, a thematic characteristic asserting
DISTORTION itself as a work of cinema that is actually a reaction to
historical traumatic times.
Cinematic Expression, Narrative of Anxiety

and DISTORTION’s Methodology of Urban Representation
as a Direct Reaction to Current Traumatic Events
Haim Bouzaglo’s DISTORTION was produced as a completely
independent film, free of financial dependency upon a funding authority.
The film’s storyline is set during the peak of the second Intifada suicide-
bombing rampage that ‘hit’ the streets of Tel Aviv at the turn of the
millennium, transforming the everyday reality of Israel’s cultural capital
and financial center a horrifying nightmare. Similarly, the film was
conceived, arranged, shot and edited over three intensive months at the
height of the second Intifada. Bouzaglo, the film’s writer-director (and
lead actor amongst a vast and impressive cast of neurotic and depraved
characters), describes the film’s coming into being:
“The film was born whilst current events were unfolding. We knew that we
needed to react (to what was going on). Not like in the case of THE CHERRY
SEASON21 in which it took us 10 years to respond to the first Lebanon war.
No – now was the time to go out to the streets and try to respond at real
time.”22
21
THE CHERRY SEASON (Onat Ha-Duvdevanim) is Bouzaglo's second feature film.
Released as a major Israeli production in 1991, the film is set in the early 1980s
and depicts the troubling realizations of an over-confident, middle aged, Israeli
bourgeoisie advertising ‘hot shot,’ who is called to reserve IDF service at the peak
of the controversial First Lebanon War. Faced with the prospect of his demise on
the battle field, the man begins preparing himself and his loved ones for his
untimely death whilst going through an introspective similar to that experienced
throughout Israeli society in that time period.
22
This quote is taken from an interview with writer-director Haim Bouzaglo that
took place on January 11, 2011. The quote was translated to English by Isaac
Rosen. Additional quotations, relevant to the themes and topics of this essay, will
occasionally be given in the body of the text.
212 Chapter Eleven
It is clear that Bouzaglo strongly positions his film within the context
of the ‘here and now’ in which it was made. Herein is provided the
understanding of the origins of DISTORTION as a film that generates a
unique Zeitgeist connection between its creators and the time in which it
was made. Such connection is an imperative element to take into
consideration in order to initiate the essay’s a priori attempt to
comprehend the film’s narrative foundations and aesthetic bedrock.
The film’s opening depicts an average-looking cafe in the heart of Tel
Aviv on an ostensibly average evening. The scene quickly climaxes,
however, in what seems to be the event of a suicide bombing. Before the
explosion occurs, we are presented with Haim, a stressed-out playwright
working on a new play he was commissioned to write by the manager of a
theatre at which he is employed. Haim is shown leaving the scene of the
bombing a few minutes before the earth-shattering explosion tears through
the scene, rendering him a severely traumatized witness. This tips off a chain
of events in which a distressed Haim, now suffering acute writers’ block,
becomes increasingly anxious. He develops extreme anxieties and falls hard
into a deeply paralyzing depression, resulting in his growing disconnection
from reality and his surroundings. Haim’s perception of reality becomes
skewed, rapidly disoriented and, if you will, gradually ‘distorted.’
The film, which focuses on Haim’s deteriorating psychological
condition as a narrative axis, moves between several distinct intertwining
plots: Haim’s rapid mental breakdown; the collective work process of
Haim’s new play and the iniquities of its cast, including a corrupt,
traitorous and maliciously intriguing array of eccentric personalities; a
sadomasochistic sexual relationship that develops between Osher,23
Haim’s homeless vagabond son, and one of the play’s ensemble actors;
and finally, a love affair that develops between Haim’s beautiful and
successful television journalist wife and the subject of her new socially
aware documentary television article, a retired IDF colonel whose life has
been destroyed by the raging Intifada.
Haim’s acute anxiety puts him in a castrating mode of paralysis,
denying him the ability to function as both an artist and husband to his
neglected wife. Thus, in an attempt at self-redemption, Haim, upon
suspecting his wife to be having an affair, hires an eccentric and paranoid
private investigator to follow his wife and her lover and report back to him
intensively, chronicling every step of his investigation. As the story
23
The word, ‘Osher’ means ‘happiness’ in Hebrew, a rather cynical titling of one of
the more depraved, corrupt, manipulative, and emotionally unstable fabricated
personalities in the film’s cast of characters.
progresses, Haim decides to use the information passed to him by the

voyeuristic and rather deranged detective as the story line for his new play,
which, as mentioned earlier, he is contractually obligated to write. The
film ends with the gala show of the play, which presents a grim end to all
of the film’s characters, followed by a narrative regression in the form of
the same suicide bombing that opened the film, thus ‘returning’ the viewer
to the narrative’s original point of departure.
Technically, DISTORTION’s unique cinematic expression is articulated
through the way in which the film is shot and edited; Yoram Millo, the
film’s director of photography, uses a shaky and deliberately unstable
handheld camera through most of the film. His shots and general mise-en-
scènes are somewhat hysterical; his lens runs amok across the traumatized
urban surrounding it captures. In the traditional aesthetic of the Danish
‘Dogma 95’ movement, the film is shot with a low-grade, semi-
professional video camera. It runs wildly across the cinematic space and
the lens captures the characters in a violent, penetrative manner, with fast
and surprising zoom-ins and agitated camera movements that destabilize
the characters’ presence within the borders of the frame.
The fast and frantic editing of the film conducted by Bouzaglo and
executed by the then young and relatively novice film editor, Yanniv
Adrian Amoday, attributes to the film’s general atmosphere a psychedelic,
‘trip-like’ quality—intense and dizzying. Camera angles and set-ups shift
rapidly. Particular situations, sometimes even a single frame or moment,
are transmitted from several different angles, intensifying the film’s
repetitive element and thereby solidifying its anxious characteristic. An
abundance of editorial ‘disturbances’ and a plethora of interferences with
the film’s pace and visual rhythm are constantly disrupting the viewer’s
sequential and comfortable experience of the film. These manifest in
aggressive inter-cuts, intentional violations of the ‘180 degrees rule,’
asynchronous audio-visual overlaps and repetition of moving shots from
the same angle, thus establishing the film’s sense of dread and anti-
realism. All of that is placed in a realistic and historically traumatic socio-
political context, the second Intifada, which wrought considerable fear and
stress, as well as a general apocalyptic mood to the streets and inhabitants
of Israel in general and Tel Aviv in particular. At these times, a fear of the
‘other,’ a daily collective sense of panic and urgency and all-consuming
concern of everything and everyone, reigned over the ultimate Israeli city.24
24
Yael Munk, “False Nostalgia and Cultural Amnesia: The City of Tel Aviv in
Israeli Cinema of the 1990s,” Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish
culture, 24 - Number 4 (2006), 130-143.
214 Chapter Eleven
Repetitiveness is clearly dominant as an editorial aesthetic in

DISTORTION. Such a technique, combined with the ‘fiction within fiction’
model—the film’s narrative, which contains a theatrical play motif that
mirrors the film’s own narrative—formulates the film as a labyrinthine
urban nightmare. This choice made by Bouzaglo, which eventually makes
the film’s narrative quite hard to follow, has a much validated purpose—
specifically if we take into consideration the state of mind and general
outlook of the represented reality the film aspires to express—as the
cinematic language in DISTORTION comes to heighten feelings of hysteria.
Combined with such characteristics as repetitiveness, this approach aims
to represent a shattered reality perceived through a fragmented and restless
perspective. One can compare the film’s cinematic expression to the point-
of-view of a madman running amok in a twisting and entangling maze,
encountering one dead-end after another, retreating, finding himself at yet
another dead end, slowly but surely losing his grip and sense of spatial
orientation and gradually, his hold on reality itself.
The urban space, one of the camera lens’s main objects of interest, is a
threatening and fatal space in which the character of the suicide bomber
reigns supreme; throughout the film, we can see in different inter-cutting
sequences the suicide bomber, dressed as a religious Jewish man in order
to fit in with the crowd, roaming the city streets, looking for the optimal
place to detonate himself in order to take as many people with him as
possible. The suicide bomber walks through a number of average-looking
Israeli Urbania, but the settings are anything but average. It is evident that
Bouzaglo places the suicide bomber in distinctly infamous suicide
bombing sites on the map of Israel’s collective memory of terrorist attacks.
Three such suicide bombings are ‘referenced’ in the film, including the Tel
Aviv Number 5 bus line bombing, which occurred on October 19, 1994
and is considered one of the most lethal and horrifying suicide bombings
ever in Israel; the “Mayor’s Falafel & Shawarma” bombing, at a renowned
falafel restaurant in the south of Tel Aviv that suffered two devastating
suicide bombing attacks during the second Intifada; and the “Sbarro”
bombing, at a restaurant of a highly popular pizzeria chain, known as one
of the most tragic suicide bombing venues in which five members of the
same family were amongst the nineteen reported deaths.
This is neither accidental nor coincidental; by placing the character of
the suicide bomber in these specific urban locations, Bouzaglo evokes and
agitates the memory of some of the most traumatic suicide bombings the
Israeli nation experienced as a collective, mainly through the televised
mediator. By that, Bouzaglo is marking the urban environment as a
‘traumatized space,’ within which the ghosts and the memories of past
horrors still shadow and haunt.25
After growing somewhat tired of his urban travels, the suicide bomber
finally chooses the café in which the film opens. As he pulls on the
activating mechanism of his suicide belt, the frame is colored with an
over-exposed, white light effect. Without so much as a word or frame of
closure, the film breaks to the closing titles sequence. We can see how the
film’s ending, which takes all that has happened to this point now back to
its own starting point, serves as a kind of chronological dead end.
Combined with the ‘fiction within fiction’ model that the film’s structure
is based on, the structural principle of Eco’s post-modern maze gains
further validity.
A Maze within a Maze: The Self-Reflecting Narrative

as a Model for the Post-modern Labyrinth Structure
The ‘fiction within fiction’ model, which serves as a cinematic self-
reflecting technique utilized in DISTORTION, is one of the main formative
and narrative attributors to the film’s structure as a post-modern maze.
This attribution comes to a narrative and formative climax in the film’s
ending sequence, as Haim’s play opens in the Kameri Theatre in Tel Aviv.
The play’s opening act starts with Haim’s stage alter-ego (playing the role
of Haim, a theatre director, in the film) rushes to the stage and begins his
opening monologue armed with an automatic pistol. He approaches the
actor who plays his son (that is, playing the part of Osher, Haim’s film
son) sitting among the audience. At the same time Osher himself, now not
of his usual destitute appearance but rather clean and neatly shaven, also
sits in the crowd, right next to his theatrical ‘equivalent.’ Suddenly, the
spotlight is put on ‘film’ Osher himself, while stage-Haim, who is caught
up in a humiliating sadomasochistic relationship with Osher, starts to taunt
Osher, gradually screaming ferociously at him, bringing the young
clochard to tears. Thus the dichotomy between the fictional space and the
‘real’ space, as well as between the fictional character and the ‘real’
character, is undermined. ‘Stage-Haim’ approaches Haim’s ‘real’ movie
wife, who is sitting next to the playwright himself, and while still standing
on the stage, confronts her about her infidelity, eventually shooting her
with his pistol. The film’s labyrinthine narrative exercises a structural
25
Yael Munk, “Recycled Wounds: Trauma, Gender and Ethnicity in Or- My
Treasure,” in: Raz Yosef (ed.), The Politics of Loss and Trauma in Contemporary
Israeli Cinema (New York: Routledge, 2011), 82-102.
216 Chapter Eleven
approach in which the stage space, the realm of the fantastic and unreal,
blends and intertwines with the ‘real world’ to such a degree that it is
impossible to distinguish where one ends and the other begins.
The next scene, serving as a sort of epilogue to what we have seen so
far, is a repetition of the opening scene of the film, only this time, the
viewer is exposed to the fact that the flâneur26 suicide bomber is the one
responsible for the fatal explosion that set off the entire story. Thus, the
viewer is meant to understand that the suicide bombing presented as the
catalyst of the broader film, takes place only at its ending. The
chronological continuum of the film is thus undermined. In addition to the
fact that at this point the causal connection between the suicide bombing
and the events revealed in the film has been dismantled and disintegrated,
the repetitiveness that the film expresses in ‘micro’ form (i.e. limited to the
borders of a single scene or sequence) is now manifested in its ‘macro’
form, establishing the whole film as a post-modern maze of time and
space.
The Panoptical Perspective as the Heart of the Urban

Nightmare Apparatus
At this point, I would like to deepen the analytical examination this
article performs on the themes and forms presented in DISTORTION, in
order to further understand the film’s relation to the time and place in
which it was produced. To accomplish this, it is necessary to focus on the
way in which the film establishes a cinematic syntax that articulates the
film’s representation of the urban environment, as well as the film’s core
structure itself, as a panoptical structure. This fundamental principle is
found in the film’s general form, both thematically and formatively,
allowing DISTORTION to successfully express, in pure cinematic fashion,
inner-world sensations like paranoia and anxiety—sensations governing
Israel’s reality in the days of constant and intense existential uncertainty
the film sets to articulate.
The urban environment in DISTORTION is governed by an abundance of
monitoring devices and means of supervision, a fact that turns it into a
space characterized as a panoptical environment. As briefly mentioned at
the beginning of this article, the “panopticon” is an architectural model
based on the idea that an individual in relative confinement will, at all
26
Anne Fridberg, “Cinema and the Postmodern Condition,” in: Linda Williams
(ed.), Viewing Positions: Ways of Seeing Film (New Jersey: Rutgers University
Press, 1995), 59.
times, be under constant (and often unseen) supervision by a governing

authority.27 The primary objective of a theoretical panoptical structure is
the imposed isolation, supervision, and constant surveillance of an
individual within the bounds of a certain institutional authority, whether a
prison, correctional facility, hospital, governmental office building, or
anywhere else it is possible to construct such a regime.28
In his writings about the influence of the panoptical structure on
human perception, Foucault claims that, “the main and possibly most
important principle of the Panopticon is […] the internalization of the
‘disciplining gaze,’ enforced upon the individual even when nobody is
actually looking.”29 This concept of internalizing the “disciplining gaze,”
lies at the root of defining DISTORTION as an urban nightmare. Presented
through an all-seeing ‘panoptical lens,’ the full cast of characters dwells in
paranoia and anxiety originating from their concern for or, do I dare
suggest, solid consciousness of, the fact that they are consistently under
surveillance and documentation. In the words of the film’s creator, “[T]he
film expresses a situation in which everybody is filming everybody,
everybody is watching everybody and everybody knows everything about
everybody.” This core principle dictates the film’s unique hysterical and
paranoid perspective of the reality it seeks to capture.
Screen Fetish: The Televised Image as Mediator

and All-knowing Storyteller
Instruments of video photography, recording, and surveillance appear
and reappear throughout DISTORTION. On many occasions, the film itself
is transmitted through a variety of long-shots of closed-circuit television
(CCTV) screens, television sets, cameras’ view-finders and even turned-
off television screens utilized as mirroring objects on which the scene’s
main situation is reflected. The film’s fetishistic approach toward
surveillance devices, television screens and voyeuristic artifacts is
personified through the character of the private detective hired by Haim to
follow his wife around the city. In a long, technically elaborated scene, the
PI sits in front of an overwhelmed and somewhat disoriented Haim and
delves into a detailed presentation about how each and every seemingly
common and everyday household item put before them on the table—a
time piece, fountain pen, eye glasses, a baseball cap—is actually a guised
27
Bentham, Panopticon or the Inspection House, 29-95.
28
Ibid.
29
Michel Foucault, Heterotopia, (Tel Aviv: Resling Publ., 2003), Preface.
218 Chapter Eleven
high-quality surveillance camera. The detective’s own apartment is equipped

with a huge television screen, acting as an enormous CCTV directed onto
the street outside the building, watching each and every passerby insolent
enough to venture into the detective’s private habitat. The anchoring of
this thematic and aesthetic motif through one of the film’s main characters
makes it evident that DISTORTION comes to present a ‘duplicated’ reality
in which people are under constant surveillance. Additionally, it is
possible to identify juxtaposition strategies implemented in the film
between critical and essential narrative developments, and the distinct and
integral presence of voyeuristic monitoring and recording devices.
It is intentionally through the intermediation of the televised image that
we as the spectators learn of the major turning point in the film’s plot; the
fact that Haim’s wife is having an affair is presented to both Haim and the
viewer through a separate television screen, rather than via a ‘first-hand’
witnessing character whose point-of-view the film adopts. The broadcast
of an additional massive suicide bombing that takes place in the film (the
images are of an actual terrorist attack that took place in Jerusalem during
the filming of DISTORTION) flickers on the television screen as background
action in one of the film’s sex scenes—the act of a pair of unfaithful
theater actors from Haim’s ensemble, cheating on their spouses with each
other. Furthermore, the actual moment in which Haim’s unfaithful wife
falls for her lover is anchored in the penetrative look her television camera
allows her to perform on the man’s tormented demeanor. In light of the
above, it is obvious how DISTORTION presents an aesthetic and narrative in
which video cameras record shattered lives at their moment of epic
fictional cataclysm. Respectively, the television screen exposes
despondent souls at the peak of their grief, with the intrusive ‘televised
gaze’ sitting at the heart of the film’s visual language, manifested through
the encompassing presence of glancing, voyeurism, and surveillance
technology. Bouzaglo explains this exaggerated—one might say,
‘surplus’—usage of documenting ‘peeping’ devices that are put bluntly in
the film’s center frame:
This is the century of security and surveillance cameras. The ones

capitalizing the most in these paranoid times are those dealing and trading
with security and surveillance equipment. In general, it seems quite
fantastic to me, this whole subject of surveillance within surveillance,
everybody knowing everything about everybody else. It’s also a very urban
characteristic: mass communication that infiltrates our private lives and the
possibility of manufacturing things that immediately surpasses to the

televised medium. Everything is instantaneous.30
The urban environment in DISTORTION is a monitored environment, a

space under constant watch by the omniscient ‘electronic eye,’ the camera
lens forever looking, photographing, documenting, and duplicating the
urban surrounding in which it is submerged. It produces false
representation after false representation until it becomes impossible to
distinguish the substantive space and the duplicated, virtual one, and thus
any such differentiation loses all validity.31 This camera lens is also
panoptical. It is all-seeing, never seen but always present, provoking
permanent awareness of its presence.32 The panoptical lens practices a
disciplining glance, of which the film’s characters are fully aware; within
the anxious state of mind such incessant intrusion evokes, they progress
towards their inevitable personal apocalypse (See Fig. 11.1).
Fig. 11.1: A reproduced moment of televised infidelity in a panoptical, urban

nightmare (Frame from DISTORTION).
Examining this aesthetic principle, which officiates as a main formative

motif of DISTORTION’s cinematic expression, alongside the film’s general
30
This quote is taken from an interview with writer-director Haim Bouzaglo that
took place on January 11th, 2011. The quote was translated to English by Isaac
Rosen.
31
Hille Koskela, “‘Cam Era’: The Contemporary Urban Pan-opticon,”
Surveillance & Society 1(3) (2003), 292.
32
David Wood, “Editorial; Foucault and Pan-opticism Revisited,” Surveillance &
Society 1(3) (2003), 234.
220 Chapter Eleven
narrative structure provides evidence for one of this article’s central

arguments: the chronological continuousness and distinction between the
real and imagined are simultaneously neutralized from the film’s narrative
and spatial representation style (See Fig. 11.2 and 11.3).
Fig. 11.2: The terroristis “Flaneur,” roaming the city streets.
Fig. 11.3: Haim Bouzaglo in a panic-stricken moment.

Fig. 11.4: In the mediated image we trust: one of the film’s characters on his knees
“worshiping” the TV screen.
Fig. 11.5: Human tragedy represented through the video lens.

222 Chapter Eleven
This technique of invalidating the distinction between the real and the
imagined, a characteristic most common to the post-modern ‘Labyrinth’
cinema discussed above, constitutes the foundation of the filmic
perception of cinematic time and space expressed in DISTORTION. Time
itself in the film is a fluid element, intersecting with itself and detached
from realistic physical confinements of continuousness and consecutiveness.
At the same time, it is apparent that the film’s spatial perception demands
integration of the substantive and reproduced environs. This characteristic
remains strong until the moment the two are inseparably blended together,
rendering them indistinguishable from one another (See Fig. 11.4).
Fig. 11.6: A lesson in surveillance: the PI’s voyeuristic fetish.
Conclusion
This article has defined Bouzaglo’s DISTORTION as an urban nightmare
that practices certain distinct cinematic methods that characterize it as such
and establish a strong connection to the time and place in which it was
created. Based on the examination of Eco’s labyrinth models, it is possible
to understand the spatial comprehension presented in Bouzaglo’s
DISTORTION as a post-modern maze. Such a structure sprouts two
fundamental attributes. First, DISTORTION’s repetitive cinematic expression,
which assembles sensations of trauma, paranoia, anxiety and stress,

establish the film’s structure as a chrono-morphic postmodern maze, also
apparent in the film’s ‘fiction within fiction’ element. The play part of the
film, mirroring the film’s plot itself, creates a situation in which fantasy
blends with the ‘real world’ to such a degree that it is impossible to
distinguish when one ends and the other begins, further solidifying
DISTORTION’s labyrinthine structure. Second, the film’s panoptical motif
articulates the disciplining gaze principle;33 the film’s characters remain in
a constant state of paranoia and dread derived from their own
consciousness that they are being watched, under continuous surveillance
and documentation as instruments of surveillance and documentation carry
the film’s main, authoritative point-of-view.
On a sub-textual level, the film presents a reality in which the
electronic lens is actually the dominant point-of-view and the screen the
one and only true reality, the realm of ‘the real.’ The diegetic reality
presented in the film is shown mainly through this all-seeing and all-
knowing lens. Bouzaglo’s formative approach towards cinema explains
the manner in which the deactivated distinction between the ‘real’ space
and the ‘imagined/duplicated’ space is at the root of the nightmarish,
constantly televised, paranoia-stricken reality the film aspires to reflect. It
therefore becomes apparent that DISTORTION presents an aesthetic and
narrative in which the ‘electronic eye’ is utilized as the main glancing
agent, conducting an intrusive ‘televised gaze’ at the heart of the film’s
visual.
To conclude, I would like to emphasize that not only did Bouzaglo
create a film that maintains a strong connection with the ‘here and now’ in
which it was created, one could argue that only in an epoch in which the
devastating and terrorizing Intifada raged through the city streets could a
film like DISTORTION have been created. Through the themes and
aesthetics expressed in Bouzaglo’s film, we witness an articulation of an
entire socio-political era dominated by fear, anxiety, and trauma. In
general, DISTORTION comes to supply a cinematic representation of the
city as the territory of the traumatized. Through understanding the way in
which the film evokes collective traumatic memories by utilizing specific
geographical locations of the urban environment, we can comprehend
DISTORTION as a work of narrative art that is a direct result of the time and
place in which it was created. As such, there is a great deal to learn from
the film as a Zeitgeist filmic piece in particular and a distinct kind of urban
cinema in general.
33
Foucault, Heterotopia, 23.
CHAPTER TWELVE
BEYOND TRAUMA:
AESTHETIC STRATEGIES OF “MINOR CINEMA”
WITHIN THE LIMINAL SPACE OF PALESTINE
(ULA TABARI, ELIA SULEIMAN)
PETER GRABHER
On May 15th, 1948, the British Mandate in Palestine came to an end.

The State of Israel subsequently celebrates this as its ‘Independence Day.’
From a Palestinian perspective it is the day of the Nakba, the disaster or
catastrophe. Since the 1990s, public commemoration of Yom an-Nakba –
meaning ‘Day of the Catastrophe’ – has become more and more visible.
This date and its loaded memory are the starting point for the films by Ula
Tabari and Elia Suleiman I will discuss in this chapter. Palestinians with
Israeli passports, both filmmakers were born in Nazareth, live in Paris, and
travel continuously back and forth. By addressing the social context of
their films within the formula, ‘Arab minority of Israel,’ we have already
touched the heart of our filmmakers’ problems. Tabari and Suleiman are
both engaged in a struggle of naming, an artistic activism that calls into
question hegemonic discourses about identity and memory. My essay
analyzes how these filmmakers react to the ‘Palestinian condition’ by
using different aesthetic strategies. For a better understanding of what it
means to work as a Palestinian artist, I will not relate or compare their
work to other, namely Jewish Israeli, positions.
In 2009, Suleiman shot THE TIME THAT REMAINS – the same year that
Tabari followed PRIVATE INVESTIGATION (2002) with JINGA48. All three
films deal with the construction of Palestinian identities and generational
memories by connecting present with the past: in Suleiman’s fiction film,
to the haunting events of 1948 – a “time that remains” – and in Tabari’s
second documentary research, to her earlier work and the legacy of the
Palestinian ‘Land Day,’ which dates back to 1976. The films tell stories of
Beyond Trauma 225
sons and daughters, fathers and mothers, thereby constructing gendered,

generational archives. Yet both filmmakers also relate to a younger,
emerging generation.
Both personally appear in their films as protagonists and agents of
audiovisual construction. Both open their latest films with a personal move
from France to Israel, where they find themselves sitting in taxis at night.
Whereas Tabari opens her film in an atmosphere of dark humor, Suleiman
affects a gloomy disorientation. They translate this initial lateral move in
space into a temporal movement towards the past. While making use of
different aesthetic strategies their films are based on a radical engagement
of the body and the authors’ own subjectivity.
Both bodies of work could certainly be described as documents of
post-memory belonging to a second generation who respond “to powerful,
often traumatic, experiences that preceded their births but that were
nevertheless transmitted to them so deeply as to seem to constitute
memories in their own right.”1 It is evident that both filmmakers’ fathers
and mothers comprise seminal figures whose testimonies, letters and
diaries form the basis of distinct cinematic strategies.
Nevertheless, I will describe the work of Tabari and Suleiman as
“minor cinema” – a term that Gilles Deleuze has developed in The Time-
Image, the second volume of his book on cinema.2 The Deleuzian
approach implies that cinema is capable of articulating the subjective and
the collective within one movement, that it is an artistic medium – perhaps
the only one – that can present the individual and collective as
substantially intermingled.3 Furthermore a Deleuzian approach potentially
frees us from certain categorical limitations that tend to depoliticize
discourses that focus on identity and memory. I hope to illustrate that a
Deleuzian approach is useful to perceive the issues of individual and
collective trauma the films in question explore in specific ways without
diminishing their aesthetic overtures to nostalgia and mourning. These
films do not try to represent trauma, but to transgress it by opening
existential options for the future. By referring to ‘trauma’ as an encounter
1
Marianne Hirsch, “The Generation of Postmemory,” Poetics Today 29:1 (Spring
2008), 103.
2
Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2. The Time-Image (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1985).
3
I have tried to analyze Udi Aloni’s MECHILOT (Israel, 2006) from a similar point-
of-view: Peter Grabher, “Wiederkehr der Verdrängten. Interventionen ins
Unbewusste des israelisch-palästinensichen Konflikts in Udi Alonis Mechilot
(2006),” in: Julia B. Köhne (ed.), Trauma und Film. Inszenierungen eines Nicht-
Repräsentierbaren (Berlin: Kadmos Verlag, 2012), 273-294.
226 Chapter Twelve
with the “intolerable,” I hope to get closer to the aesthetic politics, the
dimension of artistic resistance, the universalizing processes Tabari and
Suleiman engage, to their “becoming revolutionary.” Deleuze once called
this “men’s only hope,” the only way of “casting off their shame or
responding to what is intolerable”4 – be it in political or artistic
movements.
After the UN partition plan of November 1947 and around May 1948,
750,000 people were expelled; many were deported or killed and 70,000
houses were destroyed. These events led to the fragmentation of a whole
society, the disappropriation of a people and the disappearance of an entire
country from history, maps and schoolbooks. Both artists are descendants
of the 170,000 Palestinians who remained in the newborn state, hereby
inheriting the aporetic status of ‘internal refugees’ or ‘present absentees.’5
Still living on their own land, they were suddenly marginalized as part of
the ‘Arab minority’ in Israel. Today around 20-25% of the Israeli
population are at the same time insiders and outsiders.
These events structure the social and daily life of Palestinians even
today, informing every aspect of their political existence and even their
modes of subjectivation – live they in Israel, within the areas of the
Palestinian National Authority, in the militarily occupied territories, or in
the diaspora.6 The chiffre ‘1948’ points to a historical “trauma zone” (Udi
Aloni), which is singular insofar as the historical event has not yet ended –
the war of 1948 is not yet over. Palestinian filmmakers have to deal with a
historical trauma that is not a distinct object in time one might depict
artistically from a secure distance but rather an ongoing process that has
retraumatized every new generation for over 60 years. It even concerns the
future perspective; it means awaiting – expecting – new trauma. On the
other hand, the historical legacy of Palestinians has been seen as a threat to
the emergence of Israeli and Jewish claims and its commemoration is
4
Gilles Deleuze and Antonio Negri, Control and Becoming: Gilles Deleuze in
conversation with Antonio Negri, transl. by Martin Joughin, 2, online:
http://www.generation-online.org/p/fpdeleuze3.htm (Accessed March 3, 2013),
originally published: Future Antérieur, 1 (Spring 1990).
5
A ‘present absentee’ is a Palestinian who fled or was expelled from his home
during the 1948 war, but who remained within the area that became the State of
Israel. Present absentees are also referred to as internally displaced persons (IDPs).
The term applies also to the present absentee’s descendants. In 1950, these
included 46,000 of the 156,000 Palestinians in Israel.
6
See Sa’adi, Ahmad H. and Abu-Lughod, Lila (eds.), Nakba: 1948, Palestine and
the Claims of Memory (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007).
Beyond Trauma 227
controlled or forbidden by law.7 Ultimately the refugees’ desire to return

to their homeland continues to haunt the official Israel.
Therefore those living today face an uncanny historical circularity.
Honaida Ghanim called this a “state of alienation”8 created by the “policy
of irresolution”9 imposed by the State of Israel on the region. It suspends
both the past as a productive resource for the subject and the present as a
door to diverse possible futures. The Palestinian subject finds itself in an
existential “hole.” Ghanim put it this way:
“The Palestinian present is occupied with itself and loaded with its
moment, as well as with its immediate consequences, a stubborn tragedy in
its continuing reiteration of its particular versions of tragedy. In the ‛hole,’
the present is not a balcony anymore that surrounds a time-place that is
generative of multiple narratives of the past (the paradise of Palestine, the
home of lemons and many colors). […] Rather it is the triumph of the
abstract ‛now’ over temporal possibility, and the freezing of the moment
on the edge of the tragedy, while waiting for the (un)coming resolution—
no one knows how or when it will come, or if it will come at all,
paralleling Walter Benjamin’s messianic moment, in which the dialectic
freezes whilst we wait for messianic salvation.”10
The Palestinian experience is an experience of liminality.11 Permanent

liminality means being constantly ‘in between.’ It is a condition that
generates injustices, dilemmata, and double binds on various levels. In
addition to legal injustices – concerning property, land, and civil rights –
some determine the process of subjectivation itself:
1. In a temporal dimension the subjects are cut off from the past,
while the future is blocked, they inhabit a depotentialized present.
7
In 2011, the so-called “Nakba Law” was passed forbidding any state-sponsored
organization from marking Israel’s “Independence Day” as a day of mourning. Any
mention of the Nakba is kept out of schools by the Ministry of Education.
8
Honaida Ghanim, “The Urgency of a New Beginning in Palestine: An Imagined
Scenario by Mahmoud Darwish and Hannah Arendt,” in: College Literature, 38, 1
(Winter 2011), 77.
9
Ghanim, “The Urgency of a New Beginning in Palestine,” 77.
10
Ibid, 84.
11
Liminality (from the Latin word līmen, meaning “a threshold”) means a
subjective status of being on the ‘threshold’ of or between two different existential
planes. It refers to in-between situations and conditions that are characterized by
the dislocation of established structures, the reversal of hierarchies, and uncertainty
regarding the continuity of tradition and future outcomes.
228 Chapter Twelve
Situating oneself in relation to place is contradictory: ‘My roots are

here’ but ‘I am not from here.’
2. On the level of representative politics, the very existence of the
Arab minority contradicts the idea of a ‘democratic and Jewish
state,’ which tends to be “democratic for the Jews and Jewish for
the rest,” as an Arab member of the Knesset has put it.12
3. Within the framework of conflict the minority faces suspicion and
integrative pressure by the State of Israel but also from the
Palestinian leadership outside Israel. This liminality finally results
in a struggle of naming the ‘Israeli-Arab minority.’
Its members find themselves in the midst of impossibilities. Since the

1960s the name ‘Palestinian’ has signified the collective desire to
transgress them. Exploring these paradoxes of the collective existence of
Palestinian/ Arab citizens of the State of Israel is one of the most urgent
issues of contemporary Palestinian cinema. Many films move into the
“liminal zone between Israel and Palestine”13 in order to represent its
historical traumas, fractured memories and identities. It took a long time
for the memory of the Nakba, which had been obliterated, to reappear.
Even the militant beginnings of Palestinian cinema were unconsciously
marked by a collective trauma the early films of the Palestine Liberation
Organization (PLO) were not ready to address directly. The “Cinema of
the Palestinian Revolution,” which ended the “epoch of silence”14 from
1948 to 1967 by focusing on imageries of armed struggle and a mythic
past, is in fact a cinema of trauma. To this end, “the geographically and
socially fragmented society is unified around one subject while
disregarding anything that might harm national agreement or pride, such
as the 1948 defeat.”15
Revolutionary as well as artistic movements have to create “new
space-times.” Deleuze: “People don’t take enough account […] of how the
PLO has had to invent a space-time in the Arab world.”16 Only at the end
12
MK Ahmed Tibi, in: Haaretz, 22.12.2009, online:
http://www.haaretz.com/news/mk-tibi-israel-is-democratic-for-jews-but-jewish-
for-arabs-1.1603 (Accessed March 3, 2013).
13
Ella Shohat, Israeli Cinema: East/West and the Politics of Representation [New
edition with a postscript; originally published 1989] (New York: I. B. Tauris & Co,
2011), 271.
14
Nurith Gertz and George Khleifi, Palestinian Cinema: Landscape, Trauma and
Memory (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008), 11.
15
Gertz/Khleifi, Palestinian Cinema, 61.
16
Gilles Deleuze and Antonio Negri, Control and Becoming.
Beyond Trauma 229
of the 1970s did a reappearance of the historical period of 1948 begin. Over
the years – especially after the 50th anniversary of Israeli Independence in
1998 – this reappearance constituted a new mnemopolitical agenda17
alongside the struggle for social rights and legal equality.
Michel Khleifi‘s FERTILE MEMORY (1980) was both a result and an
important catalyst of this process. It was a groundbreaking film that
brought into being completely new forms of articulation within the
Palestinian artistic context.18 Gilles Deleuze referred to Khleifi’s film
while defining a new model of modern political cinema he decided to call
“minor cinema.” Deleuze defined various elements that mark works of
minor cinema, which he found materialized most notably in films that
emerged from the “Third Cinema” of the 1970s and early 1980s:
1. In minor cinema the political is everywhere whereas the ‘classical’

mode of politics (like political cinema) is based on a strict border
between the private and public. In minor cinema, the border is
abolished, rendering the private affair immediately political: daily
life, work, school, family, gender and inter-generational relations,
etc. In this way, the kitchen became a central place for political
cinema. This shift is also reflected in the commentary of Chris
Marker’s SANS SOLEIL (France, 1983), “Only banality still interests
me.”
2. There remains no ‘general line,’ no future project that filmmakers
can build on as Sergej Eisenstein did. It is fabricated out of
impossibilities in the middle of which it crystallizes around objects
and expressions detected within the social fabric. Deleuze: “It is as
if modern political cinema were no longer constituted on the basis
of evolution and revolution, like in classical cinema, but on
impossibilities, in the style of Kafka: the intolerable.”19 In the case
http://www.generation-online.org/p/fpdeleuze3.htm (Accessed March 3, 2013).

17
See for example the project “Palestine Remembered” which collects and
publishes detailed information about the Nakba online:
http://www.palestineremembered.com; furthermore the project “Zochrot,” online:
http://zochrot.org/en (Accessed March 3, 2013).
18
See the chapter on Khleifi in Gertz/Khleifi’s indispensable book, 74-100; for a
reading of the film within a broad theoretical perspective, see the chapter on Fertile
Memory in: Luka Arsenjuk, Political Cinema: The Historicity of an Encounter
(Duke University, 2010) (Diss.), 153-220, online:
http://dukespace.lib.duke.edu/dspace/handle/10161/3098 (Accessed March 3,
2013).
19
Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image, 219.
230 Chapter Twelve
of the two films being discussed, they start with the impossibility
either to become Israeli or to fully embrace life as a Palestinian;
they start amidst the abovementioned liminal condition.
3. In classical political cinema (Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Capra, Ford)
‘the people’ functioned as a regulating, founding image. After the
rise of Hitler and World War II, this trope of the masses as a
subject of history is fragmented. Since “the people no longer exists,
or not yet … the people is missing.”20 Minor cinema “aims through
trance or crisis to constitute an assemblage which brings real
parties together in order to make them produce collective utterances
as prefiguration of the people who are missing.”21 Consequently,
the artist quite often finds him- or herself in a separated, lonely
position.
While in the ‘classical’ mode of the political cinema of the PLO, ‘one
subject’ should substitute the “people who are missing” to uphold a
nationalist perspective, Khleifi’s FERTILE MEMORY started within the
fragmentation, gave up on the unifying national subject of the masses,22
and replaced it with an assemblage of concrete, predominantly feminine
speech acts. Deleuze’s diagnostic concept still seems useful to describe
present artistic projects. The works of Tabari and Suleiman, which make
use of aesthetic strategies that blur the borders between documentary and
fiction, unfold within the parameters of Khleifi’s new paradigm of
“minor” cinematic articulation. Tabari and Suleiman continue to explore
the potential of his initial foundation and expand it towards different
poles.23
20
Ibid, 216.
21
Ibid, 224. Paul Klee stated that for the artist, “it is necessary to have a people”
that is actually missing. Art produces collective utterances as the prefiguration of
the people who are missing – “we can do no more,” Klee continued. Deleuze also
referred to Kafka‘s statement that “minor literatures in small nations” ought to
supplement “a national consciousness which is often inert and always in process of
disintegration.” Deleuze expanded this concept of “minor literature” by
transferring it to cinema.
22
This shift from politics to micropolitics, far from being specific for ‘peripheric’
(post)colonial contexts, deeply concerns ‘Western’ politics up to the present. A
great deal of contemporary political philosophy aimed to restore ‘classical’ politics
by reconfiguring the empty place of ‘the people,’ e.g. as “multitude” (Hardt/Negri)
or within a renovated communist perspective (Badiou, Rancière, Zizek).
23
In 2009, Khleifi also shot a film that relates to the traumatic events of 1948, the
story of a Palestinian filmmaker who lives in Europe and returns home to
Beyond Trauma 231
Private Investigation (2002) and Jinga48 (2009)

by Ula Tabari
Ula Tabari24 was born in 1970 in Nazareth and started her studies in
theatre and sculpture, but was frustrated by the Palestinian theater in
Jerusalem and Cis-Jordania that put images and realities on stage in which
she could not recognize her own experience.25 In Israeli theaters, she
experienced a racist attitude towards her since she was reduced to embody
caricaturesque clichés of Arab women. In 1996, she collaborated with Elia
Suleiman, playing a leading role in his CHRONICLE OF A DISAPPEARANCE
(Palestine/Israel). Today she is living as an independent filmmaker in Paris
and also works as an actress and casting-director.26
Her film, JINGA48,27 from 2009 continued the PRIVATE INVESTIGATION28
of 2002 in which she had confronted herself with a photograph of her
childhood. Taken in the 1970s in a public school in Nazareth, it shows her
singing Israel’s national anthem, “Hatikva,” in a student choir during an
official ‘Independence Day’ festivity.29 It is an image of alienation, an
image that documents the Israeli policy to institutionally uproot and
reshape the identity of its Arab minority – “the thorn in the flesh of Israel,”
as a propagandistic formula called it in Israel’s early years of statehood.
Ramallah to film witness accounts of the 1948 Nakba: Michel Khleifi, ZINDEEQ
(United Arab Emirates/Palestine/Great Britain/Belgium 2009).
24
See the Conversation with Ula Tabari in this volume.
25
Entretien avec Ula Tabari, in: Janine Halbreich-Euvrard (ed.), Israéliens,
Palestiniens, que peut le cinéma? (Paris: Éditions Michalon, 2005), 33, 34.
26
Tabari also worked together with Suleiman for THE ARAB DREAM (1997), with
Christophe Loizillon (LES PIEDS, 1999), Samir Jallal Eddin (FORGET BAGDAD,
2002), Eyal Sivan and Michel Khleifi (ROAD 181, 2003) and Steven Spielberg
(MUNICH, 2005). In 2005, she made a fictional short film: DIASPORA,
(France/Palestine/Jordan 2005), 16 min, Production: Eris & Nada production;
online: http://vimeo.com/55944462 (Accessed March 3, 2013).
27
JINGA 48, dir. Ula Tabari, Qatar/Palestine: Al-Jazeera/JCCTV Qatar-Palestine;
2009, http://vimeo.com/55960308 (Accessed March 3, 2013).
28
PRIVATE INVESTIGATION, dir. Ula Tabari (original French title: ENQUÊTE
PERSONELLE), France/Germany/Palestine, ADR, ZDF TV, 2002,
http://vimeo.com/30639503 (Accessed March 3, 2013).
29
Excerpt of the song text: “As long as deep in the heart, the soul of a Jew yearns,
and forward to the East to Zion, an eye looks. Our hope will not be lost, the hope
of two thousand years, to be a free nation in our land, the land of Zion and
Jerusalem.”
232 Chapter Twelve
“As an Arab Israeli my scholarly education was a brainwashing. […] In the

Arab schools in Israel, which were extremely controlled, Arabic was
spoken; the teachers were Palestinian Arabs; but the schools belonged to
the Israeli Ministry of Education, in which specialized committees existed
working together with the security, the Shabak.30 These committees
controlled the teachers, chose the books and texts we are allowed to use.
Still today there is a working group for Arab literature which is active the
whole year and submits its proposals to Shabak.”31
Fig. 12.1: The PRIVATE INVESTIGATION (2002) of Ula Tabari crystallized around a
haunting image of alienation – herself as a child among Palestinian girls, singing
the Hatikva on Israel’s ‘Independence Day.’
Interested in the various forms of dealing with the impossibility of

constructing a sovereign identity as an Arab Palestinian in Israel, this
image initiates an audiovisual investigation in several directions. During
the Israeli ‘Independence Day’ Tabari collects opinions on the streets of
Nazareth with her video camera: “What do you think of the Nakba?” “Are
you a ‘Palestinian?” To identify, to name oneself is already a political
declaration. A variety of subjective positions become audible and visible.
She documents voices of self-esteem, embarrassment, and denial: “I don’t
30
Acronym for Sherut haBitachon haKlali, the “Israel Security Agency (ISA).”
“Shin Bet” is another two-letter Hebrew abbreviation of the name of Israel’s
internal security service.
31
Entretien avec Ula Tabari, in: Halbreich-Euvrard (ed.), Israéliens, Palestiniens,
que peut le cinéma? 34 (translation P. G.).
Beyond Trauma 233
think they should be Palestinians, they are Israelis.” The film describes a
whole variety of positions and ‘becomings’ – as Deleuze would say –
facing the dilemma of being an Israeli citizen of Arab descent. The
disappropriation of territory and violation of civil rights are evidently
accompanied by a collective identity crisis. Obviously, “the people” is
fragmented, missing.
Further on, she undertakes historical research of the time at which the
photo was taken. We see the school and meet her former teachers; Tabari
confronts them with her questions. The school appears as a central site of
questioning and struggle since the official Israeli education policy has
continuously tried to impose upon its minorities a model of entering into
‘Israeliness’ that forces them to neglect parts of their identity and memory
(e.g. Mizrahi Jews from Arab countries had to suppress their ‘oriental’
character).
Tabari meets her mother, who also worked as a schoolteacher. In one
sequence, she is talking to Arab Israeli primary school children about the
Nakba on ‘Independence Day.’ In another sequence, mother and daughter,
representative of two generations, sit in the kitchen and talk about the
history that marked the family, while her mother prepares vegetables for
cooking. Born in 1940, she stayed after 1948 with her brother in Nazareth
(from where she has been expelled several times). The rest of her family
left their homeland. Tabari’s father was born in Tiberias in 1929 – like the
90% of his family that dwells exile, he spent many years in Egypt and
Lebanon. In this kitchen chat, the hyper-politicizing effects of history on
the family are visible: parents and children share a troubled world, which
has repeatedly intruded on the intimate space of the familiar.
The film contains a portrait of the Massar School in Nazareth, a free,
small-scale, self-organized school that started as a private kindergarten.
Pedagogically, this school is an ambitious project that offers broad
freedom to the children. The children are taught an alternative perspective
on Israeli-Palestinian history. The teacher presents a counter-narrative:
“It’s not our Independence Day. It’s the Nakba Day.” On May 15th, the
two narratives necessarily collide.32
“As long as the world doesn’t stop to connect the existence of Palestine
with Israel I’ll have to bear that forced community. Until the world
32
In MA’ALOUL CELEBRATES ITS DESTRUCTION (1984) Michel Khleifi displayed a
similar constellation: Testimonies of refugees from the destroyed village of
Ma’aloul are confronted to the narrative that the village’s teacher, a refugee
himself, presents to his students in compliance with official discourse of the Israeli
Ministry of Education; Gertz/Khleifi, Palestinian Cinema, 81.
234 Chapter Twelve
understands and acknowledges that Palestine stands for itself, I’ll be forced
to co-exist with Israel, even before I exist. I was born as the result of a
loving act between two human beings – my mother and my father –
whereby Israel hasn’t participated.”33
33
Program of the “Filmtage Augsburg” 2002, online:
http://www.lechflimmern.de/filmfest2002/tufprivatinvestigation.php (Accessed
March 3, 2013, Translation P. G.).
Beyond Trauma 235
Fig. 12.2-5: Stills from PRIVATE INVESTIGATION (2002), an assemblage of voices

exploring the collective identity crisis of the so-called “Arab minority” in Israel.
236 Chapter Twelve
The film was Tabari’s personal “Declaration of Independence,” a

filmed process of questioning, self-questioning and constructing “a
documented point-of-view.”34 For Tabari, film is able to immobilize a part
of reality, namely, the daily experience of liminality: “The image stands
against death, it allows us to confront death and to touch the grief, to
appropriate it. […] Cinema in its way is a cry that liberates.”35
Seven years later, Tabari’s investigation is shared by members of an
even younger generation of women, Adan and Ward, two nieces of the
filmmaker. In Tabari’s first film, they had already appeared as self-
confident pupils of the Massar School and were among the first of its
graduates. JINGA48 is a portrait of this new generation; Adan and Ward,
now teenagers, participate as protagonists in an investigation that is only
guided and accompanied by the filmmaker with her camera and editing
devices. In contrast to the traumatized first generation of 1948 and the
nationalist or melancholic second generation – to which the filmmaker
belongs – the film depicts how by passionate questioning and a rigorous
sense of injustice and inequality, Adan and Ward redefine and embrace
their minoritarian condition and build impressive agency. Franz Kafka
wrote, “Nobody wants to implement more reforms than children.”36 The
process of their revolutionary “becoming” is a central subject of the film.
JINGA48 contains a short interview with Hassan, a 12-year-old boy
from an Arab-Israeli family in Nazareth. His subjective position matches
the aims of the official Israeli identity politics to an almost uncanny extent.
The boy seems to embody the impossibility of ‘being’ an “Israeli Arab.”
His identification with the majoritarian position is accompanied by racism
and aggression:
Tabari: If you were a soldier in the Israeli army whom would you fight?
Hassan: Jordan and Palestine.
Tabari: Are you willing to kill a Palestinian or a Jordanian?
Hassan: Yes!
Tabari: Yes? Don’t you have relatives in Nablus, Gaza, Jerusalem, or
Ramallah?
[Hassan shakes his head.]
34
Jean Vigo, “Towards a Social Cinema,” Richard Abel (ed.), in: French Film
Theory and Criticism, 1907-1939, vol. II, 1929-1939 (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1988), 62.
35
Entretien avec Ula Tabari, in: Halbreich-Euvrard (ed.), Israéliens, Palestiniens,
que peut le cinéma? 35-36 (translation P. G.).
36
Franz Kafka, Schriften Tagebücher - Kritische Ausgabe, Nachgelassene
Schriften und Fragmente II (Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer, 2002), 8 (translation P. G.).
Beyond Trauma 237
Tabari: What about Haifa?

Hassan: I only have one relative.
Tabari: Do you know that people of Haifa are Palestinians?
Hassan: I can kill Palestinians who are no relatives of mine.
Tabari: Are there Palestinians in Nazareth?
Hassan: No!
Tabari: Are you Palestinian?
Hassan: No, I’m Israeli.
Fig. 12.6: JINGA48 ends with an image of affection, the “becoming revolutionary”
of Palestinian teenagers in Nazareth. The film documents the process of composing
a minoritarian identity by questioning and self-questioning.
Together with Félix Guattari, Deleuze also developed an unconventional

way to conceptualize the categorization of minority/majority that might be
useful here.37 He regards these as terms not of quantity but rather of
quality, as different modes of subjectivation. ‘Majority’ basically consists
in an abstract standard model of organized properties, hierarchically
ordered points (e.g. male, white, heterosexual, etc.), whereas ‘minorities’
in Deleuze’s understanding are points in movement, thereby creating lines
37
This rethinking of Minority/Majority and the related concept of “becoming-
minor,” is theoretically developed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in their
books Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature (Minneapolis: University Of Minnesota
Press) 1975 and A Thousand Plateaus (1980) (Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A
Thousand Plateaus. Translated by Brian Massumi (London and New York:
Continuum, 2004).
238 Chapter Twelve
– the famous “flight lines” of “becoming.” In this perspective, no one can

in principle fully embody the ‘majority’ since there will always remain
differences to the abstract matrix of its model. The desire to fully embody
the majority or to conquer its definition is therefore necessarily
accompanied by violence: the subject has to control and oppress the
difference within oneself (leading to alienation and depression), as well as
within the ‘other’ (leading to chauvinism, racism, anti-Semitism and
sexism). In Deleuzian terms, the majority is basically empty; in reverse,
everybody is necessarily a minority. By identifying with the majoritarian
values, Hassan suppresses his differences from the model, articulating a
violent disidentification with his ‘Palestinian other.’ Facing the pressure of
liminality, this child’s subjective position is a real and understandable
option, although it is deeply self-contradictory and rooted in a void.
This sequence is of great importance in understanding the meaning of
the struggle for identity that Adan and Ward are engaged in. Facing the
majoritarian pressure, the girls choose another path, a minoritarian option.
Tabari’s camera accompanies them while they research, compose, and
invent such an identity. The girls question and re-appropriate their
Palestinian heritage but under completely different discursive circumstances
than the second generation of activists. After the end of the Oslo peace
process and the defeat and delegitimization of the PLO leadership, the
unified political project of nation-building concluded in crisis – the future-
orientated perspective was suspended. The world Adan and Ward inhabit
is characterized by a patchwork of localized micro-political struggles and
by differences within the Palestinian civil society that has become more
visible and significant than ever.
Adan and Ward search the nearby fabric of relationships (family,
neighbors, friends, and activists) and make personal use of the nationalistic
Palestinian iconography, symbols, flags, etc. Several sequences of the film
show them in dialogue with activists of the first and second generation,
e.g. a member of Adalah, The Legal Center For Arab Minority Rights In
Israel.38 The camera follows them practicing Capoeira, a martial art
created in Brazil by descendants of African slaves. Jinga is a basic move
that combines defense and attack in one movement. The film title,
JINGA48, points at the way the girls re-appropriate their history and
identity, reactive and creative at the same time.
Their historical research focuses on the ‘Land Day’ (in Arabic, Yom al-
Ard) of March 30th, an annual commemoration of the events of that date
in 1976. In response to the Israeli government’s plan to expropriate
38
Website: http://adalah.org/eng/ (Accessed March 3, 2013).
Beyond Trauma 239
thousands of dunams of land for “security and settlement purposes,” a

general strike and marches were organized in Arab towns from the Galilee
to the Negev. In the ensuing confrontations with the Israeli army and
police, six Arab citizens were killed, about one hundred were wounded,
and hundreds of others arrested. These events were crucial in the struggle
over land and for the relationship of Arab citizens to the Israeli state. For
the first time since 1948, Palestinians in Israel had collectively organized a
response to Israeli policies. Adan and Ward talk with activists of their
grandparents’ generation who participated in the struggle of 1976 and visit
a cemetery where victims – “martyrs” – are buried.
Another site of questioning is the ongoing institutional policy of
reshaping the identity of the Arab minority in Israel. A children’s
schoolbook that depicts Arab children waving the Israeli flag enrages the
girls. They meet a representative of the Ministry of Education and confront
him with tough questions: “Why isn’t there a Palestinian flag?” With
astonishing sovereignty, they question the dominant perspective. Adan and
Ward move on by questioning, listening, debating and also reflecting with
the filmmaker about the filmed images in front of the editing monitor.
Their guiding question, “Why?” is also the question of minor cinema.
Deleuze:
“‘Why’ is the question of inside, the question of the ‘I,’ for if the people
are missing, if they are breaking up into minority, it is ‘I’ who is first of all
a people. But ‘why’ is also the question from the outside, the question of
the world, the question of the people who – missing – invent
themselves.”39
Spinoza defined affects as “affections of the body by which the body’s

power of acting is increased or diminished.”40 The film ends with an
affective climax (to which an awareness of being filmed may have
contributed). During a demonstration against the visit of a school in
Nazareth by the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, one of the girls is
emotionally overwhelmed while shouting slogans and holding a banner
together with others. Her state of affection seems to be a mixture of anger,
relieved fear and a liberating joy at the same time that stems from the
perception of her own courage and increased agency within the group.
“Joy,” Spinoza defined, “is a man’s passage from a less to a greater
39
Deleuze: Cinema 2: The Time-Image, 220.
40
Spinoza: Ethica, III, Def. 3., online:
http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/pdf/spinethi.pdf (Accessed April 17, 2013)
240 Chapter Twelve
Fig. 12.7: Still from JINGA48 (2009): Footage from the “Land Day” 1976
Fig. 12.8: An Israeli schoolbook for Arab kids.

Beyond Trauma 241
Fig. 12.9: Debating in front of the editing computer.
Fig. 12.10: Practicing Capoeira on the beach.

242 Chapter Twelve
perfection.”41 Responding to the “intolerable” through becoming revolutionary

is a potential and joyful option that transgresses bondage, sorrow, and
alienation – a reality the film ultimately indicates.
The Time That Remains (2009) by Elia Suleiman

Elia Suleiman was born in 1960 in Nazareth. His father worked as
engraver, his mother as a schoolteacher. When he was 14 years old, his
father was accused of arms smuggling and arrested. Three years later, in
1977, Suleiman was arrested himself in Tel Aviv. He refused to sign a
confession of belonging to the PLO and departed thereafter to London.42 In
1990, he shot his first film together with Jayce Salloum, INTRODUCTION TO
THE END OF AN ARGUMENT (Canada), which dealt critically with the
representation of the Middle East in Western mainstream media. In 2002,
the Motion Picture Academy refused a ‘Best Foreign Language Picture’
nomination for his second long-fiction film, DIVINE INTERVENTION
(France/Morocco/Germany/Palestine), on the grounds that Palestine was
allegedly not a state.43
Suleiman’s THE TIME THAT REMAINS – CHRONICLE OF A PRESENT
ABSENTEE44 (UK/Italy/France) can be regarded as a sequel of an earlier
film, CHRONICLE OF A DISAPPEARANCE (1996). This film ended with an
image of the filmmaker’s father, who died two years later. He is sleeping
at night in the living room in front of the TV set displaying the Israeli flag
and national anthem. Suleiman‘s latest film reenacts Palestinian history
through the lens of the filmmaker’s personal memory. He stated:
“It’s a semi biographic film, in four historic episodes, about a family – my

family – spanning from 1948 until recent times. The film is inspired by my
father’s diaries of his personal accounts, starting from when he was a
41
Spinoza: Ethica, III, Affectuum Def. 2; conversely “sorrow is man’s passage
from a greater to a less perfection”; a person is saddened by anything that opposes
his conatus since Spinoza argues that every physical and mental thing “strives [lat.
conatur] to persevere in its being” (Ethica, III, Prop. 6).
42
Gertz/Khleifi: Palestinian Cinema, 40.
43
ABC News, 20.12.2002, online:
http://abcnews.go.com/International/room-palestinian-film-
oscars/story?id=79485&page=4#.UVaNcL-EJ18 (Accessed March 3, 2013).
44
The Time That Remains, dir.: Elia Suleiman (United Kingdom/Italy/Belgium/
France 2009).
Beyond Trauma 243
resistant fighter in 1948, and by my mother’s letters to family members

who were forced to leave the country since then.” 45
Fig. 12.11: Suleiman’s THE TIME THAT REMAINS (2009) reenacts the Nakba
according to the memories of his father Fuad and thereby re-appropriates historical
fiction beyond a cinematic project of nation building.
The film opens in 1948, at the moment of Nazareth’s surrender, and

focuses on the handsome freedom fighter, Fuad Suleiman, who survives an
execution team more or less by miracle. The film then jumps to 1970, with
Fuad deeply tamed and seemingly resigned, yet still smuggling weapons.
The images that linger show father, mother, and son sipping tea in the
kitchen, listening to Egyptian music evocative of the Nasserite dream of
Pan-Arabism or watching TV in the living room. His son Elia follows his
father’s path, and goes from earning a teacher’s ire for calling America
imperialist to being forced to flee the country for tearing an Israeli flag
around 1980. The film puts into brackets its own historical fiction by
inserting phantastic visual metaphors: the film opens and ends in an
atmosphere of spatial disorientation, the protagonist lost in a taxi at night.
Right before this sequence, the viewer witnesses an artistic transgression
of the separation wall, as spectacular as laconic, a realized phantasy of a
shared world not blocked or divided.
45
Cannes Festival Website, online:
http://www.festival-
cannes.com/en/archives/ficheFilm/id/10903551/year/2009.html (Accessed March
3, 2013).
244 Chapter Twelve
The director once uttered that for a long time he had regarded this
project as “the film I most probably will never make” – it seemed
unimaginable to create a historic fiction, the genuine genre of nation
building. Since the events of 1948, Israeli films have been hegemonic in
cinematically representing this period. Only after 1998 did Palestinian
documentaries like Mohammed Bakri’s 194846 emerge; THE TIME THAT
REMAINS is one of the first films that attempt to re-appropriate the imagery
of the past by means of fiction. In a famous sequence of his NOTRE
MUSIQUE (France/Switzerland, 2004), Jean-Luc Godard meditated on the
difference of Israeli/Palestinian positions vis-à-vis the image: “For
example in 1948 the Israelites walked in the water to reach the Holy Land.
The Palestinians walked in the water to drown. Shot and reverse shot. The
Jews become the stuff of fiction, the Palestinians of documentary.”47 In
1969, the Al-Fatah wanted Godard to create a film in order to “counter any
supposed pro-Israel feeling that might have resulted from the release”48 of
Otto Preminger’s worldwide successful epic fiction.
Undoubtedly, Suleiman’s re-appropriation of historical fiction is not
the late coming-to-birth of “Anti-EXODUS.” His reenactment of history is
in no way implicated in a project of nation building. It lacks the rhetoric of
heroism or nostalgia and does not align with the Palestinian national
narrative at any point. Most of the iconic names and events of Palestinian
history are missing: Deir Yassin, the PLO, Black September, Sabra and
Shatila, Arafat, etc. With great caution, the film develops alongside his
own idiosyncratic memories and those of his parents. Suleiman only
indirectly depicts the abovementioned personal moments of conflict and
violence or keeps them off-screen altogether. The film’s presentation of
events after May 1948 indicates, “the people,” already shattered from the
start, are missing within this moment of defeat, despair, and betrayal. The
film stays true to the singularity of his father’s experience, who was
captured by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) because he was betrayed.
46
1948, dir.: Mohammad Bakri (Palestine-Israel 1998).
47
“Le peuple juif rejoint la fiction tandis que le peuple palestinien rejoint le
documentaire.” NOTRE MUSIQUE, dir. by Jean-Luc Godard (2004), see the excerpt
online: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN3uTy8NI78 (Accessed March 3,
2013); the monologue continues: “Because the field of text had already covered the
field [champs] of vision. Shot and reverse shot [champs et contre-champs]. ---
Imaginary [imaginaire]: certainty. Reality [réel]: uncertainty. The principle of
cinema… go towards the light and shine it on our night. Our music.”
48
Walter V. Addiego, “Godard’s film was not what the PLO had expected,” in: San
Francisco Examiner, 1976 [exact date missing].
Beyond Trauma 245
The beautifully arranged shots of the family’s apartment in Nazareth of

1948 restitute an image that has been overshadowed. The reality of an
urban, civic life has been lost and its souvenir obliterated by other images.
Suleiman, by carefully composing such tableaux vivants like paintings, is
engaged in a struggle for self-determined images. As Elias Sanbar stated,
“Before we established the reality of our presence we were perceived as
refugees. When our resistance movement established, our struggle was one
to be reckoned with, we were trapped once again in a reductive image.”49
The layering of four historical levels in THE TIME THAT REMAINS does
not culminate in a continuous linear narrative; the film does not contribute
to the construction of a national subject of the historical process. By
juxtaposing these layers the film composes a peculiar co-temporality,
according to Deleuze, minor cinema’s “juxtaposition or compenetration of
the old and the new which ‛makes up an absurdity.’”50 Several visual
constellations are repeated and slightly varied within the different historic
periods. This series of subtle variations creates an intense experience of
time, of a sometimes absurd, comical co-presence of these pasts.
Throughout its duration, the film expands horizontally within the loaded
time of living memory and the productive unconscious. Suleiman’s
‘chronology’ implies a fundamental critique of the vertical construction of
history and of national myth as an answer to trauma and loss.
In the second half, THE TIME THAT REMAINS returns to the present. An
adult Elia returns home to care for his sick mother. Nowhere else is the
trauma of the generation of 1948 presented more intensively than during
an encounter of mother and son. In long, carefully composed shots, the
protagonist regards his mother with tenderness while she sits on a balcony.
She appears as a person whose life has been ruined; a life that could not be
lived becomes visible. Her image is an intense image of the Nakba. But
the director/protagonist intervenes into this tableau of mourning and
bitterness with a minimal change, putting on music that his mother loves,
enhancing a musical becoming that affects her body. She starts tapping her
toes, a minimal movement that embodies enormous intensity.
49
Gilles Deleuze and Elias Sanbar, “The Indians of Palestine (translated by
Timothy S. Murphy),” in: Discourse, 20, 3 (Fall 1998), 25-26 (original French
publication: Liberation, 08.05.1982).
50
Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image, 218.
246 Chapter Twelve
Fig. 12.12: THE TIME THAT REMAINS (Elia Suleiman, 2009)
Fig. 12.13: THE TIME THAT REMAINS (Elia Suleiman, 2009).
Like in all films by Suleiman, musicality plays a crucial role.

Throughout the film he remains a mute figure. Speech and dialogue are
clearly secondary to composition, texture, color, gesture and music, which
are all selected with extreme care and sensitivity. The status of music in
THE TIME THAT REMAINS is neither accidental nor illustrative; it is a
powerful medium of subjective ‘becomings’ catalyzed by nostalgic songs
that forge a bond between subject and territory or house beats that draw
dancers into the trance of a deterritorializing bodily movement.
Beyond Trauma 247
Such dancers appear in another remarkable tableau: In Ramallah, IDF

soldiers in a military Jeep try to impose a curfew in front of a
discotheque,51 ironically named “Stones,” in reference to the stones thrown
by Palestinian youths in both Intifadas.52 Now they dance in a club with
that name – an image that counters another stereotype of a youth caught-
up in national folklore and riots, separated from contemporary, global
popular culture. While the soldiers, representing the power of the majority,
are in a mode of control, the revelers are enjoying themselves in a musical
‘becoming.’ It is an image of the condition of the ‘society of control,’
trying to constrain the multifarious movement of minoritarian ‘becomings.’53
The dancers remain in a sensory resistance, within a non-relation to power –
they do not listen to those who give them orders. The film modifies this
static relation through a change of angle that opens a different perception.
The bodily ‘becoming’ of the dancers begins to affect the soldiers. It has –
as any becoming – the potential to infect. One of the soldiers shakes his head
with the rhythm while automatically repeating his orders. With an effect of
sublime irony a reversal of the power relationship occurs: in actuality, the
IDF soldiers become entrapped in their armored vehicles. Although
possessing force, they seem disempowered and sad, whereas the dancing
crowd appears sovereign, flowing with the music on the splendidly colored
dance floor. The film ends within such a flow: while the credits roll, a remix
of the song “Stayin’ Alive” by the Lebanese DJ Mirwais and the project
Y.A.S. plays on, a bold affirmation of endurance and joy.
Suleiman translates Mahmoud Darwish’s poetic program into
cinematography:
51
The Jeep and the imposition of curfew varies and resonates with a sequence in
the 1948-part of the film in the abovementioned way.
52
The bar in Ramallah, where the scene was shot, is really called “Stones.”
53
See Gilles Deleuze, “Postscriptum on the Societies of Control,” October, 59
(Winter 1992), 3-7.
248 Chapter Twelve

Beyond Trauma 249
History awoke a sense of irony in me. This lightens the weight of the
nationalist worry somewhat. And so one sets out on an absurd journey. […]
What matters is that I was able to find a greater lyrical capacity, and a
passage from the relative to the absolute. An opening allowing me to inscribe
the national on the universal, so that Palestine not limit itself to Palestine, but
that it may found its aesthetic legitimacy in a vaster human space.54
***
Both Tabari’s and Suleiman’s artistic projects react to an ideological

reality that is dominated by a mixture of neoliberal capitalism and the
security practices in societies of control. Both aim to overcome the crisis
of representation within the Palestinian context. Both maneuver
aesthetically from a position of relative loneliness beyond the discourse of
Palestinian nationalism and divorced from the realm of official
representative politics. Rather than participate in procedures of nation-
building, they investigate and articulate processes of minoritarian
‘becoming.’ Their films create and occupy a symbolic space beyond the
ongoing traumatization of a permanent state of emergency that jeopardizes
the subject’s capacity to desire, enjoy, experience, reflect, and act.
Since “the people are missing,” their different cinematic projects
embody two options: whereas Ula Tabari documents processes of
becoming somebody, becoming Palestinian, becoming revolutionary while
lacking a unifying national project, Suleiman’s work is engaged in an
“impersonal performance” as conceptualized by Patricia Pisters55 of
becoming nobody, becoming unperceivable. Far from being restricted to
the representation of marginalization, trauma, absence and loss, both
filmmakers use their minoritarian position for universalization. Pister’s
observations on Suleiman’s DIVINE INTERVENTION (2002) hold true for the
films this essay deals with as well:
“The political accountability of these images is necessarily situated on the

level of their power to do something (if only to affect us and cause debate)
to reality, rather than on the level of accurate representation in or as
reality. For the filmmaker, this implies that he should not try to represent a
54
Mahmoud Darwish, “I Discovered That the Earth Was Fragile and the Sea
Light,” in: Mahmoud Darwish, Elias Sanbar, Simone Bitton, Pierre Joris (eds.),
Boundary 2, 26, 1, 99 Poets/1999: An International Poetics Symposium (Spring,
1999), 81.
55
Patricia Pisters, “Violence and Laughter: Paradoxes of Nomadic Thought in
Postcolonial Cinema,” in: Simone Bignall and Paul Patton (eds.), Deleuze and the
Postcolonial (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 206.
250 Chapter Twelve
people, but his ‛fabulating’ films can contribute to the creation of a

people.”56
Academic discourses on trauma and memory tend to limit perception

of the constructive, political aspect in works of art. In Deleuzian terms,
this dimension is situated within the core of artistic creation. Its aesthetic
strategies respond to trauma to transgress the intolerable. As such art is
close to revolutionary becomings of people. Deleuze:
“They say revolutions turn out badly. But they’re constantly confusing two
different things, the way revolutions turn out historically and people’s
revolutionary becoming. These relate to two different sets of people. Men’s
only hope lies in a revolutionary becoming: the only way of casting off
their shame or responding to what is intolerable.”57
Inspired by an intense lecture by Primo Levi, Deleuze explains, “I was

very struck by all the passages in Primo Levi58 where he explains that Nazi
camps have given us ‛a shame at being human.’”59 Elia Suleiman has often
been called the “Buster Keaton of Palestine” and his films have repeatedly
been compared with those of Jacques Tati. When this happened again at a
2010 press conference in Cannes at the occasion of the premiere of THE
TIME THAT REMAINS, Suleiman stated, “I’m more influenced by Primo
Levi than I am by Tati, and he’s not even a filmmaker.”60
56
Pisters, Violence and Laughter, 208.
57
Deleuze and Negri, Control and Becoming. http://www.generation-
online.org/p/fpdeleuze3.htm (Accessed March 3, 2013).
58
A remark: Quite frequently the aphorism “Everybody is someone else’s Jew. And
today the Palestinians are the Jews of Israel” is falsely attributed to Primo Levi. He
has never uttered that sentence which nourishes moral and political confusion by
erasing the enormous differences in the historical context, the scale and meaning of
the Shoah and the Nakba; for details compare Domenico Scarpa’s and Irene
Soave’s report:
http://www.primolevi.it/@api/deki/files/995/=MARGO_000005.pdf (Accessed
March 3, 2013).
59
Deleuze and Negri, Control and Becoming, http://www.generation-
online.org/p/fpdeleuze3.htm (Accessed March 3, 2013).
60
Cinema Without Borders, website, 29.05.2009, online:
http://cinemawithoutborders.com/news-issues/1879-palestinain-director-elia-
suleiman-talks-about-his-film-at-cannes-competition.html (Accessed March 3,
2013); see also the interview with Suleiman by Aaron Cutler, in: BOMBLOG
website, 18.01.2011, online: http://bombsite.com/issues/1000/articles/4802,
(Accessed March 3, 2013).
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“THE STRUGGLE FOR MEANINGS

IS THE STRUGGLE TO EXIST”:
CONVERSATION WITH PETER GRABHER
ULA TABARI
Ula Tabari: PRIVATE INVESTIGATION [France/Germany 2002] is my

first film. I wrote and even began shooting a film while I was still living in
Jerusalem but I never finished it. In the end, it was a sort of an exercise
and I continued my activities, at that time, in theatre, television and other
people’s films.
Coming to France, I suddenly had that flame of the lost love at home;
not homesick, not at all, but a kind of an appreciation, a relinking with the
Nazareth that I had hated for so long. I spent my last seven years back in
the country, in Jerusalem and the West Bank, far from Nazareth; a place
which up until then I couldn’t communicate or connect with as I wished.
In France my writing became more focused on cinema, but with the
same personal approach I had in my previous texts and investigations on
the same ‘identity’ issue. I believe my education is also largely based on
that inseparable link between the personal and the public concern; the
various aspects of my identity as a Palestinian, Arab, woman, artist, etc. in
daily life, at work and elsewhere are as important, and valuable; I was
brought up like this at home, as many Palestinians were. So, in my film, I
started talking about my identity, my education and the duality of this
education. I was constantly questioning myself about this duality and
trying to understand, with amazement, the imperative role our schools
played in feeding it. So, I really wanted to deal with these two faces of
education at home and education in school, which brought me up and has
shaped me until today. Slowly all my writings were heading in that
direction, investigating and treating the duality of dealing with the
Palestinian Nakba Day and the Israeli Independence Day, which obviously
are the same day, and which actually is the most horrible aspect of the
252 Chapter Thirteen
basis of our education. This symbolic day meant that, as a child, I was
condemned to be called an Arab-Israeli and not a Palestinian, only because
Israel didn’t want Palestine to exist even linguistically. Israel was scared
of us, the kids, and was scared of me! This was intended to cause me to
forget my origins, in order for me not to know who I am. This was the first
transfer after the physical transfer – the expulsion of Palestinian people;
the first transfer for Palestinians who stayed inside the occupied territories
of 1948 was transferring your identity, your language, your memory,
deforming it and building another one instead.
The ‘noisy’ silence and the very careful and controlled ambience at
home actually protected me, and many others, from falling into that trap.
When I started working on this film it was important for me to declare that
I was not into representing the ‘Palestinian people’ for example, and I am
not representing ‘Palestine’ and I am not telling the ‘truth.’ Therefore, I
decided to put myself up as a character, as an individual and to tell you a
private story. The aim was that through talking about myself I create
mirrors; I present myself/my story as an example, and give others the
possibility, if they feel right about it, to reflect in my mirror, where they
are welcome to share their story. I don’t wish for people to believe me as
much as I wish them to listen to me and then to check if I am telling the
truth. That’s why I always highlight the fact that this is just a film, a
presentation, and it is not meant to tell you ‘the’ truth, but ‘a truth,’ my
own truth. And I’m inviting you to enter my world and to see what I think,
to see what I see. If I manage to convince or to attract or interest you, or to
even seduce you, you will continue the journey with me till the end of the
film. Then I consider that I have won – won my place, made a good film
and told you my story.
Now, who is this ‘you?’ This is anyone who watches this film. Myself,
being someone who lived in categorization and censorship, I cannot
personally make films that contain censorship and categorization. I would
love to know that an Indian or French person or anyone who saw my film
finds himself in the narrative, the approach, the discourse or in the
questions. It’s not only about Israel and Palestine, in spite of the specificity
of Palestine/Israel and its importance in my films.
I am not a leader and I don’t have a leader. Maybe that’s my problem
politically. So, I have to do everything alone, and doing a film is part of
that. I tried to attract all those who would find themselves in my story, and
that’s also why I built this fictional frame in order to have a clear frame-
work, a defined limit, which also will protect me from playing the
pretentious game of telling the story of everyone. It’s very important for
me to say that it’s a personal approach – not only a personal story –
Conversation with Peter Grabher 253
because I know that I am not alone in this experience. I am aware that

there were thousands and thousands of people who passed through the
same brainwashing, but, in this context, I am the one who took the
initiative to make the film. But still, I won’t represent you unless you
chose to be represented, meaning, you identify yourself in this film. This
fictionalized side of the film and the need to create such a framework is
also due to the impossibility of communicating a memory and/or a ‘whole
story’ in one film. Nobody can tell everything in one film. Through my
personal, physical presence I also wanted to hint at so many aspects
concerning identity. I’m categorized as either Muslim, or Palestinian, or
Arab, or a woman, but I am all of that together and I am also tall and thin
and have glasses because I don’t see well and so many other things that
construct my identity – my being that is constantly summed-up into a
label. Tomorrow, if I lose a leg in an accident, it will surely add another
aspect to my being, to my ‘identity.’ So for me, it was very, very important
to go there.
In JINGA48 I did the same thing, despite the differences between the
two films. I also created a fictional frame, which again was not completely
based on my fantasy; I just rewrote a casual scene of my life, in which I
lived with my nieces in the past and I filled it with a different content.
Then I asked the girls to take my place in the investigation and handle the
discussion with their generation and to liberate me a little from this
education issue/angle, because I wanted to go elsewhere.
For me making a good film means asking good questions. Because I
think we have too many answers. I try to ask different questions –
questions that can open more and more horizons for thinking without
categorization and, of course, I’m aware of the propagandist aspect in any
work like this.
Peter Grabher: By exposing your subjective position without relying

on any preexisting propagandistic narrative, you address a public that is
anyone who is human and can see. You present your subjective position in
a universal way which makes it possible for a very general public to enter
into the story. And you take a risk.
Tabari: Yes, I hope so. It’s also true that I put myself in risky positions.
Making a film means taking a risk and being responsible too. We really
ought to be responsible for what we say because we invite people to join
us. I don’t want to go into simplistic explanations, although they’re
important, like the fact that people make the effort to come watch the film
and pay the money and so on. But I’m talking about addressing and
influencing the minds of people and their imagination with a message, and
this is a big responsibility. I never said that I expose myself without taking
care of what happens around me – where I am putting myself, in which
context and about the specific ideas I’m communicating. I do it
consciously. I think and I hope that I’m aware enough of where I am
positioning myself. Maybe for some people it’s a wrong position or maybe
I’m mistaken. But I think that I am conscious of this issue.
I’m very careful while dealing with the image, the sound and the
movement, the grammar and vocabulary of a film, because of the
magnitude of the different readings of the film. You have to be aware that
your presence, as your image, stops being a private image and becomes an
image that you make, that you expose and show. We can’t possess an
image, it is not a filmmaker’s property, it is made to be shown and it will
be received differently and people can read it differently. If I’m aware of
that, I can feed an idea, I can charge it with things that I think are right for
me, because as I said, that’s my truth. At the same time, making a film that
can communicate with many other people who know or don’t know the
specific story of Palestine, for example, I think comes from two things:
being honest with one’s self and being responsible with one’s discourse.
When you are playing honestly and clearly and openly and even with some
nakedness, in a certain situation, you are just opening more doors for
healthy communication. The audience is not stupid but rather very clever;
people can feel it, they can find themselves inside the image. They can
communicate and interact with it. I do believe in people’s feelings and
perspectives. Taking care of the audience, creating a relationship of trust,
making the effort, and providing justification for your ideas and actions
will lead the audience in return to make the effort to read you, to follow
you and maybe to believe you – not just because of the data you are
providing, but because of the respectful manner and the human
connection. The audience doesn’t have to believe me if I don’t make the
effort. I do care about all the details because I am trying to be as
responsible as possible to them, the audience – especially when I talk
about Palestine, like in my first two documentaries that address
Palestinians inside Israel.
In my first documentary I played a ‘nasty game,’ which was to assume
that my audience knew nothing about my subject and about Palestine. I’ll
give you a metaphor that captures this. In PRIVATE INVESTIGATION I have
this sequence of my mother going to a school and telling a group of
children ‘The Story of Palestine,’ telling them for the first time. They are
kids, innocent, and they know nothing of the history. I wanted to have my
film use the same approach in addressing the public, although I know that
it’s not very fair to treat people as if that they know nothing about it, and
that is why I call it a ‘nasty game.’ But the only way to tell my story
differently, to tell my story which is different, is to start with a blank page,
to tell it from the beginning without referring to existing or known
narratives. I am also conscious that in this sequence I defend the right to
tell the story to kids and to anybody else who doesn’t know it, to inform,
to educate and unveil it. I wanted to shed a light on this ‘unknown story’
and I turned it into my mission. Though it is a very different film, I used a
similar basis or idea in JINGA48, where I’m also trying to unveil another
‘truth.’ Unveiling for me is an act of moving from darkness to light, from
out-of-focus into focus. In order for me to lead the public into a clear
constructive debate, and in order for me to lay the foundation of thought, I
should present a new and clear subject or information as a point of
departure for all of us, towards the pathway into a real debate.
I really enjoyed listening to people’s reflections and people’s stories
that they read in the film or stories that they remembered about themselves
watching the film. My need today, in relation to the need I had when I
made the film, is to collect more individuals from around the world who
think in these ways, who are trying to look for the pieces of the puzzle and
to reach their private readings, analysis, and meaning to revolt against the
readymade messages.
Peter Grabher: I think you drafted a concept of the spectator in which

the latter is respected as somebody with a certain level of intelligence,
even if he or she doesn’t know anything about the subject. Every film
presents a certain concept of the world and also a concept of the relation of
the image to the spectator, which always implicates a certain idea of
community.
Tabari: Making a film for stupid people means making a stupid film
and pretending to make an intelligent film for ‘stupid people’ is stupid in
itself. It will be either a pretentious, patronizing film or full of contempt,
etc. We’re talking about communication... For gaining the attention of the
other, of the spectators, to captivate their ears and their eyes, we have to
make them interested and inspire them, to give them a place to exist, to
turn them into active players and not only recipients, so they can enjoy and
make the effort to listen to us. In film, as communicators, we are the ones
who have to make the effort. I do agree that it is sad that people don’t
attend the cinema as before, but people are not the problem by themselves
and since a film is made to be shown and watched we should always look
for other ways to present it to the public. It’s essential to find solutions to
the challenges we encounter. And I am sure that addressing the audience

as real and intelligent spectators is part of the solution. I feel personally
insulted when I watch a film that tries to manipulate my thoughts, deform
facts or lie to me, etc. It’s like: why are you insulting my intelligence?
That’s a sentence that I say often in cinema. Plus, when you show the
same film to someone who is, for example, seventy-years-old and another
one who is ten-years-old, and you see that both can communicate with
certain layers of the film, it is just wonderful. If any individual can connect
with 50 per cent of my films, that is ok – I won’t be disappointed. I will
reserve the other 50 per cent for myself derived from the sheer enjoyment
of making the film and managing to communicate with him/her, with a
person that I don’t know at all. If I can do this I have won.
Grabher: The subject of both films, PRIVATE INVESTIGATION and

JINGA48, is very complicated. On the one hand there is territorial politics –
imposing a state, confiscation, occupation. And on the other hand it’s
about identity politics. Your films seem to deal with the linkages between
the two areas.
Tabari: Because actually it is one area. The difference lies mainly in

the treatment and so also in the reading. It depends also on the point-of-
view of the maker and the spectator. For example, most of the time when
saying that I am Palestinian, I am immediately confronted with the
Palestine of the newspapers, Palestine of the TV, Palestine of the political
agreements. Even for the true leftists or humanists, who are really very
interested and make the effort to learn and to interact, my Palestine and I
are mostly excluded from their discourses. While Palestine/Israel is a hot
and complicated political issue for the world-media-audience, for the
Palestinian people, it’s their daily life and the private story of each of them
– of us – and I understand this. Since it’s not their subject or their main or
daily concern, they summarize it. When we want to make a summary of an
issue, we’re always unfair concerning certain details, certain aspects. We
always tend to over-simplify things, because the idea is to raise a
particular point that you want to explain or explore. So sometimes
Palestine-Israel is reduced to certain ideas such as army, fear, danger,
resistance, terrorism, rights, lands, a struggle, occupation – while, in my
films I try to speak from within about people, about their existence, being
and living under occupation, facing expansion, massacres, army, danger…
about people’s lives as a results of these big titles. So it’s impossible to
separate these issues.
Talking about my Palestine is not a political thing. I’m not pro-

Palestinian - I am Palestinian. I’m not at all pro-Palestinian. Being born as
a Palestinian doesn’t make me a politician and is not an act of resistance
even if I fully support the resistance in and for Palestine, but it is life. But
it’s also important to say that living in Palestine is an act of resistance
today since the aim is to empty Palestine from its inhabitants. In film we
fight to present other images than those which are presented and promoted
by the mainstream media, by the authorities’ discourses. In this context,
today, telling the story of a Palestinian person, his/her inclinations,
education, family, origins, memories, physical handicaps, love stories,
sickness or success, is perceived as a political declaration and denying
him/her as a human being. This is not only pathetic but it is an arm by
itself against Palestinians…
Palestine is the world’s greatest; there is no country as beautiful as
Palestine and no country as feminine and as feminist as Palestine, as
democratic as Palestine. You know why? Because it doesn’t exist yet as a
country; it’s still in my dreams. In my dreams it is real and attainable.
Having this dream and reality, being caught in the middle of the two and
here in Europe, all the while attempting to address the whole world with
these issues and wanting to be honest at the same time. And you want me
to mark the difference between political and personal? There is no way. I
do believe that everything is political. The political is not limited to affairs
between countries. My concern is that the terminology that we use blindly
in all domains is just so ugly and we always fall into its trap. It is the
naming system which we are living and developing… For example, when
we say ‘resistance’ it means one thing to a Palestinian or any other
occupied people/country and something altogether different to someone in
the army, etc. I am sorry, but to resist is to think and to say, “No.” There is
a real need to reclaim terminology, to rescue it. In this sense, my main
enemies are the terminology and the media. Again, for me everything is
political; apolitical doesn’t exist. That pretense is nonsense and
mediocrity… Either we are engaged with certain things, values and ideas
or not, either we talk about it or we don’t talk about it. The apoliticalness
is an attempt at division and categorization. And again, in our world today,
we often forget and make others forget that, be it cinema or writing or
journalism, addressing people with whatever message implies
responsibility: it has to be real, honest and not mediocre. But today we are
in a system that is occupying and manipulating our mind completely. I do
believe that.
Grabher: You say: “My main enemy is terminology.” Could you talk a
little bit about that?
Tabari: Where are you from?
Grabher: From Austria, from Vienna. I grew up in the Western part of

Austria which is close to Switzerland. I went to Vienna when I was
eighteen. I came from a very Catholic, conservative spot on the earth with
a lot of mountains. As many others I went away to the biggest city around,
which was Vienna, and there I studied.
Tabari: Although I didn’t mean it in this way, when I asked you,

“Where are you from,” you didn’t know what to choose, Austria or
Vienna, and you gave me information that I didn’t ask for. Immediately,
we try to think what the other means by the question more than listening to
the question. And “Where are you from” becomes your city, country,
religion and origin – all the differences between us. I think we are
somehow prisoners of a certain language that we use daily. Terminology is
politics. Terminology is language and it reflects a way of thinking. And it
became my enemy when I realized that I can speak a language against my
will and that it is loaded with a meaning that I didn’t want to express. This
is a very important tool in the hands of the authorities to control me as
well as to stay in power even if they don’t belong there. It is the system –
the machine of naming – that is constantly changing the sense of the terms
and words we use according to present or the wished-for policies. Many
terms – words with positive connotations at a certain period in history –
years after, can have a very negative connotation and vice versa. While
normal people like us can find ourselves adapting and speaking and
sharing without even knowing this deformation of history. ‘Resistance’
during WWII had a very positive and important designation, while in
today’s individualistic and somehow ignorant time, ‘resistance’ most of
the time has a negative connotation, because our memory is so short,
because we are not familiar with the story of our country and our parents,
and world politics today. The power of today condemns these kinds of
‘acts,’ and promotes this condemnation on the Internet and in social
media, etc. ‘Nationalist’ – it’s even vulgar to be a nationalist. It’s like:
What? How come you are a nationalist? Yes, of course I can be a
nationalist. First I will build my country then I will be in the opposition,
since I am an anti-authoritarian person. ‘Traditional’ became equal to
narrow-minded and mentally-retarded... ‘Third World’ equals poverty and
‘uncivilized.’ What does ‘democracy’ mean today? ‘Liberty?’ ‘Rights?’
‘Terrorist?’ What do these mean today? Same if we talk about gender

issues or anything else. We often use terms separating them from their
original meaning and context. Words are more dangerous than firearms
but we don’t treat or perceive them as such. For me this is the basic
problem of communication between people today; we can both use the
same words but we won’t necessarily mean the same thing. Most of the
time when there is no communication it’s because we’re not talking the
same language. We sometimes use words that are against our own interest,
with vacillating meanings that delete certain facts in history, even our own
existence. And these facts of history – they are an integral part of me. So
this system is deleting an integral part of me. For example, I grew up with
the term ‘Arab-Israeli.’ For me, an ‘Arab-Israeli’ is an Arab Jew, who was
an Arab by nationality, a Jew by his religion, who was living in Syria,
Lebanon, Morocco, and Algeria. He left his home and he became an
Israeli. So he is an original ‘Arab-Israeli.’
I’m not a religious person, I don’t present myself via my religion,
although it is an integral part of my culture and origins but not the identity
I present myself with. I don’t understand or accept, by the way, when
someone presents himself/herself by their religion. Today the great
majority of Arab Jews who became Israelis had lost their Arab origins and
‘identity,’ history and belonging. It’s sad when people present themselves
to me as Jews, for example, and normally it is meant to be positive and
show closeness and gentleness, and I find myself saying, “Who cares,”
“So what,” or “Nobody is perfect” and I joke about it, instead of saying
how pathetic it is. Since I am not racist, I have no idea what it means to be
a ‘Jew,’ a ‘Muslim,’ a ‘Christian’ or something else. I respect the person
or am interested if I find him/her respectable and interesting…
Many Jews consider themselves Israeli since they are invited to be
so… since they were educated to believe that Israel is Jews and Jews is
Israel. Even if they are not really concerned… but it became a reality and
they feel that they can do nothing about it. This game of names is equal to
the politics of the nation states. So the struggle for meanings is the
struggle to exist, to exist as a thinking free person, as an idea and as a
group with a history.
During the editing of my first film I was amazed to hear the word Jew
repetitively used by so many people. I said, “What the hell is happening?
Are we racist?” We are addressing Israelis as Jews, although everybody is
aware of the difference and even aware that Israel has built itself by using
and commercializing their pain! I was hurt in the beginning but then I
realized that being an Israeli myself – even if I’m a tenth-degree citizen,
but still – in order to mark a difference between ‘me’ and ‘them,’ I have to
name them differently. I have to say, ‘the Jews’ and they have to say ‘the
Arabs,’ which is the commonly used terminology – the terminology of this
state of apartheid... It is horrible. Apart from the occupation, massacres,
expulsion of Palestinians and of Jews and besides the brainwashing, Israel
had another huge victory in the world: Israel had succeeded in imposing a
new language and infiltration of the Zionistic and colonialistic ideas into
the vocabularies of everyone. This was done even before its creation by
declaring itself as the ‘State of Jews’… Unfortunately, and apart from the
Israeli-Palestinian issue, we don’t give enough importance to that in daily
life and in our small projects, and the small presentations distract from
these conversations maybe because we are mostly looking for success –
for the easiest and shortest way to be accepted. But I think it’s an essential
discussion and if we lose our interest in defending the language and
terminology that we use that would be really our greatest loss as a people.
And I don’t care in which country, what origins – when I say people, I
mean us, all human beings.
Grabher: In PRIVATE INVESTIGATION there are questions like: How

would you name yourself? And there are people who’d say, I’m Israeli,
I’m an Arab-Israeli, I’m an Arab in Israel or I’m Palestinian. It’s evident
that this struggle for naming is at the core of all these contradictions.
Tabari: For me it’s the essence of the struggle. And as I said before
creating this confusion in naming is to create an identity crisis and a
division between people. In this case being different is being dangerous,
and by manufacturing difference by naming, we have the basis of a kind of
war that is being waged. Although in reality, all of us are different, and
appreciating our differences opens doors for richness, depth; difference is
what makes people interesting. Our differences only become a danger
when they are based in fear, invented or real. That’s the paranoia that this
new world is putting on us, in the sense of: if I don’t know you perfectly,
well, I have to be careful and I have to be afraid of you. And it’s a horrible
thing because instead of going forward to the other to get to know him, to
learn, to appreciate something that you don’t know, you actually find
yourself on the defensive side.
Grabher: Chris Marker wrote about his time in Berkeley in 1967 that
he believed that a camera was a weapon against the cops, “not as heroic
but more efficient,” he added. In JINGA48 you present two girls as role-
models who, with great passion, struggle for a resisting position, for
justice. In a way that is very impressive, because you see that they regard
themselves as learning and questioning.
Tabari: The girls had a huge responsibility in this film and they had to
learn so much in a very short time, but I think that our close and trustful
relationship helped the three of us to communicate in a healthy way. They
had to get used to being free in front of the camera, to get familiar with the
filmmaking in general and also they were very interested by the subject,
which wasn’t far from their reality. I think also they had a challenge
proving to me that they were capable of achieving the goal. Casting is an
essential part of the very detailed research I do while writing my film
projects and scripts, I spend lots of time with people without necessary
talking about the film. Just having coffee and chatting. And if they are
familiar to me, family and friends or not, I still do research together with
them but also about them. I remember being at home in Nazareth with my
mother and the girls – my nieces - during one of the horrible attacks on
Gaza in 2008 … and I was trying to get some info from them about the
situation… Before going, I found a cassette from my first film, where my
niece Ward who was six or seven years old at that time was saying, “The
camera is much more important than the weapon because the weapon can
kill but the camera can shoot the weapon killing.” I was very happy to find
this and I said to myself, “Yes, it’s true. She said it in the first film and I
never used it, and I hoped she would repeat the idea somehow during this
meeting since she was also very angry, there were lots of emotions about
what was happening in Palestine, she was shouting and crying like: “I
can’t take this anymore - it’s fascism!” and suddenly I said, “Would you
take part in the film?” and she said: “Yes, and you know what? Only for
one thing.” I wanted her to say it again, she said, “Because, at least, if we
cannot stop them from shooting, we’ll shoot them shooting.” I said, “OK,
that’s my girl.” And I think that this generation is intuitively aware of what
Marker said in 1967. The camera is very important, although today we
have lots of mish-mash and lots of images and ‘image makers.’ We are in
a world of images and the magnitude of the archive is so huge that many
things are getting lost. Regardless, I believe that cinema is for history. A
film documents the present time even if it’s fiction. It documents a period
of time, a snap-shot of a reality. In a way, doing a film for me is a kind of
mourning a subject, because it’s like appropriating and breathing it and
somehow there is an end, as if you accept the death of someone or
something dear – accepting in the sense of living with it in its new form.
Sometimes I think doing one film is like doing five at the same time and
going out with one. You write a film project or some ideas and while
researching, find that there is a difference to reality. Then you change

because you grow-up with the research and you grow-up again with the
writing and the re-writing. And even when everything is perfectly
prepared and ready for shooting, every day you will have something new
that will enrich you and please you – or that will slap you in the face – and
you will have to adapt to many changes. Then there is another rebirth in
the editing room. A film is all of that. This process of mourning things is
very important. When you are in love, you lose something of yourself. I
think it’s the same here; every time you lose something of yourself, you
may cry and grieve about it and then continue on happily with something
else. Making a film could be painful too, in spite of the huge pleasure and
satisfaction, it is very painful because of this long process. I don’t know if
there are many filmmakers who are completely happy with their film
afterwards… Since there is always something to regret, “till the next
film...”
Grabher: But there’s always an aspect of hazard.
Tabari: Absolutely. Although I believe that the hazard doesn’t actually

exist. It’s what we invite and attract consciously or unconsciously. But the
hazard, in the sense of being attentive to what life offers you during the
making of the film and the spontaneity to communicate with the reality,
which wasn’t prepared before, becomes a reality afterward. And that’s
why I said, you write a precise scene and then when you film it, something
will happen or you just start to see things differently. You are the one who
decides but you are not the one to create the reality itself.
Grabher: So, the story in JINGA48 is...
Tabari: Tell me, did you like the film by the way?
Grabher: I liked it, but as I told you, for me it was in a way... not
difficult to watch... but I had to concentrate a lot. I really had to make an
effort to follow since I didn’t know very much about the ‘Land Day.’ The
film shows a process of self-empowerment. The girls say, “We have to
produce our own material, our own images.” The film itself is a
documentation of this process, we see the girls watching the video images
on the editing screens. To what extent were the girls also participants in
the phase of editing? Did you discuss the construction and narration of the
whole film with them?
Tabari: They participated in all the work stages, and this was a kind of
a parallel project or mission for me and it was essential for me that they
are aware of the tools we are using, of what it means to make a film. We
had lots of discussions; sometimes we agreed sometimes we didn’t...
Casting Adan and Ward was the best choice I could make besides the
fact that both are Capoeira dancers, since I needed to have children that I
could trust, with whom I have a real emotional relationship with deep
affection and to whom I’m close, so that we can communicate well. Adan
was already active in a human rights association and Ward was in love
with kids and taking care of them at the kindergarten founded by their
parents and where she grew-up as well. So, after writing my first draft of
the project, I called and asked them about working with me in a film. They
replied, “For acting it’s a ‘Yes’.” But I said, “It is acting but it’s not really
acting, because you will somehow do what I did in the first film. You will
also be journalists. If you accept, this means you have to work more than
an actor. So, I will send you a project proposal and I want your reactions.”
So, I started sending some general information and questions about the
film and they agreed and would always say, “Yes.” But this wasn’t enough
for me, I said, “If you want to be a journalist – and you want to have a role
in my film, you have to do your research.” I gave both of them information
on the activity of the Ministry of Education about the Land Day and the
children’s book that educates Arab kids to be loyal to the State of Israel.
They were shocked to see that and they started to get more interested.
Adan realized that she had this type of activity at school in a limited way,
but still it was covered at her school even though it was an alternative
Palestinian school with a clear identity. Despite this, they had also covered
the activity, but it had not sunk in for her. And now, suddenly, she
understood and grasped the connection between the activities she already
did at school, the film and real life. So, she went crazy when I sent her the
real text, the way it’s written by the Ministry. She flashed on that and she
started reading. And the same happened with Ward and the children’s
story.
From the beginning, the idea of the film was to follow the two young
journalists as characters in their personal life as well as in their
‘journalistic research.’ I would hardly appear in the film. So there are three
frames, stagings and points-of-view. The spectator will be following me
and my camera which was following the girls in their lives and as they are
pursuing their research and interviewing the other characters, and finally
the interviewees themselves. I never gave the girls the full text and all my
real intentions since I wanted them to stay natural and spontaneous when
they were filmed within their environments alongside their friends – even
with the Capoeira – as characters, not journalists. The first few days of the
shooting were very experimental; before meeting with an interviewee, I
would compile a resume of the person and send them to search on the
internet. In the beginning, it was very hard for them, besides still being
uncomfortable in front of camera, they didn’t get what it means to be a
journalist and gather information. They would listen to an interviewee
saying things like, “Yes, I’m a proud Israeli... Palestine is finished. It’s in
1967... ” And they would get angry and argue with him in a way that
would end the discussion. I would tell them, “Wait, don’t forget that
there’s a camera that is registering everything and that what we need at
this stage is to get his opinion rather than convincing him.” I had to create
so many exercises in order for them to understand that they are here only
like a canal, a conduit, in order to channel and pass the information on.
And I said, “The more you let him talk, the more the viewer can have a
real possibility to judge him... think... give him the possibility to present
his ideas, etc. Let him even make more mistakes. In the end, we are the
ones who will decide.” It took them a while and sometimes I would be in
the shot but sometimes not, but I would say, “Excuse me, can I pose a
question?” Sometimes I would ask it on camera and sometimes I would go
to the girls and just whisper, “Why’d you go in that direction?” They were
perfect. The first week, it was like teaching journalism – how to interview
a person. They were also invited to the editing, as I showed clearly in the
film, in order for them to become more aware of their own image, and to
realize the impact of their work and to take the camera more into
consideration.
The second week, they were like the most professional people I have
ever worked with. They would really discuss things deeply, they
conquered their timidity and they overcame a lot of things. I invited them
weekly to the editing room to discuss with me the project and I shot a lot
of discussions with them about the editing. We had a one main
disagreement. I tried to say that I am creating a metaphor with the
Capoeira and they did not accept this. They said, “Look, Capoeira for us is
Capoeira, it’s a sport, it’s a dance. It has its origins… we know about the
Africans, but we are not doing Capoeira to fight.” We had to get into many
discussions to arrive to one clear understanding. I said, “As a character,
these are your limits, and I’m the director. The overall vision is mine, the
interviews are yours, so do a good job in the interviews, in your
framework, but I’m the director of the whole film.”
Grabher: You said there’s no hazard in the world.

Tabari: No. In the end, when they accepted this, I really had an
educational project with them. It was a very enriching experience for me, I
learned a lot from their intelligence, courage, spontaneity and from their
unexpected, crazy questions.
Grabher: They are very free kids.
Tabari: Yeah. It’s because they had a good solid education. And I think
that they accomplished their mission very well, when they understood that
they are the youngest of all the characters, the only women and that all the
interviewees are men.
Grabher: Why is this so?
Tabari: I think our presence as three women was enough in the film.
Women in this film do exist by acting, questioning and interviewing
others, but not by delivering their points-of-view through an interview.
This is a choice that was taken during the process of the work, and I think
it was a correct one. All those we went to see in the beginning were by
chance, men. Then I thought, I am addressing the authority – as I said an
authority can be a father, or a teacher, it could be the director of this film,
it can be the head of the State – and until now most of the key persons
with authority are men. Maybe not the particular men in the film, but this
is the image of the authority that I wanted to show; these characters,
positions, this discourse of the history of power to be faced and questioned
about education, which embraces listening to the other, accepting the
other’s differences etc. In this film, men are not only facing women, but
young women, teenagers. So they have to face children and girls and they
have to respect them. If you manage to respect me as a girl, a young girl,
who’s asking questions, maybe simplistic or silly ones, and maybe a little
bigger than her, you already are coming towards me in order to embrace
better communication.
Grabher: It’s true, because sometimes, when they talk to a

representative of the Ministry of Education, a reversal of the power
relationship is happening. Very soon the girls point to the hot spot and
then the symbolic power of the person representing the institution becomes
visible somehow.
Tabari: Yeah, becomes visible. They win because they have nothing to
hide. In PRIVATE INVESTIGATION I interviewed people who are similar to
my generation who are still living in fear, looking all the time for ways to
justify ourselves, our existence. How to do something and what to do –
what’s right, what’s wrong? People would identify themselves as an
‘Arab-Israeli,’ as an ‘Arab with an Israeli passport,’ or a ‘Palestinian from
Israel,’ etc. In JINGA48, we don’t have this. It’s a different approach of a
different generation, where they say, “Look, I know who I am, it’s your
responsibility to find who you are. I will not justify or change who I am
because you are lost or you don’t know...” They are so clear regarding
themselves. This generation has learned about their own history and can
defend themselves. That’s why they are rich enough to be strong and to
think freely. They communicate with the other on an equal basis, person to
person, with a complete and solid existence. The spectator can judge each
character according to his relationship and his way of communicating with
the girls and that’s the game of power that I was trying to create.
Grabher: In FERTILE MEMORY (West Germany/Belgium/Netherlands/

Palestine, 1980) Michel Khleifi broke with a certain militant language in
the sense that he introduced things into Palestinian cinema that had not
been there before: daily life, personal life, and the experiences of
women…
Tabari: Absolutely, he brought a new discourse, a new approach, a new

cinema. And he is considered no doubt among the first filmmaker founders
of the Palestinian new cinema.
Grabher: Yes, a total shift of perception, which was very important and
as Khleifi said, was also inspired by the French New Wave. How would
you situate your work within the history of Palestinian filmmaking?
Tabari: I don’t know. I don’t even think it’s my role to do so. Although
there is no doubt that I am coming from the same place of the cinema
d’auteur which is very wide as well, and surely I belong to this alternative
critical cinema, in both production and content. I do believe that, not only
in cinema but in life, we never create from nothing; everything was
already made and somehow said, we just recreate and reformulate ideas
which correspond more to our time, being and realities. As for the
Palestinian cinema, it is becoming more and more rich. We have so many
filmmakers, men and women, with interesting films and approaches and it
is very challenging, with quality that is creating dialogue, because there’s
an urge… I cannot situate myself today, especially as an auteur filmmaker
just starting. I mean, I have made only three films so far. Not in terms of
quantity but in terms of depth, I am aware that my films are there, present
and part of this richness; I’m still thirsty. We’ll see what will happen later,
but I won’t be the one to judge my own films. But you reminded me of an
interesting thing. For a long time I was convinced that – apart from Egypt,
which is a particular country and society – Palestine, as the rest of the
Arab world, are more compatible with documentary cinema. I thought that
we haven’t yet reached our own cinematographic language that
corresponds to our realities. I felt that our reality goes beyond a simple
classical story with a beginning and an end, especially for the places where
wars and occupation are very present and active. That’s for instance what
Elia Suleiman managed to do with his cinema, mainly with his two first
features, which I prefer.
It’s about ways of looking at our reality and it’s about the relation
between reality and cinema. Somehow, whatever classical narrative fiction
you will bring will appear so redundant and absurd in relation to these
extremely loaded realities. So, I wasn’t surprised that a high number of
Palestinian films are documentaries, and not only a classical documentary,
but all sorts of documentary filmmaking and some very successful ones. I
don’t think that it is only related to the lack of facilities or the limitations
and difficulties of production, funding and so on, but it is because this is a
language that corresponded the most to our rhythm and reality.
Recently, more Palestinian fiction films are emerging, which is very
important and promising. There are a few that I haven’t seen yet, but I
hope that with the high number of people, creations and films we will
arrive, maybe, to compose and present a language that can reflect
something of this very anxious and particular reality.
Grabher: What do you think about the idea that Jean-Luc Godard
presents in NOTRE MUSIQUE (France/Switzerland, 2004) that fiction is the
area of Israel, whereas documentary is the area of Palestinians?
Tabari: Yeah, in fiction you can imagine and illustrate fantasies, but
even when you describe another planet, it is still coming from your life.
But you can displace it from one place to another. It doesn’t have the same
roots, the same basis and roles that a documentary could have, and it’s not
necessarily shown and done with its roots by place, or location. You can
write a Palestinian story and film it elsewhere, but a documentary
somehow is related to the place and to the natives. Israel is not related to
the place, Israel could be anywhere else. By the way, the Zionist leaders
said that before me. Unfortunately they said it before me. They wanted to
go to Uganda, to Africa, to Cyprus; but the best deal was Palestine.
Grabher: There is a nice Jewish bar in Jerusalem which is called

“Uganda.”
Tabari: A nostalgic idea to go to that world. [laughs] Look at Palestine

today, look at all sources of water in Palestine – they are all polluted. Go
to Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, look at the architecture. If they want to make
something a little bit special, they go back to renovate and imitate the
Palestinian houses. Architecturally, there is a huge tension between the
buildings; everything that happens there doesn’t belong to the place. In
this state they destroy and rebuild so easily because they don’t have a
relationship with the place. Normally Palestinians are born and they live
and stay their whole lives in the same house. It’s not about poverty but
because you are related to the place. The Israeli society brought us this
very accidental thing of moving from one house to another, because we
can always find a better or bigger one, we can never manage with what we
have. It is not a communist thing, it is a question of whether you belong or
care or not. The way Palestinians are related to their truth and their life,
history, is the main problem for Israel. Because Israel as an idea, as an
ideology – despite its existence for so many years… they are still not
related to the place (as natives). Israeli people only started to be related to
the place, even if in a very deformed and complicated and unhealthy
relation… but generations were born since 1948… I have got a notion that
– and I say this without any studying or research – they are related to their
own story with the place and not with the place itself, and so I absolutely
agree that a big part of this is fiction. They are related with this fear, with
this personal memory that they – their authorities – had displaced and
brought to Palestine. But not with the positive side of the place, it’s with
the dangerous side of the place – something is not really balanced. And we
feel it in Israel. We feel it all the time. So, yes, I love and agree with this
idea from Godard.
Grabher: It’s like fictions being imposed violently.
Tabari: Studio work.
Grabher: When the Arab league invited Godard to make a film, there
was this idea, “We need an ‘ANTI-EXODUS.’ We need a fiction that can
defeat Preminger’s EXODUS (USA 1960) to confront that image, which is
so strong and so convincing and seducing.” But Godard refused to do such
a thing.
Tabari: I don’t really know why he refused at that time, but I believe
that working directly with an authority is anti-cinema.
Grabher: Could you say something about your use of music in your
films? JINGA48 ends with a Michael Jackson song.
Tabari: Till now I always loved and preferred using already published
and known music, rather than creating original music. It’s part of the spirit
of the documentaries I have made till now and the need to a constantly link
between the films and the reality, especially since I mainly used very
popular music that you can hear in the taxi, or at a restaurant or in the
street. This type of music fits the style and the structure of the films, which
is built on ‘ruptures,’ on moving from one sequence to another, which
provokes thinking and reevaluation of the information presented in the
sequence before. This musical treatment helps me avoid the possible
sentimentalism that could be related to descriptive soundtracks built to
animate the sequence as well as it helps at de-dramatizing. Sometimes, I
imagine an image through a musical piece or vice versa; an image brings
me the music. Choosing the music is part of writing the project as well,
some pieces I do find before or during or after the shooting, it depends. I
never start shooting without being very sure of my point of departure and
end, image-wise but also sound-wise. As for Michael Jackson, it’s a piece
that I chose while shooting and I thought that it fits the spirit as the
message of the film and helps me create the mirror effect that I always
wish to create in my films with other countries, cultures and people’s
stories… The music, the wonderful energy and lyrics of this song saying,
“They don’t really care about us,” fitted perfectly well with my intentions.
Then a rupture and the spectator goes out with the very beautiful and sad
Syrian song, “Lomak,” by the Syrian artist, Housam Tahsein Bek, which
means, “Your reproach is in vain; it boosts your worries and won’t get you
your lover back” bringing JINGA48 to the last title. This song was chosen
while writing the first draft of the film and I still think that it was a right
choice too. This film is very talkative, even more talkative than I am
today. Still it’s a film where I felt the content and the form worked very
well together and that is something that makes me proud of this film.
PART V
ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN FILM:
EXPERIENCES
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
TRANSGENERATIONAL TRAUMA:
ON THE AFTERMATH OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE
SUFFERED BY WOMEN DURING
THE HOLOCAUST IN ISRAELI CINEMA
SANDRA MEIRI
“So, if you repress your sexuality in a society where many issues are
suppressed, many of them Holocaust-related, because of the hundreds of
thousands of survivors, and your parents can’t tell you what they had been
through, you breathe the thick air of suppression, and then this happens,
too.” (Omer Bartov in STALAGS, Ari Libsker, 2007)
In the 1940s and throughout the 1950s, Israeli Holocaust-related films

depicted the initiation of severely traumatized young survivors into the
Zionist enterprise as a miraculous therapy. Films like Herbert Kline’s MY
FATHER’S HOUSE (1947) and Joseph Leits’ THE GREAT PROMISE (1947)
demonstrate how hard physical labor, exercise, pioneer settlement of the
land, and military training shield the mentally broken survivors from
unrelenting memories and help them to become fit for their new homeland.
It was not until the late 1970s that Israeli cinema addressed the
complexity of the memory of the Holocaust—in Hebrew, the Shoah—and
its aftermath in Israeli society and culture.1 Ilan Moshenzon’s WOODEN
1
See Ilan Avisar, “The Holocaust in Israeli Cinema as a Conflict between Survival
and Morality,” in: Miri Talmon and Yaron Peleg (eds.) Israeli Cinema: Identities in
Motion (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011), 151-67; Nurith Gertz, Holocaust
Survivors, Aliens and Others in Israeli Cinema and Literature [Makhela Akheret:
Nizolei Sho’ah, Zarim Va’akherim Bakolnoa Uvasifrut Hayisraelyim] (Tel Aviv:
Am Oved, 2004); Yosefa Loshitzky, Identity Politics on the Israeli Screen (Austin:
University of Texas Press, 2001), 15-71; Liat Steir-Livny, “Near and Far: The
Representation of Holocaust Survivors in Israeli Feature Films,” in: Israeli
Cinema, 168-80.
Transgenerational Trauma 273
GUN (1978) was the first film to break a three-decade silence. Dan
Wolman’s HIDE AND SEEK (1979) soon followed. These “retro films”2
foretold the “Shadow Cinema”3 of the 1980s. Since then many more
Israeli films have engaged with the myriad facets of Holocaust trauma.
While some of these films are mainly concerned with the question of
memory (qua memory) in the face of the disappearance of eye-witnesses,4
many others, both documentary and feature films, deal with the ways in
which the survivors’ children (the ‘second generation’) have been affected
by the malaise of their traumatized parents. Nitza Gonen’s SECOND
GENERATION (1994), for example, condenses the stories of the second
generation into an 80-minute documentary.
One of the prevailing themes in feature films dealing with the
Holocaust aftermath is that of women’s trauma. A vast number of these
women became mothers in Israel. Some of the films depict the anguished
mother, verging on insanity; others emphasize the distress of a daughter
who is violently coerced into relinquishing her own life because of her
mother’s haunted past. Tzipi Trope’s SIX MILLION FRAGMENTS (2001) is a
salient example, as are Eli Cohen’s SUMMER OF AVIYA (1988) and UNDER
THE DOMIM TREE (1995). Some Israeli Holocaust-related films such as
Tzipi Trope’s TEL AVIV-BERLIN (1987), Orna Ben-Dor’s NEWLAND
(1994), Ruti Peres’ HENRIK’S SISTER (1997), Nir Bergman’s INTIMATE
GRAMMAR, and Avi Nesher’s ONCE I WAS (both 2010), suggest that the
impossibility of women and mothers establishing a normal life might be
related to sexual violence suffered by women of all ages in the Holocaust.
It is most unlikely, however, that a film centering on a female protagonist,
a Holocaust survivor with a specific sexual trauma, be made in Israel.
Such depictions have remained, to a large extent, and understandably so,
2
Régine-Mihal Friedman, “L’oubli du génocide: Le Juif et les camps de
concentration dans le cinéma ‘Rétro’,” Les Nouveaux Cahiers 56 (1979), 10-15.
3
Judd Ne’eman, “The Tragic Sense of Zionism: Shadow Cinema and the
Holocaust,” Shofar 24:1 (Fall 2005), 22-36.
4
See Régine-Mihal Friedman’s “Les films de la deuxième génération en Israël,”
in: Vivre et écrire la mémoire de la Shoah: littérature et psychanalyse, ed.
Charlotte Wardi and Perel Wilgowicz (Paris: Les Editions du Nadir, 2002), 337-49;
“The Double Legacy of Arbeit Macht Frei,” Prooftexts 22.1-2 (Winter/Spring
2002), 200-220; “The Transmutation of Testimony in Cling, Najman and Finkiel’s
Aftermath Films” in Studies in French Cinema 5.3 (December 2005), 195-206;
Tsipi Reibenbach’s “Witnessing for the Witness: Choice and Destiny” in Shofar
24.1 (Fall 2005), 81-93; “Pour une généalogie du film-témoignage en France,” in:
Le ‘je’ à l’écran, ed. Jean-Pièrre Esquenazi et André Gardies (Paris: L’Harmattan,
2006), 277-96.
274 Chapter Fourteen
taboo. Not only are they considered a desecration of Holocaust memory,

but also, for female Holocaust survivors, a (re)opening of such wounds
would entail a deep sense of helplessness, guilt, and shame—a reiteration
of that same violence which had once defiled their bodies, sexuality and
mental health beyond repair.
Sexual violence in the camps was an inherent part of Nazi
dehumanization in the Holocaust. Women were much more susceptible
simply because they were women. Women were sexually harassed,
molested, raped, forced to barter sex for food, and even into ‘sexual
5
slavery.’ Sexual crimes against Jewish women were committed not only
by Germans, but also by Nazi collaborators, fellow Jewish inmates in the
camps, non-Jewish prisoners, protectors (those who hid Jews), and
liberators. Brigitte Halbmayr explains what she terms “sexualized
violence” and its ubiquity in the Holocaust:
[V]iolent acts can be understood as sexualized if they are directed at the

most intimate part of a person and, as such, against that person’s physical,
emotional, and spiritual integrity […] This definition of the term covers
direct physical expression of violence that are bodily attacks, an
unauthorized crossing of body boundaries. They range from flagrant sexual
advances to rape. In Nazi concentration camps, sexualized violence also
included forced sex labor, sex for survival, forced sterilization, forced
abortion, and other medical procedures… and emotional expressions of
violence, such as imposed public nakedness… infringement on intimate
space, deplorable hygienic conditions, leering stares, suggestive insults,
and humiliating methods of physical examination, all part of the constant
impending danger of becoming the victim of sexual assault by the SS or
camp guards.6
The first mode of grappling with sexual violence in the Holocaust in

Israel was the controversial literature of Auschwitz survivor, Yechiel
Feiner (Denur), in his books, Beit Habubot (1953)7 and Qaru Lo Piepel
5
Whether Jewish women actually served as prostitutes in camp brothels is still a
matter of controversy. See, for example, Robert Sommer, “Sexual Exploitation of
Women in Nazi Concentration Camps,” in: Sonja M. Hedgepeth and Rochelle G.
Saidel (eds.) Sexual Violence against Jewish Women during the Holocaust
(Waltham, Massachusetts: Brandeis University Press, 2010), 45-60.
6
Ibid, Brigitte Halbmayr, “Sexualized Violence against Women during Nazi
‘Racial’ Persecution,” 30.
7
English translation (Moshe M. Kohn): House of Dolls (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1955).
(1958).8 Both novels, published under the pen name “K. Tzetnik 135633,”9
depict sexual slavery and abuse in concentration camps—the first of a
young woman (the narrator’s sister), the second of a young boy—the
narrator’s brother. The two volumes are part of a long chronicle of the
horrors of the camps, which K. Tzetnik began with Salamandra, published
in 1946, relating the story of a Jewish Polish family in Auschwitz.10
The second attempt to address sexual violence in the Holocaust was
the no less controversial literature of Stalags, a phenomenon that emerged
at the commencement of the trial of Adolf Eichmann in April 1961 in
Jerusalem. It was the first time that Israel had been publicly confronted
with the incomprehensible and horrific memories of Auschwitz, unvoiced
until then. A few months later the Stalags hit the stands. Stalags were
pocket-sized books whose plots revealed lusty female SS officers sexually
abusing camp prisoners (mostly American and other Allied POW). During
the 1960s, sales of this pornographic literature broke all records in Israel
and hundreds of thousands of copies were sold at kiosks. The Stalags were
written in Hebrew, by Israeli authors, in the style of genuine memoirs (in
the first person), masquerading as translations from English. The
popularity of the Stalags declined after the court found the publishers
guilty of disseminating pornography in 1963.
In what follows I explore two contemporary Israeli films that address
the question of sexualized violence and its aftermath in Israeli society and
culture. Ari Libsker’s documentary STALAGS: HOLOCAUST AND
PORNOGRAPHY IN ISRAEL (2007) explores the temporal coincidence of the
Eichmann trial and the Stalags, and the relationships of the latter to K.
Tzetnik’s books. I argue that the film links the two literatures to the
experience of sexualized violence in the Holocaust. While, according to
his defenders, K. Tzetnik’s descriptions of sexual violence are based on
first-hand accounts, the Stalags, as my analysis of the film shows, resulted
from a repressed or silenced trauma, unconsciously transferred to the
survivors’ children, ‘the second generation.’ I further explore the
phenomenon of transgenerational sexualized trauma in BURNING MOOKI,
written by Moshe Zonder and directed by Lina and Slava Chaplin in 2008.
Although the film does not overtly mention sexualized violence in the
8
English translation (Moshe M. Kohn): Atrocity (New York: Lyle Stuart, 1963).
9
Feiner took this acronym from the German abbreviation KZ
(Konzentrationslager, concentration camp) for concentration camp inmates. On its
significance, see Dvir Abramovich, “The Holocaust World of Yechiel Fajner,”
Nebula 4:3 (2007), 21. 25.
10
English translation (Y.L. Barukh): Sunrise over Hell (London: W.H. Allen,
1977).
Holocaust, its depiction of the incestuous mother-son relationship, as well

as the behavior of Holocaust survivors, nevertheless suggest that their
post-traumatic symptoms originate in the experience of sexualized
violence. The film raises the subject of sexualized violence against women
in the Holocaust within the unique context of crimes against humanity by
showing how this violence affected both the generation of female
survivors and their children, underscoring the ways the children (‘the
second generation’) were and continue to be influenced by having lived
with a mother whose memories of sexual violation (experienced either
first-hand or as a witness) are still fresh in her body and mind, incapable of
being worked through, and thus transferred to her children.
Not surprisingly, BURNING MOOKI received damning reviews after its
screening at the 2008 Haifa International Film Festival. It was described as
provocative and abominable, and after a few weeks of screening in the
country’s cinematheques, it sank into oblivion. What appears to have
revolted the critics, as well as the audiences, was the inscription of
perverted sexuality into Holocaust memory. Indeed, BURNING MOOKI’s
reception reverberates in the arguments raised by denouncements of both
K. Tzetnik’s literature and the Stalags in Libsker's documentary.
STALAGS (Ari Libsker, Israel 2007)

Ari Libsker’s documentary, STALAGS: HOLOCAUST AND PORNOGRAPHY
IN ISRAEL, grapples with the first modes of contending with the fresh
traumatic memory of the Holocaust in Israel: K. Tzetnik’s literature, the
Eichmann trial, and the Stalags. The film recounts the history of the
Stalags, their background, and the controversy regarding this pulp fiction,
considered by many perverted literature, written by sexually sick
individuals with twisted imaginations. Near the end of the film, Libsker as
narrator also takes this stand, represented by figures such as literary
scholar and critic, Dan Miron, author and Holocaust survivor, Ruth Bondy,
and historian, Naama Shik. The Stalags, they maintain, were inspired by
K. Tzetnik’s books, which paved the way to exploiting the Holocaust in a
degrading and harmful way. Libsker’s voiceover announces, earlier in the
film, that “only in the 90s, Miron found the courage to write a critique on
K. Tzetnik.” The film, as suggested by its title, concludes: “The images in
K. Tzetnik’s books and in the Stalags permeated Israeli consciousness and
to this day this mixture of horror, sadism, and pornography serves to
perpetuate the memory of the Holocaust.”
This stern statement, however, is undermined by the narrator’s
poignant question, “Did the Stalags portray a reality silenced by the
establishment?” In response, the film’s structure oscillates between

defenders of the two literatures (K. Tzetnik’s and the Stalags), who claim
that everything K. Tzetnik wrote was based on his own experience, and
their denouncers. The film’s parallel editing also portrays the temporal
coincidence of the Eichmann trial and the Stalags, while establishing a
clear relationship between the traumatic past of the genre’s creator and his
fiction.
The juxtaposition between the interviews about Stalags and scenes
from the Eichmann trial conveys a direct relationship between the two
forms of contention with the fresh memory of the Holocaust. The parallel
editing shows how, while survivors of the Holocaust were daily being
confronted with unbearable memories on the testimonial stand, their
adolescent children were consuming sadomasochistic scenarios, mostly
between female SS guards and Allied soldiers in POW camps. When the
film first cuts to the Eichmann trial, we see Eichmann’s distorted frozen
face behind the glass cell, followed by Attorney-General Hausner speaking
and people sitting on benches, listening to him. We then learn that the first
Stalag was published directly after the commencement of the Eichmann
trial.
In the film, cultural researcher and Stalag collector Eli Eshed discusses
what he considers “the best Stalag”—I Was a Stalag Commander (1963):
“[It] is told from the point-of-view of a male raving sadist, describing, in a
casual way, his abuse of his male and female prisoners […].” Eshed
compares him to Eichmann and states: “Obviously, the author thought of
Eichmann while writing […].” Uzi Narkis, the first publisher of Stalags,
makes the following point: “The Eichmann trial was one of the boosters of
this literature.” A similar comment is made by Miriam Uriel, wife of an
author of Stalags: “I know he listened to the Eichmann trial. He was
definitely aware and affected by it […] He used and integrated it in his
writing.”
I suggest that sexualized violence, which could not be repeated
verbally in any shape or form (publicly or privately), had found a
mouthpiece in the Stalags and that the role inversion in the Stalags—
women as SS guards and sexual perpetrators, and POW soldiers as
victims—tragically reflects how a victim of sexualized violence in her turn
victimizes her male son. The term ‘victim,’ which refers in this case to
female Holocaust survivors, encompasses many facets of the definition of
sexualized violence associated with the infringement of corporal boundaries
and the constant fear of the impending danger of becoming the victim of
sexual assault. This experience was transferred to the ‘second generation’
and it is in this sense that the victim unconsciously and unwillingly
became a perpetrator. The Stalags thus reflect a transgenerational fantasy

unleashed by the Eichmann trial.
Indeed, to better understand this fantasy, we need to examine the film’s
treatment of this most salient element in the Stalags—women as SS guards
and sexual perpetrators. The first sequence of Libsker’s documentary
opens with a series of Stalags paintings. The first depicts the huge face of
an SS officer (in the foreground, similar to a close-up), who bears a
striking resemblance to Eichmann; on the right side of the painting (in the
background)—a much smaller image of a woman’s torso, covered only by
a brassiere. Her hands are chained to a wall and her naked body reveals
traces of violence (blood). The content of the picture conveys actual sexual
assault and its composition (including the size difference of the two
images) reflects the constant impending danger of becoming a victim of
sexual assault by SS guards. The voiceover accompanying this shot reads
from Stalag 13: “There was nothing unusual in the way they lined up
holding their heads up high” (See Fig. 14.1).
Fig. 14.1: A striking resemblance to Eichmann: Stalags

What we have here is a prototype (underscored by the visual allusion
to Eichmann): a sadistic male Nazi perpetrator and a female victim. When
this illustration fades out, however, others appear, all of which depict
seductive, voluptuous blondes wearing brown shirts with deep cleavages,
tight pants and shiny SS boots, their necks adorned with swastikas. The
voiceover continues: “Nothing unusual except for the fact that these
soldiers were women […].” The opening phrase, “There was nothing
unusual in the way they lined up,” contextualizes the first shot of a female
victim, alluding thus to a situation that represents what had happened in
reality. Clearly, the lining up of women in the camps had become a
familiar image by the early 1960s. In what follows, however, we are
transposed to the realm of fantasy. The novelty of the Stalags, we are told
and shown, consisted in the sexual role-reversal of Jewish female prisoner
as victim and sadistic SS guard as perpetrator (“Nothing unusual except
for the fact that these soldiers were women”). In other words, the film
distinguishes at its outset between what happened in reality in the camps
and what became a strikingly unusual fantasy (See Fig. 14.2).
Fig. 14.2: Cover of Stalag 13
Following Shoshana Felman’s contention that the success of the

Eichmann trial was due, in part, to its failure to represent or provide
closure to trauma, Amit Pinchevski and Roy Brand argue: “The Stalags
tapped into an imaginary realm opened between what was said through the
legal procedure and what remained unsaid. In supplying outlet to public
imagination, the Stalags functioned as the fantasy companion to the

trial.”11 Pinchevski and Brand address neither the subject of sexualized
violence, a pervasive component of the Holocaust, nor the possibility of
transgenerational trauma.
We learn from Libsker’s documentary that the Stalags were about the
ubiquity of sexual abuse in the camps, rendered in a phantasmatic form, as
a result of transference; what could not be iterated at the trial and found its
way instead into the perverted and inverted world of the Stalags was
sexualized violence in the form of “radioactive transference” and
“radioactive identification.” These two concepts are used by Yolanda
Gampel in relation to the aftermath of social violence.12
If we accept the notion of sexualized violence, we may argue that its
radioactive traces have infiltrated, body and soul, the children of
Holocaust survivors. According to Gampel, mass violence begets traumas
that penetrate collective memory, becoming permeated entirely with that
same violence. Such traumas may in turn become new origins of cruelty:
For those who suffered the horrors of the camps at first hand, the events
are still present, tangible, experienced in the body. The inherent image and
the trauma left by these experiences are rooted in the body, in their sensory
perception. These traumatic scenes, which the survivors pass on
unconsciously, are inscribed in the imaginary world of their children in an
acute and destabilizing manner. For the following generation, the trauma
experienced by the parents on their flesh, becomes a phantasmatic
traumatic reality.13
The voluptuous, sensual women of the Stalags, who are simultaneously

a source of sexual stimulation and revulsion, thus suggest the effects of
living with a mother whose memories of sexualized violence/violation are
still fresh in her body and mind, incapable of being worked through, and
thus transferred to her children.
The notion that radioactive traces of sexualized violence had infiltrated
the body and soul of the children of Holocaust survivors is further
substantiated by the treatment of the relationship between Eli Keidar's
childhood experience and the Stalags. The creator of the genre, Eli Keidar,
11
Amit Pinchevski and Roy Brand, “Holocaust Perversions: the Stalags Pulp
Fiction and the Eichmann Trial,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 24.5
(December 2007), 393.
12
Yolanda Gampel, Ces parents qui vivent à travèrs moi: Les enfants des guerres
(Paris: Fayard, 2005).
13
Gampel, Les enfants, 21 (my translation).
wrote his first Stalag, Stalag 13 (1961), as well as all his other Stalags,
under the pseudonym “Mike Bader.” The name “Stalag” and the numbers
may have been inspired by Billy Wilder’s film, STALAG 17 (1953), but it is
not unlikely that they may also refer to the way in which the blocks were
numbered in Auschwitz and other camps. Keidar chose his pseudonym
because it sounded American (the Stalags were largely modeled on
American pulp fiction and, as mentioned before, were meant to appear as
translated literature). Keidar had lived in Germany for a while, where he
hoped, but failed, to sell his genre to the Germans. During that period he
worked in a nightclub owned by an Auschwitz survivor. He claims that his
experience there inspired his Stalag, Here Comes the Sweet Undertaker,
which specifically depicts incest between a Jewish protagonist and his
German mother. The Stalag was banned.
An even more notorious Stalag, thick with radioactive traces of
sexualized violence, I Was Colonel Shultz’s Private Bitch (1962), written
under the pseudonym “Monique Caurneau,” was published by Isaac
Guttman. It told the story of sexual abuse of a French female prisoner, left
to the mercy of her sadistic commander. The police sought to destroy all
the copies—today there are only four left in the hands of private
collectors.
In 1963 a special committee was formed to address the question,
‘What is pornography?’14 Guttman was charged with the distribution of
pornography and this marked the end of the Stalags. Ezra Narkis, the first
publisher of the Stalags, insists, however, that it was not because of these
events, but, rather, because the market had reached a point of saturation:
“the Stalags became an epidemic.” To this day in Israel, the idea that Jews,
especially women, were subjected to sexualized violence in the camps, or
even worse, that some women might have succumbed to certain forms of
sexual exploitation as their only way to survive, is considered a figment of
a sick imagination. On one hand, the film does seem to support this notion.
On the other, its attempt to shield the viewers from inexorable traces of
unspoken trauma is undermined by its treatment of the relationship
between Keidar's childhood narrative and his writing.
Keidar, the son of two Holocaust survivors, experienced a very
difficult childhood. Throughout the film, he relates his continual
helplessness and terror of living with an unpredictable mother who had
14
For an exposé of the reception of the Stalags and K. Tzetnik's books in Israel,
see Nitsa Ben-Ari, Suppression of the Erotic: Censorship and Self-Censorship in
Hebrew Literature 1930-1980 (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press, 2006
[Hebrew]), 152-163.
lost her whole family in the Holocaust, lived in the shadow of trauma, and
repeatedly blamed him for her suffering. In his first appearance, he
attributes his enduring apprehension that he was not good enough as a
writer to the fact that his parents constantly told him that he was
inadequate and evil:
“I’ve been living with that image since I was six years old. Even at a safe
family moment I could be slapped. I was never secure. I realized my
parents were unpredictable, and that I should be careful around them.
Somehow even when they smiled I cringed.”
Moreover, Keidar, as do many other characters in the film, insists that

what had happened in the camps was ten times worse than what he and
other Stalag authors portrayed in their books: “All I had to do is reveal it.”
But how could Keidar and his peers have known what no parents dared
speak about? The film infers that Keidar could have discerned the ‘truth,’
not only from K. Tzetnik’s books, but also through “radioactive
transference.” In one sequence, Keidar recounts: “Every day she [his
mother] thought she was dying, and every day she thought I was dying.
She kept talking about death […] the tiniest thing, if I refused her or
argued with her, she would pretend she was dying […] and blame me for
killing her.” Libsker’s voiceover then quotes a fragment from Stalag 13,
referring to the blind obedience to the female camp commander, because
everyone knew that “the punishment for the slightest dissidence was death
[…] He [Mike Bader] hated her […].” While quoting this fragment, the
film shows a series of images of a dilapidated house (meant to portray
Keidar's childhood house, although this is not confirmed in any way in the
sequence). This becomes a visual metaphor for Keidar's ruined childhood,
substantiated by his own words: “A child absorbs this atmosphere and is
affected by it.” While we cannot detect any sexual overtones in Keidar’s
confession about his mother, Libsker’s voiceover quoting the blind
obedience to the female camp commander, because everyone knew that
“the punishment for the slightest dissidence was death,” from Stalag 13,
does not leave much room for speculation. The film does not inform us of
what really happened to Keidar’s mother during the Holocaust. What may
be inferred from this sequence, however, is how what she may have
experienced, or just witnessed and feared, was transferred to her son, who
translated his experience with her into a phantasmatic form.
Those who claim in the film that both the Stalags and K. Tzetnik’s
books, by which they were inspired, are figments of a sick, delusional
imagination fail to recognize that it was not the “banality of evil” that both
the Stalags authors and K. Tzetnik perceived in Eichmann. There are many
studies and fictional works on the role that perverse sexuality and fantasies
have played in fascist regimes in general and Nazism in particular. Suffice
it to mention films like Lina Wertmüller’s SEVEN BEAUTIES (1975) or
Liliana Cavani’s THE NIGHT PORTER (1974), whose “[m]any readings […]
continue to marginalize what they consider … scandalous rendition[s] of
fascism, Nazism, and the ‘Final Solution’.”15 In his discussion of the non-
historical kernel of jouissance, which, nevertheless, is always part of
history, Slavoj Žižek writes:
At a more traumatic level, this reference to jouissance makes clear the

inadequacy of Hannah Arendt’s notion of the ‘banality of evil’ from her
famous report on the Eichmann trial […]. The fact remains […] that the
execution of the Holocaust was treated by the Nazi apparatus itself as a
kind of obscene dirty secret, not publicly acknowledged, resisting simple
and direct translation into the anonymous bureaucratic machine. In order to
account for the way executioners carried out the Holocaust measures, one
should supplement the purely […] bureaucratic logic […] with […] the
real of the perverse (sadistic) jouissance in what they were doing
(torturing, killing, dismembering bodies […].16
Žižek’s approach sheds new light on the argument that racial laws and
the fear of racial defilement (Rassenschande) prevented the Nazis from
raping Jewish women, or engaging them in ‘sexual slavery.’ In her book
on the Jewish women of Ravensbrück, Rochelle G. Saidel writes that in
reality, Nazi racial laws did not protect Jewish women from being raped
and, in any case, a Nazi man could always deny that he had raped a Jewish
prisoner. Who was going to believe her testimony? She quotes a female
survivor of Auschwitz, who describes how young Jewish women were
pulled from their bunks and taken away to be raped by drunken SS men.17
Similarly, Sinnreich argues that, “[i]n some cases, individuals […] did not
follow the policy […] it is clear that what took place on the ground during
the Holocaust did not always match the directed racial policy.”18 She then
15
Kriss Ravetto, The Unmaking of Fascist Aesthetics (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 2001), 16.
16
Slavoj Žižek, The Plague of Fantasies (London: Verso, 1997), 55.
17
Rochelle G. Saidel, The Jewish Women of Ravensbrück (Madison, Wisconsin:
University of Wisconsin Press, 2006), 213.
18
Helene J. Sinnreich, “The Rape of Jewish Women during the Holocaust,” in:
Sexual Violence, 109.
recounts cases in which Jewish women were raped by Germans—all of

which were based on testimonies.19
Thus it is not hard, when we read these testimonies, to believe K.
Tzetnik’s claim that everything he had written on sexual violence was
based on facts, and we gain additional insight into what he must have felt
upon seeing Eichmann again. The film’s treatment of K. Tzetnik’s case
ultimately becomes a platform for the radical view that the Stalags
revealed a reality. In response to Miron’s contention that K. Tzetnik’s
literary style is that of pornography, Yechiel Szeintuch, an expert on
Yiddish and Hebrew Holocaust literature, including that of K. Tzetnik,
insists that everything K. Tzetnik wrote was based on his own
experience—he indignantly points to the irrationality of condemning
someone simply because he has written the truth.20
Moreover, denouncers of both K. Tzetnik’s literature and the Stalags
refuse to address the aftermath of being coerced for years into taking part,
even as passive bystanders, in the instrumentality of evil. They ignore one
basic element—what precipitated the advent of the Stalags was the
ongoing experience of a psychic economy that places sexuality in the
service of destruction.
In one of the scenes depicting K. Tzetnik in an interview on the news
program, 60 MINUTES (CBS 1983), when asked what he feels about Adolf
Eichmann now, he says: “No hatred, but hatred about human being. I was
afraid about myself. Then came everything, then I saw, I am capable to do
this? I am capable exactly like he. Not good, it’s not Hitler […] it’s not
Adolf Eichmann. It’s me.” K. Tzetnik’s experience in the camps had
clearly taught him a cruel lesson about the nature of evil (with which he
came face-to-face once more while facing Eichmann, who epitomized
evil):
Repeatedly, K. Tzetnik hammers home the idea that perversity and murder
were polymorphous in the Nazi phenomenon. Furthermore, he stresses that
the camp inmates, with their abject existence, would do anything to
survive, even if it involves violence against their brethren. Clearly it
19
Sinnreich, “Rape,” 111.
20
See Yechiel Szeintuch’s “Key Concepts in the Writings of K. Tzetnik,” in:
Hulyot: Studies in Yiddish Literature and its Relationship with Hebrew Literature,
Vol. 5 (Jerusalem: Haifa, Tel Aviv and Bar Ilan Universities, and Beit Lochamei
Hagetaot, 1999), 275-290; Conversations with Yechiel Di-Nur: KATZETNIK
135633 (Jerusalem: Beit Lochamei Hagetaot and Dov Sadan Institute, 2003);
Salamandra: Myth and History in K. Tzetnik’s Writings (Jerusalem: Dov Sadan
Institute, 2009). All publications are in Hebrew.
underscores K. Tzetnik’s core tenor—that Auschwitz was a planet separate

from the rest of the world, a place where one must not be good, where one
must reverse traditional morality and act with total callousness.21
Watching STALAGS, it becomes evident that violence at large and

sexual violence in particular, experienced either first hand or as
transference, can be recounted only in a distanced or disguised form. In
addition to all the other phantasmatic elements of the genre, the overall
Americanization of the Stalags created further distance—this did not
happen to ‘us,’ it happened to ‘them.’ A similar distance characterizes K.
Tzetnik’s books.22
K. Tzetnik himself insisted on several occasions that his writings were
not worthy of any literary consideration, that he had never considered
himself a writer, that all he wanted to do was to give a voice to the
millions of Jews who had perished in the hell that he managed to survive.23
And he did so in a distanced form. The film first shows him fainting at the
Eichmann trial when trying to recount what had happened in “Auschwitz,
the other planet.” Compelled by the same need characterizing his books to
represent all the victims of the Holocaust, when asked to tell their stories
in the first person, he collapsed.
K. Tzetnik’s true identity was exposed at the trial. People learned the
man hiding behind the perplexing nom de plume, “K. Tzetnik 135633,”
was in fact, Yechiel Denur. He “wrote using the third person only because
the first-person point-of-view was too threatening. He testified that ‘unless
I hid behind the third person, I wouldn’t have been able to write at all’.”24
K. Tzetnik was indeed a voice for all Holocaust survivors who had
experienced sexual violence and because they could not work through
21
Abramovich, “The Holocaust World of Yechiel Fajner,” Nebula 4.3 (2007), 29.
22
A striking element in most of the testimonies included in the Sexual Violence
volume (eds. Hedgepeth and Saidel) is that sexual atrocities happened to a friend,
another woman, an inmate, never to ‘me.’ We may understand this form of
testimony both as stemming from a deep sense of shame, and as a defense
mechanism, one through which the subject distances her/himself from the memory
of an unbearable experience.
23
Interestingly, before the Holocaust, Yechiel Feiner had published a collection of
poems. After WORLD WAR II, he burned all copies of this volume (found in the
Library of Congress in Washington and his local library in Jerusalem), claiming
that it belonged to a world that no longer existed. See Abramovich, “Yechiel
Fajner,” 20.
24
Miryam Sivan, “‘Stoning the Messenger’: Yehiel Denur’s House of Dolls and
Piepel,” in: Sexual Violence, 204.
their trauma, they passed it on to their children. It is in this light that we

may consider him as a major influence on the authors of Stalags, as well as
on many of the Stalags’ consumers. He gave a voice to what was
transferred unconsciously and experienced by many children of Holocaust
survivors who remained silent.
Libsker’s documentary clearly raises the question of sexualized
violence in the Holocaust: should Israeli society continue to deny, silence,
and suppress sexualized violence in the Holocaust, or should it start
addressing it and, if so, in what manner?
In one of the scenes of STALAGS, Naama Shik expresses her revolt
against accusations and stigmatization directed at Holocaust survivors: if
one was a survivor and a man, then he must have been a Kapo; if a
woman, especially attractive or sterile—a prostitute. Shik’s protest,
although understandable, nevertheless ignores the brutal reality of the
camps, and their perverse economy. Moreover, Shik's approach, still
representing many historical and cultural studies in Israel, hinders any
attempt to understand how the ubiquity of sexualized violence has affected
Israeli society and culture. BURNING MOOKI makes that attempt.
BURNING MOOKI (Slava and Lina Chaplin, Israel 2008)

During the last two decades, film theory has demonstrated how films
engage our body and senses in the process of film experience. BURNING
MOOKI may, to some extent, go to the extreme in its attempt to stir our
senses (even smell) and bodily sensations by condensing problematic
aspects of the Holocaust tragedy into one film: identification with the
perpetrator, Kapos, and the Sonderkommando, as well as insanity, and the
threat and experience of incest. This condensation, however, serves a
singular purpose. The film reenacts the horrors of the camps. This
reenactment is rendered through Mooki’s memories of his childhood and
adolescence and its principal concern is sexualized (social) violence. We
witness the precise modes in which radioactive transference operates and
ruins Mooki’s life. We know that his life is shattered beyond repair not
only from his present appearance, as well as his heavy drinking and
smoking, but also from the low-key, somber palette in which the present is
photographed. By reenacting the experience of the camps, as well as that
of their aftermath, the film conveys the notion of two types of hell: that of
the survivors and that of their children, the ‘second generation.’
The film covers three periods of the protagonist’s life: early childhood,
adolescence, and adulthood. Upon receiving a telephone call announcing
his mother’s death, Mooki (Heran Sagie), now a grown man living in
Norway and married to a Norwegian, succumbs to a sequence of

disturbing memories, rendered in flashbacks, accompanied by his
voiceover. We witness how he had been led into committing incest with
his mother. Physically, he has severed all ties with his family, but it is
clear that he is constantly tormented by his past, which continues to ruin
his life—he drinks heavily, appears neglected and slovenly, and is beyond
consolation. His wife is his perpetual comforter, just as he had once been
for his mother.
BURNING MOOKI creates an uncanny effect from the outset. From a
low angle, the camera tilts-up onto a residential building. It approaches a
young, attractive woman (Mooki’s mother), wearing a white nightgown.
She is sitting on the balcony railing, ready to jump (See Fig. 14.3). The
film cuts to the present, to the village of Rauland, Norway, where a voice
on the telephone announces the death of Mooki’s mother. We hear
Mooki’s voiceover, repeating twice: “No, I did not kill her.” And then:
“What happened wasn’t my fault.” These two sentences echo the diverse
transgenerational phenomena in the film, which have many modes of
expression, distorting the protagonist’s experience of time and, ultimately,
constituting a narcissistic failure:
Intergenerational time is that which inscribes the chronicle of generations

in the memory. It places the individual in the face of his time as well of
those who preceded him in a manner in which he can identify with them.
But in the case of violence which stems from social trauma, [those]
acquired identifications might change, crack, even break. Many
psychoanalytic studies carried out in the last years have emphasized the
inherent suffering of transgenerational transference […]. This legacy is in
fact a lack, a narcissistic failure […].25
This failure is conveyed in BURNING MOOKI even in the way it

employs the voiceover and the sound-image relationship. The flashbacks
are accompanied by Mooki’s adult, hoarse (due to excessive drinking and
smoking) voiceover. He is a bitter and angry man. Yet the content of his
words and his jovial characterization as a young child lead us to believe
that he had experienced a happy early childhood, up to the point when his
father died of a heart attack and was replaced by Uncle Yanek (Yehuda
Almagor). We infer that the adult here assumes the child’s point-of-view,
but this focalization imbues a lack of perspective, a sense of time frozen.
This confusion is intensified when we realize of what his ‘happy’ days
consisted. We cringe when we see that Mooki’s first memory of his
25
Gampel, Les enfants, 68 (my translation).
childhood is his beautiful (and narcissistic) mother, Tinka (Efrat Ben-Zur),

half-naked, looking at herself in her bedroom mirror; little Mooki (Itay
Feiner) is gazing at her through the half-opened door. While Mooki’s eyes
are fixed on her breasts, the voiceover tells us: “I can’t remember
anything, maybe I invented everything. In fact I remember nothing. But I
can’t forget the first time I saw her naked.”
Fig. 14.3: Ready to jump: Tinka in BURNING MOOKI (Courtesy of Lina Chaplin)
Mooki is allowed to climb into his parents’ bed, which becomes a

playground for him. He especially enjoys his mother’s embraces and
caresses. One evening, during a party—at which all the guests are
Holocaust survivors—Mooki’s father goes to his room, wakes him, gently
removes him from his bed, and carries him into the party. There he is
passed from hand to hand, like a sexual toy or object. The guests carry on
as if he were one of them. They drink heavily, use obscene language, and
engage in sexual advances—especially Uncle Yanek, who pulls down his
trousers and, when he pulls them up again, leaves the zipper open. He
overtly lusts after Tinka and encourages little Mooki to touch her,
whereupon Tinka kisses her son on his lips. It seems he has been put there
to witness something, but what?
We learn from Mooki that Yanek “was married to Rachel, but cheated
on her. He’d bring women home and do it right in front of her eyes.”
When reading testimonies of survivors, we begin to understand why this

party of Holocaust survivors may need an audience for their debauchery:
“Emil G. reported that while he was in Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Germans
arranged a ‘show’ in which they took twenty Jewish women prisoners and
raped them in front of one of the labor groups. Emil added that the male
prisoners were required to stand and applaud.”26
Memories like these are passed on to Mooki, whose every thought is
impregnated with perverse sexuality. His mother’s comportment is a
mixture of childishness (at the party, the camera moves slowly toward her
after she reluctantly lets go of her husband’s arm; she is framed while
sitting on the sofa, alone, near a small teddy bear) and seductiveness. The
behavior of all the other adults surrounding him is infused with sexual
innuendoes. Both behaviors infringe on the young child’s privacy,
ostensibly in the same way that their own privacy has been violated. This
lack of boundaries clearly shapes young Mooki’s life and orientation. At
an age when he is supposed to experience sexual latency, he is constantly
aroused by the adults around him. It is 1967, the year of the triumph of the
Six Day War, but all Mooki can remember is, “what excited me the most
were Aunt Jenia’s tits.”
Tinka is the only Holocaust survivor of her family. She comes from
Dubno, a town in Volhynia, Ukraine. She was nine years old when the
Ukrainians killed her mother, father and older sister in front of her eyes.
Though they shot her too—she was hit in the shoulder—she managed to
escape. Where did she hide? What were her experiences? Was she the only
child among a party of adults? We do not know, but the film makes it clear
that whatever she had experienced as a young girl shaped her as a
seductive, dependent, incestuous mother-child. In one of the scenes, when
an adolescent Mooki (Yoav Koresh) tries to resist her sexual advances, she
protests by telling him he would have never survived the horrors of what
she had gone through.
The violation of corporeal boundaries prevents Mooki from developing
a normal teenage sexual relationship of his own. As an adolescent, he
becomes enamored with his new teenage neighbor from Brazil, Julia (Riff
Cohen), only to realize that she is “out of his league.” Feeling
contaminated and under the constant (sexual) harassment of his mother, he
cannot imagine that a neat girl like Julia might be interested in him. His
mother, threatened by Julia’s presence, puts an end to their friendship. He
then takes up with Roha (Sivan Levy), a Moroccan girl. Roha is a sweet
26
Sinnreich, “Rape,” 111.
and sensual girl, and also a faithful friend; subject to the ethnic hierarchy
of 1970s Israel, Mooki believes he can do no better.
Jean-Gérard Bursztein considers the Holocaust as a foreclosure of the
Symbolic Law.27 ‘Foreclosure’ refers to a state of psychosis, in which
social and national unity is reduced to an imaginary solidarity that
excludes diversity and difference. Every form of alterity (Jews, gypsies,
homosexuals, the mentally ill) was thus deemed abject. Mooki repeatedly
acts out by urinating in the elevator. He thus forces all his neighbors to
smell his experience not only as an outcast, but also and specifically as
abject. The experience of abjection is reinforced by the words of a Turkish
neighbor (not a camp survivor), Esterika (Ritta Shukrun), who,
unsurprisingly, is the only character who “smelled really good.” One day
she meets her two female neighbors, who, constantly tormented and
haunted by memories of Auschwitz, often sit and reminisce (sometimes
about Josef Mengele’s attractive looks). They are out to walk their dogs
and Esterika says to them: “Schlepping the dogs all day long? Peeing,
pooing, peeing, pooing […]. Go fix your kids something to eat.”
Mooki, who is constantly subjected to the lures of an incestuous
mother, becomes intensely angry, confused, and torn between his wish to
avoid Tinka at any cost and his acute hatred and envy for Yanek, who has
taken his place. As a last attempt to forbear Tinka’s perverse love (she
asks him to paint her toes, insists on invading his privacy when he takes a
bath, for instance), he quits school and moves into a dilapidated flat. The
reenactment of the conditions of the camps within an economy of
abjection determines his final breaking point—sleeping with his mother. In
the shack, there is no furniture and no food, only litter everywhere. Mice
run hither and thither. He sleeps on a filthy mattress, does not wash
himself, uses drugs, and is severely depressed. Finally, after a failed
attempt at sexual intercourse with Roha, he storms out and runs home, to
“the real thing.” He undresses and climbs into his mother’s bed, as he used
to do when he was a small child. What follows seems inevitable. The
incest, however, as expected, leaves both of them in a state of reaching
“the end.” Tinka weeps during the brief sexual encounter and Mooki
becomes even more enraged and slaps her.
The infantile fantasy to sleep with one’s mother should be repressed
upon entering “the Symbolic.” Castration means “Thou shall not have
your mother!” “The desire for the mother cannot be satisfied because it is
the end, the terminal point, the abolition of the whole world of demand,
27
Jean-Gérard Bursztein, Hitler, la tyrannie et la psychanalyse: essai sur la
destruction de la civilization (Paris: Nouvelles Etudes Freudiennes, 1996).
which is the one that at the deepest level structures man’s unconscious.”28
Repression of the persistent fantasy that committing incest might be “the
real thing” then creates the unconscious, the demand for love and desire in
relation to lack, never to achieve satisfaction. As the materialization of a
fantasy that should remain repressed, committing incest is hence a form of
hell, “the end.” The incest in the film functions thus as a reenactment of
the experience of a world in which the Symbolic Law is abolished.
After the death of Tinka’s husband, Uncle Yanek moves in with her
and keeps the uniform of a Nazi officer he killed in Mooki’s father’s
closet. The uniform is a trophy that Yanek keeps as a reminder of his
power of survival, which also intimates being part of a world that has lost
its grip on the “Symbolic.” After committing incest with his mother,
Mooki feels compelled to wear this uniform.
Gampel argues that children—even grandchildren—of Holocaust
survivors, “investigate” their parents’ past through their post-traumatic
symptoms.29 Mooki’s compulsion to wear the uniform (as all other
symptoms and reenactments) at the end of the film signifies his desperate
investigation into his mother’s past within a perverse economy that
disavows the “Symbolic.” Dressed in the Nazi uniform, he rushes down
the stairs, knocking on doors while performing the Nazi salute. He
deliberately goes wild at the meeting place of Roha’s brother and is nearly
beaten to death by his gang. Uncle Yanek rescues Mooki only seconds
before he is about to ‘exterminate’ himself (See Fig. 14.4). The analogy
between Mooki’s own private hell and the hell created by the Nazis is
explicit.
At the end of the film, Mooki tells his wife that he is not going back:
“Let Uncle Yanek burn my mother.” Jews do not burn their dead but bury
them; Mooki cannot bury his mother because she constantly burns (in) his
memory. “Burning Mooki” is a derogatory namesake that the school
children had given Mooki, derived from a memorial song, “Our Town is
Burning.” Children learned the song in schools and sometimes performed
it on Holocaust Memorial Day. In the film, the song, as well as Mooki's
namesake, is a metaphor for how the children of the ‘second generation’
became burning candles, a memorial to the horrors experienced by their
parents. Further, this is meant to depict a ruined life in the shadow of a
perverse economy in which violence is repeatedly acted out.
28
Jacques Lacan, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis (1959-1960), Jacques-Alain Miller
(ed.), transl. Dennis Porter (London: Norton, 1997), 68.
29
Gampel, Les enfants, 68.
Fig. 14.4: Uncle Yanek saves Mooki in BURNING MOOKI (Courtesy of Lina
Chaplin)
Conclusion
One of the difficulties of dealing with sexualized violence suffered by
women during the Holocaust is the fear of recourse to violent or debasing
overtones. Questions such as, “What did you do in order to stay alive?”
might transform into the stark and brutal, “Was your mother raped?”
However, much of what is said and revealed in Libsker’s STALAGS and in
BURNING MOOKI shows that refusing to address the aftermath of the
ubiquitous sexualized violence of the Holocaust has only exacerbated the
sense of shame, guilt, and rage of the Holocaust survivors’ children.
BURNING MOOKI shows precisely how some teenagers recognized the
sexualized violence of the Holocaust when they were presented with
images of lined-up naked women. While watching an 8 mm porn film
(photographed off-focus) with his best friend, Mooki tells us that the first
time he saw “naked women with black triangles between their legs” was
on television, on Holocaust Memorial Day. This association in the film is
not meant to desecrate any memory, but to show the ubiquity of the Nazi
perversity. It attests to the way the lining up of female camp prisoners
registered in the minds of the survivors’ children, who are the victims of
its aftermath.
The attempt of STALAGS and BURNING MOOKI to investigate the

trauma of sexualized violence in the Holocaust through the manifestation
of transgenerational symptoms attests to what Alison Landsberg calls
“prosthetic memories.” Although they do not refer specifically to
traumatic events, prosthetic memories are disseminated by the mass media
and culture—radio, film, television, and the Internet. “Prosthetic memories
are adopted as the result of a person’s experience with a mass cultural
technology of memory that dramatizes or recreates a history he or she did
not live.”30 Furthermore, in the 1960s, during the Eichmann trial,
radioactive transference was experienced by half of Israel’s population—
children whose parents were Holocaust survivors. For the rest of the
population, the radio played a crucial role and might have inspired the
creation and reception of the Stalags. In BURNING MOOKI, we learn how
prosthetic memories were adopted as a result of films and photographs
broadcasted on television each Holocaust Memorial Day. Given that the
onus of the memory of historical trauma and its effects is today entirely on
audio-visual mass culture, the ethical concern of STALAGS and BURNING
MOOKI materializes in their investigations of the nature of prosthetic
memory in Israel through the attempt to explore and understand post-
traumatic symptoms transmitted to the ‘second generation.’
30
Alison Landsberg, Prosthetic Memory (New York: Columbia University Press,
2004), 28.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE TRAUMA OF THE FEMALE PERPETRATOR

AND NEW WAR CINEMA
RAYA MORAG
The trail-blazing emergence of perpetrator trauma films in Israeli

cinema (2007-2013) marks a turning point in documentary and trauma
cinema studies alike. Shifting the focus from the trauma of victims to that
of perpetrators, this novel genre focuses on the new war trauma of soldiers
who become involved in human rights violations during their encounters
with a civilian population and who – in contrast to the cathartic confession
genre of war movies1 –uncathartically confess these acts upon release from
duty. Cinematically speaking, such confessions call for society’s
acknowledgment of soldiers’ responsibility for atrocious acts carried out in
their name.2 In this, the new genre declares its unwavering commitment to
the ethnic other, the victim.
Israeli perpetrator trauma films are also pioneers in world cinema in
their staging of the female ex-soldier as new war perpetrator.3 Feminist
1
As well as documentary literature, exemplified by the acclaimed The Seventh
Day: Soldiers Talk about the Six-Day War (New York: Hill and Wang, 1968),
which discussed the IDF’s doctrine of “purity of arms” and the price of war,
written to counteract the plethora of coffee-table books published glorifying the
victory.
2
See Raya Morag, “Perpetrator Trauma and Current Israeli Documentary
Cinema,” Camera Obscura 80, 27.2 (2012), 93-133; Raya Morag, Waltzing with
Bashir: Perpetrator Trauma and Cinema (London: I.B. Tauris, 2013). On new war
characteristics see e.g., Neta C. Crawford, “Just War Theory and the U.S.
Counterterror War,” Perspectives on Politics 1 (2003), 10; Mary Kaldor, New and
Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era, 2nd. ed, (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 2007).
3
American films on the Iraq/Afghanistan wars like Sara Nesson’s POSTER GIRL
(2010), or individual confessions by both male and female ex-soldiers rendered in
other documentaries, like Jon Alpert and Kent Ellen Goosenberg’s ALIVE DAY
The Trauma of the Female Perpetrator and New War Cinema 295
critique took upon itself the traditional role regarding premodern or

modern wars (discussed from various perspectives by Joan W. Scott,4
Miriam Cooke,5 Cynthia Enloe,6 Robin May Schott,7 and Kelly Oliver8),
exposing the mechanism of power inherent in women’s draft regulations
and/or service and investigating how power imbalances inevitably create
conditions for routine abuse of power. Doing so, it pointed out the
particular consequences for women placed in what would conventionally
be thought of as a masculine environment and challenged prevailing war
myths. That role now requires adaptation to the psychological, gendered,
ethnic, religious, geographical/spatial and militaristically unique
characteristics of new war doctrine. Taking into consideration the
masculinized nature of women’s involvement in new war as suicide
bombers, guerrilla warriors, torturers, and combat soldiers9 adds another
unique layer of inquiry for the feminist critic.
MEMORIES: HOME FROM IRAQ (2008), barely detail the atrocities. Instead they focus
on survival. Errol Morris’ STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE (2008), dealing with
torture, raised a heated debate in regard to the female soldier who is the main
protagonist. See, e.g., Jonathan Kahana, “Speech Images: Standard Operating
Procedure and the Staging of Interrogation,” Jump Cut 52 (2010),
http://www.ejumpcut.org/currentissue/sopkKahana/text.html (Accessed December
2, 2012); Bill Nichols, “Feelings of Revulsion and the Limits of Academic
Discourse,” Jump Cut 52 (2010),
http://www.ejumpcut.org/currentissue/sopNichols/index.html (Accessed December
2, 2012); and Linda Williams, “Cluster Fuck: The Forcible Frame in Errol Morris’s
Standard Operating Procedure,” Camera Obscura 25 (2010), 29-67.
4
Joan W. Scott, “Rewriting History,” in: Margaret R. Higonnet, Jane Jenson, and
Margaret C. Weitz (eds.), Behind the Lines: Gender and the Two World Wars (New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987), 21-29.
5
Miriam Cooke, “Gendering War Talk,” in: Angela Woollacott (ed.), Gendering
War Talk (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993).
6
Cynthia Enloe, Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women’s
Lives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).
7
Robin May Schott, “Gender and ‘Postmodern War,’” Hypatia 11, 4 (1996), 19-
29.
8
Kelly Oliver, “Women: The Secret Weapon of Modern Warfare?” Hypatia 23, 2
(2008), 1-16. Oliver analyses the common femme fatale characteristics latent in
these destructive roles in “Women.”
9
Women took part in guerilla warfare in previous eras, of course, most notably
during the Vietnam War; however, terror and other characteristics make new war
distinctive. I regard the Vietnam War as an intermediate stage between modern and
new wars. See my book, Raya Morag, Defeated Masculinity: Post-Traumatic
Cinema in the Aftermath of War (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2009).
296 Chapter Fifteen
In the absence of a moral doctrine to rely upon,10 feminist critique

defines the autonomy of the female soldier’s agency as caught in the
fluidity of atrocity-producing situations11 and gendered involvement
within them, while recognizing, as Enloe12 has, that “[m]ilitarization is the
step-by-step process by which something becomes controlled by,
dependent on or derives its value from military as an institution or
militaristic criteria.”13
This unstable gendered situation is exacerbated in the context of
protracted strife such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during the
Intifada14 period, which had no clear or steady temporal or geographical
boundaries. Perpetrator trauma films, especially those about women
perpetrators, as elaborated in the following article, entail an understanding
that “the aftermath of war is crucial to the justice of the war itself.”15 Post-
traumatic confessions by female directors and other female ex-soldiers,
which emerge out of an ethical stand in the so-called postwar (in fact,
post-military service) era, reveal a feminist rupture in the framing of new
war’s timelessness and spacelessness. Their particular gendered perspective
on the military permits a reflection on both genders, making women’s
confessions more intense than those of male soldiers16 and thus more
strenuous in demanding the healing of the social order. In a context
characterized by the absence of well-defined aims on which the public can
debate and agree, and because “[w]e have passed from an era in which
ideals were always flatly opposed to self-interest into an era in which
tension remains between the two, but the stark juxtaposition of the past has
largely subsided,”17 this feminist intervention is crucial. Regarding the
female perpetrator trauma film as a new sub-genre of women’s cinema, I
suggest that the genre’s non-cathartic confessions stand as a social
10
Bat-Ami Bar On, “Introduction: Thinking about War,” Hypatia 23, 2 (2008), vii-
xv.
11
This term was coined by Lifton. See Robert Jay Lifton, “Haditha: In an
‘Atrocity-Producing Situation’ – Who Is to Blame?” War is a Crime, June 4, 2006
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/11574 (Accessed December 2, 2012).
12
Enloe, Maneuvers.
13
Enloe, Maneuvers, 291. Emphasis in the original.
14
Intifada – the Palestinian uprising.
15
Gary J. Bass, “Jus post bellum,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 32, 4 (2004),
384.
16
See e.g., analyses of Ari Folman’s WALTZ WITH BASHIR and Avi Mograbi's Z32 in
Morag, “Perpetrator Trauma” and Morag, Waltzing.
17
Leslie H. Gelb and Justine A. Rosenthal, “The Rise of Ethics in Foreign Policy,”
Foreign Affairs 83, 3 (2003), 7.
challenge to (usually democratic) patriarchal and militarized societies,

both in terms of recognizing that female and male soldiers have undergone
traumatic experiences in perpetration and attempting to heal them.18
Israeli director Tamar Yarom’s docudrama, SOB’ SKIRT (2002), and
documentary, TO SEE IF I’M SMILING (2007),19 are undoubtedly pioneering
works that, for the first time in both Israeli and world cinema, deal with
the unique experience of the new war female perpetrator.20 Both films
represent the female soldier’s encounter with the violent and unpredictable
militaristic, spatial, ethnic, and gendered situation of the Intifada. In both,
the female soldier has to deal with systemic atrocity and violation of
human rights, participation in the oppression of the civil population in
combat zones, performance of routine military jobs that naturalize
systemic androcentric and ethnocentric violent norms, and (typically
verbal) sexual harassment.
This essay will focus on Yarom’s docudrama, SOB’ SKIRT. The
questions to be asked, then, are: how does the subject position of the post-
traumatic female perpetrator in this film reveal anew the complex relations
among women, men, and (new) war? What does the belated confession
disclose when post-traumatic symptoms intermingle with belated
memories of gender conflicts during war? How does the director’s
18
See Mark Godfrey, Eyal Weizman, Ayesha Hameed, and T.J. Demos, “Rights of
Passage Tate etc,” 19 (2010).
http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20100506143409/http://www.tate.org.uk
/tateetc/issue19/rightsofpassage.htm (Accessed December 2, 2012).
19
In TO SEE IF I’M SMILING, director Tamar Yarom interviews six women who had
been IDF soldiers and served in the Occupied Territories during the second
Intifada. As widely known, in Israel at age eighteen, almost all women are
conscripted into the military. A number of years after their release all of the women
fully confess to their participation in, or complicity with, wrongdoings and human
rights violations during their military service: Meytal, a medic and medical officer,
posed for a picture of herself with the naked body of a dead Palestinian; Libi, a
combat soldier, humiliated and abused Palestinians during her shifts at a
checkpoint; Rotem, a video surveillance officer, supervised a chase during which a
child who threw an incendiary bomb at IDF soldiers was killed; Dana, an
education officer, failed to report looting carried out by her platoon; Tal, a welfare
officer, searched and checked Palestinian women at checkpoints; and Inbar, an
operations sergeant, did not report abuse of a Palestinian child by IDF soldiers and
assisted her commander in replacing the criminal report with a false one. See
detailed analyses of the film in Morag, “Perpetrator Trauma” and in: Morag,
Waltzing.
20
I differentiate in the following between female soldiers who are drafted into the
IDF by law and guerrilla combatants and suicide bombers.
298 Chapter Fifteen
awareness of her own past indifference towards the ethnic other and
complicity with wrongdoing affect the film’s approach to individual and
collective moral responsibility?
In the following, I argue that the female perpetrator, both as insider and
outsider to the armed conflict, exposes through this unique, usually
unbearable position the difference between trauma as an experience that
affects the individual soldier and trauma as a (militarist) cultural process.
The film offers an exceptional perspective on female perpetrator trauma
not only because of the clash between genders, but because in her
militarized, masculine involvement, the female perpetrator sheds light on
both genders’ involvement in new war deeds.
Sob’ Skirt
SOB’ SKIRT21 tells the story of a young female soldier, Shirli22 (Dana
Ivgy), who joins an infantry platoon as the new Welfare Non-
commissioned Officer (NCO). Under incessant, mainly verbal, and
ostensibly humorous sexual harassment, she tries to fit in and do her job.
She falls for the platoon’s commander, Yaron (Moshe Fokenflik), but is
torn between him and a maladjusted soldier, Daniel (Dado Elbachari).
Gradually, she becomes closer to, and part of, the soldiers of the platoon,
who in their chauvinistic and sexist way learn to respect her. The platoon
is sent to Gaza and confronts the local population during riots. Looking for
Daniel, who refuses to shoot even when responsible for protecting the
patrol from his guardpost on the roof and whose hints she previously
ignored, Shirli is shocked when she accidentally discovers that a tortured
Palestinian detainee is being kept by her comrades-in-arms, tied to a
generator, abused and half-dead, in the basement of the abandoned
building in which they are staying (See Fig. 15.1).
SOB’ SKIRT is based on Yarom’s own experience as the Welfare NCO
of an infantry platoon in the Occupied Territories during the first Intifada
(1987-1993). In its representation – based upon autobiographical sources –
21
SOB’ SKIRT won the award for Best Drama at the Haifa International Film
Festival (2002). TO SEE IF I’M SMILING won the Audience Award and Silver Wolf at
the Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival (2007), Best
Documentary at the Haifa International Film Festival (2007), and Best
Documentary in the Israeli Academy Awards competition (Ophir, 2008).
22
Her name means in Hebrew either ‘I have a song’ or ‘sing to me,’ which is ironic
under the circumstances. See below analysis of the scene in which the male
soldiers sing to Shirli.
of a female soldier’s confession of complicity with severe ethnic abuse,

SOB’ SKIRT paves the way for the confessions presented five years later by
actual female ex-soldiers in Yarom’s documentary film, TO SEE IF I’M
SMILING.
Fig. 15.1: Shirli in Gaza, SOB’ SKIRT (Photo: Amos Zuckerman. Courtesy of Buzz
Films)
Though both films take a subversive stand towards the Israel Defense
Forces (IDF) and the evils of the Occupation, SOB’ SKIRT’s release at the
height of the terror attacks (2002) of the second Intifada made acceptance
of its denouncement of Israeli soldiers problematic. TO SEE IF I’M
SMILING, however, released during the post-second Intifada period, was
accepted as a depiction of the chronic ills of the Intifada, by then a
longstanding fact of life.23 No less than the difference in genres, this
difference in political climate is a major factor in the following analysis.
23
This information is based on a talk I had with Tamar Yarom on December 30,
2010. After reading the script, the IDF refused to assist her with the production,
which significantly added to the film’s cost. Luckily, while shooting the outdoor
scenes on location near an IDF training zone the photographer managed to take a
few shots of an IDF helicopter. These shots undoubtedly contribute to the film’s
authenticity.
300 Chapter Fifteen
In an interview she gave to Haaretz newspaper in 2007 about her

service in the IDF, Yarom divulges the autobiographical moment that
caused her to write the script and direct the film: one night, she was
awakened by one of her soldiers who wanted to show her something in the
basement of the abandoned house in which they were staying:
“Before we opened the door I heard this awful noise from a generator and
there was a strong smell of diesel fuel. I saw a middle-aged Palestinian
detainee, lying with his head on the generator. His ear was pressed against
the generator that was vibrating, and the guy’s head was vibrating with it.
His face was completely messed up. It amazed me that through all the
blood and the horror, one could still see the guy’s expression, and that’s
what stayed with me for years after – the look on his face . . . [The soldier
who woke me up] wanted to share this horror with me. Maybe he hoped I
would do something, that I’d raise an outcry. I don’t remember how we left
there or what happened afterward. The next day, I asked one of the
commanders what happened in the basement and he politely told me that I
mustn’t interfere in things that were none of my business. That detainee I
saw taught me something about myself that I would never have learned in
years of university. And he’s imprinted in my memory, engraved in every
cell of my being. I saw a human being in the lowest, most suffering state.
A victim of cruelty I did not know existed. And I stood there unmoved,
apparently.”24
As this confession shows, as a post-traumatic film, SOB’ SKIRT

represents the cultural process of transforming post-traumatic memory
about complicity in wrongdoing into a cinematic account of complicity.25
24
Dalia Karpel, “My God, What Did We Do?” Haaretz, November 11, 2007.
http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/magazine/my-god-what-did-we-do-1.232798
(Accessed December 2, 2012).
25
Based on my conversation with Tamar Yarom on December 30, 2010, I believe
that a dramatic process caused Yarom’s personal experience to undergo change in
the script, testifying to how (in this case, twelve) years later, a post-traumatic
experience can shape personal memory. During her military service she was
shocked to discover the disparity between the soldiers she knew (and loved) and
the deeds they carried out – causing her to lose her faith in human nature. The film,
in contrast, describes how her personal need to be accepted led to denying the
violence and racism of ‘her’ soldiers and to her complicit cooperation in atrocity. It
is as if her post-traumatic memory made the soldiers’ verbal violence towards her
take on more vibrant colors; that is, it made her unwilling to see that the soldiers
she felt for and took care of had a dark side. In the film, the shocking and traumatic
incident in Gaza is the outcome of the soldiers’ behavior towards Shirli, which
foreshadows the horror. On one hand, formulating the screenplay in this manner
mitigates Yarom’s experience by showing that it was complex, multi-dimensional,
Discussing the ethics of responsibility, Judith Butler claims, “the

account is completed only on the occasion when it is effectively exported
and expropriated from the domain of what is my own. It is only in
dispossession that I can and do give any account of myself.” 26 And it is
only through belatedness (this work was made twelve years after Yarom’s
undergoing of traumatic events), and—as the film discloses—through
awareness of the “primary and irreducible relations to others as a
precondition of ethical responsiveness,”27 that Yarom is able to yield to
narration.28 In this regard, the accounts in SOB’ SKIRT (and in TO SEE IF
I’M SMILING) involve a process of “dispossession” by which other fictional
characters tell Yarom’s story, and so vicariously perform her post-
“dispossession.” Comprised of many levels, including the non-narratable
or even unspeakable dimensions of the unconscious, SOB’ SKIRT
demonstrates this complexity through the link between Shirli and the
ethnic other, one that finally overrides the (spurious) link to ‘her’ soldiers.
As ghostwriting is arguably an essential characteristic of autobiography
as a genre,29 it is noteworthy that in SOB’ SKIRT two ghosts presenting
complicity with the atrocious event converge: the ghost of the author,
whose personal story is unfolded by the fictional character(s) as hinted
above, and the ghost of the Palestinian in the basement. The ghost story
genre, mainly in its Gothic formulations (especially in women’s Gothic
novels), is about the undying spirit, rather than the dying flesh. It offers the
spectator (or reader) an escape into the land of the impossible, a
reassurance of his/her own mortality, excitement at stimulating horror and
fantasy, and thirst for the suspension of disbelief. Transferred to the reality
of Gaza, the ghostly figures of the Palestinian (and the young Yarom) are
presented in contrast to these conventions. The ghost-in-the-basement
convention serves to uncover textual secrets and bring to the fore other
enigmas, which demand, but are not susceptible to, a satisfactory solution.
and shocking; on the other, precisely for this reason, her sense of guilt is stronger
because of her denial and willingness to ignore the incident.
26
Judith Butler, Giving an Account of Oneself (New York: Fordham University
Press, 2005), 36-37.
27
Butler, Giving An Account, 135.
28
In our talk, Yarom told me that she was obsessive in writing the film script,
providing the producers with endless drafts. After all these years, she still feels the
film is an open wound; she relates this obsessive writing to coming to terms with
the trauma.
29
See Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Ghostwriting,” Diacritics 25, 2 (1995), 64-84;
and Paul de Man, “Autobiography as De-Facement,” MLN 94 (1979), 919-930.
302 Chapter Fifteen
Beyond everything is the enigma of complicity in the perpetration of

atrocities.
The first stage in uncovering this enigma is the film’s representation of
how Shirli relates to the soldiers’ degrading behavior towards her: she
ignores their salacious overtures and gestures.30 Orna Sasson-Levy31
claims that in the IDF, female soldiers in “masculine” roles show both
resistance to and compliance with the military gender order. She describes
the trivialization of sexual harassment that characterizes female soldiers in
“masculine” roles as part of the emulation of the masculine model of the
combat soldier and construction of alternative gender identities.32
SOB’ SKIRT shows that sexual harassment serves primarily to reinforce
male power,33 keeping women “in their proper place.”34 Above all,
however, it preserves male-dominated Intifada norms. Sasson-Levy’s
survey of women in combat roles fails to take into account the nature of
30
When she visits their tent, for example, they are in their underwear, she
nevertheless enters and sits down. Upon leaving, one of them tells her: “Did you
know that when a female chimpanzee is in heat, her ass swells up and turns red.
It’s a sign for the male to go in. Isn’t that interesting?” (Film script, 10, in
Hebrew).
31
Orna Sasson-Levy, “Feminism and Military Gender Practices: Israeli Women
Soldiers in ‘Masculine’ Roles,” Sociological Inquiry 73 (2003): 440-465.
32
Although Sasson-Levy’s “Feminism” deals with women in combat roles and
does not refer to perpetration of wrongdoings during the Intifada, I find her claims
regarding sexual harassment relevant to Yarom’s representation:
The women’s “masculine” roles allow them to be “mini-men” – almost “one of the
guys” (as they told me) – whereas sexual harassment relates to them as sexual
objects. If they react to sexual harassment by being insulted and hurt, they confirm
the discourse that the harassment itself is trying to create, which constitutes women
as sexual objects. Thus, when women ignore the insulting character of the ‘jokes’
and refuse to be offended, they do not allow the harassment to attain its intended
exclusionary power. Moreover, if they label the event as sexual harassment and act
upon it as such, they are seen as constituting a ‘gender problem’ within the army
and will therefore not be treated as an integral and equal part of it. The concept of a
‘gender problem’ belongs to the discourse that naturalizes gender differences, and
thus could prove to be counterproductive to these soldiers’ interests within the
army. Furthermore, an awareness of sexual assault would associate these soldiers
with the identity of the victim. In their eyes, the victim is defenseless and
vulnerable and has no place in an army (455).
33
Lin Farley, Sexual Shakedown: The Sexual Harassment of Women on the Job
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1978).
34
Catharine A MacKinnon, Sexual Harassment of Working Women: A Case of Sex
Discrimination (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1979).
new war and the fluidity of gender roles it imposes.35 Although she aptly
analyses the ways in which women are entangled in gendered conflict, she
does not discuss their involvement in violent, ‘masculine’ conflicts in
which, repressed by both outer (new war combat) and relentless inner
(soldierly) forces, in the face of constant confrontations with both the male
other and ethnic others, the female soldier succumbs to the demands of the
inner other. Thus, I suggest that the film shows that acceptance of (mainly
verbal) sexual harassment from the male other leads to acceptance of
violence towards the ethnic other. This, as the following analysis aims to
demonstrate, is a trap that lures the female soldier into (indirect)
perpetration of atrocities: mimicking the male soldier becomes an act of
complicity with disastrous consequences for her in new war combat zones.
In SOB’ SKIRT, Shirli’s complicity with the soldiers’ deeds is represented
in the first scenes in Gaza through mise-en-scène, intertextuality, and
editing. When the platoon’s soldiers complete their daily mission, the
omniscient camera shows them entering their barracks wearing helmets
and with rifles positioned to fire – as if they were still in combat.
Clutching a blue-flowered scarf, the main symbolic element in the mise-
en-scène, they yell: “Where’s the Sob’ Skirt?” Then, seen from Shirli’s
point-of-view, they approach her, dancing with the scarf while singing a
variation of an old and still very popular Israeli children’s song,
“Danny,”36 “A flower I gave to Shirli / A flower, beautiful and blue / The
most beautiful flower in Gaza / I gave, while dancing, to you.”
When they stop singing, the soldiers encircle Shirli and the scene is
built around the dialogue between them:
SHIRLI. Where did you get it?

OFER. From Fatma’s head.
ZION. We saw it and knew it would look better on you. At first we wanted
to bring it with the head, but we were afraid you wouldn’t like it. So we
35
Sasson-Levy, “Feminism.”
36
(Dani Gibor in Hebrew) in Miriam Yalan-Stekelis, Poems and Stories (Tel Aviv:
Dvir, 1943; 1966), in Hebrew.
Yalan-Stekelis’ children’s poetry first appeared in the Hebrew children’s
newspaper Davar li-Yladim and was followed by many children’s books. She was
awarded the prestigious Israel Prize for children’s literature in 1957. According to
Celina Mashiach, “Indeed, the development of children’s poetry in Israel would
have been inconceivable without the…achievements of Yalan-Stekelis.” (Celina
Mashiach, “Miriam Yalan Stekelis,” in: Jewish Women: A Comprehensive
Historical Encyclopedia. 2009. http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/yalan-stekelis-
miriam (Accessed December 2, 2012).
304 Chapter Fifteen
explained it to her. At first she didn’t understand. But when I explained it

to her with my rifle against her ear, she understood real well.
(The close up on Shirli shows her smile freezing.)
AVI. Stop it, now she won’t wear it . . . They’re kidding, they probably got
it off a clothesline.
OFER. You can’t say it’s a dirty gift.
HAGAY. I told you she wouldn’t like an Arab gift.
AVI. It’s not Arab. It’s yours.
ZION. Do you like it? Say you like it. It’s a gift that can’t be exchanged.
SHIRLI, smiling. It’s nice.
OFER, to Hagay. Nice.
I told you, she understands what art is.37
Ofer places the scarf on Shirli’s head in a parody of IDF initiation

ceremonies and celebration of brotherhood. The cut reveals Hagay
carrying Shirli on his back with her arms around him, the two circling the
room while everyone laughs. The feeling of togetherness is abruptly ended
by the commander, Yaron, whose expression of disapproval is exposed by
the camera. He orders the soldiers to check the basement. The editing
reveals a deep irony when the camera follows Shirli in the next scene as
she passes the basement door and enters a nearby Palestinian shop. There
she sees the Palestinian woman who serves her wearing the same scarf.
I argue that in autobiographically-based female perpetrator trauma
films, the female soldier’s complicity with wrongdoing is built in three
phases, defined herein from her perspective: i) the outsider phase, which
involves experiencing (mainly verbal) sexual harassment and/or a
requirement to adjust to the group’s androcentric and ethnocentric norms;
ii) the motherly phase, in which mothering the soldiers mitigates previous
ethno-sexual conflicts, thus turning the woman soldier into an ‘inside-
outsider;’ and iii) the complicity phase, in which direct or indirect
projection of violence onto the ethnic other is inevitable, a continuation of
the female soldier’s previous partial or total acceptance of all-male norms
and the previously established belonging to ‘her’ soldiers.
Analyzing the scene described above sheds light on the representation
of these stages in SOB’ SKIRT. The original poem, “Danny,” presents a
young child’s point-of-view:
Mother told me: Danny!

My child is brave and bright
My child never cries
He knows better than that.
37
From the film script, 29-30 (in Hebrew). My translation.
I never ever cry,

I am no crybaby
It’s only the tears that come,
They come by themselves.
A flower I gave to Nurith
Small, beautiful, and blue
I gave her an apple, too
I gave her my all. [my emphasis]
On the surface, this poem, like other children’s poems by the author,
portrays children “playing and frolicking yet also struggling, hurting and,
especially, suffering from the judgment of adults.”38 The intimate
depiction of a small child’s inner self (his mother’s betrayal worsens
Nurith’s, and he is confused and relieved over his body’s betrayal as the
tears “keep coming by themselves”) has undoubtedly contributed to the
poem’s enormous popularity. However, generations of Israelis grew up
reciting the poem mainly because, written in 1943, it reflected the
prevailing political ideology of the new Israeli society coming into
being.39 The role of Hebrew literature in the creation and establishment of
the ‘New Jew’ myth during this period was immensely significant as a
mold for designing national identity40 with literature for children and
young adults playing an especially important role in epitomizing the New
Jew. Adult inculcation of various precepts is therefore most evident in
literary works written for children.41
During the 1940s and the decades that followed, bravery became a
major characteristic of the New Jew/Man myth. I posit that when
38
In Yalan-Stekelis’s poetry, “The child is poised on the edge of the adults’
awareness, questioning their norms of behavior…In adopting such a stance, Yalan-
Stekelis placed herself squarely at the head of the avant-garde stream of both
Palestinian and European children’s poetry. As early as the 1930s, she challenged
one of the central conventions of modern children’s literature – the “happy ending”
that paints the child’s world in shades of unmitigated joy.” (Mashiach, “Stekelis”).
39
Later, in the 1950s, the poem was put to music.
40
Michael Gluzman, The Politics of Canonicity: Lines of Resistance in Modernist
Hebrew Poetry (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003).
41
See Anita Shapira, “The Origins of the Myth of the ‘New Jew’: The Zionist
Variety,” in: Jonathan Frankel (ed.), The Fate of the European Jews, 1939–1945:
Continuity or Contingency? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 253-270;
Benjamin Harshav, “Theses on the Historical Context of the Modern Jewish
Revolution,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 10, (2003), 301-302; and Oz Almog, The
Sabra: The Creation of the New Jew, transl. Haim Watzman (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 2000), 23-72.
306 Chapter Fifteen
Holocaust children’s literature gradually entered Israeli youth culture, this

myth somehow paradoxically intertwined with a well-known Holocaust
tale in national memory. Abba Kovner, a partisan, Hebrew poet, and
leader of the Vilna Ghetto, told the story of a young girl who, after leaving
the family's hiding place asked, “Mother, may I cry now?”42 The ordeals
undergone by Jewish children during the Holocaust, depicted most notably
in Anna Frank’s diary,43 describe that even the very young, when ordered
not to cry to avoid revealing their hiding places, managed to keep silent.44
Despite the innumerable transformations undergone in the relationship
between Zionism’s New Jew and the Holocaust’s Old Jew throughout
time, Danny, embodying both, has remained the nation’s best-loved child
who “never ever cries.”
The soldiers’ use of the song in SOB’ SKIRT, in all its rich and
contradictory meanings, is complex. Singing Danny’s words reflects both
on the platoon’s alleged heroism and its dependence on Shirli’s motherly
love. The soldiers’ joyful imitation thus subverts the hidden Zionist ideal
of the ‘New Man,’ the Sabra (tough but, in contrast to Jewish children
during the Holocaust, allowed to cry but choosing not to), and
simultaneously preserves it. In contrast to Danny, however, as the film’s
final scene reveals, their abusive deeds are merciless, devoid even of those
tears that should have “come by themselves . . .” Their Intifada-like
version of early Zionist and Holocaust myths (and even the myth of first
love) – “A flower I gave to Shirli . . . The most beautiful flower in Gaza” –
racializes the original song, drastically subverting the conception of the
humanistic Israeli nature, and serves to tempt Shirli into complicity with
the platoon’s violence. Their singing and dancing are merely a variation on
belly dancing with a scarf – a Scheherazade-like performance, albeit by
men, meant to keep them from ‘dying,’ that is, from losing Shirli’s
motherly love.
In the dialogue about the scarf, SOB’ SKIRT reveals the soldiers’
heartlessness, cruelty and false bravery. Shirli ignores the soldiers’ use of
dark and ambiguous humor about looting and accepts that they took the
scarf from a clothesline (“You can’t say it’s a dirty gift”). She also ignores
their Mafia-style violent behavior towards the Palestinian woman (“At
42
See Alterman’s poem dedicated to Kovner’s story in Natan Alterman, The
Seventh Column (Tel Aviv: Kibbutz Hameuchad, 2010), in Hebrew.
43
Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl (New York: Bantam, 1993).
44
See Lena Kuchler-Silberman, My Hundred Children (Jerusalem: Schocken,
2004), in Hebrew; and Sara Shner-Nishmit, The Children of Mapu Street: A Novel
(Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchud, 1977), in Hebrew.
first she didn’t understand. But when I explained it to her with my rifle
against her ear, she understood real well”), and their racist, de-humanizing
attitudes (calling the woman “Fatma,” a derogative sobriquet for all
Palestinian women). Unlike Danny’s mother, Shirli fails to judge the
soldiers’ deeds. Instead, she pretends to share their worldview, submits to
the requested mothering, and so becomes part of the group (an inside-
outsider). The film describes the act of belonging and aims to overcome
Enloe’s45 adage – men are the military; women are in the military – as a
major factor in this denial.
The soldiers enter the room calling for the ‘Sob’ Skirt,’ referring to
Shirli by the moniker to which all Welfare NCOs are referred in IDF radio
communications (they are usually on the receiving end of soldiers’ tears).
In this case, however, the tears that cry by themselves at the sight of the
abused Palestinian are Shirli’s alone. By ignoring their deep (albeit
inhuman) feelings in the name of (false, inhuman) bravery, her motherly
attitude towards them is much like that of Danny’s mother; however,
crying in the basement in the face of the horror she has tried so hard to
avoid, she more closely resembles Danny. The film plays on her
alternating between the two roles, but by drying her tears they become but
momentary shifts in her subject position. Shocked by the awful abuse and
cheapening of human life (and perhaps her earlier obtuseness regarding
veiled hints), she returns to the joyful group without saying anything about
the basement or the Palestinian. The last shot reveals her frozen face in a
close up. Her complicity has come full circle.
SOB’ SKIRT describes the step-by-step mechanism of becoming a
female perpetrator (and the indirect and complicit perpetration as post-
traumatic). Wearing a scarf procured by threats against a Palestinian
woman’s life, that is, ignoring dehumanization and looting, inevitably
leads to complicity with deadly torture of the ethnic other. In her silent
approval, Shirli turns herself into the Palestinian woman she “imitates,”
through the wearing of “her” scarf, and so totally denies her own
humanity.46
45
Enloe, Maneuvers.
46
“Who counts as human? Whose lives count as lives? . . . What makes for a
grievable life?” Judith Butler, Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? (London,
New York: Verso, 2009), 20. Emphasis in the original.
308 Chapter Fifteen
The Female Ex-soldier as Persecuted Perpetrator

I would like to discuss here the terminology central to my conception
of Israeli perpetrator trauma cinema. As I contend in other forums,47 first
and foremost, we must ask if the term ‘perpetrator’ is appropriate to the
discussion and whether it poses an adequate contrast to the term ‘victim.’
Hebrew differentiates between the kibush (occupation), signifying Israel’s
control over the Palestinian territories since the 1967 Six Day War,48 and
kovesh (perpetrator), which is not in common use in this context as it
carries overtones of Adolf Hitler’s racist and genocidal regime. The terms
meavel (wrongdoer) and mecholel (violator), however, are prevalent in the
discourse and more precisely describe the wrongdoings of the
conqueror/colonizer during the Intifada. The problem is that these terms
are themselves devoid of historic connotations.49
I therefore suggest using the term, ‘persecuted perpetrator.’ It captures
the historical character of the identity crisis of soldiers serving in the
Occupied Territories as Israelis are in a sense symbolic members of the
second and third post-Holocaust generations. That is to say, the term
makes reference to the intergenerational transfer of the trauma of the
Holocaust, which is pervasive in Israeli identity discourse (as the analysis
of the poem “Danny” has shown), while at the same time preventing the
lone term, ‘perpetrator,’ of being equated with the Nazi perpetrator. In any
case, while I by no means intend to apply the trauma of the Holocaust to
Israeli cultural products dealing with perpetrator trauma, I believe that in
this genre and in Israeli soldiers’ accounts of their army service,
perpetrator trauma erupts precisely because the persecution complex has
been internalized. The term, ‘persecuted perpetrator,’ does not refer to
generational identification with the perpetrator,50 although (usually
belated) identification with Palestinians as a persecuted people is
sometimes discernible. The crisis brought about by the historical burden of
the Jews as a persecuted people is realized in this utterly unbearable – and
inevitable – subject position. The term reflects a possible explanation for
47
See Morag, Waltzing.
48
It is significant that the common use of this term in Hebrew does not refer at all
to the ’48 Occupation, but represses it.
49
Both of these words have religious connotations. Meavel is associated to the
biblical approach toward unjust acts, and the word mecholel is even more closely
associated with hilul hashem (desecration of the name of God) and hilul Shabbat
(desecration of the Sabbath).
50
See the analysis of the film WALTZ WITH BASHIR in Morag, Waltzing. The
analysis takes up this subject.
the emergence of the perpetrator trauma genre in Israel and not in post-
9/11 American cinema, for example. It is difficult to imagine American
soldiers in Iraq constantly imagining themselves in another stage of
American history, or a case in which overwhelming collective memories
would cause identity crises to such a degree.
According to accounts given by both male and female Israeli soldiers
about their service in the Occupied Territories to Breaking the Silence, an
organization made up of veteran combatants who have served in the Israeli
military since the start of the second Intifada and have taken it upon
themselves to expose the Israeli public to the reality of everyday life in the
Occupied Territories,51 their post-traumatic identity is based to a large
extent on the contradictory semi-paradox of the persecuted perpetrator.
But for the generation of soldiers that in 2002 began to give their accounts
of wrongdoings in the Territories, this means a growing confrontation with
Israeli identity as based on the past of the Jewish diaspora. Their decision
to give confessions to Breaking the Silence in its very nature points to an
internal ethical conflict and the choice of a unique, dissenting, subject
position. The term, ‘persecuted perpetrator,’ suggests, therefore, a clear
ethical distinction between two common attitudes towards the Occupation
– denial of perpetration and assimilation in the (historic) subject position
of Israeli-Jewish victimhood, and acknowledgement of perpetration and
wrongdoing (despite the huge burden of the past).
51
This description is taken from the Breaking the Silence website home page,
http://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/about/organization (Accessed December 2,
2012). See the website and Morag, Waltzing. The organization publishes the
soldiers’ accounts both on the website and in print. To mark the tenth anniversary
of the outbreak of the second Intifada and as part of the organization’s wider goals,
Breaking the Silence released a new Hebrew publication entitled Occupation of the
Territories – Israeli Soldier Testimonies 2000-2010, eds. Michael Menkin, Avichay
Sharon, Yanay Israeli, Oded Na’aman and Levi Spector (Tel Aviv, 2010). The 431-
page volume is made up of testimonies from 101 male and female soldiers who
served in the Territories during this period. In contrast to the organization’s use of
the word testimony to refer to the soldiers’ accounts in the title of the book and in
other publications, I refer to them as confessions. I believe that although the
accounts have a dual function in the absence of Palestinian testimonies and
ongoing colonization (as confessions of the perpetrators as well as testimonies on
the behalf of the Palestinian victims), their tone and form of address adhere to most
of the characteristics of perpetrator trauma (See Morag, “Perpetrator Complex,”
Waltzing). This is, of course, a unique case of the perpetrator’s voice breaking both
his/her silence and the victim’s. Written from the perpetrator’s point-of-view, the
accounts are, above all, confessions.
310 Chapter Fifteen
In order to further illustrate the meaning of the term, ‘persecuted

perpetrator,’ what follows are two representative quotes from accounts of
female veterans given to Breaking the Silence. In both accounts,
consciousness of the Holocaust flares up, indicating the identity crisis of
the post-traumatic persecuted perpetrator.52
Account 1
Name: *** | Rank: Sergeant | Unit: Nahal | Location: Mevo Dotan53
SOLDIER. I recall once, this was after we moved to Mevo Dotan, to the
base there, some Palestinian was sitting on a chair and I passed by several
times. Once I thought: Okay, why is he sitting here for an hour? I feel like
spitting at him, at this Arab. And they tell me: Go on, spit at him. I don’t
recall whether anyone did this before I did, but I remember spitting at him
and feeling really, like at first I felt, wow, good for me, I just spat at some
terrorist, that’s how I’d call them. And then I recall that afterwards I felt
something here was not right.
INTERVIEWER. Why?
SOLDIER. Not too human. I mean, it sounds cool and all, but no, it’s not
right.
INTERVIEWER. You thought about later, or during the act?
SOLDIER. Later. At the time you felt real cool.
INTERVIEWER. Even when everyone was watching, you felt real cool.
SOLDIER. Yes, and then sometimes you get to thinking, especially say on
Holocaust Memorial Day, suddenly you’re thinking, hey, these things were
done to us, it’s a human being after all. Eventually as things turned out he
was no terrorist anyway, it was a kid who’d hung around too long near the
base, so he was caught or something.
INTERVIEWER. A child?
SOLDIER. An adolescent.
INTERVIEWER. Slaps?
SOLDIER. Yes.
52
See “Women Breaking the Silence: Female Soldiers Testify on Their Service at
the Occupied Territories” in: Breaking the Silence (Jerusalem: Aecid, 2009), in
Hebrew; and online in English:
http://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/wp-
ontent/uploads/2011/02/Women_Soldiers_Testimonies_2009_Eng.pdf
(Accessed December 2, 2012). Thanks to Avichay Sharon for assisting me with this
material, and the video testimonies.
53
Mevo Dotan is a communal village and an Israeli settlement in the northern
Samarian hills part of the West Bank south of the Dotan Valley within the
municipal jurisdiction of the Shomron Regional Council.
INTERVIEWER. Blindfolded and all?

SOLDIER. Yes. I think that at some point no one even stood watch over
him.
(Women Soldiers Testimonies, Breaking the Silence, 93; my emphasis)
Account 2
Name: *** | Rank: Sergeant | Unit: Nahal | Location: Hebron
SOLDIER. I recall once I thought it was a trifle but I remembered it while

watching the film TO SEE IF I’M SMILING.54
I sat with guys from the auxiliary company, I don’t know if they were
just back from some mission or something, but we were sitting together, I
also liked to sit and listen to their combat stories and be let in on things
they did. It fascinated me. If I can’t do it myself, at least let me hear about
it from the source.
So we sat there and they played around with these prayer-beads, and
then someone came in and said: “Hey, look at my loot,” something like
that. He either said that or I asked where it was from. I remember asking,
and knew that these were prayer-beads. So they said: “From the Arabs.” So
I say: What do you mean, from the Arabs? What, you bought them? “No,
we took them.” But it’s theirs, I said. “Okay, what do you mean theirs?” As
if it was all right. And I thought, no, that’s not all right. It’s theirs, after all.
Did they do anything to you, that you took them? “No, we just took them,
we always do.” I didn’t know there was such a phenomenon. After seeing
that film I suddenly realized, this was a phenomenon indeed. And then
suddenly it hooked up, and it’s most weird when I link it to things that
happened in the Holocaust, when skullcaps were taken off men’s heads.
Come on, this is important, have some respect. But these are the things that
make you think it’s okay. When these combatants say it’s okay, and they
suffer more than I do, they’re out in the Territories all the time and staying
out weekends and all, so what they do is all right.55
Both of these accounts strip bare the heart of the topic under
discussion, both in the Israeli context and beyond it. They demonstrate that
persecuted perpetrators who take an activist stand and confess their actions
are conscious of the Holocaust. Each of those who confessed to Breaking
54
In TO SEE IF I’M SMILING, Dana, an education officer, reported the looting of
prayer beads by her platoon when she first arrived on the military base. She was
immediately excluded and boycotted for a long period, after which she did not
disclose these sorts of events.
55
Women Breaking the Silence, 116-117. My emphasis.
312 Chapter Fifteen
the Silence is alone in her isolation. Each reflects upon and reconstructs
what she went through. Even though the interviewer guides the
interviewees with questions, as the two examples show, this is no
dialogue, but rather a deep, unspoken partnership between two people
committed to reporting and to recognizing personal responsibility. The
interviewer, like all other volunteers in the organization, is an ex-soldier.
Moreover, the sheer bodily presence of the interviewer is complementary
to the embodied elements revealed and relived during the confession –
both the abjective spitting and tactile playing with the prayer beads. In
this, though the Breaking the Silence’s accounts are anonymous, the
usually physical dimension of participation in atrocities (from torture and
humiliation to looting) is kept through the embodied elements of the post-
traumatic confession.
The genre of persecuted perpetrator trauma56 presents the transformation
of the Zionist ‘New Woman/Man’ into the ‘New Soldier’ involved in new
war. She or he is burdened with Israeli society’s intricately woven
traumas: the Holocaust, the 1948 and 1967 conquests, the Nakba,57 the
terrorist attacks during the second Intifada, two Lebanon Wars, and the
war in Gaza. The above accounts reveal an incessant return to the
Holocaust as the primary and constitutive trauma in Israeli life. The
accounts given in second Intifada cinema and literature demonstrate that
Israeli cinema is a highly relevant case for probing the limits of both
victim and perpetrator traumas, and for revisiting and recontextualizing the
crucial moment in which the victim/perpetrator cultural symbiosis is
dismantled. I contend that the rise of the new wave testifies to a
remarkable cultural maturity. It is illustrated first of all in relation to
Jewish history and the significant role the Holocaust plays as a constitutive
trauma in Israeli socio-cultural life, which for decades blocked any option
other than victimhood.58 Both the significant number of Holocaust films
still being produced each year (representing second- and third-generation
devotion to the legacy of the Holocaust),59 and the figure of the persecuted
56
See also AFTERSHOCK (dir. Yariv Horowitz, 2002), UNDERCOVER DREAMS (dir.
Yehuda Kaveh, 2003), ON THE OBJECTION FRONT (dir. Shiri Tsur, 2004), ONE SHOT
(dir. Nurit Kedar, 2004), CONCRETE (dir. Nurit Kedar, 2011), and EDUT (dir. Shlomi
Elkabetz, 2011).
57
“The Day of Catastrophe”
58
It is worthwhile to recall at this point Edward Said’s famous phrase regarding the
Palestinians being “the victims of victims.”
59
Conspicuous among them are autobiographical documentaries by second
generation directors (like Yair Lev, whose HUGO PART I [1990] and II [2008] deal
perpetrator emerging in documentary cinema and literature reflect a

complex, persistent, socio-cultural challenge. As the perverse Holocaust-
inspired fantasy in SOB’ SKIRT shows, deep processes of fantasmatic
violent projection interwoven with the persecuted perpetrator’s guilt dwell
beneath the surface of the Israeli-Jewish imaginary unconscious,
threatening to erupt. Moreover, as the film and Breaking the Silence’s
accounts show, the emergence of the new wave was triggered by the
unique conjunction of the Holocaust legacy and near total collapse of the
IDF’s claim to morality and ‘just’ war in the Territories during the second
Intifada. The new wave has the courage to suggest that the ongoing
Occupation has by and large turned Israelis from symbolic and/or actual
victims into symbolic and/or actual perpetrators, and that the female
perpetrator is a powerful agent of complicity.
with his father’s survival and his own post-memory), and third-generation directors
(like Arnon Goldfinger, whose 2010 film THE FLAT renders the negative symbiosis
between his grandparents and a Nazi couple after the war). See also Netalie Braun
and Avigail Sperber’s THE HANGMAN (2010), which offers a sensitive portrayal of
the man who hanged Adolf Eichmann and how he has coped with his post-trauma
and Yael Hersonski’s A FILM UNFINISHED (2010), which features a recently
discovered public relations film made by the Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto – to
name but a few of the documentaries that prove the power of this cinematic
tradition.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“FROM INDIVIDUAL EXPERIENCE

TO THE COLLECTIVE ARCHIVE,
FROM PERSONAL TRAUMA
TO PUBLIC MEMORY”:
ACCOUNTS OF WAR AND OCCUPATION
IN ISRAEL
MARCELLA SIMONI
Introduction: Some Questions

Since ancient times, mythologies of war—and later, national
mythologies—have elaborated a system of symbols and rituals that
(usually) mobilize the nation’s youth and justify its eventual death in war
in the name of the raison d’état, so as to include fallen youth into the
nation’s pantheon. Dulce pro patria mori (it is sweet to die for the
homeland) is possibly the best known expression of this rhetoric, which
has found countless applications since Roman times and which, in the
context of Zionist nation-building, has been famously attributed to Joseph
Trumpeldor at the battle of Tel Hai (1920).1 However, it seems that no
1
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, see Horatius, Odes, III, 2, 13. See also the
famous poem by Wilfred Owen, one of the most well-known poets of the First
World War, who closed his poem Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori calling it
“the old lie.” On narratives of sacrifice and defeat placed at the center of national
mythologies, see the classic Yael Zerubavel, Recovered Roots. Collective Memory
and the Making of Israeli National Tradition (Chicago/London: The University of
Chicago Press, 1995); see also Steven Mock, Trauma, Sacrifice and the
Construction of Modern National Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2012).
Accounts of War and Occupation in Israel 315
nation or political system has ever glorified or celebrated the soldier who
was traumatized in battle; even though physical casualty, whether loss of
life or limb, has found a space in the glorification of the nation’s history,
the loss of mind as consequence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
is not considered a qualifying credential for entry into the nation’s
pantheon of heroes.2 Doubtless so, as the narratives of veterans affected by
PTSD (or related conditions) rarely conform to the official historical and
political narrative.
Within the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in this essay I will
not examine the testimonies (traumatic or otherwise) of Palestinians or
other civilian populations that have been involved in the conflict; rather, I
will look at testimonies delivered by soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces
(IDF) collected by non-governmental organizations (NGOs), Israeli film
directors, and authors.
Cathy Caruth has extensively examined how “trauma unsettles and
forces us to rethink our notions of experience” in various settings:
communication, therapy, classroom, and literature.3 In this chapter, I argue
that a historical narration that keeps at its center the notion of trauma—as
well as the actual trauma of those who narrate their experiences—unsettles
the standard national historical and political narratives. This is particularly
interesting as the testimonies I examine here have been delivered by
individuals who, as soldiers, represent the state from an institutional point-
of-view.
The essay’s broad timeframe is from 1982 to the present, with filmed
testimonies comprising my primary sources.4 Given the broad availability
2
Although mainly based on US and British post-World War I experiences, see
Robert J. T. Joy, Shell Shock to PTSD. Military Psychiatry from 1900 to the Gulf
War (New York: Psychology Press, 2005). See also Tracey Loughran, “Shell
Shock, Trauma and the First World War. The Making of a Diagnosis and Its
History,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 67 (2012), 94-
119.
3
Cathy Caruth (ed.), Trauma. Explorations in Memory (Baltimore/London: The
John Hopkins University Press, 1995), 4.
4
Other kind of testimonies abound, and can be easily retrieved on the websites of
several NGOs like “Breaking the Silence,” “Combatants for Peace,” “B’Tselem,”
“Zochrot” and others. See
http://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/testimonies/database;http://cfpeace.org/?cat=
6; http://www.btselem.org/testimonies (Accessed September 27, 2012); other
testimonies can be read in collected volumes, starting from the famous Avraham
Shapira (ed.), The Seventh Day. Soldiers’ Talk about the Six Day War (New York:
Simon Schuster Trade, 1971) or Irit Gal and Ilana Hammerman (eds.), De Beyrouth
à Jénine. Témoniages de soldats israéliens sur la guerre du Liban (Paris: La
316 Chapter Sixteen
of such testimonies, their significance, and the scant attention paid to such
material by historians and scholars thus far, I give ample space to hear the
voices of the soldiers themselves. 5
Among the many films recently produced by the so-called ‘new Israeli
cinema,’ I will look at the documentaries, WASTED and CONCRETE, by
Nurit Kedar (released 2007 and 2011, respectively), and at the movie,
TESTIMONY, by Shlomi Elkabetz (released in 2011)—which is neither
fiction nor a documentary, but something in-between. These films (and
others I will only briefly mention in the text) delivered to the screen the
(mainly secular, male) testimonies of soldiers in a context of war, often
among civilian populations or with heavy civilian involvement and/or
military occupation.
In WASTED, Kedar has collected the voices of the soldiers who were
the last occupants of the mythical fortress of Beaufort on Lebanese soil,
conquered on the first day of the Lebanon War in 1982 and abandoned
after eighteen years of occupation in the summer of 2000. This movie
stands as a counterweight to BEAUFORT, by Joseph Cedar, released in 2007
and inspired by the homonymous book by Ron Leshem. CONCRETE is a
collection of testimonies and reflections of soldiers who took part in
operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip in 2008. In preparing for
TESTIMONY, director Elkabetz and scriptwriter Ofer Ein Gal worked their
way through a large folder of testimonies of both Israeli soldiers and
Palestinians, delivered to (and collected by) B’tselem, a well-known Israeli
NGO. In this movie, unlike its previously mentioned counterparts, actors
impersonate characters with the aim of creating “a single narrative uniting
both sides [Israelis and Palestinians]” through a composition of recollections.
These individual narratives were acted out with minimal editing and
Fabrique éditions, 2003); for some photographic testimonies see A. Azoulay, Atto
di Stato. Palestina-Israele 1967-2007. Storia Fotografica dell’occupazione
(Milano; Bruno Mondadori, 2008), ed. by Maria Nadotti and Gillian Laub,
http://www.gillianlaub.com/#/Works%20and%20Projects/Testimony/1/ (Accessed
September 27, 2012). See also Tamar Katriel and Nimrod Shavit, “Between moral
activism and archival memory: The testimonial project of ‘Breaking the Silence,’”
Motti Neiger, Oren Meyers and Eyal Zandberg (eds.), On Media Memory:
Collective memory in a New Media Age (Basingstoke Hampshire: Palgrave,
Macmillan, 2011), 77-87.
5
A recent article, unpublished when this essay was first written, looks at other
(similar) testimonies of Israeli soldiers through a different yet compatible prism,
i.e. that of testimony as confession and search for forgiveness. See Dan Arav and
David Gurevitz, “Trauma, Guilt, Forgiveness: the Victimizer as Witness in the
Cinematic and Televisual Representations of Conflict in Israel,” Media, War and
Conflict, 7 (2014), 104-120.
delivered in a way that was intended to force the viewer to listen

attentively.6 It is only for reasons of space that I do not include in this
analysis a fourth movie, Z32, by Avi Mograbi (released in 2008), drawn
from material taken from folder Z32 of the archives of Breaking the
Silence, another well-known Israeli NGO. In Z32, the trauma of a soldier
revisiting his own behavior is exposed and slowly worked through in a
filmed conversation with his girlfriend; in parallel, his face gradually
emerges from behind a digital mask covering it from the beginning of the
film. Towards the conclusion of the movie, the soldier and film crew
return to the West Bank location where soldier Z32 killed a number of
Palestinians in a shooting spree. Arav and Gurevitz analyze some of the
theoretical and moral issues addressed by this movie in their recent article
(see above).
For the historian these movies raise a number of questions; are the
testimonies they present relevant sources of historical analysis? If so, what
kind of analysis can they help unfold? After all, they reveal a trauma that
is entrusted to a witness or, more accurately, to an expanding chain of
witnesses: the NGO, the scholar or director that collected them, the
filmmaker that transformed them into a product for larger audiences, the
viewer. If we accept that these are also valuable primary sources for the
historian—whether collected directly from the witness, heard in films, or
read in the archives of an NGO—we can also accept that they testify to the
existence of a post-traumatic stress disorder that, together with Caruth,
should be understood not so much as a symptom of the unconscious, but
as a symptom of history. “[T]he traumatized […] carry an impossible
history within them,” she writes, “or they become themselves the symptom
of a history that they cannot entirely possess.”7
Do these testimonies represent the tip of the iceberg of a broader
trauma that has thus far remained unspoken (or unheard), but which has
invested at least a couple of generations in Israel? When did the trauma of
the soldiers emerge within the public sphere in Israel? When, if at all, were
their narration and/or experience publicly acknowledged as traumatic?
What do the words—and more often the pauses, or silences—of
(generally) male soldiers convey about the situations they describe? As
soldiers do they speak only for themselves, or more eloquently of the
society they represent (also from an institutional point-of-view)? Does
their narrative match that of the “Other”?8 Do these sources add anything
6
Osnat Trabelsi, A Conversation with Shlomi Elkabetz, Press Kit for Testimony.
7
Caruth, Trauma, 5.
8
Leonard V. Smith, The Embattled Self: French Soldiers’ Testimony of the Great
War (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2007) where the author declines to
318 Chapter Sixteen
to the accounts that one can read on war and occupation in books and
newspaper articles locally and internationally? Can these filmed
testimonies contribute to the construction of an archive (of memories or
traumas) that testifies to the possibility of writing a history that differs
from the official one?
In order to address some of these questions, I will first discuss briefly
the extent to which Dominick LaCapra’s well-known distinction between
the traumas of victim and perpetrator may be useful in this context,
especially in view of its adoption (in different ways) by Raz Yosef and
Raya Morag, who have worked extensively on trauma and some recent
Israeli movies. Second, I will discuss the emergence of a public discourse
on trauma in Israel between the 1980s and 1990s. Third, I will evaluate the
extent to which the adoption of such traumatic testimonies as texts—either
for movies, documentaries, scripts, or as historical sources—represents a
challenge to the standard narrative of events.9
Perpetrators, Victims and Cognitive Dissociations

Dominick LaCapra has elaborated a theoretical distinction between the
trauma of the victim (as a psychological, social, and political category)
and that of the bystander and/or perpetrator (as an ethical category), a
propose a replacement “metanarrative” for a discarded one of tragedy and

victimization.
9
Consider the material (mainly emails and diary entries) left by Rachel Corrie,
activist for the “International Solidarity Movement” (ISM), and published as a
book after her death in Rafah, which have become the material for the play My
name is Rachel Corrie, directed by Alan Rickman, who also edited the text with
journalist Katherine Viner. The play was staged for the first time in London in
April 2004. See also Rachel Corrie, Let me Stand Alone (New York: W. W. Norton
& Company, 2008). On a different theme see Igal Ezraty and Freddie Rokem, “The
Trial of the Refuseniks,” TDR: The Drama Review, 50 (2006), 131-153, a
theatrical adaptation of the trial of four Israeli conscientious objectors, the so
called Givathi-Beth trial and the trial of Lieutenant-Colonel Yehuda Meir; the piece
was performed unedited at the ‘Acco Theatre Fringe Festival’ in 1990 and, later, in
a more coherent form at the Tzavta Theatre in Tel Aviv in June 2004. For other
collaborations between the work of NGOs and theatre representation see Rania
Jawad, “Staging Resistance in Bil’in: The Performance of Violence in a Palestinian
Village,” TDR: The Drama Review, 55 2011, 128-143. See also the work of The
Freedom Theatre http://www.thefreedomtheatre.org/ (Accessed September 29,
2012).
distinction also taken up by Raz Yosef and Raya Morag, although in

different ways, in their recent works on trauma in Israeli cinema.10
There exists a vast literature on perpetrators, victims, bystanders and
their different traumas from various points of view, including history,
psychoanalysis, politics, and international law; much refers to the history
of genocides and their long-term legacies, conflicts featuring massive
ethnic cleansing, or situations where Truth and Reconciliation
Commission(s) (TRC) have been employed.11 There are several references
to the individual and collective trauma of Palestinians as victims,12 but
little, if any, direct reference to IDF soldiers as perpetrators in the sense
elaborated by most of the literature on the subject.
A standard English dictionary defines a perpetrator as “someone who
has committed a violent or harmful act;” in historical terms—given the
experience of the twentieth century in Europe and elsewhere—a perpetrator
is also someone who has committed violent acts within a political
framework that justified (and even encouraged) them on ideological
grounds, often leading to large scale, organized mass murder. In reference
to IDF soldiers, I use the term ‘perpetrator’ according to its first, simpler,
meaning, as this allows a broader and, I argue, deeper understanding of the
nuances of their trauma, as well as helps to prevent the creation of false
analogies.
In different ways, both Yosef and Morag used the framework
elaborated by LaCapra to look into the trauma of perpetrators, starting
from two recent Israeli movies exploring the recovery of a suppressed
traumatic memory and process of healing; LaCapra had written of how the
10
Raz Yosef, The Politics of Loss and Trauma in Contemporary Israeli Cinema
(London and New York: Routledge, 2011), 8.
11
Steven K. Baum, The Psychology of Genocide: Perpetrators, Bystanders and
Rescuers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Jensen Olaf and C.
Szejnmann (eds.), Ordinary People as Mass Murderers: Perpetrators in
Comparative Perspectives (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008); Karl Cordell
and Stefan Wolff, Routledge Handbook of Ethnic Conflict (Florence KY:
Routledge, 2010); Eric Wiebelhaus-Brahm, Truth Commissions and Transitional
Societies: The Impact of Human Rights and Democracy (Florence KY: Routledge,
2010); Priscilla B. Hayner, Unspeakable Truths: Facing the Challenge of Truth
Commissions (Florence KY: Routledge, 2011) [1st ed. 2001]; Philip Spencer,
Making the Contemporary World: Genocide since 1945 (Florence, KY: Taylor and
Francis, 2012).
12
See for instance Alice Rothschild, Broken Promises, Broken Dreams. Stories of
Jewish and Palestinian Trauma and Resilience (London: Pluto Press, 2007) esp.
part II.
320 Chapter Sixteen
trauma of the perpetrator “must in itself be acknowledged and in some

sense worked through if perpetrators are to distance themselves from an
earlier implication in deadly ideologies and practices.”13 This framework
fits quite well in the case of both WALTZ WITH BASHIR (Ari Folman, 2008)
and LEBANON (Samuel Maoz, 2009), which Yosef and Morag examined
among other works. In this context, it is interesting to note that Morag
defined the Israeli soldier as a “persecuted perpetrator,” arguing “the
perpetrator trauma erupts precisely because the persecution complex has
been internalized.”14 In her view, this term could also help to solve the
issue of definitions in Hebrew, whereby, on the one hand, the word kovesh
bears too close an association to the Shoah, while on the other, me’avel
and mecholel (‘wrong-doer’ and ‘violator,’ respectively)—terms without
overt historical connotations—lack the depth for bridging individual
trauma and collective memory.
It is quite clear that in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict—and of
the Israeli-Palestinian confrontation—the ultimate victims are civilians,
especially considering that from the 1982 Lebanon War onwards, Israeli
military operations have increasingly taken place among civilian
populations, whether in Lebanon (1982, 2006), the West Bank, or Gaza
Strip (2008, 2012). However, the movies mentioned here, as well as the
collection of testimonies on which they are based, raise the questions
whether and to what extent IDF soldiers are perpetrators in the historical
and clinical senses of the term.
According to the many testimonies registered—and adapted for the
screen—soldiers are often placed in situations that they do not approve of,
where they are particularly uncomfortable, and which cause in many of
them a cognitive dissonance between the education they received in family
and school—the positive values of patriotism and heroism and the notion
of just war on which they grew up—and the test of reality that fails to
confirm them. Together with Yuval Harari, one should also add that
service conditions also play a crucial role in determining the extent to
which soldiers suffer from trauma.15
13
Dominick. LaCapra, Writing History, Writing Trauma (Baltimore: John Hopkins
University Press 2001), 79.
14
Raya Morag, Current Israeli Documentary Cinema and the Trauma of the Israeli
Soldiers, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdkIm00WkIg&feature=relmfu;
online papers from the Trauma, Testimony, Discourses, Genre, Patterns and
Innovation International Conference, February 21-24, 2011, Tel Aviv University.
(Accessed March 27, 2013).
15
Yuval N. Harari, Do just wars cause trauma?
With perhaps one partial exception, the testimonies that I present in

this essay do not portray soldiers as ideologically determined to harm or
harass civilians; rather, they portray individuals who have adopted the
model of the fighter (as transmitted to them through education, national
mythology, the cult of the fallen, the calendar of memory, etc.) as a
positive identity marker, and whose models crumbled when confronted
with the reality of their military service: fighting an invisible enemy (as in
WASTED) or civilians (as in CONCRETE) or being stuck at a checkpoint, a
liminal condition per se (as in TESTIMONY and CHECKPOINT by Yoav
Shamir, 2003).
The following three quotations refer to two different military contexts.
The first speaks about the situation in Beaufort, while the second and third
reveal the frustration and delusion of having to man checkpoints during
the second Intifada. They all give an example of the cognitive dissonance
mentioned above, of the trauma it leads to, and of the potential
subversiveness of a traumatic narration. At the same time, the third quote
is particularly disturbing as the cognitive dissonance and the conditions of
service invoked thus far as causes for soldiers’ PTSD are not enough to
justify the crescendo in the words, the tone and contents of that account,
which shifts from hunger and exhaustion to a cry which contains traits of
sadism and megalomania. From Beaufort (See Fig. 16.1):
“When we went out to safeguard the position, who and what are we
guarding? Outside, all was dark. We started to feel that we were actually
safeguarding ourselves. We go out. Why were we there? To keep the cities
in the North safe? They were three, four, five kilometers behind us. We
were basically safeguarding our post and ourselves so that we would make
it out alive when the mission ended.”16
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8wjBxCmfAc; online papers from the Trauma,

Testimony, Discourses, Genre, Patterns and Innovation International Conference,
February 21-24, 2011, Tel Aviv University. (Accessed March 27, 2013).
16
Nurit Kedar, WASTED, 2007, 56:07-56:30. These words echo precisely the words
pronounced by River, one of the soldiers stationed in Beaufort in the book by Ron
Leshem: “It has nothing to do with the Northern Border. We are just looking out
for our own asses, that’s all. We sit up here at Beaufort, disconnected from
everything, drawing rockets and mortar shells and explosive devices, endangering
our lives, just so that we continue sitting in Beaufort.” Ron Leshem, Beaufort
(New York: Bantam Dell, 2009), 148.
322 Chapter Sixteen
Fig. 16.1
From the West Bank:
“There is a link between the time you serve in the occupied territories and
how fucked up you become. The more shit you take from Jews and Arabs
and the army and the State. Some people call it de-sensitization. I think it is
actually hyper-sensitization. Being a soldier in the territories is a high. A
negative high. You are always tired, you are always hungry, you always
have to go to the bathroom. You always want to catch the terrorist. You are
always afraid to die.17
“You get to the checkpoint and do eight hours on duty and eight hours off.
Eight hours on and eight hours off. That was the hardest thing I did in the
army. Standing at a checkpoint at 40 degrees [Celsius], you are dripping
with sweat, totally wiped out. It takes its toll. You are exhausted and fed
up. And you’re sick of all the shit, and then someone shows up. You don’t
care who he is; you don’t care if he’s old, a man or a woman, old or young.
At first you speak nicely; but at some point, after seven hours, you say,
come on, ‘Give me your ID, or you don’t go through.’ You don’t want to
deal with anything. No excuses; I don’t give a damn. ‘You want to buy
17
Shlomi Elkabetz, TESTIMONY, 2011, 55:39-56:31.
vegetables? What do I care? There is a curfew. Period. You’re not going

anywhere.’ ‘Your house is in the other direction? Find another way to go.
You can’t pass through here.’ It wears you down. Remember, you don’t do
it once a week; you do it the whole week, a month, half a year. It’s hard
work; it is easy to lose it. You are supposed to keep order, to educate the
people who come to a checkpoint, but all you end up saying is: ‘No.’ At
first we tried to be understanding but they keep trying to fool you, and two
months later all you can say is ‘No.’ If that doesn’t work, you punish them.
Punishment comes in different levels: the simplest level is to unpack the
car and make you pack it again. Or make you wait, i.e. we check you at the
end of the line. Because you talked back. I decide what ‘talking back’ is.
You see? We’ll screw you. I have a gun, you don’t. That means that I
decide what you will do. My checkpoint is my kingdom. I tell you to jump,
walk, run around, you name it. ‘You start arguing with me? Wait on the
side.’ ‘Are you arguing with me?’ No problem, I’ll slap you. ‘If you argue
with me, I’ll push you, ignore you, send you back.’ And people do what
you say. You know it is because you have a gun. You know that, if you
didn’t have a gun, if you didn’t have other soldiers with you, they would
jump at you, stab you, kill you. So you start enjoying it; not only you enjoy
it; you need it. So when someone says: ‘No...’ What do you mean ‘No’?
How dare you tell me ‘No’? I am the law here. I am the law here. I am the
law here.”18
These three testimonies are unsettling in different ways; they certainly

undermine the official version of events, whether referring to the military
necessity to retain Beaufort—the fortress carrying “mythical status among
generations of Israelis”— at all costs, as the opening line of WASTED
remarks; and the privileged status attributed to those who served (and
died) there; or the official image of the soldier serving at checkpoints and
acting according to State law. They also complicate drawing the line
between the victim and the perpetrator: the two testimonies from the West
Bank are indeed from the same soldier, who, when placed in conditions
that he defines as “a negative high,” becomes abusive, whose most
extreme manifestation—after a list of physical expressions (hunger,
exhaustion, etc.)—is the constant fear of dying. This last testimony is
particularly problematic because it discusses someone developing a need
to exercise violence and humiliate people acknowledged by the soldier
himself as having harmless intentions—people wanting to buy vegetables,
heading home in the other direction, etc.—and because of the possible
(generally deceiving) historical analogies such behavior can provoke, the
most obvious being that between the behavior of IDF and Nazi soldiers. In
18
Elkabetz, TESTIMONY, 1:01:37-1:05:25.
324 Chapter Sixteen
turn, such comparison intimates parallels between the humiliating

treatment suffered by Palestinians and the persecution of Jews before and
during World War II. Nonetheless, such testimony opens a window
remarkably few accounts disclose. Even when personal stories are spoken
with a reflexive and introspective tone—which is the case of most
testimonies found in films, books or archives—because they are delivered
in a non-therapeutic setting, they signal a distance that prevents the
historian from evaluating the extent of the psychological damage caused
by the combination of conditions of service and cognitive dissonance.
Indeed, such testimonies are often delivered in a non-therapeutic setting.
Anger represents a fundamental aspect of the last two testimonies.
Originally directed at institutions (the State, education, youth movements,
the army, etc.), who educate an individual to become a “kick-ass soldier”
(see below) only to then place him in a repetitive and exhausting situation
checking IDs under the sun—an image that corresponds to the office clerk
dressed in war gear—this delusion is turned into carelessness (“I don’t
give a damn”) and paternalism (“you are supposed to educate people who
come to checkpoints”), leads to abusive behavior (the need to exercise
violence), and culminates in the soldier substituting himself for the State
and the law (“the checkpoint is my kingdom,” “I am the law here”) (See
Fig. 16.2).
Fig. 16.2
Other soldiers spoke with a different tone, more introspective and/or

sarcastic than imbued with anger. One of the soldiers featured in
CONCRETE told Kedar of the rock concert organized for the troops the
night before they entered Gaza, which invokes an immediate association
with two other movie scenes. First, from the iconic APOCALYPSE NOW
(USA 1979, Coppola), the USO concert attended by Captain Benjamin L.
Willard (Martin Sheen) the night before he ventures beyond the
Vietnamese border into Cambodia in search of Colonel Walter E. Kurtz.
The night before entering Gaza does not seem as hallucinatory, but there
appear to be some analogies (See Fig. 16.3).
Fig. 16.3
“The night before we entered [Gaza] they gave the soldiers an evening of
folk music on a basketball court and they brought a female and a male
singer. I don’t remember who, but all the guys took off their shirts, got on
each other’s shoulders and had fun and danced ‘Let’s get in and tear them
apart, we’ll show them’… like a football game, as if the IDF made it to the
finals and we are about to play... […] and the rabbis gave out copies of
Psalms and the Traveler’s Prayer ‘Faith in the Righteousness of our path’
and Ninet blasting and guitars and a lot of packages and candies and letters
from children: ‘Protect me...’ ‘You are so good...’ … Wow, what a crazy
country... You don’t want to miss a war, so many people are excited, so
many packages... people donated thermal undershirts, underwear, 100
326 Chapter Sixteen
minutes free from Orange [cell phone company], all kinds of stuff,
bonuses. Wow, what fun! We must have a war!”19
The second movie scene called forth in this juxtaposition of induced

excitement and border crossing into war, is found in WALTZ WITH BASHIR
(2008, Folman). Here Carmi Can’an tells Folman about his arrival into
Lebanon aboard some imaginary love boat where a party with music and
drinks had been going on the whole night.
Another soldier described operation Cast Lead as “a war you don’t
know anything about,” where “none of them wear a uniform and nobody
has written on his head ‘terrorist.’” Another echoed, “War is not like in the
movies. We were fighting ghosts. Most of the shells that I fired, I didn’t
see who they hit. That’s one of the things that scares me.” Or a third:
“Say a woman comes up to you carrying a white flag and you don’t know
what to do. What do you do? She might be some poor woman who
happened to be there, and it’s so terrible and you can give her water and to
sit and maybe the next second she’ll explode all over you. There’s no way
of knowing.”20
You find similar echoes in WASTED; one of the soldiers states, “I

served three times in Lebanon and I have never seen a terrorist; never in
my life a Hezbollah terrorist” (See Fig. 16.4). Another echoes:
“I don’t know if we fought. I don’t remember fighting. I remember being

there doing what I was told to do but I have never seen anyone that I could
harm. Never anybody I could shoot at. I was always the one being shot at. I
was always on the defensive.” 21 (See Fig. 16.5)
In these contexts, the dissonance is manifold; not only between the

moral values with which one is raised and the manifest lack of morality of
certain military orders, it is also apparent in the gap between an
expectation of military heroism built up though teenage years into
adulthood and the disillusionment at the lack of opportunity to develop it.
With reference to contexts of occupation—whether the Security Zone,
within which the fortress of Beaufort was located, or the Palestinian
territories under occupation since 1967—one should add the ethical and
19
Kedar, CONCRETE, 8:17-10:05.
20
These three quotes are in Kedar, CONCRETE, respectively at 25:46-25:57; 49:07-
49:19; 46:00-46:17.
21
These two quotes are in Nurit Kedar, WASTED, 2007, 19:28-19:49; 28:55-29:32.
Fig.16.4
Fig. 16.5
328 Chapter Sixteen
Fig. 16.6
political trap in which soldiers have been pushed by the policies of

successive Israeli governments. The following quote from TESTIMONY
about Hebron exemplifies the point of soldiers being placed in impossible
situations from ethical, human and also political points-of-view, and
whose actions can only produce violent outcomes (See Fig. 16.6):
“One day we were guarding on a roof. We were talking about some TV

show. Suddenly I get a report over the radio: ‘Fifteen settler girls broke
into the Western Kasbah, some of them are carrying babies.’ We were
shocked. It didn’t register. They repeated it a few times, before I could
even speak. Within seconds everyone was on their feet and off the roof.
We ran like crazy and all I could think about was fifteen girls carrying
babies in the middle of the Kasbah; it’s crazy, they are going to be
slaughtered. We never ran so fast; we reached the Kasbah and my officer
tells me: ‘Flank right, we’ll meet you in the middle.’ I come to a bend in
the road and then I see the craziest thing I’ve ever seen: fifteen girls, some
holding babies with one hand, but what was missing in the report was that
in the other hand they were also holding cubs and planks, and were
smashing everything in sight. Everything: car windshields, and windows
and stalls where people work, like a hurricane destroying everything. And I
stand there for half a minute and my officer says something that I don’t
even hear... I don’t see him, I see through him. Then he grabs me and
shakes me and slaps me: ‘Come on, get out of the shock! Get out of the
shock!’ I pull myself together, and I run towards a settler girl who is trying
to pull a doorbell off a building entrance. So I grab her from behind, and
she turns around and shouts: ‘Gavald! Don’t touch me! How do you dare
to touch me? You cannot touch me!’ So I let her go. So she pulls off the
doorbell from the building, so I grab her again and she screams again:
‘You cannot touch me. It’s forbidden!’ So I let her do whatever she wants,
so she takes a floor tile and bangs it against the door. Then my officer
comes and says: ‘You can do whatever you want, you can touch her.’ So I
grab her and she yells again, so I let her go. Now, at the same time
Palestinians are gathering across the street, closing in on us, about 100-150
Palestinians, it’s a narrow street; it’s scary. Finally my commander said:
‘Let’s stand in a line on the side of the street and force the girls out of the
Kasbah.’ We lock arms and start moving forward and it works, we force
them out without touching them. And as they retreat backwards, they
continue smashing everything that is on their way, like nothing remains
whole. So gradually, we force them out, and then a Palestinian comes and
yells in my ear: ‘Look what they are doing! Look what they are doing!’
And I am like: ‘Okay, Okay.’ And I keep going, and it’s hot, and I am
sweaty and agitated and he keeps yelling in my year and I say: ‘Stop it,
man! Go home! Come on!’ And I go back in line and we keep moving
forward, and he keeps shouting in my ear, so I say: ‘Man, enough already,
I got it! Now go away! Now!’ [pointing at him a fictional gun] And I chase
him with my weapon; and as I turn around one of the girls spits a loogie on
me, here [points at the eyebrow]. Not just a spit, a loogie. A settler girl’s
loogie and it drips down my face, and the Palestinian comes back and yells
in my ear again, so I turn around and I grab his shirt and throw him against
the wall and smash his head against the wall, without understanding what I
am doing. Then I see that he touched the back of his head and it’s all
bloody. He was in shock; but it worked, he shut up. Then we managed to
get the girls out of the Kasbah and keep the Palestinians away.”22
22
Elkabetz, TESTIMONY, 51:52-55:37. These words find a correspondence in the
testimony by Dotan Greenvald, 50th Battalion, Nahal Brigade, dated 10 April
2011, available at: http://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/testimonies/videos/68345
(Accessed April 11, 2013): “Whenever there is a terrorist attack or shooting […]
the Jewish settlers get up and either march towards the closest Palestinian
neighborhood or seize a piece of land or bang on the walls or carry out other forms
of vandalism in the surrounding neighborhood which is a few meters away from
the Arab neighborhood. […] The scene I remember from all the chaos was seeing a
mother with her a few months old baby picking up a stone and banging on the iron
doors of the Arab houses. She banged on one door after another. She was
surrounded by something like two policemen and some border police who, first of
all tried to take the child to stop her, to send her back and to calm her down. But
no, she took the baby as a shield. ‘If you touch me, you’ll endanger the baby.’ And
she continued banging on the doors and going wild. We couldn’t stop her. […] I
have never seen so many policemen standing around people without touching
them.” On settlers and soldiers in Hebron, see also the documentary of visual
anthropologist Ester Hertog, SOLDIER ON THE ROOF (2012).
330 Chapter Sixteen
The Emergence of Trauma in the Israeli Public Sphere

Amia Lieblich has argued that the recognition of trauma as an
individual experience and collective phenomenon entered the Israeli public
discourse in the late 1980s and 1990s in connection with a number of
factors: in the first place, the progressive decline of the collectivist ethos in
the country; second, a general trend in the medicalization of societies,
which concerned many industrialized countries, including Israel; and
finally, the downfall of the myth of the war hero.23 In this context, the
perception and understanding of pain has shifted from that of a challenge
to its acknowledgement as a manifestation of individual trauma.
Moreover, as Harari suggested, the twentieth century has seen a gradual
distancing of societies and civil societies from the idea of war as romantic,
just and justified, with two important reference points: World War I and
the Vietnam War. The latter, as is well known, led in 1980 to the
American Psychiatric Association’s recognition of PTSD as a
psychological condition previously referred to as ‘battle fatigue’ or ‘shell-
shock.’
This process of detachment, which also allowed trauma to surface as a
manifestation of individual pain, can also be seen, together with Harari, as
the manifestation of a cognitive dissonance between the values received
through education and the reality confronted on the ground by combat
soldiers. Consider, for example, the dismissal of the idea of the ‘purity of
arms’ into which generations of Israelis were educated and which began to
crumble in the 1980s, the decade that started with the Lebanon War and
ended with the First Intifada.
These two events pushed a record number of soldiers to express
politically the trauma caused by such aforementioned cognitive dissonance
and conditions of service. Irit Gal and Ilana Hammerman have collected
some of their testimonies. In the words of Giora Ben-Dov, pilot and
lieutenant-colonel of the reserves:
“The War in Lebanon placed us in front of this problem for the first time
and we also asked ourselves some questions because we had not been
educated like this. It could not be enough to say ‘we were obeying orders’
as in non-democratic regimes. We had learnt that orders had a moral
23
Amia Lieblich, Trauma Testimony Discourse over Time,
http://www.vanleer.org.il/eng/videoShow.asp?id=659, online papers from the
Trauma, Testimony, Discourses, Genre, Patterns and Innovation International
Conference, February 21-24, 2011, Tel Aviv University. (Accessed March 27,
2013).
content. I went to visit Dani Sahaf, our commander and I told him: ‘Listen
Dani, don’t ask me […] to bomb Beirut. […] I am an architect, I have a
masters in urban studies. I build cities, I do not destroy them. I am not
going to plan cities on the one hand and destroy them on the other.”24
Other testimonies tell of the wait before entering Beirut as that static
moment that allowed the first doubts to crack through and that led to
intimate questioning and protest. According to the testimony of Ouri
Schwartzman:
“The wait gave us time to think. It was there that we began to speak for the
first time of refusing to serve, directly or indirectly. The discussions,
questions and discontent appeared – everything that had been repressed
during the fighting resurfaced.”25
Some of these soldiers and officers protested; others channeled that

protest through rock music, including Yuval Banai, lead singer of the
band, Machina, whose first homonymous album (1984) focused on these
themes. Others left the army and became selective or total conscientious
objectors, and still others left first-hand testimonies. The tent in front of
Begin’s office where soldiers back from the front stayed in order to protest
permanently, and where they daily updated a board with the names and
numbers of the fallen and wounded, can indeed be seen as a reaction to
PTSD. This becomes clearer listening to additional testimonies:
“I remained six months in front of the house of the Prime Minister.

Gradually, more people joined us, and it turned into a picket line. Each
time a soldier died in Lebanon, we updated a sign. Reservists returning
from Lebanon came directly to us. They returned their equipment and
came to protest with us. There were also some parents who had lost their
sons, and they received increasing expressions of sympathy.”26
Shouki Yashuv confirms:
“I was discharged after three weeks, and the first thing I did upon arriving
home was to call my friends to tell them everything. And so it was that,
call after call, the first demonstration outside the Prime Minister’s office
was born. We only wanted to tell, almost naively, what we had been forced
24
Irit Gal et I. Hammerman, De Beyrouth à Jénine. Témoniages de soldats
israéliens sur la guerre du Liban (Paris: La Fabrique editions, 2003), 186.
25
Gal et Hammerman, Beyrouth, 46.
26
Ibid, 50.
332 Chapter Sixteen
to do, and say that there was no relationship between the reality on the
ground and the objective of this war as it has been presented to us.”27
Daniel Bar-Tal, back to civilian life in August 1982, and again to the
front for reserve duty in March 1983, continues:
“I was back to being a civilian, albeit a traumatized one. For me

personally, and for a lot of my contemporaries, the following months were
wrought with heart-wrenching reflections on what we’d been through −
and why. The ‘why’ was the hardest part. Already in the first days of the
war, I found myself asking that question. The last thing I ever wanted to do
in my life was to be a soldier. But as a Zionist and a new immigrant, I felt
the need to help defend my people. After all, isn’t that what IDF stands
for? […] I was, in a nutshell, traumatized.
“A week after that stint of reserve duty ended, I was in Alaska, hitch-
hiking into the wilderness of Denali National Park, where I could reflect
from as far away as possible. By the time I returned to Israel eight months
later, I had banished that gremlin from my psyche. The years passed, and
the memories inevitably faded. […] But as the cliché goes: there’s a scar
deep inside me that will never heal.”28
It is widely accepted that the Lebanon War the first to not only to lack
national consensus, but also witness the emergence of a novel
conscientious objection in Israel, embodied in at least two new
organizations: Iesh Gvul and Soldiers Against Silence. Both established in
1982, they were radically different from organizations like the historical
War Resisters’ International, whose Israeli branch had been established in
1947.29
For the period of the first Intifada, the film, TESTIMONIES, by Ido Sela
(1993) offers a range of generally male testimonies that present good
27
Ibid, 75.
28
Daniel Bar-Tal, “Reluctant recruit: One IDF soldier examines his scars from the
Lebanon War,” Haaretz, 15 September 2012.
29
Marcella Simoni, “‘Hello Pacifist’. War Resisters in Israel’s first decade,” Quest.
Issues in Contemporary Jewish History, Journal of Fondazione CDEC,” n.5 July
2013, 73-100 url: www.quest-cdecjournal.it/focus.php?id=335; see also Tamar
Hermann, “Pacifism and Anti-Militarism in the Period Surrounding the Birth of the
State of Israel,” Israel Studies, 15 2010, 127-48; Among the various publications
available, see Ruth Linn, Conscience at War. The Israeli Soldier as a Moral Critic
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), 122-127; Mira M. Sucharov,
International Self: Psychoanalysis and the Search for Israeli-Palestinian Peace
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005), 108-109.
examples of the cognitive dissociation at the foundation of those soldiers’

trauma, their dilemmas and their situation. These find a female counterpart
from the period of the Second Intifada in the documentary, TO SEE IF I AM
30
SMILING, by Tamar Yarom (2007).
Testimony as Struggle
All the movies and documentaries mentioned so far present individuals
that, by telling their story—as well as by remembering it through the act of
telling—eventually come to acknowledge and distance themselves from
that part of their past, or from the underlying context, taking responsibility
for actions that (seen at a temporal and geographical distance) appear
incomprehensible, if not detestable, and almost alien to one’s upbringing
and values. In WASTED, we find several such testimonies of post-eventum
detachment. The third soldier that we encounter, for example, speaks of
his attempt to scare off demonstrators from Beaufort. (See Fig. 16.7). In
his own words:
“The first time I saw demonstrators on the crosshairs, one quick quiver
went through my body and that was it. From that moment, I operated just
as I was taught. I was like a machine. To me they were cardboard targets. I
really wanted to shoot them. I felt like I had the chance to get revenge for
everything we went through there. Then I did something very stupid. I said
to myself: ‘Ok, I am not allowed to shoot at them. I must shoot near them.’
And they were standing near an electric pole, so I thought ‘I’ll shoot the
electric pole.’ When metal hits metal ricochets fly. I aligned my shot,
exhaled and took aim. Now, remember that the pole was surrounded by
people. At the time I did not even consider missing the target. Why should
I miss? […] If I had missed, I would have killed someone. I took aim at the
electric pole and took the shot […]. Then I had a feeling that I am shocked
today in retrospect. I can understand feeling excited in that situation; I can
understand fear; I can understand anger; all those feelings can be seen as
appropriate in that situation. I felt joy”.31
30
See also Chava Brownfield-Stein, “Visual representations of women soldiers and
‘Civil militarism’ in Israel” in: Gabriel Sheffer, Oren Barak (eds.), Militarism and
Israeli Society (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010), 304-328. An
important recent addition to the bibliography of women soldier testimonies is Shir
Daphna Tekoa and Ayelet Harel-Shalev, “‘Living in a Movie’ - Israeli Women
Combatants in Conflict Zones,” Women Studies’ International Forum, 44 (2014),
26-34
31
Kedar, WASTED, 08:08-09:21.
334 Chapter Sixteen
Similar emotions and words can be heard from a different context, for
instance, in TESTIMONY. The actor that impersonates the fourth soldier to
appear in the movie speaks in a way that could be compared to the
previous ones, even though his testimony refers to the Second Intifada.
The tone is that of shock, shame, anxiety and fear; the quote should be
read keeping these emotions in mind (See Fig. 16.8):
“The first time I fired at that city I thought I was crazy to agree […]. I was
covered in cold sweat. The radio screams: ‘Why aren’t you shooting.’ I am
shaking. The sniper asks for permission to shoot and I shout ‘Yes!’ ‘Yes!’
And he shoots bullet after bullet... And I cannot load my grenade launcher.
The radio man again screams. I clear my head. I load, cock and fire a
grenade that hits the foundation. Lucky hit! Soldiers shout ‘Yes!’ And I am
about to faint. My sniper says: Congratulations, a great shot. I reload and
this time is easier to shoot. It’s a game, like a video game. Finally the radio
man says ‘Hold your fire.’ I say a few words to my soldiers and send them
to bed. I don’t want them to see me tremble. I call Keren, my girlfriend.
She asks ‘How is it going?’ and I tell her that ‘Everything is fine’ because I
don’t want to tell her that I just fired at a house in the middle of a town.”32
Fig. 16.7
32
S. Elkabetz, TESTIMONY, 2011, 46:30-47:57.
Fig. 16.8
Both these testimonies point to the fracture caused by “the first time
that...,” i.e. when some sort of threshold was crossed that turned soldiers
into perpetrators of violence among civilians; in both cases, following the
recollection of a traumatic memory in a non-therapeutic setting, the trauma
emerges through a detachment of the agent from his act. As the following
quote from CONCRETE demonstrates, it is again a ‘first time’ threshold that
triggers a reflection on the events that occurred during the war:
“The first time I walked into the house when I came home, my wife and
my mom had a surprise for me. […] I went inside and I saw a new plasma
screen. I am not a big TV fan, but my mom thought it would make me
happy. They put up new shelves; they painted part of the wall and tidied up
the house so I came home to a more renovated, clean, accessorized house. I
stood there, looking at the house and I could not accept it; I didn’t agree to
it because the very moment that I saw the house... I knew how we left the
house for the family in Gaza. It was already something that there still was a
house, as the neighborhood was gone, but I knew... I could picture the
family coming home, and what do they see? The shit in the bathtub, all
their clothes, the beds where the soldiers had stepped with their boots, all
the holes in the walls, all their torn clothes, the smell of the soldiers and of
the weapons, of the... And I am in a brand new house with a plasma
screen...”33
33
Kedar, CONCRETE, 55:57-57:29.
336 Chapter Sixteen
There could be dozens of other testimonies by IDF soldiers expressing

detachment from their own actions upon or following their return from one
front or another; one could even go back to the 1968 bestseller, The
Seventh Day, to find, among other stories, many testimonies of
traumatized soldiers returning from the battlefields of the Six Day War—
as they were collected at the time by young journalists and authors, among
them Amos Oz—expressing shock, fear and horror at one’s own capacity
to inflict violence.34
Fewer are the testimonies of soldiers that reacted on the spot. It is
worth mentioning the already quoted Giora Ben-Dov, the urban planner
who refused to bomb Beirut, or the soldier filmed in CONCRETE, who told
his commander that he “wouldn’t shoot at things [he is] not supposed to
shoot at, and that he shouldn’t order [him] to do anything illegal.” The
soldier who talked about the clash between the fresh memories of the
house left semi-destroyed in Gaza and the renovated home found upon his
return also spoke of the reality (“there is life here [in Gaza]! […] There is
something here which is meaningful and great”) that he was only able to
glimpse, but not to “digest emotionally at the time,” too busy “trying to
survive, to protect my life” and seeking to “go home and leave the fear
behind for a while.”35
The three movies considered in this essay are either documentaries

presenting the testimonies/confessions of IDF soldiers, or movies where
testimonies/confessions are enacted for an audience.36 In the case of
Elkabetz’s TESTIMONY, they are presented in the least reassuring
framework possible: actors, photographed by David Adika, are framed in a
silent, peaceful, and surreally quiet landscape photographed by David
Adika. It is a scenery that does not show the markers of the occupation—
checkpoints, the separation fence, the bypass roads, the settlements37—a
stage where only language is able to depict the daily violent dynamics and
practices of the occupation. Both the testimonies of Israelis and
Palestinians are intentionally told in Hebrew—the language of the
34
Avraham Shapira (ed.), The Seventh Day. Soldiers Talk about the Six Day War,
recorded and edited by a group of young kibbutz members (New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1970).
35
Kedar, CONCRETE, 32:00-32:17; 47:26-48:05.
36
Drawing upon the distinction by LaCapra, Morag terms ‘testimony’ the narration
of the victim and ‘confession’ that of the perpetrator.
37
See Adi Ophir, M.ichal Givoni and Sari Hanafi (eds.), The Power of Inclusive
Inclusion. Anatomy of Israeli Rule in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (New
York: Zone Books, 2009).
occupier—with the aim of turning “the language of the occupier in his

own nightmare” and thus triggering a process that “would push […] out
denial”38 and make the viewer realize, as David Grossman has written, that
the shallower and plainer the language used to describe the conflict, the
greater the human impoverishment and the more claustrophobic the world
in which one lives.39 Some of these testimonies are marked with a
language imbued with violence; others describe situations that are highly
abusive and painful, especially for the Palestinians. As a side comment, it
should be remarked that all the actors chosen to impersonate IDF soldiers
are exceptionally attractive, revealing an aesthetic choice (that further
complicates the message of the movie) inspired to the principle of καλ
ὸς κἀγαθός (kalós kagathós), whereby who is aesthetically beautiful
cannot be but virtuous. Interestingly, though originating in the classical
military context, this concept has found countless applications in the world
of theatre and cinema.
On testifying and witnessing in reference to the historical experience of
the Holocaust, Dori Laub has defined testimony as a “ceaseless struggle”
on three levels: being witness to oneself within the experience, being a
witness to the testimonies of others, and being witness to the process of
witnessing itself.40 The contexts analyzed here are clearly distinct from
that of the Holocaust; yet Laub’s indications remain valid from a
methodological point-of-view. Many of the testimonies quoted herein—as
well as others that could be quoted in reference to a litany of IDF military
operations in the past thirty years—whether received by an NGO, film
director or historian, or found in the pages of published or unpublished
material, concern the first and the second levels of testifying, i.e. to oneself
and to the testimonies of others. IDF soldiers ‘break the silence’ to testify
about their own experiences and trauma, whether caused by conditions of
service, the cognitive dissonance between education and experience, or a
combination of the two. Each testimony stands on its own, reflecting an
individual experience of a given moment that cannot be generalized for
others and likely not in other contexts. At the same time, each describes
situations that provoked similar emotions: fear (of dying—whether at a
checkpoint, in Beaufort, at the hands of invisible enemies, in Gaza),
discomfort (the cold during guard duty in Beaufort, living under a
38
Director’s note. Press Kit for TESTIMONY.
39
David Grossman, Writing in the Dark (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
2008), 59-63.
40
Dori Laub, “Truth and Testimony: the Process and the Struggle” in: Caruth,
Trauma, 61-75.
338 Chapter Sixteen
fluorescent light, the job at checkpoints), distress and entrapment (the

settler girls and the Palestinians in Hebron), misplaced feelings (joy amidst
the dispersal of demonstrators at Beaufort), as well as a periodic
questioning of the legitimacy of certain military orders (as in Lebanon or
Gaza). In their own accounts, most who bore witness responded to
situations that mobilized internal resources, allowing them to respond on
the spot (without knowing what they were doing, as in Hebron, for
example), but that, after their return, they acknowledged as highly
problematic. In many respects, therefore—even when there is no direct
witnessing to the testimonies of others—these testimonies reflect and echo
one another, creating an archive of memories and traumas that could assist
the writing of a different history.
When using sources from documentaries or films, the third level—
being witness to the process of witnessing itself—is reserved for the
viewer (and historian), who becomes invested in the ultimate responsibility
of transmitting the testimony. This is even more obvious in TESTIMONY,
where the viewer is forced to participate not only by listening to the
stories, but also by being engaged by the actors’ prolonged gazes. The
following testimony (see Fig. 16.8) sums up some of the themes seen so
far: cognitive dissonance, fear, discomfort with one’s own behavior and
that of others, and the viewer being called directly into the picture not only
as a witness, but also as likewise co-responsible in whatever happens on
one front or another.
I could have been a kick-ass soldier if there was a war. But instead I gave
out candy to children to ease my conscience. There are many soldiers like
me who stood at the checkpoint and told an old woman ‘Buzz off!’ I don’t
feel I have to apologize for what I did. You are like me. What I did, you
did.41
Conclusion – An Archive of Memories

A particular question that should be asked is whether these and other
Israeli movies wherein the question of trauma figures prominently—such
as the internationally acclaimed WALTZ WITH BASHIR and LEBANON—
merely respond to the personal needs of directors or indicate, rather, that
Israeli society and its institutions are gradually coming to confront some of
the events of their recent history. Answering for WALTZ WITH BASHIR and
LEBANON, Raz Yosef has concluded in favor of the first option.
41
Elkabetz, TESTIMONY, 56:10-56:49.
Additionally, in an interview with Haaretz, Shlomi Elkabetz stated that he

did not make the film “to change anything […] but only to confront the
issue, to become a testimony of things that happen in this place where I
live.”42 At the same time, he spoke of how, during filming, he was able to
remember and draw the prison he had guarded as a soldier in Gaza, a
memory previously suppressed from his consciousness. Ari Folman and
Samuel Maoz also wrote about similar processes of healing while
preparing or shooting their films.43
This essay asks whether testimonies based on a traumatic experience
are able—with time—to bear a historical narrative distinct from the
national consensus. The time needed for such an unsettling narrative to be
acknowledged and integrated within the collective and national experience
is another, still unresolved question.44 In any case, requisite to the
initiation of this process is an acknowledgement that there exist texts and
other sources that can substantiate such claims. As we have seen, from
1967 to the present, there is an almost uninterrupted continuum of such
traumatic testimonies. Even by looking only at the case of Israeli
soldiers—only one of many sides to this story—we can draw on
testimonies from diverse realms: written, as in newspaper articles or in the
case of the two books mentioned here, Soldiers’ Talk and De Beyrouth à
Jénine; photographic, such as in the project by Gillian Laub and Ariella
Azoulay; and even rock music. Though fictional, a number of Israeli
literary works, including Infiltration by Yehoshua Kenaz, 1948 by Yoram
Kaniuk and the recently published Falling Out of Time by David
Grossmann, just to quote three examples,45 are all texts/sources that have
alerted the public to the existence of such traumatic narrations. Still other
testimonies come from the world of movies, as the various films
mentioned in this work demonstrate. As we have seen, in two instances,
testimonies were collected directly by Nurit Kedar, who directed WASTED
42
Nirit Anderman, “A sad basis in fact,” Haaretz Weekend, 13 January 2012.
43
http://www.sonyclassics.com/lebanon/lebanon_presskit.pdf, 6 (Accessed April
14, 2012), 3-4.
44
For a discussion of traits of continuity and discontinuity in veterans’ accounts
from a sociological point-of-view, see Edna Lomsky-Feder, “The Meaning of war
through Veterans’ Eyes,” in: Esther Herzog et al. (eds.), Perspectives on Israeli
Anthropology (Detroit: Wayne State University, 2010), 295-313.
45
Yehoshua Kenaz, Infiltration (Vermont: Mouth Royalton, 2003); Yoram Kaniuk,
1948, Giuntina, Firenze 2012; David Grossman, Nofel michutz lezman, (Tel Aviv:
HaKibbutz HaMeuchad, 2011); See also Runo Isaken, Literature and War.
Conversations with Israeli and Palestinian Writers, (Northampton, MA: Olive
Branch Press, 2009).
340 Chapter Sixteen
and CONCRETE. Finally, some of these testimonies originate in the projects

of NGOs. Tamar Katriel and Nimrod Shavit have analyzed testimonies
collected by the Israeli NGO Breaking the Silence.46 Another Israeli NGO,
Zochrot (named in reference to the events of 1948), has dug up individual
testimonies with the aim to reshape collective and public memory. In this
respect, it would seem that their work falls within the sphere of action
classic literature attributes to ‘civil society,’ conceived as that public space
where horizontally networked associations confront state authorities with
the aim of transforming political reality.47 The words heard so far
demonstrate that a plethora of such voices has existed for decades.
Despite such a wealth of testimonies, the examples quoted in this essay
also demonstrate that this category of trauma has yet to enter the Israeli
historical narrative or public sphere; such an entry would imply (at least in
part) some generalized level of acceptance of the subversive potential of
traumatic testimonies in unsettling standard national and historical
narratives, including the depiction of soldiering as heroism and patriotic
sacrifice. When completed, this traumatic puzzle will belie the popular
picture seen thus far, revealing that conflict—even considering only the
Israeli side of the picture—runs deep below the surface.
46
Katriel-Shavit, Archival memory.
47
Norberto Bobbio, Saggi su Gramsci, (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1990).

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The Horrors of Trauma in Cinema

The Horrors of Trauma in Cinema:

Michael Elm, Kobi Kabalek and Julia B. Köhne

This book first published 2014

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

ISBN (10): 1-4438-6042-5, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-6042-0

Contributors .............................................................................................. viii

Part I – Horror in Trauma Cinema

Chapter One ............................................................................................... 32

Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 46

Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 68

Part II – Nazism and War

Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 90

Chapter Five ............................................................................................ 108

Chapter Six .............................................................................................. 125

Part III – Memory and Trauma

Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 146

Chapter Eight ........................................................................................... 163

Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 177

Part IV – Israeli-Palestinian Film: Spaces

Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 194

Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 207

Chapter Twelve ....................................................................................... 224

Chapter Thirteen ...................................................................................... 251

Part V – Israeli-Palestinian Film: Experiences

Chapter Fourteen ..................................................................................... 272

Chapter Fifteen ........................................................................................ 294

Chapter Sixteen ....................................................................................... 314

Jeanne Bindernagel, studied theatre studies, linguistics, and

Michael Elm, PhD, studied sociology, political sciences and

Hinderk M. Emrich, 1968 MD (University of Bern); 1998 PhD

psychiatry, neurology and clinical psychopharmacology; 1979-1987

Pablo Fontana, is PhD candidate in the Department of History at the

Peter Grabher, is a freelance historian, film activist and works as a

Dania Hückmann received her PhD from the German Department at

interests include discourses of law in literature and film, narratology, and

Kobi Kabalek, holds a PhD from the University of Virginia, studied at

Julia B. Köhne, PD, PD, Dr. habil., is guest professor at Humboldt

deutschsprachigen Dokumentarfilm (Vienna, Mandelbaum, 2013) (with

Sandra Meiri, is co-chair of Film Studies in the Department of

Raya Morag, is an associate professor of cinema studies at the

Daniel Müller, is a PhD candidate in the Department of English and

Isaac (Itsik) Rosen, holds an MA and BFA in Film and Television

Christiane-Marie Abu Sarah, is a PhD candidate in the Department

Danielle Schwartz, is a PhD candidate in the Department of Hebrew

Marcella Simoni, obtained her PhD from the University of London in

Kerstin Stutterheim, PhD, is professor of dramaturgy and aesthetics

Ula Tabari is an independent Palestinian filmmaker living in Paris,

Thomas Weber, is a Professor of film and television studies at the

THE HORRORS OF TRAUMA IN CINEMA

JULIA B. KÖHNE, MICHAEL ELM

This anthology is the product of the international interdisciplinary

enabled to decapitate her. Her head becomes a weapon and is put on an

persecution.”2 Bronfen’s Specters of the War makes a contribution to

Violence – Void – Visualization

displaying traumatic symptoms, literature, spoken memories of an eye-

Trauma Theory and Film History

this was due to better orchestration of the disciplines of social psychology,

Film and Trauma Interface

self-generation, the primeval present of the Volk”?20 How do the acoustic,

cannot be easily reintegrated into the individual or national master