Projecting the Holocaust into the Present

1
Projecting the Holocaust into the Present

• Imag(in)ing the Unimaginable
• The Devils Arithmetic

2
Lawrence Baron

• Chapter 1
• The Holocaust A Cinematic Cataclysm?
• Chapter 6
• The Children Are Watching Holocaust Films for
  Youngsters
• In Projecting the Holocaust into the Present The
  Changing Focus of Contemporary Holocaust Cinema.
  Lawrence Baron
• Rowman Littlefield Lanham, Maryland, 2005.

3
A Crisis of Representation

• The question inexorably asserts itself Does
  there exist another way, another language to say
  what is unsayable? The image perhaps? Can it be
  more accessible, more malleable, more expressive
  than the word? Can I admit it? I am as wary of
  one as of the other. Even more of the image. Of
  the filmed image, of course. One does not imagine
  the unimagineable. And in particular, one does
  not show it on screen
• -- Elie Wiesel

4
Assumptions of critics

• The first asserts that since the Holocaust is
  unique and exists outside of human meaning,
  it can never be accurately represented in cinema
  or literature (3).
• The second assumption concedes that even though
  it might be possible to approximate what the
  Holocaust was like in feature films and novels,
  such portrayals must mirror the reality that
  most of the Jews died, most the Germans
  collaborated with the perpetrators or remained
  passive bystanders, and most of the victims sent
  to the showers were gassed (3).

5
Barons Dissent

• Human beings planned, implemented, condoned,
  perished in, resisted, and survived the Final
  Solution. Consequently, it should not be regarded
  as a supernatural phenomenon beyond human
  comprehension and representation (3).

6
Children, the Holocaust, and Hope

• If we persist in thinking that children need
  hope and happy endings, then the stories we give
  them about the Holocaust will be shaped by those
  expectations, and we will need to consider
  narrative strategies that give child readers a
  double narrative, one that simultaneously
  respects our need for hope and happy endings even
  as it teaches a different lesson about history.
• -- Adrienne Kertzer

7
Emplotment

• Disruption-Resolution
• Double-Narrative