Formal doubleness and moral duplicity: the Holocaust on the page and screen
2012
This essay examines representations of the Holocaust in several media, mostly prose
narrative fiction and film. It focuses in particular on the ways in which depictions of the
Holocaust involve a sense of moral duplicity, both as regards the experiences portrayed
(on the part of victims as well as perpetrators) and as egards the ambiguous status of the
literary / fllmic artifact in relation to its audience. It also focuses on aspects of formal
doubleness in the construction of the works themselves, such as the clash between a
character's or a narrator's limited awareness of reality and the reader's / viewer's fuller
understanding of the implications of the stories; and on the role of propaganda and false
consciousness. Michel Foucault's remarks on heterotopia and utopia form the basis for
the critical rationale of the essay. Works of literature discussed include John Boyne's
novel "The Boy in the Striped yjamas", Piotr Rawicz's "Blood from the Sky" and Tadeusz
Borowski's collection of short stories "This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen"; films
include Roberto Benigni's "Life is Beautiful", Charles Chaplin's "The Great Dictator", Steven
Spielberg's "Schindler's List", Vicente Amorim 's "Good", Paul Schrader's "Adalll Resurrected", and
the ftlm version of Boyne's "The Boy in the Sriped Pyjamas", directed by Mark Herman.
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