Formal doubleness and moral duplicity: the Holocaust on the page and screen

• Autores: Jorge Miguel Bastos da Silva
• Localización: Relational designs in literature and the arts: page and stage, canvas and screen / Rui Carvalho Homem (ed. lit.), 2012, ISBN 978-90-420-3581-2, págs. 121-135
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • 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.