Expertise, Criticism and Holocaust Memory in Cinema

Abstract

This essay offers a critical examination of two recent Holocaust films that exemplify contrasting approaches to Holocaust representation: Peter Forgacs’s 1997 The maelstrom: A family chronicle and Quentin tarantino’s 2009 Inglourious basterds. One film is historical; the other translates history to figurative exaggeration. The essay explores how The maelstrom positions viewers within the constructed subjunctive spaces of the film, while Inglourious basterds positions viewers as spectators of history as comic book. Looking at these films together illuminates competing rhetorical claims to expertise in film production and reception, and, in the context of Holocaust memory, the levels of expertise required of viewing audiences. Moreover, the analysis reveals that rhetorical aporia no longer dominates inventional possibilities for cinematic memory construction of the Holocaust.

Keywords:

• Memory
• Film
• Aporia
• Expertise
• Rhetoric

Notes

1. This understanding of rhetorical aporia can be found in Jasinski (2001), LaCapra (2001), and Owen and Ehrenhaus (2010).

2. The fact that the adult women are still wearing gold wedding bands in these scenes suggests that perhaps the footage was shot substantially earlier than the eminent departure for Auschwitz. The Nazis most probably collected all the gold owned by Dutch Jews well before the Peerebooms were sent to the camps in 1942. My thanks to Judith Kay for this insight.

3. Bill Nichols reports that the home movies of the Seyss-Inquart family were housed in the Royal Dutch Film Archive (2003, 5). He also reports that Seyss-Inquart “was executed as a war criminal at the conclusion of the war” (Nichols 2003, 12).

4. In an interview, Tarantino explained his creative imagination with this character. He claims that Aldo has “been fighting fascism since he got into the war … Nazis, Kluxers, they’re all the same to him. But he’s a war history nut, so he knows all about Geronimo’s battle plans and the idea of doing an Apache style resistance against the Germans” (Pfefferman 2009, 15A).