Genocide on Film

Mar. 08, 2012

6:33 p.m.

It's a bit jarring: the glaring error that leaps from the first sentence of the introduction to Film & Genocide (published by University of Wisconsin Press). The word genocide was not coined in 1933 as the book states, but 1943, in response to the Holocaust that began two years earlier. Of course, editors Kristi M. Wilson and Tomas F. Crowder-Taraborrelli must know this; typos happen, but stilla book about genocide shouldn't open with something so obviously wrong. Sloppy copyediting isn't the only question mark about Film & Genocide. Fashionably sloppy thinking can occasionally be found among the collection's essays. In his contribution on Chilean documentaries of the Pinochet regime, Michael J. Lazzara insists on calling the mass murder of political opponents genocide, even though the crimes of Pinochet weren't directed against a particular national identity but fellow Chileans opposed to his rule. Stretching the definition of genocide to cover every terrible crime, every slaughter, undermines the intention of the Jewish refugee who coined it, Raphael Lemkin, and diminishes the ability to distinguish attempts to wipe out entire ethnic, religious or cultural groups from a host of other political crimes. Fortunately, Film & Genocide also contains much to admire, including Jennifer L. Barker's close reading of Orson Welles' The Stranger, in which an architect of the Holocaust is found comfortably concealed in an idyllic New England town, and Georgiana Banita's sensitive examination of Turkey's strenuous denial of the Armenian Genocide (and its impact on personal lives) in light of Atom Egoyan's Ararat. Sophia Wood's essay “Film and Atrocity” lays out the larger ethical problems dogging the book's topic by weighing opinions by other scholars on Holocaust movies, especially Steven Spielberg's genre-setting Schindler's List. As Wood says, the immensity of the Holocaust (and, I would add, other genocides) is difficult to fully comprehend. Even documentary footage gives rise to charges of voyeurism from some authorities and fictionalized dramatizations generate even greater controversy. But aside from painting Oskar Schindler in brighter colors than the real man behind the story, and Spielberg's irrepressible urge to sentimentalize, is Schindler's List as odious as some of its critics charge? One writer quoted by Wood, Janina Struk, attacks Spielberg for his gas chamber scene. “Even the Nazis, as far as we know, drew the line at filming in the gas-chambers.” But wait: Spielberg never actually filmed murder in a gas chamber. He depicted a particular reality with details chosen for emotional effect on the audience. After all, isn't that one thing art of any kind has always tried to domove an audience by establishing a sense of emotional connection with people and events?