Re-enactment and Traumatic Memory: Cinematic Ethics in The Act of Killing and S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine

IF 0.4 0 HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY Emotions-History Culture Society Pub Date : 2021-07-13 DOI:10.1163/2208522X-02010117
Robert Sinnerbrink
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Abstract

The Act of Killing (Oppenheimer, 2012) and its companion piece, The Look of Silence (2014), are powerful works of cinematic ethics. The former is a ‘perpetrator documentary’ that invites killers to make movie re-enactments of their crimes, the latter a case of ‘ethical witnessing’ in which a victim’s descendant questions his brother’s killer. In what follows, I explore The Act of Killing’s use of stylised re-enactments, using various movie genres as distancing and mediating devices, which enable the perpetrators to approach and expose their traumatic acts of violence. I contrast this with Rithy Panh’s perpetrator/witness documentary, S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine (2003), focusing on the mass killings perpetrated by the Pol Pot regime (1975–1979), which uses both visual representations and a more direct, bodily performative mode of re-enactment, to represent and communicate traumatic memory. Both films examine a range of moral emotions, solicited through interview sequences and different modes of cinematic re-enactment. These strategies enable the perpetrators to expose their traumatic violence and, in some cases, acknowledge the suffering of their victims, but also allow the perpetrators to be questioned and held to account, staging an ethical encounter wherein the social recognition of traumatic memory of political violence might become possible.
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重演与创伤记忆:《杀戮演绎》与《红色高棉杀人机器》中的电影伦理
《杀戮演绎》(奥本海默,2012)及其配套作品《沉默之影》(2014)都是电影伦理的有力作品。前者是一部“罪犯纪录片”,邀请凶手将他们的罪行拍成电影,后者是一个“道德见证”的案例,其中受害者的后代质疑杀害他兄弟的凶手。接下来,我将探讨《杀戮演绎》对风格化重演的运用,使用各种电影类型作为距离和调解手段,使肇事者能够接近并暴露他们的创伤性暴力行为。我将其与Rithy Panh的纪录片《S21:红色高棉杀人机器》(2003)进行对比,后者关注波尔布特政权(1975-1979)所犯下的大规模杀戮,它使用视觉表现和更直接的身体表演模式来再现和传达创伤记忆。两部电影都通过采访序列和不同的电影重演模式审视了一系列道德情感。这些策略使肇事者能够揭露其创伤性暴力行为,在某些情况下,承认受害者的痛苦,但也允许对肇事者进行询问和追究责任,从而进行一次道德上的接触,使社会认识到政治暴力的创伤性记忆成为可能。
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来源期刊
Emotions-History Culture Society
Emotions-History Culture Society HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY-
CiteScore
0.70
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0.00%
发文量
3
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