Hamid Dabashi in his “Introduction” to Dreams of a Nation: On Palestinian Cinema establishes Palestinian cinema as traumatic realism. The defining feature of traumatic realism is “The mutation of…repressed anger into an aestheticized violence - the aesthetic presence of a political absence” (Dabashi, “Introduction” 11). Here, aestheticized violence serves a political underpinning. Elsewhere in contemporary cinema, which is no stranger to aestheticized violence, directors focus on the aestheticization as such. Dabashi repeatedly singles out Elia Suleiman for special recognition among Palestinian directors. For him, Suleiman’s films are particularly attuned to the crisis of mimesis in traumatic realism (Dabashi, “Introduction” 21). Suleiman’s affinity to cinematically represent the crisis of mimesis, while still attending to the politically repressed leads to a unique aestheticization of violence, which focuses on narrative and cinematic means of stylization over finely polished visual representations found in modern consumer cinema.
In Divine Intervention, violence becomes aestheticized through narrative and cinematic absurdity. Instead of shying away from metaphor in a crisis of representation, “when reality becomes…too unreal to accommodate any metaphor,” Divine Intervention takes metaphor and stretches it to its logical limits, where a piece of fruit becomes a bomb to represent the suppressed anger in Palestinian society. The lack of establishing a central point of view from the outset of the film further adds to the incongruousness of the narrative is. Suleiman achieves this by focusing on a neighborhood of characters at the beginning of the film, delaying the formation of focalizing point that would structure the na...
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...thoritative narratives do not allow space for critical reflection. Instead, they require a passive, uncritical individual to fully work.
Elia Suleiman’s cinematic reflexivity and poetic structure provide him the means to work through the crisis of mimesis while attending to political particularities of the Palestinian occupation. His style resists totalizing and appropriation by other narratives. It effectively critiques Israeli state violence by opening the violence up to questioning and reinterpretation, but the film does not move beyond questioning. In leaving his film open to interpretation, Suleiman refuses to provide answers to the questions he opened in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Any attempt at providing an answer to the questions raised in the film would push the film towards a totalizing narrative and weaken the poetic structure of the film.
1. Sobchack’s argument pertaining to on -screen violence that she wrote thirty years ago was that any violent acts portrayed in movies back then was to emphasize the importance of an element in a story, an emphatic way of engaging the viewers and forcing them to feel what the movie was about. It gave them a sense of the substance of the plot which would allow them to feel for the characters and yearn for good to overcome evil. In other words, the effort made to engage audiences through depictions of violence created violence that was artistic and well done, or as Sobchack writes, violence was “aestheticized.” Violence was incorporated into film in a stylistic way, and even though violence in all forms is offending, twenty five years ago when it was seen in film, it had a greater impact on audiences because it had meaning (Sobchack 429).
“Longitudes and Attitudes” is a collection of his more recent columns and a diary of supporting incidents. It relates to the theme that has consumed him in his career. This theme is given point by Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the attack of 9/11.
Often, when a story is told, it follows the events of the protagonist. It is told in a way that justifies the reasons and emotions behind the protagonist actions and reactions. While listening to the story being cited, one tends to forget about the other side of the story, about the antagonist motivations, about all the reasons that justify the antagonist actions.
Most people think Israel always belonged to the Jews but it wasn’t always a safe, holy place where Jews could roam freely. Along with Palestine, it was actually forcefully taken from the Arabs who originated there. The main purpose of this novel is to inform an audience about the conflicts that Arabs and Jews faced. Tolan’s sources are mainly from interviews, documentations and observations. He uses all this information to get his point across, and all the quotes he uses is relevant to his points. The author uses both sides to create a non-biased look at the facts at hand. The novel starts in the year 1967 when Bashir Al-Khairi and his cousins venture to their childhood home in Ramallah. After being forced out of their homes by Jewish Zionists and sent to refuge for twenty years. Bashir arrives at his home to find a Jewish woman named Dalia Eshkenazi. She invites them into her home and later the...
This marked the beginning of the Palestine armed conflict, one of its kinds to be witnessed in centuries since the fall of the Ottoman Empire and World War 1. Characterized by a chronology of endless confrontations, this conflict has since affected not only the Middle East relations, but also the gl...
Movies, one can argue, are one of America’s greatest pastimes. Unfortunately, after 9/11, films have become increasingly prejudiced against American Muslims. In movies Muslims are frequently portrayed negatively. According to James Emery, a professor of Anthropology, Hollywood profits off of “casting individuals associated with specific negative stereotypes”. This is due to the fact that viewers automatically link characters with their clichéd images (Emery). For Muslims, the clichéd image is of the violent fundamentalist, who carried out the terroristic attacks on 9/11. As a result, the main stereotypes involved in movies display Muslims as extremists, villains, thieves, and desert nomads. An example of a movie that has such a negative character role for Muslims in film is Disney’s cartoon Aladdin, depict...
One could easily dismiss movies as superficial, unnecessarily violent spectacles, although such a viewpoint is distressingly pessimistic and myopic. In a given year, several films are released which have long-lasting effects on large numbers of individuals. These pictures speak
Galen Strawson argues against narrativity by describing the way he sees his life – episodically. I argue that he is not neutral in his description of narrativity and episodicity and that this weakens his claim. Narrativity, according to Galen, is when one sees one’s life as a story or a narrative. Contrarily, episodicity is when one sees one’s life in episodes and does not construe these episodes to form a narrative . Strawson specifically claims that not everyone lives his or her life as a narrative, and he is against the idea that “a richly Narrative outlook is essential to a well-lived life” . In order for his claim to be supported, he must give both sides of each argument and, therefore, remain neutral.
Joyce, James. “Araby.” The Norton Introduction to Literature, Shorter Eighth Edition. Eds. Jerome Beaty, Alison Booth, J. Paul Hunter, and Kelly J. Mays. New York: W.W.Norton.
Critics have already begun a heated debate over the success of the book that has addressed both its strengths and weaknesses. The debate may rage for a few years but it will eventually fizzle out as the success of the novel sustains. The characters, plot, emotional appeal, and easily relatable situations are too strong for this book to crumble. The internal characteristics have provided a strong base to withstand the petty attacks on underdeveloped metaphors and transparent descriptions. The novel does not need confrontations with the Middle East to remain a staple in modern reading, it can hold its own based on its life lessons that anyone can use.
He underlines the divine idea of peace and understanding given by God to His people. However, this conception is well opposed by the explosions and terror shared in the area instead. Given that, the sociopolitical value of the book Palestine by Joe Sacco cannot be underestimated. The author provides Western people with an exact picture of the war in the Middle East and the violence it spreads as an after effect. Hereby, a political mismatch by officials and inability to urge for peace are, perhaps, the main topics in the book. And what I appreciate is that the graphic novel doesn’t seek to politicize the events. The focus of all the anecdotes centers on the people. Ordinary people like you and I, who are drawn into the vicious cycle of hate, prejudice, violence, revenge and
Joyce, James. "Araby." 1914. Literature and Ourselves. Henderson, Gloria, ed. Boston, Longman Press. 2009. 984-988.
Slowly we are led to see how a simple, innocent man can lose the demeanor of mercy and civility as he allows revenge to dominate his emotions. The kind, peaceful, and helpful Emad we knew in the opening scene is now clouded in a different ideation. In the most calculated manner, Farhadi lets us visualize Emad’s earlier reply to his student, how a man can gradually change into a different
The historical drama, Lawrence of Arabia, is a reflection of one man’s interpretation of Arab culture during World War I. In Lawrence of Arabia, the director, David Lean, shows the journey of T.E. Lawrence and how he helped defeat the Turkish forces. He uses imagery and specific scenes to convey this idea of British superiority throughout the movie. The direct and indirect use of wells in the movie shows Lean’s interpretation of Arab culture.
Eshun, K. and R. Gray (2011) 'The Militant Image: A Ciné‐Geography', Third Text, 25 (1), p. 1-12.