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.
2. According to Sobchack, contemporary screen violence greatly differs than portrayals of violence in years past. Today, violent scenes are careless and lack significance because we as audiences have become calloused and desensitized to any acts of violence. She states that there is “no grace or benediction attached to violence. Indeed, its very intensity seems diminished” (Sobchack 432). Senseless violence, gruesome acts, and profound amounts of gore are prevalent in movies today, and because even this is not enough, it must be accompanied by loud blasts and noise, constantly moving scenes to keep audiences stimulated and large quantities of violence for viewers to enjoy what they are watching. Decades ago, it was the story that was engaging to audiences and filmmaking was an art.
“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.
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.
“Drawing on appropriate theory, deconstruct a narrative to show how it operates on the psychological, cultural and/or ergodic level within the interactive text of your choice.”
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...
Rotham, William. "Violence and Film", in Violence and American Cinema. Slocum, J. David, ed. Routledge, 2001.
Joe Sacco’s graphic novel, Palestine, deals with the repercussions of the first intifada in Israel/Palestine/the Holy Land. The story follows the author through the many refugee camps and towns around Palestine as he tries to gather information, stories, and pictures to construct his graphic novel. While the book is enjoyable at a face level, there are many underlying themes conveyed throughout its illustrated pages and written text.
The Green Zone directed by Paul Greengrass and starring Matt Damon focuses primarily on the United States' involvement in Iraq, 2003 on the eve of George Bush's 'War on Terror'. Though the movie focuses more on behind the scenes activities of Senior U.S Officials and media agencies at the time of war, snippets throughout the film portray the Middle East and its inhabitants in a time of political turmoil and backlash, as Iraqi people are often seen angry and unsettled in large groups due to the danger of events that transpire around them, with the U.S now pulling the strings in the war torn region determining the future of all its citizens. This essay will focus mainly on the theme of politics expressed throughout the movie by focusing on certain dialogues amongst characters, analysing important scenes and settings, and will make reference to Edward Said's 'Orientalism' in arguing that Arabs are often misplaced and mistreated at the hands of Americans throughout the movie.
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.
The article Regime-Made Disaster: On the Possibility of Nongovernmental Viewing collected from the book Sensible Politics: The Visual Culture of Nongovernmental Activism, New York, NY: Zone Books, 2012. The author Ariella Azoulay who is an art curator, filmmaker, and theorist of photography and visual culture, currently she is working as an assistant professor at Brown University. However, her study discloses a detail view how the Israeli regime turns the photography of their invasion on Palestinians to benevolent photographs of Palestinian refugees.
The postmodern cinema emerged in the 80s and 90s as a powerfully creative force in Hollywood film-making, helping to form the historic convergence of technology, media culture and consumerism. Departing from the modernist cultural tradition grounded in the faith in historical progress, the norms of industrial society and the Enlightenment, the postmodern film is defined by its disjointed narratives, images of chaos, random violence, a dark view of the human state, death of the hero and the emphasis on technique over content. The postmodernist film accomplishes that by acquiring forms and styles from the traditional methods and mixing them together or decorating them. Thus, the postmodern film challenges the “modern” and the modernist cinema along with its inclinations. It also attempts to transform the mainstream conventions of characterization, narrative and suppresses the audience suspension of disbelief. The postmodern cinema often rejects modernist conventions by manipulating and maneuvering with conventions such as space, time and story-telling. Furthermore, it rejects the traditional “grand-narratives” and totalizing forms such as war, history, love and utopian visions of reality. Instead, it is heavily aimed to create constructed fictions and subjective idealisms.
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
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