REPRESENTATION ON THE SILVER SCREEN: (RE)PRODUCTIVITY OF TRAUMA NARRATIVES VIA CINEMATIC STORYTELLING

Abstract

The reproduction of trauma narratives via the filmic medium can be understood as an embodiment of what Alison Landsberg terms “prosthetic memory”. According to Landsberg, prosthetic memories are detachable and commodified, “derived from engagement with a mediated representation” instead of first-hand and authentic experiences (20-21). She argues that it is due to their “[interchangeability] and [exchangeability]” that they are productive, bearing ethical, literary and political promise (20). Guided by Lansberg’s argument for the potential utility of prosthetic memories, this thesis investigates how the representation of trauma via the medium of film can be understood as productive. By navigating three selected texts that span across different socio-political and temporal settings, namely Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), Jimmy Murakami’s When The Wind Blows (1986), and Amer Shomali’s The Wanted 18 (2014), cinematic storytelling emerges as a complex yet cohesive means to make sense of disparate forms of historical trauma. I will expound on how each film reconfigures and negotiates what is seemly entrenched in the past or belatedly reconstructed in the present, investigating how the filmic medium’s engagement with trauma aligns with the temporalities and multivalence of the traumatic experience. Through an engagement with this curation of texts, this thesis is a concerted endeavour to further develop the critical relationship between trauma theory and film studies. In doing so, I hope to address the following questions: how do these films, varied as they are, respectively revise memories and narratives about historical trauma via cinematic storytelling? How can we better understand the ethical injunction offered by the filmic medium as productive by considering its potential for transferring, transposing and transfiguring traumatic memories and historicities?