2018 | 1

Recent Submissions

Now showing 1 - 10 of 10
  • Review
  • Review
    Book Review: Wendy I. Zierler, Movies and Midrash
    Knauss, Stefanie (2018)
  • Review
  • Article
    Intercultural Perspectives on Das radikal Böse and The Act of Killing: Similarities and Dissimilarities in Coping with Trauma in Indonesia and Germany, in Southeast Asia and Europe
    Bakker, Freek (2018)
    This article offers a close reading of DAS RADIKAL BÖSE (RADICAL EVIL, Stefan Ruzowitzky, DE 2013) and THE ACT OF KILLING (Joshua Oppenheimer, ID / USA 2012) – two very different films – that nevertheless provide images of the same topic by focusing different facets of it. These filmic works arise from very different situations and context, referring to historic events in countries lying in a large geographic and chronologic distance from each other. But in these two completely different contexts, also from a religious perspective, something maybe detected which universally human. The thoughts of Zygmunt Bauman and Emmanuel Levinas may be helpful in this exploration of three scenes in which the perpetrators seem to break down when they realise what they did to the women and children.
  • Review
  • Article
    Punishment and Crime: The Reverse Order of Causality in The White Ribbon
    van der Pol, Gerwin (2018)
    This article explores, within a sociological-psychological framework, the problematic moral emotions of spectators evoked by watching the film Das weiße Band (The White Ribbon, Michael Haneke, DE/AT/FR/IT, 2009). As always in Michael Haneke’s films the spectator’s moral system is severely put to the test, upon watching the unimaginable actions people are capable of. At first sight the shown atrocities that remain unpunished seem to cause the spectator’s distress. The real horror, however, lies in the fact the evil occurs within the boundaries of a religious society that hails itself as good and just. The word of God as a moral guide becomes ineffective in this film and in Dogville (Lars von Trier, NL/DK/UK/FR/FI/SE/DE/ IT/NO 2003), a film used as comparison. Both films exemplify that in the end, the most difficult conclusion to process by the spectator is that the worst crime is feeling morally superior and teaching others how to behave. In The White Ribbon this teaching is projected as the punishment that causes the crimes.
  • Article
    Representations of Religion and Culture in Children’s Literature: An Analysis of Othering Processes in Texts and Illustrations
    Eberhardt, Verena (2018)
    Literature is an important medium for representing and communicating world views and values. This article focuses on the representation of culture and religion and reveals constructions of identities in children’s literature. The analysis of selected contemporary books from the German speaking area considers the representation of the main characters and their cultural and religious background as well as their faith and practices with a discourse analytical approach. The analysed narrations tend to specify difference by means of cultural and religious characteristics; instead of dissolving those categories, narrations strengthen them. The article states the importance of literature in the mediation of knowledge, self-concepts, interpersonal perceptions and normative paradigms.
  • Article
    The Banality of Ghosts: Searching for Humanity with Joshua Oppenheimer in The Act of Killing
    van Liere, Lucien (2018)
    In The Act of Killing, (Joshua Oppenheimer, ID, DK 2012), Joshua Oppenheimer searches for humanness by assessing the rituals, routines and grammar of former perpetrators who played a role during the 1965/6 genocide in Medan, Indonesia. This article puts The Act of Killing in the context of Oppenheimer’s writings on film and violence and explores how this film negotiates humanness by working with a missionary paradigm of expressive guilt that not only serves the director, but also a critical audience with a happy ending.
  • Article
    Trauma and Conformity: Psychology in The Act Of Killing and Das radikal Böse
    Zondag, Hessel J. (2018)
    This article discusses the psychological aspects of two documentaries about violence: THE ACT OF KILLING by Joshua Oppenheimer and DAS RADIKAL BÖSE (THE RADICAL EVIL) by Stefan Ruzowitzky. These are the concepts ‘Trauma’ and ‘Conformism’. Both perspectives expose, provide insight and structure. But to both concepts question marks can be placed, because both of them also hide important elements of the violence described in the documentaries.
  • Article
    Trauma, Memory and Religion in Film. Editorial
    Bakker, Freek; van Liere, Lucien (2018)