Creating a Community of Witnesses: Acts of Reading in Anne Michaels’s Fugitive Pieces

Canadian Jewish Studies / Études juives canadiennes ◽

10.25071/1916-0925.40245 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 32 ◽

pp. 113-127

Author(s):

Brenda Beckman-Long

Keyword(s):

Mise En Abyme ◽

The Holocaust

This article considers the reading effects of the mise en abyme in Anne Michaels's Fugitive Pieces to create a community of witnesses among readers. The novel’s multi-voicedness, created through a series of narratees and narrators, models complex identifications of the author, narrators, and reader. Through the figure of the reader presented by the narratees Bella, Michaela, and Naomi, as well as the narrators Athos, Jakob, and Ben, Michaels engages us in acts of reading and interpreting the ongoing effects of the Holocaust. She offers a prime example of not the eyewitness but the reader as witness in recent Canadian fiction.Cet article examine les effets de lecture de la mise en abyme dans Fugitive Pieces d’Anne Michaels pour créer une communauté de lecteurs en tant que témoins. Le caractère multivoix du roman, créé par une série de narrataires et de narrateurs, modélise les identifications complexes de l’auteur, des narrateurs et du lecteur. À travers la figure du lecteur représentée par les narrataires Bella, Michaela et Naomi, ainsi que par les narrateurs Athos, Jakob et Ben, Michaels nous engage dans des actes de lecture et d’interprétation des effets continus de l’Holocauste. Elle offre un excellent exemple non pas du témoinoculaire, mais du lecteur en tant que témoin dans la fiction canadienne récente.

Download Full-text

Rose-Colored Genocide: Hollywood, Harmonizing Narratives, and the Cinematic Legacy of Anne Frank’s Diary in the United States

Genocide Studies and Prevention ◽

10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1715 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 14 (2) ◽

pp. 65-89

Author(s):

Nora Nunn

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Cultural Studies ◽

The United States ◽

The Other ◽

Film Adaptation ◽

Mise En Abyme ◽

Other Hand ◽

The Holocaust ◽

Killing Fields ◽

Schindler's List

Drawing from literary and cultural studies, this paper situates U.S. adaptations of Anne Frank’s diary in the 1950s within a lineage of other films about historical genocide, including Schindler’s List, Hotel Rwanda, and The Killing Fields. Analysis of these narrative adaptations matters because it helps us better understand the danger of what critic Dominick LaCapra calls “harmonizing narratives,” or stories that provide the viewer with an “unwarranted sense of spiritual uplift” (14). Tracing the metamorphosis of Frank’s own diary from play to film adaptation, this article builds on existing scholarship to focus on how, in the wake of what has become known as the Holocaust, Hollywood began to construct popular and simplified understandings of complex genocidal crimes—all in the name of celebrating globalized humanity. In the first part of the article, I take a longer view of these adaptations by situating U.S. interpretations of Frank’s diary within a lineage of other Hollywood versions of historical genocide, including The Killing Fields, Schindler’s List, and Hotel Rwanda. I argue that in making Anne Frank’s story morally simplifying and ultimately uplifting for U.S. audiences—in other words, shaping it into what critic Dominick LaCapra calls a “harmonizing narrative”—these Broadway and Hollywood adaptations privileged rose-colored narratology for that would influence future mainstream cinematic representations in dangerous ways. The second part of the paper then considers cinematic alternatives from outside of Hollywood (such as Canada, Rwanda, and Spain) that challenge these harmonizing narratives by enlisting a mise en abyme structure—in other words, the nesting of stories within stories—that ultimately suggest the full representation of genocide is impossible. By making false promises of harmony, Hollywood’s interpretation of Frank’s story has, in turn, limited our understanding of subsequent genocides. On the other hand, alternative modes of cinematic storytelling—most notably, ones such as Ararat that fracture a coherent narrative—compel the audience to grapple with questions of spectatorship, agency, and above all, the problems of representation.

Download Full-text

Texts—Textures—Intertexts: Brian Cherney’s Transfiguration (1990)

Intersections Canadian Journal of Music ◽

10.7202/1059894ar ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 37 (1) ◽

pp. 181-200

Author(s):

Matthew Ricketts

Keyword(s):

Jewish Woman ◽

Mise En Abyme ◽

The Holocaust ◽

The Relationship ◽

The Way

Transfiguration ([1990] 1991) is one of Brian Cherney’s most ambitious compositions. Scored for large orchestra, the piece explores how memories transfigure reality and what that process might sound like. Cherney weaves together a dizzying mise en abyme of quotations—from the canonic repertoire, simulacra of European folk tunes, and his own earlier music (including most prominently Shekhinah for solo viola from [1988] 1992). Orchestral textures alternatively obscure and reveal material both directly and indirectly related to and inspired by the Holocaust, including the photograph of a Hungarian Jewish woman at Auschwitz who haunts the work. The fleeting figure of this unknown woman is represented in the way that material is transfigured—lost, re-emerging, and lost again—throughout. This article focuses on Transfiguration as an apotheosis of Cherney’s interest in the relationship between orchestral texture and intertextuality.

Download Full-text