Holocaust, Trauma and Bollywood
This is an essay about who “owns” the trauma associated with the Holocaust, which is the name used in the West for the extermination campaign against European Jews during World War II. Note that I’m not talking about the academic debate over the “uniqueness” of the Holocaust, or whether it was just another example of racism, albeit an extreme example. I mean who is allowed to talk about the Holocaust, to “own” it in the sense of borrowing some of the trauma associated with mass extermination to explain other traumas in life.
The prompt for this essay is the release of a new Bollywood movie called “Bawaal” that repeatedly makes reference to the Holocaust as a metaphor for relationship problems and a kind of anomie that plague two young Indian lovers. It’s streaming now on Amazon Prime.
Here’s a summary of the criticism the movie has received, as described in The Guardian newspaper:
“However, film critics and Jewish organisations have raised issues about the portrayal of the characters’ visits to some of the most horrific sites of the Holocaust, which are entwined in their love story. The trailer makes reference to the ‘war within,’ and in one scene the couple visit Auschwitz. During the sequence one of them says: ‘Every relationship goes through its Auschwitz.’
“In another fantasy scene in a gas chamber, the couple are pictured in striped pyjamas and the male lead says: ‘We’re all a little like Hitler, aren’t we?’ in reference to people never being satisfied.”
Many years ago, a small controversy erupted when a well-known sportswriter referred to a blowout during a professional basketball game as “a Holocaust.” The writer was roundly criticized and, if I recall correctly, apologized for trivializing the death of millions, reducing it to a crappy sporting event.
But this strikes me as different. The Guardian’s writer noted that the Holocaust is barely known in India, and that some instruction in “the world’s largest democracy” once praised Adolph Hitler’s accomplishments. This is not about a sportswriter lunging for a word that’s stronger than “rout” or “blood bath,” however, but characters in a play talking about their feelings. Two lovers from India are thinking about the Holocaust. Why should they not be allowed to? And, who are these self-appointed monitors of history who criticize the movie not for a historical inaccuracy but for violating some kind of taboo? I’m glad that the director, Nitesh Tiwari, has introduced the subject to his viewers, even if in a small way. Everything gets popularized and diluted when it moves out of the history books and halls of academe, and the Holocaust is not going to be an exception.
I think part of the criticism of the movie and the accusation that it trivializes genocide (there are calls for Amazon Prime to remove the movie from its streaming service, i.e., censorship) is that the Holocaust is considered too holy, too sanctified, to be dealt with in any but most somber and tearful way. The former DePaul University professor and author Norman Finkelstein, who wrote “The Holocaust Industry: Reflection on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering,” argued that a lot of people are simply making money off the Holocaust, and his many supporters use the book to criticize support for Israel.
My interest in invoking Finkelstein is not to talk about exploiting anything or to get into debate over the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is something Finkelstein wrote early in the book, a claim he made to the effect that the Holocaust is too holy or sanctified to ever be invoked or discussed in anything but the most special of circumstances. He claimed that neither he nor his family would ever talk about the Holocaust except in remembrance of the dead, i.e., at a memorial service. People who are criticizing the movie seem to agree - don’t confuse holy water for Coca-Cola! The real criticism is not that the movie trivializes the Holocaust; it is a demand for piety.
My mother and father and older siblings were refugees from Eastern Poland during World War II, landing in America only in February 1946, and I believe one of my brothers shared the view that one is never to discuss the Holocaust except in the most special of circumstances and, furthermore, that no one who wasn’t touched personally by the suffering and genocide should ever be allowed to talk about it. It’s like a priestly class in virtually every religion claiming that only they can have communion with God.
Why?
Here is another criticism of the Bollywood movie cited by The Guardian: “Rabbi Abraham Cooper, an associate dean and the director of Global Social Action at the NGO, said: ‘Auschwitz is not a metaphor. It is the quintessential example of man’s capacity for evil.’”
Actually, anything can be a metaphor. Language itself is a metaphor for reality. I’m glad more people are learning about this chapter in World War II, even if it is diluted.