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Exploring Trauma Through Fantasy

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Exploring Trauma Through Fantasy IN-BETWEEN WORLDS: EXPLORING TRAUMA THROUGH FANTASY Amber Leigh Francine Shields A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD at the University of St Andrews 2018 Full metadata for this thesis is available in St Andrews Research Repository at: http://research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk/ Please use this identifier to cite or link to this thesis: http://hdl.handle.net/10023/16004 This item is protected by original copyright This item is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ 4 Abstract While fantasy as a genre is often dismissed as frivolous and inappropriate, it is highly relevant in representing and working through trauma. The fantasy genre presents spectators with images of the unsettled and unresolved, taking them on a journey through a world in which the familiar is rendered unfamiliar. It positions itself as an in-between, while the consequential disturbance of recognized world orders lends this genre to relating stories of trauma themselves characterized by hauntings, disputed memories, and irresolution. Through an examination of films from around the world and their depictions of individual and collective traumas through the fantastic, this thesis outlines how fantasy succeeds in representing and challenging histories of violence, silence, and irresolution. Further, it also examines how the genre itself is transformed in relating stories that are not yet resolved. While analysing the modes in which the fantasy genre mediates and intercedes trauma narratives, this research contributes to a wider recognition of an understudied and underestimated genre, as well as to discourses on how trauma is narrated and negotiated. Acknowledgements This has been a journey that has taken me into the uncomforting and unfamiliar and whose end still remains unknown. Along the way, others have provided hope, reassurance, and the tools and magic necessary to move forward. I am grateful to my advisor Leshu Torchin for the great care and attention she put into reading all my drafts and the passion in her comments. I was blessed in this process with supportive parents, Jordan and Kathy Shields, as well as an equally supportive family that I found in the postgraduate community that have all encouraged and sustained me. I want to especially thank Eileen Rositzka, Ana Grgić, Rohan Berry Crickmar, Marta Crickmar, Isabel Seguí, Ben Walden Naylor, Jennifer Whitty, Connor McMorran, Diana Popa, Giles Taylor, Jonny West, and Kristin Ginger who discussed ideas, read drafts, and listened and offered support throughout this process. Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction .................................................................................................. 1 1.1 In-Between Worlds .............................................................................................................. 1 1.2 Questions of Representing Trauma ...................................................................................... 5 1.3 Questions of Representing Fantasy ...................................................................................... 7 1.4 Applying Fantasy to Troubled Transitions ......................................................................... 11 1.5 Intervention: Approaching Trauma through Fantasy ......................................................... 15 1.6 Methodology and Case Studies: A Close Reading of Films from Across the World ......... 17 1.7 Chapter Breakdown and Conclusions: Looking Forward .................................................. 22 Chapter 2: Literature Review ....................................................................................... 24 2.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 24 2.2 Trauma: Shattering Worlds and Crises in Representation ................................................. 24 2.3 Fantasy: Exploring Intermediate Worlds ........................................................................... 39 2.4 Two Strands: Forestalled Fairy Tales and Fantasies in Witnessing ................................... 46 Chapter 3: Tale of the Three Jewels: Dreams of a Homeland ....................................... 61 3.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 61 3.2 Film Synopsis .................................................................................................................... 63 3.3 Contexts: Conflicting Constructs ....................................................................................... 64 3.4 Spaces of Violence ............................................................................................................. 68 3.5 Dreams of the Palestinian Experience ................................................................................ 79 3.6 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... 89 Chapter 4: Underground: Telling Tales in Times of Conflict ........................................ 91 4.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 91 4.2 Film Synopsis .................................................................................................................... 94 4.3 Contexts: A Land Being Divided ....................................................................................... 96 4.4 A Wary Return Home: Defamiliarizing through Nostalgia ............................................... 98 4.5 The Man Behind the Curtain: Exposing and Examining the Storyteller .......................... 108 4.6 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 115 Chapter 5: The Blondes: Testimonies of Generation 1.5 ............................................. 117 5.1 Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 117 5.2 Film Synopsis .................................................................................................................. 120 5.3 Context: Living Amidst Legacies of National Trauma .................................................... 122 5.4 Unsettling Dominant Narratives ...................................................................................... 126 5.5 Producing a Testimonial Space ........................................................................................ 136 5.6 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 146 Chapter 6: The Missing Picture: Uncovering Buried Memories and Missing Pictures 149 6.1 Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 149 6.2 Film Synopsis .................................................................................................................. 153 6.3 Contexts: Traumatic Transmutation under the Khmer Rouge .......................................... 154 6.4 Revisiting and Restructuring Spaces of the Past .............................................................. 158 6.5 Fantasy as an Act of Resistance ....................................................................................... 165 6.6 Creating a Space in Collective Memory .......................................................................... 172 6.7 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 179 Chapter 7: Waltz with Bashir: The Quest for Suppressed Pasts .................................. 182 7.1 Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 182 7.2 Film Synopsis .................................................................................................................. 184 7.4 Between Dreams and the Past: Witnessing the Life of Memory ...................................... 189 7.5 Societal Silences and Legacies of Collective Violence .................................................... 200 7.6 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 211 Chapter 8: Conclusion ................................................................................................ 213 8.1 Returns and Rebirths ........................................................................................................ 213 8.2 “The Unforgiving Temporality of Trauma”: Looking to the Past, Present, and Future ... 215 8.3 A Gift to Future Generations ........................................................................................... 218 BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................................................... 221 FILMOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................ 236 Chapter 1: Introduction “The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there” (L.P. Hartley) 1.1 In-Between Worlds El laberinto del fauno (Pan’s Labyrinth, Guillermo del Toro, 2006), the acclaimed fairytale about young Ofelia’s (Ivana Baquero) quest to restore her place as a princess during the final days of the Spanish Civil War,
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