The Ethics of Representation (a Review of the Film “Jacob the Liar” and an Interview with Director Peter Kassovitz)
Abstract
Marty Fairbairn talks with Peter Kassovitz – the director of Jacob the Liar – about the ethics when representing the Holocaust. Fairbairn reminds that altogether with the opinions that dramatic representation of the Holocaust is – at least from the moral point of view – falsification of its nature (which is impossible to be represented) there are some opinions saying that an attempt to represent horror of the Holocaust for today’s audience is a moral imperative. In Kassovitz’s opinion, representation of any human tragedy – extermination, disease, famine – is not possible as there is always possibility of an excessive subjectivization of the theme. The Holocaust is not anyone’s private property so the audience has the right to see different representation of it and know different opinions on it.
- The text is a translation of an article The Ethics of Representation: A Review of “Jacob the Liar”; An Interview with Peter Kassovitz by Marty Fairbairn, Film-Philosophy 1999, vol. 3, no. 1. © 1999 by Film-Philosophy.
Due to copyright restrictions the article is available in the print version only.
Keywords:
Peter Kassovitz, ethics, Holocaust, representationReferences
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Authors
Marty Fairbairnkwartalnik.filmowy@ispan.pl
McMaster University Canada
Mieszka w Guelph (Ontario) w Kanadzie. W 1996 r. uzyskał doktorat z filozofii na McMaster University w Hamilton (Ontario, Kanada). W 1999 r. wydał wraz z Garym B. Madisonem książkę pt. The Ethics of Postmodemity: Current Trends in Continental Thought. Jest autorem przygotowanej do druku pracy pt. Cinema as Secular Temple: A Hermeneutic Phenomenology of The Film Experience.
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