Suchergebnisse

The aim of this chapter is to frame contemporary films about terrorism within inclusive interpretations of the war film genre and discuss the adoption of epic narratives in the depiction of 1970s revolutionary violence. Two recent films have explored the history of notorious left-wing terrorist groups as negative sagas: United Red Army/Jitsuroku Rengo Sekigun (Wakamatsu Koji, 2007) and The Bader-Meinhof Complex/Der Baader-Meinhof Komplex (Uli Edel, 2008). In light of Robert Eberwein's flexible definition of the 'war film' (2010: 45), these biopics meet his criteria by depicting the conflict itself (preparation, aftermath and actual urban guerrilla), the activities off the battlefield (radicalisation, recruitment and propaganda) and the effects on society (impact on families and the state's response to violence). Through a comparative contextualisation of terrorism in West Germany and Japan, this chapter also analyses one of the most striking aspects of how left-wing political violence return in the cinema of the new millennium: the high visibility and mediated spectacle of female terrorists. Female participation in politically motivated violence has been consistent in global conflicts, but during the 1970s the number of female terrorists grew rapidly in radical left-wing organisations. In order to understand gendered representational strategies and the legacy of female involvement in the armed struggle, particular attention will be paid to the threatening and threated body of the female terrorists in The Bader-Meinhof Complex and United Red Army. The representation of terrorists is not homogeneous but tends to follow stereotypical paradigms because female combatants are seen as the worst attack to society and the patriarchal system. In these films, in fact, political violence is blamed on sexually free and naïve youngsters, mentally unstable mothers and emotionally dependant women. It will be suggested that through narratives of female hysteria and supportive of gender imbalance, these films domesticate female violence and reject all forms of action that do not re-inscribe femininity within its normative societal role.

Following the events of September 11, 2001 the discourse on terrorism changed radically acquiring new symbols, meanings and its own vocabulary with terms such as 'war on terror', 'the enemy-within' and '9/11'. It is general knowledge that American cinema and television underwent a paradigmatic transformation in the representation of Muslims, having been caught in the grip of an oftentimes-hysterical fear of global terror offensives. This essay departs from Hollywood discourses on international terrorism to investigate how European cinema reflected upon this tragedy. The scope consists in outlining the peculiarities of European cinema in dealing with international terrorism and thus, analysing the representation of Islamic fundamentalism and more generally, Muslims. In particular, the proposed essay will focus on Fremder Freund (The Friend, Elmar Fischer, 2003) and London River (Rachid Bouchareb, 2009), two transnational European films about the impact of international terrorism within family. Similarly to Dutch-Palestinian Paradise Now (Hany Abu-Assad, 2005), Fremder Freund investigates the strong friendship between two young men, a German and a Yemenite flatmates whose destinies will take divergent path on the eve of 9/11. London River maintains the parallel-stories narrative recounting the search of two missing people by their respective parents on the background of London terrorist attacks. The bombings on March 11, 2004 in Madrid and on July 7, 2005 in London brought the terror in the heart of Europe and amplified the feelings of fear, disbelief and suspicion developed as a consequence of 9/11 trauma. This essay argues that these films avoid any explicit attempts of commemorating and memorialising these tragic events, but they contextualise the attacks engaging with issues of identity politics and migration. Drawing on studies about memory and discourse analysis I argue that London River and Fremder Freund comment more about the problem of migration and multiculturalism in Europe rather than crime and terrorism. The films insert, in fact, into the public debate about contemporary society and the role of British and German institutions in developing 'home-grown' terrorists.

Elena Caoduro's essay explores the relations between a history of political violence and the function of art with reference to the 1969 Piazza Fontana massacre in Milan. This terrorist attack inaugurated the most violent decade in the history of the Italian republic: the anni di piombo ('years of lead'), in which Italy experienced waves of social conflict and unprecedented acts of violence carried out by both right- and left-wing paramilitary groups. Caoduro analyses how the city of Milan monumentalises the victims of this massacre and searches for reconciliation between conflicting truths, since the last trial proved inclusive and provided no closure. Drawing on Paul Ricoeur's seminal Memory, History, and Forgetting (2004), Caoduro attempts to discern when it is right to remember and when it is better to forget, or indeed how much we should remember. Although arguing that cathartic narration can assist national reconciliation, she cautions against political amnesty being accompanied by amnesia. ; Palgrave grant permission to place author's version (pre-copy-editing) of single chapter online with 36 month embargo: see http://www.palgrave.com/gb/our-policy-on-archiving-in-institutional-or-funding-body-reposit/7086794

Preface - Sean Redmond -- 1. Introduction - Elena Caoduro, Karen Randell, and Karen A. Ritzenhoff -- 2. Paradise Now (2005) - Robert Burgoyne -- 3. Munich: Spielberg and Terrorism - Frederick Wasser -- 4. Spinning Terror on TV: How The Grid Taught Us What To Fear - Dahlia Schweitzer -- 5. "God, I Miss the Cold War": The Imagination of Terrorism on Post 9/11 American Television - Ariel Avissar -- 6. Battling it out with Memes: Contesting Islamic Radicalism on Indonesian Social Media - Leonie Schmidt -- 7. 1984: Gauri Gill's Photo Narrativization of the (Continuing) "Horrors of Those Weeks" - Harveen Sachdeva Mann -- 8. The Pencil is Mightier than the Kalashnikov: What Cartoons can tell us about our Misunderstanding of Terrorist Acts in the Wake of the Charlie Hebdo Massacre - Matt Leggatt -- 9. Return to Entebbe: CineTerrorism as Contested Memory - Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann -- 10. In the Fade (Fatih Akin, 2017): Motherhood, Grief, and Neo-Nazi Terrorism - Elena Caoduro -- 11. Tales of Revenge and Chaos: Exploring Terrorism's Discursive Use in The Dark Knight (2008) and Skyfall (2012) - Charles-Antoine Courcoux -- 12. Terrorism and Gender in Eye in the Sky and Zero Dark Thirty: Women and Girls on the War Front in Contemporary Cinema - Karen A. Ritzenhoff -- 13. Afterword - Stacey Takacs. .