Finally, the survivors who have offered testimony, have
done so out of some historical sense of obligation and with
something to offer that they perhaps can't even be sure of.
There is a Jewish teaching that says one should read every
verse of the Torah as attentively as every other verse.
Although it is a necessary rule from a pragmatic point
of view (Leviticus is a dry read and needs the encouragement),
the practice of reading each verse closely is also a matter of
respect. Freud too recognized that, even when the texts are not
scriptural, paying close attention to seemingly unimportant details -- details even of how material is presented,
which may be impossible to observe in a less boring medium --
can provide profound insights. The choices that witnesses have made
about what they describe and how they describe it may provide
significant insights into the nature of the Shoah. It
is as a mark of respect, as well as historical perspicacity,
that we might look for them.
The Fortunoff archive might be 'boring', but I happen to find the current spate of "reality tv" shows fairly tedious as well. As a Zeek editor, I have for the past few months been trying to find someone to write and explain "reality" television's obvious fascination to the viewing public in some new or interesting way, or at least, in a way that would make sense to me. But the phenomenon still begs an explanation. Perhaps the fascination with reality TV is about how far people will go in their search for fleeting celebrity, and what strange behaviours they think will win it for them. Professional actors appear in character on our screen and their performances are edited into the vision of the director and editor - that is their job. The unpaid performers of Joe Millionaire, Survivor, Big Brother, the Real Worlds et al, on the other hand, sacrifice their own free choice to live by the formats and the cuts imposed by the corporations. This pop idolatry entails a sacrifice of freedoms that is perhaps all too "real", all too accurate a televisual reflection of the reality we live in. Fifteen minutes of fame is a constraint (temporal, behavioural) as well as an opportunity. The tedium of the Fortunoff Archive is that of unpracticed reality, and of truth which cannot conform to the conventions of entertainment. Pop stardom is well and good but, as consumers of mass media, we risk assimilating its mores into our own lives. Both the content and form of the Fortunoff Archive remind us how dangerous such assimilation might be.
May Tricks: Reel-or-Dead?
June, 2003
Hypercapitalism as Satanism
June, 2003
Constitutive ritual for distributed families
May, 2003
Ali G.: The Poseur's Poseur
April, 2003
The ambiguities of art and life
March, 2003
The undervalued genre of airplane movies
July, 2002
CBS's packaging of the '9/11' documentary reveals exactly what America
fails to understand about September 11.
April, 2002
What draws protesters to banal holocaust art?
April, 2002
Cinema can help expose ourselves to the world, or it can seduce us to sit
back and relax.
February, 2002
What's the right perspective, close up where everything matters, or from a distance,
where it doesn't?
August, 2001
The Queer Guy at the Strip Club
Jay Michaelson
The Gifts of the German Jews: Toward a Postmodern Judaism
Michael Shurkin
My first shabbos
Jennifer Waters
Stones of Jerusalem
David Goldstein
Holocaust Video Testimonies: The Other Reality TV
Dan Friedman
Josh Tells a Bedtime Story
Josh Ring
Zeek in Print
Buy online here
Saddies
David Stromberg
About Zeek
The Zeek Archive
Links