Holocaust Impiety in Literature, Popular Music and Film

Boswell, Matthew

doi:10.1057/9780230358690

Cited by 32 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…There is certainly no adherence to what Gillian Rose (1996) has called 'Holocaust piety' (see also Boswell 2012), but rather an aesthetic of excess, evident even in the title of the penultimate song: 'The Mussulmans Wander Through the Infernal Whirling Fires Amongst Silent Shadows to be Fed Into the Thirsting Jaws of a Godless Death Machine to Cough Up Their Souls to the Nazi Moloch Who Sits Within a Ring of Smoking Infant Skulls'.…”

Section: Bookishness: the Meads Of Asphodel Sonderkommandomentioning

confidence: 99%

Embodying the Auschwitz Sonderkommando in extreme metal

Williams

2020

Metal Music Studies

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Prompted by the Meads of Asphodel album Sonderkommando (2013), this article considers ways in which the Auschwitz Sonderkommando (SK) figure in extreme metal. While there are not many metal songs about the SK, they feature far more in metal lyrics than in almost all other music genres. Attracted by obscure and difficult parts of history, metal bands draw on their practices to ‘embody’ the SK: not simply representing them, but feeling and acting out their plight to excess. The article examines a number of these practices: difficult to decipher vocals, the use of global Englishes and a bookish attraction to the arcane and the bizarre. It argues that metal’s embrace of intense feeling in the lyrics and vocal and musical styles can be interpreted as an exploration of embodiment and materiality, allowing a consideration of mediation, the matter through which the SK might be felt and understood. Embodying the SK in metal, then, does not merely comprise an eccentric example of Holocaust memory at work, but takes on central issues of Holocaust representation.

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Section: Bookishness: the Meads Of Asphodel Sonderkommandomentioning

confidence: 99%

Embodying the Auschwitz Sonderkommando in extreme metal

Williams

2020

Metal Music Studies

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“…It is not uncommon now to see an approach such as that taken by Aaron Kerner (2011), who considers a whole range of cinematic representations of the Holocaust, including 'Nazi-sploitation' movies, 13 paying more attention to how the Holocaust is figured rather than whether it can or should be. Matthew Boswell (2012) has even suggested that forms of 'Holocaust impiety' might be important ways for generations that come after, and that often have no connection with, the Holocaust, to engage with it. Boswell reads 'impious' texts as raging against the pastness and mediatedness of the event, and as scorning approaches that take it as a sacred occurrence that cannot be thought about critically.…”

Section: Impieties and Intensitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Feel the Knife Pierce You Intensely’: Slayer’s ‘Angel of Death’—Holocaust Representation or Metal Affects?

Williams

2019

Genealogy

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This article tackles a well-known but little-studied phenomenon: the importance of Holocaust themes to heavy metal. The fascination of metal bands with evil and death has until recently been met outside the scene with such reactions as moral panic, disgust or indifference. In the last ten years, however, scholars in an emerging discourse of Metal Studies have attempted to engage more critically with the social and musical dimensions of metal, in order to contextualise and understand its lyrics and imagery. Although a number of writers have touched upon the recurrence of Holocaust imagery, no one has dealt at any length with extreme metal as a form of Holocaust memory. My article focuses on what might be called the founding text of extreme metal, Slayer’s ‘Angel of Death’, which lived up to the sub-genre’s name by pushing both its musical form and its lyrical content beyond previously maintained limits and taboos. It considers the song's mobilisation of affective intensities as involving problematic politics, but also a challenge to conceptions of Holocaust representation. I consider how affects are evoked by ‘Angel of Death’ through offering readings of the song itself as well as of ways that its reception have been recorded on social media, in concert videos, and reaction videos uploaded to YouTube.

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“…The two recently published graphic novels I focus on in this article are examples of texts written by authors who grew up on 'the periphery' of the event (Aarons and Berger 2017, p. 4) and that show a clear reticence, for different reasons, to hear about their family's past. Drawing on the duality that seems to be at the heart of Holocaust literary studies-Holocaust piety (as coined per Gillian Rose 1996) and Holocaust impiety (as defined by Matthew Boswell 2012)-I analyze here two autobiographical works originally published in French: Deuxième génération-Ce que je n'ai pas dit à mon père (Second Generation-The Things I Didn't Tell My Father) (2012/2016) 2 by Belgian-Israeli author Michel Kichka and Nous n'irons pas voir Auschwitz (We Won't See Auschwitz) (2011/2012) 3 by French author Jérémie Dres. 4 Both the authors, respectively the son and grandson of Holocaust survivors, narrate their difficult relationship with their family traumas, struggling to find the desire to listen to perpetual sorrow and refusing to go to Auschwitz.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Holocaust Impiety in 21st Century Graphic Novels: Younger Generations ‘No Longer Obliged to Perpetuate Sorrow’

Serraf

2019

Genealogy

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At a time where so few survivors remain alive and the extermination of European Jews is leaving the field of direct human experience, the evolving collective memory of the event is reflected in popular culture. There has recently been a rise in the number of graphic novels written on the subject of the Shoah, particularly in France, Germany, and North America. These works, written by second or even third-generation survivors nearly 80 years after the genocide, approach the event from perspectives that not only further Art Spiegelman’s path in that they challenge the so-called limits of Holocaust representations, but also open up new discussions on transgenerational trauma. Focusing on two graphic novels, Michel Kichka’s Deuxième génération: Ce que je n’ai pas dit à mon père (2012) and Jérémie Dres’ Nous n’irons pas à Auschwitz (2011), my aim here is to examine the new aspects of trauma that these texts present, more specifically the reluctance to deal with one’s past, the struggle to bear the weight of the ‘sacred’ memory of Auschwitz, and in some cases the lack of interest of the youth in the Shoah. Both these autobiographical texts narrate the story of men who end up making the conscious decision never to go to Auschwitz after finding out about their ancestors’ history, asserting their desire to not solely be defined by their family tragedy. These issues, which fit in with what Matthew Boswell and Joost Krijnen define as ‘Holocaust impiety’, mark a break with graphic novels from the 1970s and 1980s which, as Gillian Rose writes, ‘mystified’ the event as ‘something we dare not understand’.

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Holocaust Impiety in Literature, Popular Music and Film

Cited by 32 publications

References 0 publications

Embodying the Auschwitz Sonderkommando in extreme metal

Embodying the Auschwitz Sonderkommando in extreme metal

‘Feel the Knife Pierce You Intensely’: Slayer’s ‘Angel of Death’—Holocaust Representation or Metal Affects?

Holocaust Impiety in 21st Century Graphic Novels: Younger Generations ‘No Longer Obliged to Perpetuate Sorrow’

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