Performing Mass Murder

Constructing the Perpetrator in Documentary Film

Dados Bibliográficos

ID2236802
AutoresSimon Philpott (Newcastle University, autor correspondente)
Ano2017
Volume11
Fascículo3
Páginas257-272
Data de publicação2017-09-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoInternational Political Sociology (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1749-5679 • E-ISSN: 1749-5687
EditoraOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/ips/olx011
OpenAlexW2612868599
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas5
Referências citadas21

The massacre, torture, persecution, and imprisonment of real and imagined communists and sympathizers in mid-1960s Indonesia was among the greatest state-sponsored atrocities of the twentieth century and yet remains little known and even less understood outside Indonesia. An elaborate mythology about the supposed communist coup attempt of September 1965 was foundational to the military government’s legitimacy discourses. The dead, the tortured, and the imprisoned remained an existential threat to Indonesia’s survival according to these discourses, and yet they could not be spoken of, or acknowledged without fear of retribution from the state. This article explores one attempt to break the silence surrounding the massacres and to make visible the suffering of millions of Indonesians; it does so through an analysis of the documentary film, The Act of Killing, in which a number of those involved in mass murder re-enact their killings. It explores the contribution of the film to understanding the politics of mass murder through an interrogation of the history it purports to address and through the methods employed by filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer. It concludes that while the film is a singular achievement, it fails as a political intervention aimed at deepening understanding of the mass killings.

Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Criminology · Film director · Human rights · Imprisonment · Injustice · Interrogation · Legitimacy · Mass incarceration · Movie theater · Persecution · Political science · Politics · Prison · Silence · Sociology · State (computer science) · Torture · Asian Studies and History · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · History · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies