Recycling of images in films - does it enhance memory or forgetfulness?

Recycling of images in films - does it enhance memory or forgetfulness?

I would like to offer an additional angle to "the truth about film" and the "rhetorical abilities of the camera". Most of our readings dealt with the ways film makers depict reality and create images of themselves and others. I would like to suggest, that an additional concern is how these images are than used, or recycled in other films and what is the impact of such use on the meaning of the original images. Does it reinforce the memory that these images carry to does it contribute to forgetting it?

Tobias Abrect (2012) states the use of iconic images of the holocaust in popular cinema is actually contributing to forgetting the original traumatic event. According to him, the holocaust became part of our universal collective memory. The images that became the symbol of a- historical total evil, are used not only for the memory of the holocaust but also for understanding other war horrors. "They became the visual foundation for our imaging of any horror that follows". This "migration" of images to other contexts, the use of the visual representation of the holocaust to cinematic and television images of other wars occurs internationally.

The films that were filmed by the allied forces while entering the concentration camps were recycled as iconic images for genocide. According to Abrect these images were used for films about the holocaust like Shindler's Lists (Spielberg, 1993), Memory of the camp (McAlister 1945) and more. However it was also used in films like Platoon (Stone 1986) about the Vietnam war. Abrect claims that Stone is using images from the holocaust (such as bulldozers shoving corpses to the graves). According to Abreact Stone creates a visual connection between the burial of the Vietnamese farmers and the Jewish victims of the holocaust to emphasize his notion that the Vietnam war was un justified. This "migration of images" stigmatizes historical events that are compared to the holocaust.

Furthermore, images from the holocaust appear in science fiction and fantasy movies as well: X- men (Singer, 2001). "V for Vendetta" (2006) and Shutter Island (Skorze 2010). Abrect states that the use of these images makes the narrative of the holocaust into a universal paradigm of moral.

References:

Abrecht, T. (2012). Iconic images of the holocaust in popular cinema. Yad Vashem (Heberw). Retrieved 15/8/2012 from http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/he/education/newsletter/24/main_article.asp