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Table of content
Preface 2
Introduction 4
Methodology: Audience research 6
1. Theoretical framework: coming close to the perpetrator 13
1.1. Representing the Holocaust 13
1.2. Coming close to the perpetrator 20
2. The remediation of The Kindly Ones 28
3. Audience research 33
3.1. Respondents 33
3.2. Closeness and the spectators’ (un)changing perspective on the
perpetrator 33
3.3. Exploration 43
Conclusion 45
Bibliography 47
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Preface
Nearly ten years ago, I quitted VWO and decided to go to the HAVO due to suffering from mental illness. At that time, I could not have imagined or hoped that today, you will read this Research Master thesis.
After graduating secondary school, I attended classes in journalism at the University of applied sciences of Amsterdam and the Theatre school. There, I fell in love again with the history of art. But when the lecture became really interesting, class was over. Apart from that, I struggled with the predominant practical approach of these studies. I just wanted to learn as much as possible about all my topics of interest.
I realized that my curiosity would only be satisfied at the university and I decided to go back to the VWO in October the same year. Nine months and a re-examination later, I received my admission for the Bachelor Arts, Culture and Media at the University of Groningen.
The last six years, I enjoyed participating in classes, internships, study trips, visiting numerous theatre performances and reading countless books. Besides this, I participated in the board of the study council and overall I learned a lot. I do not regret the path I chose; on the contrary, I can only recommend everyone to follow their (intellectual) desires and fascinations.
My thesis is focused on the possibility of identifying oneself with a perpetrator of atrocities. I have always been interested in three cultural disciplines: arts, history and religion. During my academic education, I tried to find ways to combine them. Until now, I frequently focused on the
representations of the victim’s perspective of the Shoah represented in art. I believe that sharing stories is highly important in people’s realisation what life is or might be. The perpetrator’s perspective is part of that life. The Kindly Ones and the adaptation of this novel by Toneelgroep Amsterdam and Het Toneelhuis Antwerpen, De Welwillenden, show many possibilities of perpetratorship and is, therefore, an innovative and important work of art.
I really want to thank my two supervisors, Dr. Peter Eversmann and Dr. Boris Noordenbos, for helping to think about the topic and their unwavering support. Mum and dad, for loving me, taking care of me, supporting me and making me believe that I could do whatever I want as long as I stay true to my fascinations, as long as I am willing to work hard. My beloved Thom, because I never could have thought that I would meet someone who cares about the same topics as I do, and that someone like that would love me back. After five years I still feel lucky when we visit the theatre, museum or
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cinema together or just lay on the same couch reading books. And last but not least, Toneelgroep Amsterdam for giving me the opportunity to attend rehearsals of De Welwillenden and trusting me in giving introductions to the audience and interviewing the actors. I enjoyed every moment and I finally learned to appreciate and rely on my skills and enthusiasm.
What will I do after graduation? I will keep doing what I love the most: reading, watching, listening to, writing and sharing stories.
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Introduction
Ik leef, ik doe wat ik kan, zo gaat het met iedereen, ik ben een mens zoals andere mensen ik ben een mens zoals u. Ja dat zeg ik u: ik ben net als u (Aue qtd in Jans en Cassiers, De Welwillenden 4).1
With these lines, fictive SS-officer Maximilien Aue, played by the Dutch actor Hans Kesting, ends his monologue in the theatre play De Welwillenden. There is no illusion of a fourth wall and the audience is directly addressed by the protagonist, which might be confronting if you realize that he compares the spectators with a Nazi-officer. The text is practically the same as the closing words of the epilogue -which is called Toccata - of the Dutch translation of the novel Les Bienveillantes.2 The
(literary) strategy of a fictive Nazi-officer who directly talks to the recipient of an artefact about the borders of humanity and particularly their responsibilities, has not been used earlier in books, films and theatre plays about the Holocaust.3 How do the spectators perceive these lines? Do they agree
or sympathise with Aue? Do they consider him a normal human being? Or do they feel offended by this statement? In this Master thesis, I will explore levels and dimensions of closeness between the spectator and the protagonist in the theatre performance De Welwillenden.
In 2006 the French-American author Jonathan Littell published the novel Les Bienveillantes. The book can be seen as a fictive autobiography of SS-officer Max Aue. Aue, who is born in France, is left by his father and together with his twin sister Una has to live with their mother and stepfather. Una and Aue engage in a complex, incestuous relationship. When his stepfather finds out about the scandal, Aue moves to an institute where boys sexually experiment with each other. When he reaches maturity he moves to Germany. As most of the Germans, he is called to serve in the army at the beginning of the Second World War. Aue is stationed at the East front and is one of the few to survive the battle of Stalingrad. After his rehabilitation, he is promoted and slowly moves up in the military hierarchy. Aue meets highly ranked SS-officers like Adolf Eichmann and joins Nazi-meetings and drinking festivities. But alongside that, he also participates in executions and visits the
1 I chose not to translate the quotes from the drama text as these are the lines the actors speak and the
audience receives. Translation: I live, I do what I can, that is how it works, I am a human, just like other people, just ike you. Yes, I am telling you: I am just like you.
2 Dutch translation: De Welwillenden. English translation: The Kindly Ones. From now on, I will use the English
title when I mention the novel. When I mention the performance of Toneelgroep Amsterdam and Het Toneelhuis Antwerpen, I will use the title De Welwillenden.
3 Despite of the debates about the use of the word 'Shoah' instead of 'Holocaust', in this thesis I will use the
term 'Holocaust' as it is more widely known than 'Shoah'. Many people prefer the term 'Shoah', which means catastrophe. The literary meaning of the word 'Holocaust' is burnt offering. It is derived from the old Greek word Holocauston. In the antiquity, people burnt offered in the name of the gods. This activity was fully voluntary. Due to the voluntary part, which is contrary to the atrocities during the Second World War, today, many people refuse to use the word 'Holocaust'
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concentration camps. In the course of the novel, the reader notices that the cruelness of the war begins to seem normal for Aue. He is portrayed though, as an atypical Nazi who is not fully convinced of the National Socialism ideology and, in contrast to Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann thesis4, thinks about
and reflects on the current events and his own violent deeds. Apart from that, he is a homosexual with strange, intense sexual habits. Slowly, Aue becomes mentally unstable. He murders his mother and stepfather and, in the end, also his best friend Thomas. Aue, however, survives the war and becomes the manager of a lace factory. In the prologue of the novel, he is looking back on his days as a Nazi-officer.
Jonathan Littell said that he has tried to grasp the evil side of perpetrators. He tried to visualize what it means to be a Nazi and how someone could become a mass murderer. He states, for instance, that "in a way, Aue is a Nazi in the same way I would have been a Nazi (qtd in Uni 2008)". This is an interesting statement, especially in relation to the prologue of the text. The various dialogues between different Nazis and others, for instance scientists and victims, differentiates this novel from others about the Holocaust. The story is full of different perspectives on the Second World War and its atrocities. Littell chose to combine historical characters, for instance Adolf
Eichmann and Heinrich Himmler, with fictive ones. This strategy gave him the opportunity to portray different kinds of evil characters who are interacting with each other. Themes such as guilt, murder, power, homosexuality, humanity and freedom of will are discussed at length.
The Kindly Ones has received divergent reviews from the French press (Depondt 2006). Although it has won two prestigious literary prizes5 in France, some reviewers argued that the book
was badly written. Two years after the French publication, the Dutch translation De Welwillenden was published. Again, opinions on the novel were divided. Some journalists wondered if writers should be allowed to fictionalize history like Littell did, raising moral objections. In the United Kingdom and Germany, the reviews on The Kindly Ones (2009) and Die Wohlgesinnten (2008) were also remarkably diverse. For instance, Littell was accused of being "a pornographer of violence" instead of an artistic writer (Burke 2009). In Israel, the book was, against expectations, unanimously appreciated (Uni 2008).
Ten years after the release of the French novel, Toneelgroep Amsterdam (The Netherlands) and Toneelhuis Antwerpen (Belgium) staged a play based on the novel: De Welwillenden6. In the
4 In 1961, philosopher Hannah Arendt attended the trial of SS-officer Adolf Eichmann and wrote the book
Eichmann in Jerusalem: a report on the banality of evil about him. In here, she states that Eichmann did not
reflect on his participation in the Nazi regime, but he just followed the orders he received from higher ranks. In short, this tractable nature of a person is the thesis I recall.
5 The Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie Française (2006) and The Prix Goncourt (2006)
6 De Welwillenden was performed from March 10, 2016 until June 22, 2016 in Antwerp, Valenciennes, Gent,
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program of the performance, the director Guy Cassiers states that the most interesting aspect of the novel is the propensity of the reader to identify with the protagonist Maximilien Aue, despite his evil thoughts and deeds (Toneelgroep Amsterdam, De Welwillenden). Cassiers argues that the core statement of the book is that every human may become a perpetrator, dependent on the
circumstances someone is living in. The possibility of the spectator becoming convinced that he/she, given the right circumstances, feels close to a perpetrator will be the core subject of my research.
What if the audience identifies with Max Aue? If so, is this a dangerous mechanism? Will the spectator copy his thoughts and deeds as Anna Freud argues in her writings on identification with an aggressor? Probably not, but it is interesting to explore what happens if someone feels close to a perpetrator. Will it help us to gain a more thorough understanding of perpetratorship? What does The Kindly Ones tell us about this kind of evil? And how do the spectators of De Welwillenden react to the performance? To find out, I formulate the following research question:
What is the relation between the spectators of De Welwillenden and the protagonist Max Aue in terms of closeness?
To answer this question, an interdisciplinary approach will be employed. The first two parts of the thesis comprise literary research. The first chapter consists of a theoretical framework which covers two research topics: 1) a short exploration of the pioneering position of The Kindly Ones in the field of cultural Holocaust representations (in light of its perpetrator's perspective), and 2) the concept of closeness. This concept also provides the basis for the theoretical background of the audience research. The second chapter treats the remediation of the novel The Kindly Ones into the
performance De Welwillenden. In this chapter, the dramaturgical decisions that might influence the experience of feeling close to the perpetrator are explored.
The third part of this thesis consists of empirical research. In the methodology part of the introduction, the method is explained. This thesis is explorative in nature. The results I present are not based on an extensive, quantitative investigation, but show an indication of how spectators may experience closeness between themselves and an evil character. In the following I will explain the method I used to do audience research.
Methodology: Audience research
The last part of the thesis consists of an empirical audience research. I chose to combine qualitative and quantitative research to study the relation between the spectator and the protagonist. The method I will use is Q methodology. Originally, the method was constructed by the psychologist
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William Stephenson, but the research of Allen Neal Kepke on the comparison of the perception of a character among actors, director and audience served as an inspiration to create a test to explore the closeness between a spectator and a character in De Welwillenden. This study is highly interesting in relation to my research as it provides a way to empirically measure human subjectivity. In their article on Q methodology, Bruce McKeown and Dan Thomas explain that Q methodology offers a way to combine principles and statistics (7). It is a quantitative method which is focused on communication and self-reference (7): "an individual is saying something meaningful about a personal experience and what Q methodology provides is a systematic means to examine and reach understandings about such experience" (McKeown and Thomas 12). Kepke has found a way to measure someone's perception of a character by using matrixes (Q sorts) and relating them to each other. He asked his participants to fill in two matrixes with sixty characteristics. The first one concentrated on the self and the other on the fictive character. He worked with ratios to find
structures in the acquired data. In the next paragraphs, I will explain how I will use Q methodology to answer my research questions.
By constructing this method, I thought about different variables to focus on to find out if the participants had a priori knowledge of the performance’s content. The first variable discriminates between those who have read the book before visiting the performance and those who have not. Secondly, it is asked if the participant has read reviews, and the last variable is their potential visit to the Wish you were here evening7. All these three variables might influence the perspective of the
spectator.
The tests were conducted anonymously. It was important that to avoid biased opinions, I did not reveal the concrete goal of the research beforehand. The test consists of five phases. The first three take place prior to the performance and the other two afterwards.
Phase one
In this phase I ask the spectators if they are willing to participate in the research. The first thing I ask the participants is to answer some questions on paper8:
7 Wish you were here is an evening program of Toneelgroep Amsterdam in which they inform the audience
about the content of their performances. On February 15, 2016, Bart van der Boom, Boris Noordenbos, Job Cohen en Connie Palmen gave lectures about themes of the novel. People who visited this evening will surely be influenced by these readings.
8 Age:
Male/Female
I did/did not read the book The Kindly Ones
I am visiting theatre performances o Once a year
o Once in six months
o Once in three months
o Once a month
o Once a week
Why do you visit De Welwillenden? (You can choose many answers) o I have read the review
o I am interested in the content
o I appreciate the novel
o I like to visit performances of Toneelgroep Amsterdam and/or
Toneelhuis Antwerpen
o I attended the Wish you were here evening at Stadsschouwburg Amsterdam
o Other, …
The answers of these questions will give insight in the reasons why the participants visit this play and their pre-knowledge of the story.
Phase two
In the second phase I ask the participants to put 36 cards with different characteristics (Q samples, figure 1.3) on a matrix (figure 1.4). The participants have to divide the characteristics on a scale from 0 to 10 in such a way that they reflect on their personality. Phase two is important because I need the matrix to compare the other matrixes with, in order to compare the spectator’s perceptions about themselves with those of a typical Nazi and with their perspective on Max Aue.
9 Figure 1.3 Characteristics9
Human Stubborn Intelligent Empathic Careless Tractable
Persistent Courageous Suspicious Responsible Idealistic Disturbed
Malicious Tolerant Friendly Ambitious Doubtful Arrogant
Honest Social Considerate Stable Pessimistic Competitive
Righteous Driven Convincingly Helpful Pragmatic Condemnatory
Self-conscious Impulsive Merry Fantastical Defensive Aggressive
Figure 1.4 Matrix for the Q sorts
Phase three
In this phase I ask the participants to put the same 36 cards on the matrix, but now reflecting on their perception of a typical Nazi. This phase is necessary as it enables me to compare the matrix from phase four to notice the perception of Max Aue as an atypical Nazi.
Phase four
The fourth phase takes place within an hour after the performance. I ask the participants to put the 36 cards in the matrix reflecting on their perception of protagonist Max Aue. The three matrixes from phase 2 – 4 can be compared to each other.
9 This figure is based on the research of Kepke and complemented with characteristics that will be useful or
10 Phase five
In the last phase I ask the participants the following questions about the performance.
1. What mark do you give the performance on a scale of 1 to 10? ...
2. What mark do you give the acting of Hans Kesting on a scale of 1 to 10? ...
Can you indicate with the following statements to what extent you agree? The higher the number, the more you agree with the statement.
Completely disagree
Disagree Neutral Agree Completely
agree
3. Max Aue is a normal human, just like me
0 1 2 3 4
4. I do think that Max Aue’s decisions are understandable
0 1 2 3 4
5. At no single time I felt myself empathizing with Max Aue
0 1 2 3 4
6. Max Aue en I shared the same cultural background
0 1 2 3 4
7. I think the story is plausible
0 1 2 3 4
8. I did not feel Max Aue
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9. I identified myself with Max Aue
0 1 2 3 4
10. I did not recognize any characteristic of Max Aue in myself
0 1 2 3 4
11. During the performance I was totally immerged into the story
0 1 2 3 4
12. I can imagine the feelings of Max Aue
0 1 2 3 4
13. After the performance, my perspective on the Nazi as a person is changed
0 1 2 3 4
14. I can imagine that I would act the same as Max Aue in some situations
0 1 2 3 4
Since the respondents have already handed in their matrixes, these Q sorts cannot be influenced by the final questions (as the goal of the research becomes increasingly knowable). These statements in phase 5 are related to the different manners of closeness Eder describes (space & time, cognitive, social relations, imagined interaction and affective closeness). This theory of closeness will be explained in chapter 1.
After I collected the 20 tests, I analysed the results. The first step was conducting a factor analysis. The personal points of view were reduced to factors which give an indication of the different attitudes existing within the whole group of respondents. It is an explorative way of
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composing a hypothesis of a shared opinions within the general audience. Besides these more or less general opinions about oneself, a Nazi and Max Aue, the spectator’s perspectives on a Nazi and Max Aue give also information per respondent about the experienced divergence between themselves, a Nazi and Max Aue. This one can assess the relative closeness of each respondent to Max Aue. The results from the Q method will be studied next to the results of the interview questions. Their correlations might suggest explanations for some of the results. In a last analysis the empirical and theoretical research will be merged. Did the spectators feel close to the protagonist? And if so, what kind of closeness, in accordance with the theory of Eder, did they experience?
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1. Theoretical framework: coming close to the perpetrator
In the first part of this chapter I will give a short overview of the cultural memorialization process of the Holocaust. The described timeline ends with the release of The Kindly Ones in 2006. The main goal is to explain what makes The Kindly Ones different from other artefacts on this subject. In fact, the novel is a fictive testimony based on historical facts. It is a written speech act of an imagined perpetrator who has already experienced several traumatic events before the Second World War started. The storyline and description of the protagonist are further explained in the next paragraphs. In the second part of this chapter I will sharpen three notions: empathic unsettlement,
identification with an aggressor and closeness. I chose to use to focus on these terms instead of ‘identification’. Shortly, in case of De Welwillenden, an eventual problem is that the spectators may not really identify themselves with the protagonist. They may consider Max Aue as an evil person. To overcome this problem, I choose to concentrate on the broader idea of closeness and the
subcategories as theorized by multimedia professor Jens Eder. Eder distinguishes the closeness to character in terms of spatial and temporal closeness, cognitive closeness, perceived similarity, perceived interaction, imaginative closeness or emotive closeness.
Apart from Eder, I will utilize two other theories. First, the notion of empathic unsettlement by Dominick LaCapra and second, identification with the perpetrator by Anna Freud. The concept of empathic unsettlement explains what happens if someone is confronted with a perpetrator which he does not fully distance himself from. People might experience unease, but also gain (emotional) insight by perceiving this kind of fiction. This notion is further explored in one of the next paragraphs. Furthermore, Anna Freud explains what could happen if someone really identifies himself with an aggressor. The last paragraph focuses on identification processes in theatre. Henri Schoenmakers investigates the relation between emotions or emotional involvement and identification in theatre. Identification in theatre is a complex, multi-layered process. The audience is watching someone who plays a role and thus pretends to be someone else. The most important thing in this process might be that the spectator suspends his or her disbelief and willingly accepts the fictive situation on stage (temporarily) as reality. In relation to the case study of this research, this layer will be highly
interesting to explore as it makes a difference if the spectator is, emotionally or cognitively, involved in the presented story. This layer is described by Schoenmakers as the moment when the spectator breaks into the internal communication between characters of the fictional world (140).
1.1. Representing the Holocaust
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belief and thought, all forms of literary and artistic expression, seem irrelevant or even criminal (David Caroll qtd in Friedlander 6).
'Holocaust' itself is a difficult term to relate to. For people who were not born before 1940, it is mainly an abstract notion. We think we know what the word means, but we do not understand it. But if we cannot know, is there a possibility to represent it? And if there is, is it morally right to do so? These are frequently discussed questions in both the field of both Holocaust- and art studies. Gary Weismann describes the Holocaust as "unimaginable and unrepresentable" (10). According to him, current generations only know the Holocaust in its mediated form (20). "We can perceive artistic representations, but we are not able to feel closer to the horror than that" (Weismann 209). The presence of the Holocaust in contemporary artworks and the special status of The Kindly Ones in this field, is the main topic of this paragraph.
According to Alan Mintz, the Holocaust is pervasive in current times (3). With this term, he means that the Holocaust is omnipresent in fictive stories found in books and films. Mintz explains that before the 1980s, the attitude towards the Holocaust was very different. He describes the process as a shift from silence to salience (4). People remained silent about the atrocities that happened during the Second World War. The Eichmann trial in 1961, amongst others, changed this stance. The trial was broadcast worldwide on television and became one of the first global media events. Suddenly, people felt inclined to speak about what happened in the past. An earlier notable happening in the shift from silence to salience was the translation of The diary of Anne Frank to English in 1952. People were strongly affected by the words of the young girl who died in the concentration camp Bergen-Belsen. Mintz explains that the focus on the victim's perspective made the people aware of what happened and the attractiveness of Anne brought about an effective process of identification with her (17). Only three years after the English publication, a play based on Anne's story premiered at Broadway. This was the start of a series of plays and movies which
represented this narrative.
Mintz explains that in the seventies and eighties, a move from awareness to memorialization appeared because of the increasing creation of cultural artefacts concerning the Holocaust (23). New narratives about Nazism appeared, which were often discussed on aesthetic, intellectual and moral grounds (Friedlander 2). Examples are the miniseries Holocaust by Marvin Chromsky (1978) and the famous nine hour documentary Shoah by Claude Lanzmann (1985). When the time of silence came to an end, these representations further catalysed the production of these narratives and helped to develop the openness about the atrocities because of its visibility (Landsberg 123). It stimulated, for instance, the education on the Second World War and racism.
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to the distribution of the famous movie Schindler's List by Steven Spielberg, the United States Holocaust Museum was opened in Washington D.C. In this museum, the visitor buys a ticket and receives a passport of a person who actually lived during the Second World War. At the end of the museum tour, the visitor will find out if he or she survived. The tour includes amongst others a representation of a gas chamber. It is promised to be a complete experience with a gift shop where the visitor can buy souvenirs like a teddy bear with a striped pyjama and a yellow star pinned down on it. In here, the Holocaust has become a touristic experience rather than a memorial, though the main purpose of the museum is to educate people about the atrocities. But then, the question is: is everything allowed in cultural representations of a past event as long as the purpose is clear? Schindlers List also raised various moral questions. For instance, the naked bodies that were shown are in no way historically accurate. As is the often criticized shower scene. The bodies of the actors are too healthy in comparison to the actual bodies in the concentration camps. Is this lack of historical truth offensive? According to Landsberg, the strength of this film is that the recognizable bodies are part of the idea of identification in the film (124). The spectator is likely to feel more close to recognizable people than to emaciated bodies. This artistic decision influences the affective experiences of the audience.
These examples show how the shift from silence to salience and then from awareness to memorialization, sometimes has led to commercialism. Shortly after the war, perceptions of the Holocaust were personal, but slowly they have become collective as the scale on which these representations were shared, increased. The Holocaust has become a collective memory which means, according to Maurice Halbwachs, that it has become a social phenomenon (qtd in Assmann, A. Tranformations 50). “No memory is possible outside frameworks used by people living in society to determine and retrieve their recollections" (qtd in Assmann. Tranformations 51). Jan Assmann invented the term communicative memory to define the process of memorization (qtd in Erll and Nünning 110). An event is, according to him, remembered by everyone who was present. Aleida Assmann explains that because of the communication between persons, the memory is socially mediated and related to the group (qtd in Assmann. Collective 127). “Every individual memory constitutes itself in communication with others" (127). The evolution from awareness into
memorialization is associated with the culturalization of the Holocaust. Because of the distribution of narratives in artistic contexts, the Holocaust has become cultural memory. Weismann stated that today, we only know the Holocaust as result of this process of cultural memorialization (140). The Kindly Ones is an object of cultural memory.
The cultural memorialization of the Holocaust raises moral questions. Can such a unique and horrific event as be represented in a cultural object? Philosopher Jean-François Lyotard stated that the Holocaust brings about a limit to the possibility of representation as well as testimony (qtd in
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Landsberg 112). Also, Saul Friedlander mentions the difficulties in representing the Holocaust (1). He wonders if the extermination of the Jews in Europe, which is often called the most extreme case of mass criminality in history, can be the object of theoretical discussions, especially about the contemporary cultural reshaping of this particular past event (1). Friedlander quotes Jürgen Habermas to clarify the radical character of the Holocaust:
There (in Auschwitz) something happened, that up to now nobody considered as even possible. There one touched on something which represents the deep layer of solidarity among all that wears a human face; notwithstanding all the usual acts of beastliness of human history, the integrity of this common layer had been taken for granted ... Auschwitz has changed the basis for the continuity of the conditions of life within history (qtd in Friedlander 3).
It is self-evident that such an historic event will not be forgotten, Friedlander states. That is the reason why he wants to concentrate on how the Holocaust was, is and will be remembered in cultural objects and the limits of these representations. This discussion includes questions of truth and historical accuracy (3). In relation to this, Friedlander discusses the existence of many different narratives about historical event. He describes the idea of the master narrative (3). When something happens, different narratives are constructed, for instance: an official narrative, personal testimonies or collective memories, which can be competing. These narratives may overlap or compete. They may be very clear or lack some details. Cultural memory is another kind of narrative. It can include personal testimonies or a master narrative, but it distances itself from the others through its form. Aleida Assmann argues that cultural memories are important as they can bridge the gap between objective, academic historicism and personal experience (A. Transformations 62). The question of whether the cultural memory is historical accurate is not interesting anymore as it illuminates a different dimension of the past. Later in this thesis it will be explained how The Kindly Ones gives an innovative perspective on the Holocaust.
So far, cultural memory has mainly focused on victimization (Mintz 26) due to amongst others, all the films, books and other narratives that are famous all over the world. Joseph Bergman argues that due to the explosion of Holocaust-related material, the subject may become too
commonplace and does not shock, wonder or hurt anymore (qtd in Weissman 9). He warns that, for instance, the basic plotline of a Holocaust narrative has become too familiar (Bergman qtd in Weismann 9). In relation to this, Susan Sontag talks about recognizable tropes in Holocaust narratives: the phenomenon of exposing decontextualized melodramatic narratives in which the main character overcomes victimization and becomes a heroic survivor (Sontag qtd in Anne Rothe 2). Today, more and more artists try to explore the perpetrator perspective. Schindler's List may be
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viewed as a step into this new perspective. The film blurs the borders between good and bad. In the beginning of the movie, Oscar Schindler is a sympathizer with Nazism, but he ends up being a hero after saving more than one thousand Jews.
In 2006, Jonathan Littell published the novel The Kindly Ones in which he represents a perpetrator as a witness. With this choice of perspective, he breaks with the collective memory of the Holocaust which, so far, almost exclusively focused on victims. Aurélie Barjonet states that The Kindly Ones marks a shift in history as it has managed to overcome the "Holocaust fatigue" of many audiences (8). She argues that the Holocaust is reduced to several images, namely "perverse, cruel monster who rules with his absolute and arbitrary power over life of death, an isolated heroic moment and an extraordinary person (8). The Kindly Ones portrays the Holocaust in a different way. Pierre Nora argues that The Kindly Ones helps to place the extermination of the Jews in the wider context of the war and avoids the tendency to de-historicize the Holocaust (qtd in Barjonet 8). Since 2006, several other Holocaust narratives from the perpetrators perspective have been released, for example HhhH from Laurent Binet (2010). The Kindly Ones can be seen as a pioneering work in this respect. In the next paragraph, the focus on the perpetrator in this novel is discussed.
Perpetratorship in The Kindly Ones
Barjonet states that the focus on the perpetrator's perspective is the most disturbing and innovative aspect of The Kindly Ones (9). She does not argue that it is unique in a general way, but according to her the comprehensive way Littell managed to do this is actually comparatively exceeds previous representations (9). She supported her argument with the anecdote that even Holocaust survivors expressed a desire to hear the voice of the perpetrator in fictive stories (9). But how exactly is this perpetratorship portrayed in The Kindly Ones? This question is the focus of this paragraph.
The Kindly Ones can be seen as a fictional testimony. The French-born Maximilien Aue tells his life story. The narrative is written in the first person, thus the reader experiences the story through the eyes of Max Aue. This is an interesting artifice, as the reader is perceiving all the horror through the I-perspective and may mentally come closer to the protagonist than if the story was written in the third person. In the prologue, Max Aue speaks directly to his reader. The opening line of the novel reads as follows: “Oh my human brothers, let me tell you how it happened” (8). But, if the reader feels close to Aue, he perhaps perceives this invitational tone as directed to other people.
Aue's narrative takes the form of a 'life-testimony'. Dori Laub and Shoshana Felman wrote about (real) life testimonies of mainly victims. As the text of Laub and Felman is anchored on survivor perspectives, the description of a testimony is not usable in the context of The Kindly Ones. Except
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from one aspect: there is no testimony without a perceiver10. Exactly this aspect is interesting in
relation to the aim of this thesis. There has to be someone who listens to, reads or watches the story and at the same time is part of the creation of knowledge (Laub 57). The witness of this specific testimony is always a volunteer as he or she chooses to read the book. He is able to put away the novel and distance himself from what is told. In case of the performance De Welwillenden this is not always the case. A spectator can, for instance, be invited by a friend and may be not informed about the content of the performance. In this thesis, a potential experience of perceiving a testimony, namely identification with the storyteller, is explored.
The text is clearly not Littell’s own testimony as it is fiction. Nevertheless, is he often held responsible for the words that Aue spoke. Although he states that he based his protagonist on his fantasy of being a Nazi himself, Max Aue is still a fictive character. Luc Rasson argues that literature is not prone to univocality (98). "An author is allowed to play with history" (98). That is exactly what Littell did. Apart from his fictive characters, he gives the floor to some people who have lived in reality, for instance Adolf Eichmann, Albert Speer and Adolf Hitler himself. All of them are (active) perpetrators or (passive) bystanders. The words of the victims are seldom heard in this novel. Herein, we behold the core of what makes The Kindly Ones so fascinating.
The Kindly Ones can be characterized as a polyphonic novel. Different points of view concerning the war are represented. This idea can be further elucidated by using Bakhtin’s concept 'dialogism'. Bakhtin argues that the novel is an eclectic object that has multiple opportunities (5). "The language of the novel is essential as it renews itself by incorporating extra literary heteroglossia and novelistic layers of literary languages which become dialogised, permeated with laughter, irony, humour and elements of self-parody" (Bakhtin 7). Dialogism is the creation of meaning by the interaction of the social varieties of language" (qtd in Steinby 85). This can only be achieved through the interaction of characters and positions. Bakthin states that the dialogic nature of the novel provides a kind of truth other than texts that are limited to one perspective on a given case (qtd in Steinby 75). Such truth can only be found in the multiplicity of consciousness (qtd in Steinby 76).
In the monologue, Aue addresses the reader directly by putting forward various statements and questions. With this monologue, Littell steers a dialogue between the character and the
audience: "Don’t think I am trying to convince you of anything; after all, your opinions are your own business" (8). Aue does not seem to regret his actions, but implicitly, he hints at the reader’s
understanding of his behaviour and perhaps even safeguards himself from judgements. On this level, Littell creates tension between protagonist and reader, a dialogue that continues throughout the
10 Felman and Laub argue that literature has become a witness itself (Felman and Laub, XVIII). This statement is
interesting in relation to The Kindly Ones. Although the story is written in the first person, the reader gets to know more than the protagonist is logically able to know.
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novel. Is Aue an evil person? What are his motives to act? What would I have done in his situation? Several pages later, Aue is in a conversation with some soldiers. When one of them, Zorn, sighs: "Fortunately I just have to look after the cordon” (44), Max states that this man shirks his
responsibility. "If we were committing an injustice, we ought to think about it, and decide if it was necessary and inevitable, or if it was only a result of taking the easy way out, of laziness, of a lack of thought” (45). Indirectly, the reader is stimulated to think again. What does the attitude of Zorn says about his evil deeds? Does he act because of his ideological beliefs or does he simply follow orders and fails to reflect on his deeds?
In the novel various perspectives on the war, the atrocities and the underlying ideology are portrayed. These perspectives do not merely show horrible deeds or world views in themselves, but also tell the reader what horror means and what perpetratorship is. The Kindly Ones is often called an example of what Christopher Browning describes as the Nazi as an “ordinary man”. However, Luc Rasson states that Max Aue is too extraordinary to make a serious claim for this label (qtd in Barjonet and Razinsky 108). For instance, Max Aue has an exuberant sexual life. He has an incestuous relation with his sister and has various uncommon sexual experiences and fantasies with men. Catharine Coquio wrote an essay about the prologue of The Kindly Ones. She wonders to whom the perpetrator is actually speaking. She questions the "jarring tone" of Aue (qtd in Barjonet 76). Someone who is aware of his guilt and maybe doubt his deeds would not have used such a tone. Barjonet states that Aue is doubtlessly more an enigma than a 'realistic' character (7). These arguments are pulled together by Rasson to conclude that Aue is an unreliable narrator (107).
Max Aue is a man who does not act out of ideological belief, but because it is something inherent to his personality. His internal dialogue is frequently portrayed. He doubts the motives of Nazi's, but he murders several times without grounded reasons. Another form of perpetratorship is shown through the character of Thomas. Thomas is a follower. He is a perfectionist who wishes to be appreciated by his superiors. When Max expresses his doubts about the Nazi-regime, Thomas reacts: "Max … these kind of ideas: keep them to yourself. They could get you into trouble" (139). Thomas murders because he is ordered to do so. In fact, he seems to embody the kind of perpetratorship that Hannah Arendt famously described in The Banality of Evil.
The book shows us how people could act and react in specific situations. How do people cope with evil thoughts, commands and deeds? One of the cruellest fragments presents us with a soldier who has shot a pregnant woman.
She was pregnant … You didn’t have to shoot her like that … - ‘She isn’t dead yet,’ said the man who was examining her … ‘She’s finished, But she’s at full term, we can still save the baby’ … ‘What is this mess, Greve?’ … ‘It worked, Untersturmführer,’ Greve said. ‘He should live’ … ‘You’re crazy,’ Ott
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shouted. ‘Give me that’ … He tore the newborn from Greve’s hands and, holding it by his feeds, smashed its skull against the corner of the stove. Then he threw it on the ground … ‘You should have let it croak in its mother’s womb, you moron! You should have left it alone … Greve was sobbing: ‘You shouldn’t have done that.’ (150 – 151)
This fragment shows different kinds of perpetratorship. Before this scene, all the soldiers have committed murder. They have acted in malicious ways. Still, in each situation, the moral validity of choices and deeds are continuously discussed and subsequently, upheld. One of the soldiers thinks the murder of the pregnant woman was already a gross moral transgression. For Greve, killing the infant transgresses any moral standard. Ott however, does not seem to care about these issues. It is the dialogue between the soldiers and positions that represents these different levels of
perpetratorship.
A final example of perpetratorship concerns the notion of the bystander. Max meets lieutenant Dr. Voss who is a specialist in racial issues. In the dialogues between Max and Voss, the ideology of the Nazi's and the subsequent atrocities are discussed. Voss is the most critical character concerning the Nazi ideology, but in fact, he refuses to act against it. This exemplifies another kind of evil that can be qualified as the position of the passive bystander.
This paragraph has explained the way perpetratorship is expressed in The Kindly Ones. Earlier, the human desire to come close to a perpetrator was highlighted. Gary Weismann stated that the unrepresentability of the Holocaust attracts people to read, view or listen to narratives that deal with this historical event (221). The desire to experience the Holocaust as a witness is often
unspoken (4) and therefore hard to research. The potential feeling of closeness to an SS officer is the main focus of this thesis. In the second part of this chapter, three theories concerning this topic are explored: 1) empathic unsettlement by Dominick LaCapra; 2) identification with the aggressor by Anna Freud; and 3) closeness by Jens Eder. The first notion explains what happens if someone is intrigued by an evil character, the second gives a psychological view on the possibility of identifying yourself with a perpetrator, and the third consists of different forms of feeling close to a character like Max Aue. Together they give a thorough theoretical overview of the main subject of this thesis.
1.2. Coming close to the perpetrator
In this part of the chapter possible attitudes towards an evil protagonist are explored. First, the notion of empathic unsettlement is explained to explore how people might feel empathically close to a fictive perpetrator. Thereafter, the theory of Anna Freud is used to discuss potential identification with an aggressor. Finally, the various ways of feeling close to a character Jens Eder describes, will
21 guide us to the empirical part of this thesis.
Empathic unsettlement
Dominick LaCapra has written about the notion of identification in The Kindly Ones. He states that Jonathan Littell seems to conflate empathy with identification in his explanation of his writing process (2013, 73). In another article, LaCapra talks about possible responses to narratives and especially, the differences between experiencing empathy and empathic unsettlement in perceiving fiction (2001, 78). He states that "empathy is important in attempting to understand traumatic events and victims and have stylistic effects in the way one discusses or addresses certain problems" (78, 2001). Or, put differently, it helps to overcome the denial of the trauma (78). Thus, reading, watching or listening to narratives about the Second World War may help to acknowledge the trauma if the perceiver experiences empathy for the character(s). It is important to mention that LaCapra focusses on the (fictive) victim perspective. But will the mechanism also work in relation to a perpetrator perspective? I am convinced that the notion of empathic unsettlement can be used in relation to the reader’s perception of The Kindly Ones. In this and later paragraphs, I will discuss this matter.
What happens if someone feels empathically unsettled? “It poses a barrier to closure in discourse and places in jeopardy harmonizing or spiritually uplifting accounts of extreme events from which we attempt to derive reassurance or a benefit” (LaCapra 2001, 41-42). It is the reader’s critical interplay between empathizing and distancing itself from a character in a narrative. Jill Bennet describes LaCapra's notion of empathic unsettlement as the aesthetic experience of simultaneously feeling for another and becoming aware of a distinction between one's own perceptions and the experience of the other (8). The perceiver both doubts, intellectual, cognitive, stylistic or rhetorical concerns and reflects on his empathy for the character. Catharine Coquio's comment on the jarring tone of Max Aue is an example of such a stylistic concern as she criticizes the way the character acts, while at the same time being intrigued by him. It is a distinctive interplay of distance and intimacy that attempt to avoid the difficulties that accompany sympathetic identification (Luciano 12).
Empathic unsettlement is a kind of witnessing-the-self without overtaking that of the survivor (Luciano 12). But, LaCapra explains that the result of feeling empathically unsettled towards a victim may be secondary or muted trauma or objectionable selfdramatization (qtd in Postone and Santner 220). Being confronted with, for instance, images or stories about the Holocaust, people might feel traumatized themselves (LaCapra qtd in Postone and Santner 220). Although The Kindly Ones is written from a perpetrator perspective, this effect of witnessing might be the case by reading the novel. Especially because the novel is written in the first person and the reader experiences the
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events through the eyes of Max Aue. According to several reviewers, various passages are shocking to read (Dijkgraaf 2009). The reader might feel empathy for Max Aue or understand his decisions, but feel critically aware of his deeds at the same time. This almost paradoxical experience comes close to LaCapra’s description of empathic unsettlement. Therefore, the notion is used in this thesis.
Will the spectators of De Welwillenden indeed feel empathically unsettled while watching the play? That is one of the questions that will I will try to answer in this thesis. People might feel a kind of empathy for the protagonist if they go along with Aue's invitation in the prologue, but they surely will disagree with, and criticize his deeds.
Identification with the aggressor
Psychologist Anna Freud wrote about the human ego based on the theoretical writings of her father Sigmund. She states that the ego may defend itself to external dangerous influences, for instance potential identification with an aggressor (109). But, sometimes identification with such an external force might be useful. Freud tells a story of a girl who is afraid in the hall of her home (110). The girl pretends to see ghosts. After a while she finds a way to deal with her fear by copying the attitude of the ghosts. She internalizes the evil in order to protect herself.
Another example describes an individual's fear for visiting the dentist. Because of his fear, he might have a bad experience. After his appointment he is angry because the dentist has hurt him. He does not identify himself with the dentist, but with the imagined aggression. This anger he projects on other people and he will get into a fight (112). According to Freud, these examples show a
mechanism of identification via impersonating the aggressor (114). She explains that this mechanism is frequently combined with a defence strategy: the protection of guilt (119). The ego protects itself with intolerance towards other people and withholds from self-criticism (119). Freud states that true morality starts with internalized criticism, and thus the ego's perception of its own fault (119). If that happens, the aggression will slowly fade away. Both the mechanisms of protection and identification are inherent to human beings.
Psychoanalyst Bruno Bettelheim observed these mechanisms in relation to concentration camp prisoners and guards. Even these prisoners, who have not been intimate with anybody for a long time, displayed such behaviour (qtd in Sanford 107). Linda Hunt and others question
Bettelheim's thesis. They state that this had nothing to do with Freud's concept of 'identification with the aggressor', but alternatively, seek its cause in the effect of traumatisation (83). If they really had identified themselves with the guards, they would have morally agreed with their actions, according to Hunt. This statement can be questioned as Freud argues that the critical part is lost in the process of identification. I would plead for the simple explanation that these prisoners had to survive and
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were by no means able to morally judge their own acts. My idea of this mechanism is in line with that of Hans-Hermann Hoppe. He states that the concentration camp prisoners showed chronic, reactive aggression, which is a result of a traumatic diffusion of instincts (qtd in Hunt 84).
The identification process with the aggressor might also work in relation to fictive stories. The spectators or readers internalize the anger of the aggressor in their perception of the narrative (116). Thus, the spectator will not identify with the aggressor itself, but with the aggression. This mechanism is frequently discussed in relation to aggressive video games. Anna Freud did not write extensively about identification with fictive aggressors, but that does exclude her ideas’ relevancy to fiction. An example of internalizing the fictive feelings of the character is the famous Werther effect. After the release of Goethe’s Das Leiden des Junges Werther, lots of people copied his feelings and final deed: they committed suicide.
Concerning De Welwillenden, the hypothesis is that the same mechanism is at work, though to a certain extent. Nevertheless, the circumstances are highly different in the playhouse, than the circumstances in which he founds himself that had a large influence on Aue's thoughts and deeds. Furthermore, the protagonist literally calls for self-reflection in the prologue which might cause, according to Freud, moral reflection. The audience is likely to experience a more nuanced feeling of identification or closeness as the character itself reflects on his deeds. Jens Eder wrote about different forms of feeling close to a character. His theory will be explicated in the last paragraph and adopted in the empirical research.
Closeness
In his article Ways of being close to a character, multimedia professor Jens Eder tries to grasp different ways of how a film spectator relates himself to a character. He states that there are unlimited ways of affective and cognitive responses possible and therefore notions such as 'identification' and 'empathy' are too limited to describe various situations (68). Eder argues that audience members often speak of 'being close' to a character and that this seems to be a
precondition to experience empathy or understanding (68). But, the notion of 'being close to a character' implies more than experiencing empathic or cognitive closeness. Eder explains that in real life situations people can experience three ways of closeness: 1) spatiotemporal proximity, 2) mental or affective closeness and 3) intimate relationships. With the term 'spatiotemporal proximity' he means the physical closeness between two people in time and space (69). The second option "occurs when someone has certain mental attitudes and dispositions towards another person which are cognitive or affective" (69). In the third way of closeness, Eder describes an intimate relationship between two people as "knowing private things about each other, experiencing certain emotions and
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interacting regularly in ways not open to others" (69). All these three options may overlap, but the third one is a matter of degree. For instance, lovers often live physically near to each other. Eder explains that characters are mental constructs (69). As a result, people will not
experience real physical closeness to them. But, they can imagine themselves to be. Eder labels these psychological reactions as the process of 'character synthesis' or 'character recognition' which means that the recipient constructs a mental model of the character (69). These mental models are based on real life experience. This does not mean that these models cannot be challenging. For instance, in the case of a perpetrator, people have to find (new) ways of relating themselves to such a character. Nevertheless, Eder states that fictive situations are often based on the real world, so spectators might be able to experience some way of closeness to the character. Concerning the research questions of this thesis, this idea is discussed. To what extent do people find ways to relate themselves to such a character or is this indeed challenging?
Furthermore, Eder discusses some preconditions for experiencing closeness (70). First, the audience member has to pay attention to the narrative. Thus, he has to be mentally involved in the story. Second, the perceived authentication of the character might influence the process as well. An unreliable narrator, for instance, is more difficult to feel close to than a reliable one. Third, the fictional world the character is set in, can be more or less attractive to the recipient. The war situation of mass murdering in De Welwillenden will likely not intuitively attract the spectator. Moreover, the values and norms that are upheld in this world, may also influence the feeling of closeness. The fourth factor is the degree of perceived realism in the narrative. If the audience member recognizes the fictional situation as possibly real, presumably he feels closer to the character than if he does not. Lastly, the spectator's feeling of immersion during the film or performance influences the feeling of closeness to the character.
Eventually, Eder describes six ways of relating yourself to a character (70):
1) Perceived relations in space and time: spatiotemporal proximity and paraproxemics; 2) Cognitive relations to fictional minds and bodies: understanding and perspective-taking; 3) Perceived social relations: similarity and familiarity;
4) Imagined interaction: parasocial interaction; 11
5) Imagined interaction: parasocial relationships;12
6) Emotional responses: affective closeness.
11 When viewers imagine themselves interacting with a character or react to behavioural cues in represented
face-to-face situations (Eder 70).
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These categories usually overlap. The first way of interaction covers suggested physical closeness (Eder 71). This may be the case because of the "general geographical and temporal proximity" (Eder 72) of the character. The strong mimetic connection between the character and the recipient can lead to two tendencies: 1) it will be easier to understand the character because of a shared cultural knowledge and experiences or 2) it facilitates mental stereotypes that lead to feel less close to the character (72). Another option within this category is spatiotemporal attachment (72). The spectator gets to experience time and space through the perspective of the character. In film, the landscape is shown and in theatre the mise-en-scène often gives an impression of the imagined story world. Eder states that according to the mere exposure hypothesis, people react with more sympathy to
something or someone they recognize (72). This first way of experiencing closeness will presumably not be the category most present in this research due to the circumstances where Max Aue is living in. Apart from that, in his article Eder focuses on film and the medium theatre has contrasting spatio-temporal potential to film. Nevertheless, in De Welwillenden the medium of film is also present. The actors for instance, work with close-ups which facilitate the audience’s physical closeness to the character. Apart from that, music is also present in the performance which engenders feelings of the passage of time.
The second way of closeness describes the understanding of mental experiences, such as perceptions, imaginations, evaluations, opinions, judgements and behavioural choices (71). Herein, the mental models someone creates while meeting another person are important, or in other words, the spectator gets to know the character. It partly depends on the information that is given in the narrative if and how people come to understanding (73). Eder divides this category in four parts: 1) perceptual and imaginative (e.g. seeing, hearing, hallucinating and dreaming), 2) epistemic and doxastic (e.g. knowing and believing), 3) evaluative and conative (e.g. judging, evaluating, having interests, concerns, wishes, goals and plans) and 4) affective (e.g. having emotions, moods and feelings) (73 - 74). All these examples can be experienced by the perceiver, but because of the process of focalization in a narrative, spectators will experience the perspective of the character. This implies that the audience member may share the perspective without experiencing any form of identification. It is hypothesized that this option will take place among the greater part of the audience in the empirical experiment.
The third category describes the process of the spectator's comparison with the character, thus, his search for similarities and differences (71). An important aspect of this category is the idea of social identity (74). Social identity means that a person is characterized by social features that show whether he or she is a member of a particular group (Deschamps and Devos qtd in Worchel 2). Before watching a film or visiting a theatre performance, people are biased by their own social identity. People are partly made up by an identity that is shared with members of a certain peer
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group. Concerning De Welwillenden, age, gender, the knowledge of the book, the reason of visiting the performance and the frequency of visiting the theatre, will influence perception. This third category might be the most important one in relation to the audience research. Eder states that "the viewer may compare the character with his self-image and feel that he is 'like him' in some
characteristic way" (75). This quotation describes exactly what Max Aue hopes that his spectator will experience while listening to his story.
The fourth and fifth categories, cover the imagined relationship between the perceiver and character. Here fiction plays an important role, especially the spectators’ experience with perceiving fictive stories. Eder states that someone who is used to watching romantic comedies, for example, approaches a narrative from this perspective (76). Moreover, a trained viewer is more likely to comprehend and reflect upon narrative techniques as, for instance, the effect(s) of focalization.
The last category is constituted by the affective feelings the recipient might have for the character. Does the audience member feel empathy, sympathy, distance or antipathy for the character? Eder states that closeness can even exist despite having negative feelings for the character (75). When the spectator imagines himself interacting with the character (category four), as in real life situations, negative feelings can be present as well.
Although this theory is focused on film reception, I am sure that the different ways of closeness Eder describes can be transferred to a theatrical situation. The following statements will also apply to theatre performances: 1) the medium is able to intensify feelings of closeness or to bring forth reflective distance; 2) the medium gives us information about a character and its inner life which we could never know about real people and 3) the medium makes us feel close to character types we would never meet or would actively avoid in reality (69). The second and third statements are especially important for this research. The novel shows the inner life of a Nazi officer. This is something the lawyers, prosecutors and audience members tried to grasp during the Adolf Eichmann trial in 1961. Philosopher Hannah Arendt famously wrote about it in her book The banality of evil: Eichmann in Jeruzalem. Her theory is often challenged, but in fact, nobody really knows what Eichmann really thought. Of course, The Kindly Ones is fictive, but what makes this novel so interesting is that Littell based Max Aue on his own imagination of being a Nazi-officer. Thus, the reader gets to know what a person might think in such a situation. Eder ends his article with the question of how closeness between a spectator and character can be tested empirically. This is exactly the aim of this thesis.
Therefore, the last part of this chapter focuses on the theatrical situation. Theatre scholar Henri Schoenmakers describes the multi-layered communication process between the product (performance) and the audience in theatre. He investigates the relation between emotions or emotional involvement and identification. The audience is watching someone who plays a role and
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thus pretends to be someone else. The most important thing in this process is that the spectator suspends his or her disbelief and willingly accepts the fictive situation on stage (at least temporarily) as reality. This layer is described by Schoenmakers as the moment when the spectator breaks into the internal communication between characters of the fictional world (140). He further builds on Siegfried Schmidt's division between two conventions of perceiving fiction: 1) the aesthetic
convention and 2) the reality convention. When people watch a film or theatre play they are aware of the signs within the communication process between the makers and themselves. This is what Schoenmakers calls the aesthetic convention (141). Immersion can make viewers forget this
convention and adhere more to the created reality (141). Both conventions can be active at the same time, but there is always one dominant (141). This process influences identification. The second convention makes the spectator forget the theatrical situation and makes him feel close to the character.
In the next chapter, the theatralization of The Kindly Ones is explored. On the part of the makers, what choices were made in creating the scenario and the play? How does the narrative differ from the novel? What is the philosophy of the scenography? And how can all these aspects influence the perception of the spectator?
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2. The remediation of The Kindly Ones
Ik wil niet het monsterlijke in de mens, maar het menselijke in het monster tonen (Cassiers qtd in De Standaard).
The present chapter focuses on the remediation process of the novel The Kindly Ones into the
performance De Welwillenden. The term remediation finds its origin in media theory. Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin describe remediation as the adaption of the content of a medium into another medium. They explain that in the beginning of the twentieth century in Hollywood many filmed versions of classic novels were made (8). The content was borrowed from the novel, but the narrative was not always the same as in the original medium. It is not fully a copy of the first
medium. The process of remediation can be described as taking an artwork and adapting the content into another artefact. This process can be influenced by many aspects. In this chapter, the
remediation of the novel The Kindly Ones into the play De Welwillenden is explored.
The remediation process started with adapting the book into a play. Director Guy Cassiers and dramaturg Erwin Jans wrote the play together. At the same time, the scenographer Tim van Steenbergen designed the scenography on the basis of conversations with Guy Cassiers. During the rehearsals the performance was set and the result is showed in theatre. This part of the chapter consist of three different parts: the scenario, scenography and direction, and the acting of Hans Kesting. All these aspects of the theatre play may influence the perception of the audience and will be reviewed in relation to the empirical research in the final conclusion. During the rehearsal
process, I worked as an intern in the dramaturgy department of Toneelgroep Amsterdam which gave me access to five rehearsals of De Welwillenden and the scenography presentations. In the writing phase of the play, I was able to read the various versions. Hereby, I am well informed of the intentions of the makers. Where explication of decisions is appropriate, the text is supported with the arguments of the director and scenographer expressed in written media.
The play
The first step in the remediation process was rewriting The Kindly Ones into a play. Director Guy Cassiers and Erwin Jans wrote the play together. They realized that it is impossible to transform a story of nearly one thousand pages into a script of 68 pages without making a content selection. Guy Cassiers explains that, during the writing process, their point of focus was language (qtd in Gazet van Antwerpen). Scenes are copied from the book and rewritten to fit in the play. As in the book, the
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story is told by Max Aue. The dialogues are interspersed with monologues which are told chronologically.
The initial concern of the remediation process was that the spectator should be entrained into the perspective of Max Aue. Cassiers and Jans choose to focus on the character of Aue and the choices he makes. The other characters are flat, which were mostly round characters in the novel. The various dialogues which portray the myriad ethical stances towards the war are shortened or omitted. The result of this choice is that the mechanism of dialogism in the play is less
comprehensive than in the novel. The main focus of the narrative is the life of Max Aue during the Second World War. The audience shares these experiences through the various internal monologues of Aue. Another notable difference is that the screenwriters left out Aue’s personal history. Because of this choice, the spectator does not get to know the incestuous relationship with Una, difficult family relations and Aue’s time spent at the boarding school. They only get to know the man they see before them on stage. The man who lives in a world of war and makes decisions in that context. Following the novel, the performance starts with Max Aue's testimony. He looks back at his actions during the Second World War. Cassiers was resolute adapting the monologue. While reading the novel, he was drawn to the sentence "But always keep this thought in mind: you might be luckier than I, but you are not a better person” (Cassiers qtd in Knols). Cassiers argues that as a reader you do not want to accept this statement. That is, according to Cassiers, a motivating factor in continuing to read is to prove the statement incorrect (qtd in Knols). He states that the perpetrator perspective is interesting as it implies 'what if' and questions of responsibility. Much alike to the monologue in the book, Aue directly addresses the spectators. This may raise the questions mentioned above. Is it true that Aue is a normal human like me? Should I have acted the same as he did in a similar context? Therein, the distinction between good and bad will be parted, especially if the spectator starts to feel close to the character.
The most notable omission is the family history of Max Aue. The theatre audience does not get to know his incestuous relation with his sister and the murder of his mother and stepfather. This choice is however, an interesting one as this could show Max Aue in a more human way than the book does. The performance is focused on his deeds during the Second World War.
The feeling of closeness between the spectator and Max Aue would be affected by the information about the incestuous relation with Una and the murder of his mother and stepfather. This might also be the reason why Cassiers and Jans ignored the absurd scene between Hitler and Aue. In this scene at the end of the novel, Aue meets the Führer for the first time and squeezes his nose. This
happening might be too strange for Cassiers and Jans' purposing of De Welwillenden. Moreover this omission serves the plausibility of the story.
