Re-enacting Trauma in Film and Television: Restaging History, Revisiting Pain

Abstract

My aim in this chapter is to examine the restaging and revisiting of historical events through re-enactment in documentary film as a very contemporary form of therapy, a way of enabling viewers to identify with the emotions and pain of events with which they are most likely not personally involved. The traumas and the pain of the past haunt the present, and by re-enacting a painful memory, filmmakers, program makers or artists bring that pain to life — pull it into the present. In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the USA on 11 September 2001, collectively known as ‘9/11’, Susan Sontag uttered her famous and influential imperative: ‘let the atrocious images haunt us’ (2003: 102). After arguing earlier that, after the attacks of ‘9/11’,

… we encountered in the media graphic pictures of those who died, along with their names, their stories, the reactions of their families. Public grieving was dedicated to making these images iconic for the nation (Butler, 2010: 38).