Trauma and Memory in Afrikaans Families:
A REFLEXIVE ESSAY
ACADEMIC ESSAY
ANIKA DE LANGE
221047
30 OCTOBER 2024
List of Figures
INTRODUCTION
The Afrikaans culture has brought a distinct colonial trauma to South Africa as a community, with its notoriety being brought on by the recent history of Apartheid and van Riebeeck’s arrival to the territory. However, beyond the impact on greater South African society, there is much to be said about the distinct mark the culture has left on those who embody it. In this essay, I will reflect on my personal experience with the religious and cultural traumas experienced as an Afrikaner, as well as how this trauma and memory has impacted the art I have created during my time at the Open Window. In order to this, I will be relying on the following theorists’ discussion of trauma and memory: David Bordwell in his overview of Cognitive Theory (2009, pp.356-367), Allen Meek’s Trauma and Media (2010) as well as Cathy Caruth’s Trauma, Explorations in Memory (1995).
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
The study of trauma and memory grew into public consciousness through explorations of representing post war trauma in the aftermath of World War II, specifically with the effects of the Holocaust. This is explained best by Meek’s (2010, p.26) introduction to the origins of this theoretical framework: “The encounter between deconstructive criticism and the testimony of Holocaust survivors led to a contrast being made between authentic traumatic experience and images produced by dominant media culture (such as melodrama).” I will specifically be looking at the way trauma distorts memory when reproduced in a filmic retelling of events. This concept is explained by Caruth (1995, p.153) as follows: “Modern neurobiologists have in fact suggested that the unerring “engraving” on the mind, the “etching into the brain” of an event in trauma may be associated with its elision of its normal encoding in memory”. Bordwell (2009, p.356) discusses the historic link between the filmic medium and cognitive
science, stating that: “Soon after cinema was invented, philosophers and psychologists, as well as filmmakers, proposed theories of how cinema related to the human mind.”
It is clear then, that there is a distinct connection between cinema and representational trauma. This can be seen both in how our own trauma influences the art we make, how we may represent our stories through the filmic medium via allegory, fantasy and retellings of historic events as well as in how we represent the fictional trauma of characters through the medium. Both perspectives are unique with regards to their representational outcome, and each can be seen in my chosen case studies. My attraction towards this theoretical framework links closely to how my personal experiences throughout this year have influenced my university projects. I made the active choice to explore the recent death of my father as well as how his community has influenced our lives in my art, diving into personal traumas for the first time as an artist. No other theoretical framework would be able to concisely summarise the experiences I have had creating art as a student throughout this year, each work being flavoured by the perspective of these events.
CASE STUDY: DIE BLOED VAN DIE LAM
The first case study within my body of work that exemplifies themes of memory and trauma is that of my final SW300 feature length screenplay, titled Die Bloed Van Die Lam (2024).
It has the following logline: “After the death of his pregnant teenage girlfriend, the guiltridden son of a farmer seeks to make amends with his past by protecting the life of a twoheaded lamb, but is faced with fear and ridicule from his religious community.” The brief for this assignment tasked students to write an original South African screenplay of any genre. I specifically chose to focus on the rural Afrikaans communities of South Africa and their
relationship to Christianity and religious guilt as this is something I have personal experience with and felt I could explore through the lens of a fictional story.
I specifically decided to delve into a fantasy world for this screenplay, one in which surreal and real blend together and allegory plays a large part in the representation of trauma. This links quite closely to Caruth’s (1995, p.24) recitation of Frued’s perspective on how trauma distorts the memory of its victim. She states: “Freud later rejected this model of trauma in favour [sic] of one in which traumatic experience was constituted retrospectively utilising [sic] both memories and recent experiences and only assumed psychic significance through the workings of fantasy and desire. In other words, Freud decided traumatic memories could not be accepted as literal accounts of things that happened.” This notion that trauma can distort our memory and perception of events is one which I felt pertinent to explore with the screenplay’s main character, Josua. In his world, there are parallels between his deceased conjoined first child and a two headed lamb which he discovers on his parents’ farm a decade later. This connection between the death of a very real child and preserving the life of a disabled lamb that is made in Josua’s mind, him viewing the lamb as the rebirth of his child and an opportunity to redeem his past sins, is obviously rooted in fantasy.
A specific scene that showcases this connection in Josua’s mind is that of his confession to his community with regards to the events of the last decade. As their pastor, Josua has the opportunity to preach to the congregation, who know nothing of his past, his parents having covered up the events. In Figure 1, Josua admits to having murdered his own child at the behest of his parents, who made him commit this atrocity both due to the child’s disability as well as it being born out of wedlock. In Figure 2, Josua connects these events to his parents’ insistence that he ends the life of the two-headed lamb. He views both infants as innocent creatures brought to death due to the perceived criminality of their disability within the
Author’s own artwork, “Screenshot #1 of Die Bloed Van Die Lam”.
Note: Anika de Lange, 2024.
FIGURE
Author’s own artwork, “Screenshot #2 of Die Bloed Van Die Lam”.
Note: Anika de Lange, 2024.
FIGURE
community. He thus attaches the same value to the lamb as he did his child, viewing saving its life as an opportunity to rectify his past sins.
CASE STUDY: I AM SAM
My second case study from my body of work is that of my final SD300 project, an experimental short film titled I am Sam (2024). This project was made for the final year “Own Brief” project, where students are tasked with creating an experimental audiovisual project based on their own selected theory. I chose to create a project that would act as an exploration of the relationship I have with my recently deceased father, specifically with regards to the duality between the disintegration of memory of a loved one after their passing, as well as the disintegrative effect of dementia on the brain. This links very closely to the theoretical framework outlined in this essay, as a key theme within the film is that of temporality and how memory changes over time. This beckons back to Caruth’s (1995, p.153) outlining of the formation of memory of a traumatic event. She explains that the memories are never fully formed to begin with, as theorised by Pierre Janet. Rather, these memories are distorted from their origin, only being further changed with the passage of time and recall.
The film consists of experimental shots of actors repetitively performing the same activities, as well as shots of a funeral pamphlet extract being set alight, with the narrative element being found in the voice over, which consists of readings of a letter I wrote my father before his passing, my funeral speech and the pamphlet extract, which can be seen in Figure 3, as well as being burnt in Figure 4. As part of the theoretical element of this project, I relied on Michel Chion’s (1990, p. 95-122) The Real and The Rendered, William S. Burroughs’ Cut-Up Method as well as Sound Collages (Cox and Warner, 2004). Chion’s distinction between the real, rendered and reproduced formed part of my inspiration for the sound design of this project, with the difference between realistic soundscapes and more artificially distorted and
Author’s own artwork, “Screenshot #1 of I am Sam”.
Note: Anika de Lange, 2024.
FIGURE
Author’s own artwork, “Screenshot #2 of I am Sam”.
Note: Anika de Lange, 2024.
FIGURE 04
altered versions of them showcasing the degradation of an audiovisual memory over time. The concept of Sound Collages and The Cut-Up Method also influenced how I distorted these soundscapes as well as my footage, randomly rearranging sentences within the texts until their meaning was entirely changed.
The main point of self discovery in this project was how both the letter I wrote before my father’s passing as well as my funeral speech were tainted in their memory of him as a person, neither being truly representational of our relationship. The letter, its scathing hatred for his perceived abuse of my childhood self etched a very specific idea of an angry, awful man which I no longer feel to be true. The funeral speech, in contrast, completely altered this version of him, replacing perceptions of abuse with those of a man who merely cared and did not know how to show this properly. In the letter, I state “You are already dead. How can I reconcile with a corpse?” (De Lange, 2024). I had no idea he would die three months later. In contrast, the funeral speech laments his early death and wishes he could have been here to see me graduate, marry and so forth. While juxtaposed, both texts form memories which were very real at the time, merely tainted by the traumatic perspective.
CONCLUSION
It is in reflecting on my work as an artist through the lens of trauma and memory that I have come to the realisation that trauma shapes the way in which I interface with both my own perception of reality, as well as the perspective from which I create a narrative around these experiences through art. The effect of the religious and familial trauma experienced within the Afrikaans culture has led to a distinct distortion in memory, reproduced through the filmic medium in a way which coincides with Caruth’s (1995) psychoanalytical theories regarding representation of trauma as well as Meek’s (2010) analysis of trauma in film.
REFERENCES
Bordwell, D. (2009). Cognitive theory. In P. Livingston & C. Plantinga (Eds.), The Routledge companion to philosophy and film (2nd ed., pp.356-367). Routledge.
Caruth, C. (Ed.). (1995). Trauma: Explorations in memory. Johns Hopkins University Press.
Chion, M. (1990). Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen. Columbia University Press.
Cox, C & Warner, D. (Eds.). (2004). Audio culture readings in modern music. Continuum.
De Lange, A. (2024). Die bloed van die lam [Unpublished screenplay]. Screenwriting Department, Open Window.
De Lange, A. (Director). (2024). I am Sam [Unpublished film]. Sound Design Department, Open Window.
Meek, A. (2010). Trauma and media theories, histories, and images. Routledge.
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