Diluted representation of Shoah and Education: the (tele)dramatic model in Jayme Monjardim’s Olga (2004)

Abstract

Piece of work on the problems of representation of Shoah (“Holocaust”) in film works, based on theoretical notions such as fictional resistance of the trauma, memory, and testimony. Such concepts are present in texts by authors such as Márcio Seligmann-Silva and Berta Waldman. The objective is to make explicit that ethics is compromised when such fictional works use trauma as an expressive element of drama – commotion or "lamentation", according to Primo Levi. This problematic is widened when such films are included in Education as a didactic resource or as a portrait of a historical period. The film work that serves as an example of the debate here presented is Jayme Monjardim’s Olga (2004). The methodology follows this dynamics: 1. reflection on the representation of trauma and its dilution or simplification; 2. The tele(dramatic) model present in Jayme Monjardim's Olga, also the need for teachers and students to distinguish what is "real" and what is stylized (or “staged”) from this "real." In the final considerations, it is proposed that the documentary genre, as well as the literature of testimony, problematize better both Shoah and trauma, especially in the school environment. Both of them are textual materials that alternate attachment and detachment from the traumatic experience, as well as the fragmentation that comes from it, result of its "violent clash".