Duma, wstyd, profanacja

Postpamięciowy wymiar filmów Piętno i Paragraf 175

Abstract

Pride, Shame, Profanation. Post-Memory in the Movies Bent and Paragraph 175

This paper offers a post-memory oriented analysis of the movies Bent (1997) and Paragraph 175 (2000), both referring to the so-called pink triangles—homosexual men persecuted by the Nazis. The author reverses Marianne Hirsch’s key concept in order to introduce a new one, “the generation of homosexual post-memory”. Theoretical categories of dignity, shame, and profanation are used contextually, to comment on the main themes of the movies and their common interpretations. Seen through the post-memory perspective, films under discussion become substitutes of direct, familial narratives, which for years remained inaccessible due to binding law, social taboos, “institutional homophobia”, and sustained “days of masquerade”. Even though it may not seem obvious at first, the text presents that both titles have the potential to activate the process of trauma transfer and create homosexual post-memory as such.