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The Tyranny of the Martyr: Biblical Structures of Violence and the Rhetoric of Victimization in the Work of Lars von Trier
Dr.
Todd Penner Caroline
Vander Stichele Taking the topos of violence against the martyr in the Jewish and Christian traditions, we will lay out the formative structures of violence, victims and victimization, paying special attention to the rhetorical force embedded in the text. Moving from the reception text to its contemporary appropriation, we will explore this phenomenon in light of the work of Lars von Trier, the Danish filmmaker made famous for his participation in the Dogma method of movie production. We will focus primarily on von Trier's two major works, "Breaking the Waves" and "Dancer in the Dark". Von Trier's scripts have a clear victim-focus, delineating the martyr as a woman possessing an imbalanced personality or mental state. Further, his work has a strong religious and moral framework, with both movies following a similar line of development wherein death comes at the hands of the religious and moral authorities, with ritualistic atoning benefits resultant upon the demise of the protagonist. It is evident that despite some rather creative play with the biblical tradition, von Trier himself is intimately tied to the "script" of the biblical precedent. The effect of this structural pattern is most evident in the frequent characterization of von Trier's work as misogynist. The clear rhetorical and fictional demarcation of victim and victimizer, of martyr and tyrant, evident in the literary tradition and its subsequent reception reinforces the lack of nuance in understanding violence and suffering in the world, underscores the simplistic characterization of victim and perpetrator, and, finally, with the loss of the classical context for the embedded values of the biblical structure, ultimately results in a reversal of the original narrative argument: "pathos" thus become pathetic and martyrdom ineffectual.
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