Visual Culture, Spectatorship and Humanitarian Disaster: Vanni Eli and the Representation of the Sri Lankan Civil War

Title

Visual Culture, Spectatorship and Humanitarian Disaster: Vanni Eli and the Representation of the Sri Lankan Civil War

Creator

Nair G.J.

Description

This article examines the dialogic encounter between the spectator and the spectacle in the context of war crimes and humanitarian disasters (in this context, the Sri Lankan civil war) in Vanni Eli, a short film by a Sri Lankan Tamizh diasporic filmmaker Tamiliam Subhas. The narrative introduces us not only to the military disaster that is war but also to the humanitarian disasters effected through war. The article studies the role of the spectator who 'witnesses' the torture, and thus complicates the ethics of both the act of torture and the viewing of it.By looking closely at the ingenious ways of narrating torture the article argues that the creative representation of war and disaster implicates within its discourse not merely the participants and the victims of the war alone but also the 'peripheral' subjects like the mice (the film's lead 'actors'), and by extension, the spectators participating in the discursive construction of the victimized. Despite the symbolic disembodiment and effacement of the tortured, their suffering is recognized as a humanitarian disaster with the shared grammar of suffering common to all. 2012 Mudra Institute of Communications.

Source

Journal of Creative Communications, Vol-7, No. 45689, pp. 121-134.

Date

2012-01-01

Subject

atrocity narratives; disaster; human rights; spectator; Sri Lanka; torture

Coverage

Nair G.J., Christ University, Bangalore, India

Rights

Restricted Access

Relation

ISSN: 9732594

Format

Online

Language

English

Type

Article

Identifier

https://doi.org/10.1177/0973258613501064

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