Page 10 - Bitter Icons

The Rhetoric of Collective Memory and Modes of Remembering

Advancing in the analysis, I will now look at what Erll (2008) calls the rhetoric of collective
memory. According to her the choice of media influences the kind of memory created (Erll

2008:390). In our case, we have a fictional film where “…there are different modes of repre-
sentation which may elicit different modes of cultural remembering in the audience.” (Erll

2008:390) There are then identified four modes of remembering: the experiential, the mythical,
the antagonistic and the reflexive mode. The different modes of remembering Erll (2008) talks

of, like the antagonistic mode, may also have aspects creating “the other” through fiction and

to establish one memory over another:

Literary forms that help to maintain one version of the past and reject another constitute an
antagonistic mode. Negative stereotyping (such as calling the Germans “the Hun” or

“beasts” in early English poetry of the Great War) is the most obvious technique of estab-
lishing an antagonistic mode. More elaborate is the resort to biased perspective structures:
Only the memories of a certain group are presented as true, while the versions articulated

by members of conflicting memory cultures are deconstructed as false (Erll 2008:391).

Here it is also interesting to note that such a mode of remembering could establish a hegemonic
memory of a certain group, which could apply to the case of Bitter Harvest.

One example of the antagonistic mode may be found in the beginning of the movie in the scene
where the father Yaroslav tells young Yuri of how the Tartars invaded them and tried to take

away their freedom. Then later in the movie when the Bolsheviks arrive in their village to im-
plement the collectivization, the parallel to the Tartars could be drawn and yet again their free-

dom is at stake. In this mode, the Bolsheviks are portrayed as an invading force that will enslave
the people and bring them under a totalitarian rule and here it could be argued that this sort of

negative stereotyping maintains the Ukrainian version of the events.

The next mode I want to look at is a mythicizing mode which is “…the remembrance of foun-

dational events which are situated in a faraway, mythical past.” (Erll 2008:391) While the film
is not a literary form it could still establish a mythizing mode. I think Bitter Harvest has traits

of mythicizing in the way it shows the Ukrainian past, the way it makes the village setting seem
like a lost paradise soon to be ravaged by outside forces. The nationalistic clothes the villagers

use, the traditional parties, and there are witchlike women and seances in the forest, it all could

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