mamigon

Do you have Dyer's book? Does he actually say that the Young Turk leadership, who were in their mid-twenties, panicked"? Talaat was born in 1874; Djemal in 1872; Enver in 1881. We know history isn't Dyer's strength. Apparently math isn't either. Please confirm the exact quote if you can. Thanks.

It is very good. He is a superb writer & he has many, many books. Some have more "Armenan relevance" than others, but they are all worth reading.

For God's sake don't waste an ounce of strength or a minute of your time getting worked up over or responding to our good friend Holdwater. If you have seen his website, which I will spare mentioning by name, you know what I am talking about. He is an energetic idiot. His points refute themselves. I have to laugh, though, at people who get all weepy about that noted "Christian scholar" Sam Weems. That gives you an idea the level ol' Holdwater is working at.

This, of course, is what people are talking about when you hear that some Armenians don't really want any resolution to the Genocide issue with Turkey, that they just want to keep the hatred going in order to keep their political agendas alive, and that Armenians are their own worst enemies. It's good to be reminded every once in a while that there are such people. One the day that Turkey offers every living Armenian a million dollars cash and the restoration of Tigran the Great's kingdom these people will scream "Turkish Trick! I refuse your piddling offer!" And then they will expect Armenians to thank them for their patriotism. AM I YELLING LOUD ENOUGH?

What an absurd and tedious argument this is. It brings out the pseudo-scholar in everybody. Shall we all submit a blood sample and be done with it? Race, ethnicity, all of these things are constructed by people who think they have some inherent meaning. It's all mythology -- which doesn't mean it means nothing, just that it only means what you make it mean.

I think we agree, really. My point is that there was no way Egoyan's film was going to satisfy the community -- that is not a criticism of the film, merely a statement of how I see things. I think the community as a whole wants something they are not going to get -- a mainstream, widely-viewed, historically accurate film on the AG. Of course we do not need such a film to validate our experience. Such a film is a pipe dream, anyway.

That is a very interesting essay. It was always clear to me that no film Egoyan made would please much of the Armenian community. He does not make straightforward films. I can understand people's need to have a straightforward movie about the Genocide made, to feel validated, free from Egoyan's intellectualising about production of meaning and the inherent shortcomings of any artistic representation. Ideally, his film would have been part of continuum of films on the Genocide, a kind of critique of them -- unfortunately, it is a critique of films that don't even exist, except as represented by the Ararat film within the film. I'm not sure Egoyan even knows how he feels about that film. He seems to regard this film as kitschy and overwrought. "We know all the clichés about evil Turks, the scenes of torture, and the stories of what happened on the death marches. While it's important to show this material - and my film does - it is also important to address the limitations of such traditional representation." Of course, the problem is that the vast majority of the world does not know these "cliches," if that is what they are. And if they are just cliches, why does he think it is "important to show this material"? I suspect most Armenians who disliked or were disappointed in the film -- and in my experience that is the majority -- just are not ready for the Genocide to be deconstructed, no matter how skillfully or compassionately. I am sympathetic to this, but I still think it is an important film.

Don't know if this is what you have in mind, but this is from the Ararat press notes. ATOM EGOYAN ON THE INECEPTION OF ARARAT At the press conference for “The Sweet Hereafter” at Cannes in 1997, a journalist asked me if the film couldn’t be seen as a metaphor for the Armenian Genocide. It was one of the few times in my life when I found myself quite speechless. The journalist went on to suggest that many of my films had dealt with themes of denial and its consequences, and was interested as to why I hadn’t dealt with the subject more directly. It was a good question. Another good question came from my six-year-old son. A few years ago, I was speaking to him and explaining what happened during the Armenian genocide. The question he asked at the end is, so did the Turks say they were sorry? I found that was a really difficult question to answer, because I realized the moment I said they didn't, that would provoke a whole series of other questions that I had to deal with. I felt really sad about that, and realized that something had to be done to try and break this cycle of denial. In terms of the Armenian genocide, the facts are absolutely irrefutable. This film isn't trying to add anything to these facts, but rather is trying to use them to tell a story about denial. About how something which is so evident and which so many people understand to be true can be denied, and how that affects the psychology of the present day. INTRODUCTION “As a Canadian-Armenian filmmaker,” says Atom Egoyan, “ I had always contemplated a film about the unique history of the Armenian people. While it was tempting to consider an adaptation of one of several books, I realized it was crucial for me to root the film in the present day. In this way, I could trace the effects of this historic event on the present generation. My goal was to make a film that would allow the viewer to experience the reality of horror in a spiritual sense, and not just present the obvious results of material and physical loss.” “Ararat is a meditation on the spiritual role of art in the process of struggling for meaning and redemption in the aftermath of genocide,” he continues. “It is a deeply personal piece of work. While there are certain motifs that I have explored in my other films, this is the first time I have directly addressed the notion of historical consciousness on such a scale. What is destroyed in genocide are not only human lives, but the very imprint of humanity in us. The challenge was to harness the epic consequences of genocide with the intimate moments shared by contemporary characters. If history is in the telling, then life is in the making.” “The film-within-the-film revisits the historic events in an attempt to recreate the past,” he explains, “ while the contemporary story and its present day characters reconstruct their own histories, according to their own needs, memories and imaginations. As the historical epic recreates a conventional history out of the ruins of memory and the anecdotes and accounts of the survivors (in particular, Clarence Ussher’s AN AMERICAN PHYSICIAN IN TURKEY, published in 1917), it provides an environment for all of my characters to come together, desperate to find the truth and hopeful of making sense of their lives through an understanding of the story the film tells.” This is a sentiment that resonates strongly with producer Robert Lantos. “The 20th century harbours many untold stories,” says Lantos. “Among them are tragic events that affected millions of people and shaped the world we live in today. As filmmakers, we use our art form to tell these stories. Making a movie demands tremendous energy, commitment and risk. This is only worthwhile if the effort is on behalf of a film that has universal appeal and tells a story that must be told. While each film I produce does not have to be about an unresolved chapter in history, in the case of Ararat, however, this is very much the case.”

That is a very interesting definition of bigot you have there. Criticizing the movie is precisely what you fail to do. Spouting filth is not the same as criticism. Any idiot can do that, as you ably demonstrated. There is plenty about the movie to criticize, but it requires the ability to think. It certainly doesn't minimize the Genocide; it just is not a film "about the Genocide," it is a film about the denial of Genocide and other forms of denial, and how it warps people, both the deniers and the denied. I have criticized publicly and privately, in print and in speech, Jews who deny or minimize the Genocide. I will continue to do so. It is loathsome. I am not going to call them "all kinds of idiotic names" because I understand the ugly politics behind Israel's support of Turkey, as just as I understand Armenia's alliance with Iran, which is not exactly a regime I care for either. Every Jew I know is vocally pro-Armenian and embarassed that Israel takes the stand it does. I'm certainly not going to debate the Holocaust with you because you are obviously one of those Armenians so blinded by rage at the denial of our genocide that you need to deny others'. That's sad, and a losing strategy, to boot. My friends' families who got sent to the concentration camps are as much of a hoax as my grandmother who survived the genocide. It's an absurd discussion, like arguing about the sun coming up. Try to return to reality, if only for a visit.

My goodness, what a perceptive and sensitively written critical assessment of the film! With astute viewers like you in the audience a filmmaker's job must truly be a pleasant one. "It needed to be more graphic" presumably so you could get off on that? Perhaps more rapes? Maybe a half-hour dream sequence of killing "Turkish fags"? And "holohoax" is good, too -- I mean, if we can't recycle neo-nazi white supremacist rhetoric, how will we ever get justice for ourselves? Bravo, my friend.

Phantom- You seem to actually have a grip in reality. Surely you must have figured out by now that there is a sizeable chunk of Armenians who are so paralyzed by their powerlessness or their frustration or what you will that it will always come back to the Jews. Whenever a Jew -- apostate or orthodox -- does anything against an Armenian it is ALL JEWS acting against all Armenians. Whenever a Jew does something that seems to be pro-Armenian they are actually only interested in themselves. Don't you see the logic? And then a Jew who has become a Turk, like Enver apparently was, is still a Jew. An Armenian who sells out the Armenians -- and there have been plenty -- is "no longer one of us." You can go crzy arguing with these nuts. Save your breath and your own sanity, my friend.

Well, again, demonizing is not exactly what I set out to do, but if we are ever to demonize anyone for anything, it seems to me that fighting with the Nazis is a reasonable place to start. Otherwise we are setting the bar pretty damn low. I look forward to the day when someone does some serious, non-propagandistic research on this question and we can get a little closer to understanding if Dro and Nzhdeh were blinded by their hatred of the Soviets (not without reason, of course); willing to get into bed with anyone who dangled the promise, however remote, of a liberated Armenia; committed to Nazi ideology; or just delusional. All I know is we aren't there yet. Anyway, I am sorry to have hijacked this string with this discussion; although not all that sorry, since I think it is very interesting.

I have to admit that I don't have a good answer to that. First, I don't know that there were a lot of these situations, but perhaps there were. Second, there is the issue of balancing possible lives saves through collaborating versus other lives lost due to the same collaboration. I mean, is it okay that Dro saved Armenian lives (or tried to) by collaborating if this resulted in the loss of Russian lives or Polish lives or whatever? Are Armenian lives to be given a higher value in this case, so that anything done ostensibly to save Armenians is worthwhile? If in the end, the act of collaborating has a positive result and no negative results then I guess it can be justified. But how often could this be the case?

"i don't think this subject is taboo" Hmm, can't agree with you there. My experience has been that the only people who want to talk about this are either rabid anti-Tashnags who want to paint all Tashnags as Nazis or Nazi wannabes or on the other side knee-jerk Tashnags who will defend whatever their heroes did just because they are their heroes. Neither side is of any use at all in getting to the truth of the matter. And at any rate discussing it is not the same as researching it. To my knowledge there has been no non-partisan investigation of the topic. Now, of course, the Turks and their stooges have free rein to make of it what they will -- what scholarship do we have to counter with? (I know: even when the scholarship exists in abundance the Turks and their stooges make of it what they like.) In the end, though, I have a hard time thinking one can ever be too harsh about people who chose to fight for the Nazis.

Well, it is to your credit, I guess, that you are able to see it that way. I cannot. I'm not saying they were committed Nazis and I am not saying that their collaboration negates what they did before. But I can never condone their collaboration, whatever the virtuous motives you wish to ascribe to it. I will simply stick to my guns and say that in 1918 they were heroes and in 1941 (or whenever) they brought shame on themselves. In this they are no better or worse than Petain, or Ezra Pound, or Charles Lindbergh, or Martin Heidegger. Or many other basically decent but fearful people who chose badly. If that makes me unpatriotic, then I am prepared to live with that.

Holy smokes, I'm sorry I got going on this, which I have finally figured out is one of the two or three Armenian taboo subjects. (I won't say what the others are.) It is one of the sickening aspects of all Armenian history that we end up having to choose sides between one exploitative power and another perhaps slightly more or less exploitative power. Persian or Roman? Byzantine or Turk? Turk or Russian? Soviet or Nazi? And so on. I know hindsight is 20/20. I guess what amazes me is that even in hindsight there are so many Armenians who are reluctant say that snuggling up with the Nazis was a bad idea.

"They fought against soviets not with nazis"? No offense, but that's not the way it works. If you wear the uniform of Nazis you are fighting with Nazis. You don't get to pick and choose like that. I do not assume they collaborated because they were dyed-in-the-wool Nazis. Frankly, I don't know. I give them the benefit of the doubt and say they made terrible decisions for perhaps reasonable goals. But still terrible decisions, nonetheless. They laid their money on Hitler. If Hitler had won they could have strutted around Yerevan in swastikas and basked in the glory of their achievement; and when Hitler was finished with them he would undoubtedly have had them killed. But Hitler lost, and they bet on the wrong horse. They should face the music, historically speaking, that is.

The point is not to compare Dro and Nzhdeh with Stalin and Hitler, but rather to caution against the "they were just doing what they thought was best for their nation" defense, which can be used by almost every tyrant in history. Obviously their actions do not rise to the horrible level of Hitler. But using nationalism as a defense for collaborating with the Nazis is weak. As for your questions, I have to say I don't know the answers to them. I think it is an embarassment to the Armenian community that exactly what Dro did and why he did it has not been thoroughly researched and documented so that people can come to reasonable conclusions. It allows the Turks and their lackeys to wield this information as if it is a dirty secret that the Armenians do not want the world to know about -- which, to some extent, seems to be the case.

Until Bush plunges the entire world into war and is responsible for the death of millions of people -- a prospect which I wish were more far-fetched than it is -- then the Bush/Hitler analogy does not hold up. You're quite right that nations do what they have to do; but history should judge them accordingly. I fear that by your sliding scale, though, that we will come to the conclusion that Hitler was "just doing what he thought was best for Germany," Stalin was just doing "what he thought was best for Russia, and so on down to George Bush, who, as we know, has regular conversations with God about what is best for everyone. I mean, isn't "you just do what you have to do to help your nation survive" Talaat's best defense, too?

True enough. "Fools" is the wrong word because it implies that these people were stupid or did not know what they were doing. Clearly they did. "Not perfect," though, makes it sound like they had occasional bad manners. It goes a bit beyond "not perfect." For me their mistakes do not negate their earlier achievements, but they should not be let off the hook, either. Henri Petain was one of France's greatest heroes in World War I and he sold the nation out to the Nazis in World War II -- allegedly to save the French nation. Is he revered as a hero or condemned as a traitor? I don't think they have too many statues of Petain in France. He was sentenced to death, later commuted to life in prison. Fair or not fair? Not for me to say. But when you get in bed with Nazis, my feeling is that you get what's coming to you.

Once you put on a Nazi uniform you are associating yourself in no uncertain terms with all that goes with them, including their crimes against humanity. Look, I know this is not cut and dry stuff -- no one would say that the Armenians who fought bravely against the Nazis for the Soviet Union should be associated with Stalin's crimes, for example. But Dro and Nzhdeh and some of the other fools who were trying to establish the Armenians' "Aryan" pedigree knew what they were doing and with whom they were doing it. But my understanding of things is that the actual role they played in the war was negligible.

Agreed. I just wish that Armenians in general would be a little bit more open about Dro and Nzhdeh. Acknowledge that they were heroes for saving Armenia in 1918 or thereabouts and judge them harshly for collaborating with the Nazis, whatever their motives.

Presumably they are referring to Generals Dro and Nzhdeh, who, unfortunately, in their (understandable) anti-Soviet zeal, made the (not understandable, in my opninion) decision to collaborate with the Nazis, apparently in exchange for some post-war rewards for "liberated" Armenia. Not a proud part of our history. But also not what some of the Turks and their nutcase apologists like crazy as a coot Sam Weems would have it -- they make it sound like most Nazis were Armenians, and most Armenians were Nazis. Not the case, of course. Still, it is sad that any were.

Oh, I get hay with a little help from my friends...

But then, Yoko, too, was actually a crypto-Zionist-Turk-Mason working for the anti-Armenian cabal that controls the world. So, there you have it. Case closed for the prosecution!