Abstract
This article explores the rhetoric and mass mediation of the national Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) commemoration ceremony, as broadcast on British television. Following the recommendation of the Stockholm International Forum, since 2001, Britain has commemorated victims of the Holocaust and subsequent genocides on 27 January. The national commemoration has been broadcast on television five times: in 2001, 2002, 2005, 2015 and 2016. These programmes both reflect and illuminate the complex processes of (national) histories, individual memory and collective remembrance, and the ways that they mediate and interact with each other in social and historic contexts. I argue that these televised ceremonies orientate to four communicative metafunctions, the combination of which is particular to this media genre. They aim to simultaneously achieve four things: to Communicate History (‘what happened’); to Communicate Values (‘why we commemorate’); to Communicate Solemnity (‘how we commemorate’); and to Communicate Hope (‘that we are not defined by this catastrophic past’). In this article, I examine: the ways that these metafunctions are communicated through words, music and images; and some of the ways that these metafunctions can rhetorically derail, undermining their communication.
Highlights
Commemorations are ongoing dynamic processes, through which narratives about the past, about ‘us’ and ‘them’ as well as beliefs and values contained in these stories, are produced and reproduced
The 27th January—chosen to mark the liberation of the concentration and extermination camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau by the Soviet Red Army—provides an opportunity ‘‘for everyone to pause to remember the millions of people who have been murdered or whose lives have been changed beyond recognition during the Holocaust, Nazi Persecution and in subsequent genocides’’ (UK Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) Trust)
This article offers a rhetorical analysis of four British Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) ceremonies (2002, 2005, 2015 and 2016), as broadcast on British television
Summary
Commemorations are ongoing dynamic processes, through which narratives about the past, about ‘us’ and ‘them’ as well as beliefs and values contained in these stories, are produced and reproduced. Commemorative events play a subtle role in the garnering of public consensus, working to consolidate myths about social in-groups and out-groups ( nations) and contributing to processes of group inclusion and exclusion. This facilitates room for the creation of unity and the collision of opposing political interests and interpretations of the past, as well as the potential for conflict with the collective myths/narratives of other national, ethnic or religious groups (Heer et al 2008; Wodak and Auer-Borea 2009). This article examines one such case: the televisation of the British national commemorative ceremony, as part of Holocaust Memorial Day
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