Remembering Genocide: The Sacred Madonna and Narrative Closure in Atom Egoyan's Ararat

This article explores Ararat's (Atom Egoyan, 2002) epistemological framework for understanding the Armenian Genocide. Confronted with a demand for sensationalized spectacle and the impossibility of visualizing it, Ararat contends with how to narrativize the persisting traumas of that past. I show how it makes use of the family as a narrative structure with the sacred image of the Madonna and Child at its center to articulate the less spectacular, silent effects of historical trauma. Tracking "plots of desire" and their moments of catharsis, I show that by foregoing sensationalized spectacle, the film highlights the melancholy of "without future" that a postmemory of genocide effects. Foregrounding Celia's contiguous affiliation with the family, I argue that her tenuous relationship makes her central to the articulation and survival of the memory of the genocide. The film's postmodern aesthetic thus allows it to address "outsiders" in its challenge of recognition of the Armenian genocide.