Those that Trespass Against Us: Childhood, Violence, and Memory in The White Ribbon

This thesis examines aesthetic representations of childhood and violence in Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon, I argue that Haneke’s film interrogates notions of the idealized child in the context of German history/the history of the Tätergeneration in order to question the possibility of affixing particular objective truth to historical or cultural narrative. First, I examine and deconstruct culturally accepted representations of the child as a symbol of innocence and purity, and explore how Haneke’s film manipulates and subverts these tropes. I then approach the film using three different theoretical structures: the gaze of the monstrous child in the horror genre, play theory as a tool for framing the children’s actions as moral exploration, and a close reading of the film’s use of violence and its relationship with the spectator. Ultimately, I contend that both childhood and notions of memory are inherently retroactive constructs. Haneke’s depiction of the cultural role of the child in pre-WWI Germany as well as the attempt to explain the history of 20th century Germany are instances of storytelling—an inherently subjective, multidirectional act that questions the stability of both discourses