The documentary chronicles the controversy over a 1936 mural depicting violence against Native Americans in a San Francisco high school. The mural is supposed to be a critique of violence, but, as Jessica Young remarks, any kind of depiction can preserve the original act of violence.
“The definition of trauma is that it is a repetition,” said Young, whose scholarship focuses on memory in the literature of genocide. “Sometimes [it’s] the outright repetition of the violent event itself, sometimes it’s the way we see something again and again in our mind’s eye.”
Read the full NPR article here and watch the trailer below: