“Pour dire la souffrance des innocents?” Problematics of the Madonna-Son Trope in Representing Trauma in Philippe Aractingi’s Under the Bombs and Nadine Labaki’s Capernaum

Abstract

This chapter explores the mother and son trope in representing war and statelessness. It analyzes two Lebanese films that use it to speak of the traumas of the innocent and voiceless: Philippe Aractingi’s Under the Bombs (2007) and Nadine Labaki’s Capernaum (2018). The chapter takes this claim to task, interrogating whether the Madonna-Son trope can articulate such suffering, especially when it invokes the discourse of “women and children,” a discourse rooted in the ideology of male dominance. Rather than represent “actual” trauma, I argue that Under the Bombs represents a masculine fantasy of the sacred bond between a mother and son; similarly, though Capernaum disrupts male-centered cinematic conventions, it creates a dichotomy between a “good” and “bad” mother. As a result, both films end up voicing the experience of an essentialized mother who is subordinate, powerless, and victimized, in need of male protection. By codifying trauma through the figure of the Madonna and Son, both films concede that women and children are victims, undermining women’s agency and reifying the very masculine systems—political, social, and economic—that place women and children in such dire situations.