Petra Rau
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780748668649
- eISBN:
- 9780748689149
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748668649.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
In the post-war imaginary of the West, ‘the Nazis’ became a cultural trope that served as a justification for defending democracy through military intervention. But in films and in fiction, the Nazis ...
More
In the post-war imaginary of the West, ‘the Nazis’ became a cultural trope that served as a justification for defending democracy through military intervention. But in films and in fiction, the Nazis were also camped up, laughed at, eroticised and demonised as evil monsters. In fact, the representational rules of engagement with historical fascism have always been remarkably uncertain. This book examines why and how the penomenon of ‘fascinating Fascism’ has re-emerged once more after the end of the Cold War. What is its cultural function now, in a global era of Holocaust commemoration? How can any representation avoid the impasse of either re-evoking fascism’s original seduction or merely recycling previous fictional and cinematic clichés? This study discusses alternative history (Robert Harris’s Fatherland and Quenting Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds), the noir thrillers of Philip Kerr, perpetrator fiction (Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones) and resistance (Synger’s Valkyrie and Cartwright’s The Song Before It Is Sung). Crucially it suggests that contemporary culture has instrumentalised the Nazi trope for its own agandas: ‘the Nazis’ have become ‘our Nazis’. The book also points to some of the risks and responsibilities attendant on this appropriation as one of the peculiar, late legacies of the Second World War.Less
In the post-war imaginary of the West, ‘the Nazis’ became a cultural trope that served as a justification for defending democracy through military intervention. But in films and in fiction, the Nazis were also camped up, laughed at, eroticised and demonised as evil monsters. In fact, the representational rules of engagement with historical fascism have always been remarkably uncertain. This book examines why and how the penomenon of ‘fascinating Fascism’ has re-emerged once more after the end of the Cold War. What is its cultural function now, in a global era of Holocaust commemoration? How can any representation avoid the impasse of either re-evoking fascism’s original seduction or merely recycling previous fictional and cinematic clichés? This study discusses alternative history (Robert Harris’s Fatherland and Quenting Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds), the noir thrillers of Philip Kerr, perpetrator fiction (Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones) and resistance (Synger’s Valkyrie and Cartwright’s The Song Before It Is Sung). Crucially it suggests that contemporary culture has instrumentalised the Nazi trope for its own agandas: ‘the Nazis’ have become ‘our Nazis’. The book also points to some of the risks and responsibilities attendant on this appropriation as one of the peculiar, late legacies of the Second World War.
Petra Rau
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780748668649
- eISBN:
- 9780748689149
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748668649.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This chapter outlines the history of ‘fascinating Fascism’ in film and popular culture from the 1960s to the present day. It contextualises this phenomenon within the critical debate over fascist ...
More
This chapter outlines the history of ‘fascinating Fascism’ in film and popular culture from the 1960s to the present day. It contextualises this phenomenon within the critical debate over fascist iconography and its legacy, referring to the arguments of Susan Sontag, Klaus Theweleit and Alvin Rosenfeld. It suggests that the Anglo-Saxon interest in Nazism is less motivated by historical inquiry but fuelled by a desire to inhabit a fascist universe in a safe fashion: the audience engages in a form of fascist flânerie. This strategy allows for the projection, and simultaneous disavowal, of fascist longings. Such dark tourism uncomfortably alongside recent attempts to re-instate affect in the engagement with traumatic history, notably in Saul Friedländer’s notion of disbelief in Holocaust historiography and Alison Landsberg’s emphasis on empathy. The re-emergence of fascinating fascism suggests that in a consumer culture in which violence is reduced to aesthetics and entertainment, neither Holocaust piety nor the mandatory mobilisation of affect towards the victims of fascism through commemoration have succeeded in shifting interest from the perpetrator to the victim. On the contrary, the taboo of representing the perpetrator perspective has enabled the fascination with fascism to flourish into historical voyeurism and cultural pornography.Less
This chapter outlines the history of ‘fascinating Fascism’ in film and popular culture from the 1960s to the present day. It contextualises this phenomenon within the critical debate over fascist iconography and its legacy, referring to the arguments of Susan Sontag, Klaus Theweleit and Alvin Rosenfeld. It suggests that the Anglo-Saxon interest in Nazism is less motivated by historical inquiry but fuelled by a desire to inhabit a fascist universe in a safe fashion: the audience engages in a form of fascist flânerie. This strategy allows for the projection, and simultaneous disavowal, of fascist longings. Such dark tourism uncomfortably alongside recent attempts to re-instate affect in the engagement with traumatic history, notably in Saul Friedländer’s notion of disbelief in Holocaust historiography and Alison Landsberg’s emphasis on empathy. The re-emergence of fascinating fascism suggests that in a consumer culture in which violence is reduced to aesthetics and entertainment, neither Holocaust piety nor the mandatory mobilisation of affect towards the victims of fascism through commemoration have succeeded in shifting interest from the perpetrator to the victim. On the contrary, the taboo of representing the perpetrator perspective has enabled the fascination with fascism to flourish into historical voyeurism and cultural pornography.
Petra Rau
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780748668649
- eISBN:
- 9780748689149
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748668649.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This chapter examines the intertextual strategies and visual grammar of Quentin Tarantino’s alternative history film Inglourious Basterds which deals with the role the cinema in a successful plot to ...
More
This chapter examines the intertextual strategies and visual grammar of Quentin Tarantino’s alternative history film Inglourious Basterds which deals with the role the cinema in a successful plot to assassinate Hitler. It argues that the film exploits our fascination with fascism and its iconography in a thoroughly ambivalent fashion and through the characteristic trademark of hyperbolic violence. Tarantino’s database narrative refers to war films and Westerns (genres that legitimise violence) but its rather more self-reflexive take on fascism must also be seen in the context of cinematic precursors that send up the audience’s habitually disavowed fascination with fascism, farces such as Mel Brooks’ The Producers and Helmut Dietl’s Schtonk!.Less
This chapter examines the intertextual strategies and visual grammar of Quentin Tarantino’s alternative history film Inglourious Basterds which deals with the role the cinema in a successful plot to assassinate Hitler. It argues that the film exploits our fascination with fascism and its iconography in a thoroughly ambivalent fashion and through the characteristic trademark of hyperbolic violence. Tarantino’s database narrative refers to war films and Westerns (genres that legitimise violence) but its rather more self-reflexive take on fascism must also be seen in the context of cinematic precursors that send up the audience’s habitually disavowed fascination with fascism, farces such as Mel Brooks’ The Producers and Helmut Dietl’s Schtonk!.
