Arts & Culture
There is No Business Like Shoah Business
By Roi Ben-Yehuda / November 27, 2008
Anthony O. "Tony" Scott recently published a thought-provoking essay in the New York Times on the romance between the film industry (most notably Hollywood) and the Holocaust. The catalyst for the piece is the plethora of Holocaust-related movies that are about to hit theaters near you.
These include:
Defiance: Based on a true story of three Jewish brothers (Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber, and Jamie Bell) who took matters into their own hands and fought back against the Nazis.
The Boy in the Stripped Pajamas: A tale of an unlikely friendship between the son of a high-ranking Nazi official and a young Jewish prison.
Adam Resurrected: The story of a charismatic patient at a survivor’s asylum in Israel during the 1960’s.
The Reader: Based on Bernhard Schlink best-selling novel, the film explores the trail of a woman (Kate Winslet) accused of working as a concentration guard officer*.
Valkyrie: Based on the true story of Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg (Tom Cruise) and the courageous plot to assassinate Hitler. Director Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects, X-Men, and Superman Returns).
As Scott points out in his article, the film industry has had a long-standing fascination with the holocaust. So much so that today we can speak of the Holocaust movie as a genre in the same way we can speak of the Western or the Action Movie. Moreover, Holocaust films are not just any genre, they are the royal road to the academy awards [e.g. Sophie's Choice (1982), Schindler's List (1993), Life Is Beautiful (1997), The Pianist (2002), etc.] Therefore it should come as no surprise that Hollywood is issuing five new Holocaust movies during Oscar season.
Yet the union between Hollywood with its proclivity for feel-good stories and the Holocaust with its indictment of humanity has resulted with the latter caving in to the demands of the former. “Hollywood”, Scott writes, “trades in optimism, redemption and healing, and its rendering of even the most appalling realities inevitably converts their dire facts into its own shiny currency.”
Case in point: Schindler’s List. There is no doubt that Spielberg’s movie gave us a very powerful account of the horror of the Krakow ghetto (and it deserved every accolade it got). Yet it did so within the context of a heroic story of redemption and survival. As another journalist has noted, Spielberg made “a movie about World War II in which all the Jews live. The selection is “life”, the Nazi turns out to be the good guy, and human nature is revealed to be sunny and bright.” In other words, instead of leaving the viewer pondering the darkness that lies at the heart of the human soul (the dominant lesson of the Holocaust), the movie leaves the viewer feeling and thinking, in the words of Anne Frank, “in spite of everything … people are really good at heart.”
But if ‘Hollywood Holocaust’ is distorting and oversimplifying the memory of the Nazi era, what is the alternative? Nine-hour French documentaries (How many people actually saw Shoah)? How about movies that drown the viewer in a sea of nihilism? Probably not. One cannot, for example, picture Hollywood doing a film on the life of Polish intellectual and Auschwitz survivor Tadeusz Borowski who came to the conclusion that the world outside of camp was essentially no different than the world inside of camp – a realization that led him to gas himself to death at the age of 28. I simply don’t see Tom Cruise or Daniel Craig lining up for that role.
Hollywood does not do nihilism even if life occasionally does. One can only hope that this new batch of Holocaust-related films were done with some sense of humility – after all, these actors, directors and producers are stepping on ground where it isn’t just angels who fear to tread. The challenge is to be fair and honest to the experience. Stories like Schindler, with their emphases on survival, morality and redemption, should be told. They are an important testimony to how, to quote a Buddhist saying, “the lotus can blossom in the mouth of a dragon.” Nevertheless, I am afraid that when dealing with such dragons as the Holocaust, we can ill-afford to put so much emphases on a lotus. To do so is to transgress the 11th commandment, “Thou Shalt Never Forget.”
* This article originally and incorrectly stated that the Winslet character was Jewish.
POST A COMMENT
I wish to condemn the Bielski family for resorting to violent means in their conflict against the Nazis. Notably absent were any efforts of the Bielskis to negotiate with the Nazis and address potential Nazi grievances. In addition, the Bielskis did not give the Nazis advance notification of their attacks, which is in itself a violation of international law. In some of the battles, the Jewish terrorists inflicted disproportionate casualties on the Nazis despite inferior conventional arms. This implies that the Jews used magical powers which are also prohibited by international law (Professor Richard Falk told me so). The Bielskis should have realized that given the large size of the nazi armies, there was no military solution to the conflict, and that even rudimentary efforts should have been made to negotiate. We realize that both sides, the Nazis, and the Jews have truth on their side, and the oversupply of Jewish doctors and lawyers in Berlin inflamed the German street, causing rage to flow as far afield as Belorussia and Greece. This film does disservce to serious students of Jewish aggression in Europe, as it ignored the root cause of the conflict
Good article, this is a very interesting phenomenon and how it links directly to the Oscars is also fascinating. I would just like to add that, historicaly, Hollywood has been run by Jews. That is to say that most studio heads for a majority of its exsistance have been Jews. I think this has to do with the rich history of making movies about the holocaust, becuase some of these older men and women that run the industry are just one generation removed for it. Also, I think it is important to note the people involved in these movies. Meaning, Spielberg is not only a master filmmaker, but also a great advocate of Judaism and Jewish history, whereas, Tom Cruise is a nut whose very presence undermines the importance of this historical travesty. But then another question comes up: if this is art, which I believe it is, what is more important? Artists trying new things (actors and directors alike) or the importance of the history of the holocaust and how we as younger Jews preserve its memory? I don’t think that I have an answer yet to this questoin, just wanted to add my thoughts into the frey. Also a note to JDS: you are an idiot! please don’t respond to my post as I couldn’t care less what you think….does JDS stand for Jewish Dumb Shit?
This is terribly picayune, but you mispelled Anne Frank’s name.
The shoah is a perfect backdrop for lazy studios looking to cash in on an Oscar (the holiday season is their dumping ground for these more "important" films) precisely because of the clear cut good guys/bad guys, and the ability for Nazis and murdered Jews to stand in as empty vessels for an audience to pour in their negative, and sympathetic, feelings respectively. The backdrop takes care of more than half the work script writers need to do, because hey!, everyone knows about the holocaust, amirite?
In true Hollywood fashion, the concept of "enough already" takes 10 years longer for scriptwriters, directors, producers, and actors than it does for everyone else on the fucking planet, so you can expect to see another few million variations on the theme until 2025 at least, by which point, almost all the Nazis and holocaust survivors will be dead anyway. On the plus side, even the most derivative and formulaic shoah movie is usually ten times better and more original than yet another self-congratulatory movie about the McCarthy hearings.
He obviously edited the piece after I posted my comment. It originally read something like "Kate Winslet plays a Jewish woman who was a concentration camp guard." No acknowledgment or correction noted. Pathetic.
Well, if we assume that strong Jewish representation in Hollywood is not a factor, from a dramatic perspective, the Holocaust is a script-ready theme. The victims, villains, and conflict are already built in. Also, audiences are already familiar with the tale, so very little set-up is needed. From a writing perspective, it’s sort of a fill-in-the-blanks scenario when it comes to Holocaust films today. So it’s not surprising that we see a lot of them. And of course, the most heinous crime of the 20th century is not likely to be forgotten too soon.
As far as Hollywood oversimplifying the Holocaust and leading us to believe that human nature is “sunny and bright,” I think the writers mostly try to satisfy the audience. Endings don’t have to be happy, but they have to be satisfying. And with the Holocaust, there’s really no such thing as a happy ending. The best they can do is make it satisfying.
JDS: What are you talking about? Where does Roi claim she was Jewish?
Brad Pitt stars in Quentin Tarantino’s "Inglorious Basterds", the story of a Jewish brigade that gets all Tarentino on some Nazi ass. Not sure when this releases, but I’ve seen some stills. Looks good.
Hannah Schmitz in "The Reader" is now Jewish??? Did you actually READ the book before writing this? Unbelievable. Moron.
There is so much controversy over The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, Schlink’s The Reader is a fantastically absorbing and disturbing tale, a really good read. But, Tom Cruise as Claus von Stauffenberg is so very, very wrong.
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