The most difficult subject to put into a movie, (which was best told by Spielberg) is the ability to reenact tragedies of an actual event. The 2004 documentary Imaginary Witness, the 2004 Hotel Rwanda, and the readings of An Overview of Hollywood Cinema’s treatment of the Holocaust and Imagining Fields of Witnessing for Rwanda and the Balkans prove that films do not document the Holocaust or the genocide in Rwanda accurately. Because of this, the biggest question is why? Why hasn’t American gotten it right. One thing that both horrific crimes had in common was that the film industry did not give accurate depictions of the events’ tragedy. When Hitler first came to power the American film industry depicted the things that the Nazi people were doing to the German people as harmless pranks. The Imaginary Witness second chapter talks about how in 1943 when the Nazi began burning the German peoples’ books, Hollywood did not illustrate the seriousness of the Nazi actions. There were only a few Americans who were able to decipher or realize the tragedies that were happening in Germany. In the film Rwanda Hotel there were …show more content…
Both crises were an act of prejudice against ethnicity. The documentary of Imaginary film mentioned that the movie The Dictator 1940 was the first movie that actually used the word Jew. Many filmmakers were afraid to offend the American people and/or Hitler. The readings of and Imagining Fields of Witnessing for Rwanda and the Balkans elaborates on how most films strayed away from using the term genocide. In the film Hotel Rwanda the broadcast of the interview with the U.S. State Department spokesperson features one of the characters Shelley being interviewed concerning the genocide, but she completely avoid saying the word genocide by doing verbal
Roberto Benigni, the director of Life is Beautiful (1997), explores the sacrifice of people during war . Through the use of Foreshadowing, Mood, and Characterization, film audiences are challenged to Imagine the struggles of the those in the holocaust.
By 1945 over 6 million Jews were killed as a result of the genocide launched by Nazi Germany. The Holocaust has been documented and depicted by various visual images revealing the atrocities of this tragic period. The film posters of Roberto Benigni’s Life is Beautiful produced in 1997 and Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List produced in 1993 utilize various rhetorical appeals to present starkly different visual arguments about the Holocaust. For the purpose of this rhetorical analysis, viewing these images from the standpoint of a viewer who is exposed to these posters for the first time, with the acute knowledge that these posters are related to the holocaust is necessary. From this standpoint, it is clear to see how images that depict that
Censorship in the 1950's: How did this affect the making of “Night and Fog” one of the first ever cinematic documentaries on the Holocaust? A film by Alain Resnais.
Can genocide ever be stopped? For decades the UN (United Nations) has tried to abolish all kinds of genocide; unfortunately, we do not believe in equality as a species, and this perfect utopia seems impossible in our day and age. In 1994, during the genocide in Rwanda (one of the bloodiest genocides of all time) the United Nations tried to make a stand and stop this massacre once and for all. Grievously, the UN’s mission terminated due to the lack of resources; the UN military was forced to watch while the genocide continued(Document A). Genocide has been occurring for decades, anything from clans like the KKK to the extermination of Jews during WW2. Genocides happened to a multitude of minorities, ironically, no one has made a considerable stand to stop them. Generally speaking, the abolishing of genocide seems unattainable in our modern day due to 3 reasons: Lack of media attention, Human innate stubbornness, and abominable people.
The events which have become to be known as The Holocaust have caused much debate and dispute among historians. Central to this varied dispute is the intentions and motives of the perpetrators, with a wide range of theories as to why such horrific events took place. The publication of Jonah Goldhagen’s controversial but bestselling book “Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust” in many ways saw the reigniting of the debate and a flurry of scholarly and public interest. Central to Goldhagen’s disputed argument is the presentation of the perpetrators of the Holocaust as ordinary Germans who largely, willingly took part in the atrocities because of deeply held and violently strong anti-Semitic beliefs. This in many ways challenged earlier works like Christopher Browning’s “Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland” which arguably gives a more complex explanation for the motives of the perpetrators placing the emphasis on circumstance and pressure to conform. These differing opinions on why the perpetrators did what they did during the Holocaust have led to them being presented in very different ways by each historian. To contrast this I have chosen to focus on the portrayal of one event both books focus on in detail; the mass shooting of around 1,500 Jews that took place in Jozefow, Poland on July 13th 1942 (Browning:2001:225). This example clearly highlights the way each historian presents the perpetrators in different ways through; the use of language, imagery, stylistic devices and quotations, as a way of backing up their own argument. To do this I will focus on how various aspects of the massacre are portrayed and the way in which this affects the presentation of the per...
Reading, Anna. "Young People's Viewing Of Holocaust Films In Different Cultural Contexts." Holocaust And The Moving Image (2005): 210-216. RAMBI. Web. 10 Oct. 2013.
For the past centuries, the world has endured mass human extinctions and brutal violence from the well-known holocaust to the under recognized Rwanda genocide. According to Dictionary.com, genocide is the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group. Genocide has been occurring for centuries and centuries and continues to occur in countries such as Syria, Nigeria, Iraq and many more. These recent genocides are mostly occurring at the hands of extremist groups such as Boko Haram and ISIS
These ideas all correlate with how we view World War II history and how Inglourious Basterds muddles our previous thoughts on how these events occurred. Many Americans have watered down the depiction of Jewish oppression during Nazi reign to swiftly round up concentration camps. What Quentin Tarantino and the Jewish film community wanted to illustrate through this film is how this is an incorrect overgeneralization. Inglourious Basterds illustrates more realistic Jewish life during Nazi reign and the constant terror they faced. This oppression was far more personal, intimate, and cordial yet brutal altercations invoked through self-defense and hatred.
Classic narrative cinema is what Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson (The classic Hollywood Cinema, Columbia University press 1985) 1, calls “an excessively obvious cinema”1 in which cinematic style serves to explain and not to obscure the narrative. In this way it is made up of motivated events that lead the spectator to its inevitable conclusion. It causes the spectator to have an emotional investment in this conclusion coming to pass which in turn makes the predictable the most desirable outcome. The films are structured to create an atmosphere of verisimilitude, which is to give a perception of reality. On closer inspection it they are often far from realistic in a social sense but possibly portray a realism desired by the patriarchal and family value orientated society of the time. I feel that it is often the black and white representation of good and evil that creates such an atmosphere of predic...
However, his Universalist approach to the subject gained criticism from the Jewish community in that Night and Fog almost entirely suppresses the persecution and suffering Jews experienced at this time. The European Jewish community’s persecution far surpassed that of any other marginalized group by the Nazi Party during World War II, with the death toll of Jews estimated at 6 million people (Documenting Numbers of Victims of the Holocaust and Nazi Persecution). In Resnais’ film, the word “Jew” is only mentioned once in reference to a victim that was a Jewish student (Tzioumakis 247). Eric Kligerman argues that Resnais attempt to show parallels between past and present that could happen again, his absence of voicing Jewish victims contributes to the suppression he’s critiquing (171). However, there are those that argue in favor for Resnais ingenuity. It’s arguable that Resnais knew the French audiences originally viewing the film would have known who the victims were and that Jewish victims were visible throughout the film (Tzioumakis 248). Resnais was truly a gifted artist and so this detail of never mentioning the word “Jew” was not a small oversight, instead he used the film as a platform to call attention to a “stricter morality” (Tzioumakis). The film is used as a means to advocate against genocidal violence
As the years distance us from the Nazi horror, and as survivors are slowly starting to lessen in number, we are faced, as a nation, with the challenge of how to educate the new generations of the Holocaust. Many young people have no knowledge of the events that took place in World War II. However, today, artifacts can greatly contribute to the understanding of the Holocaust, just as the movie La Rafle (The Round Up) did for me. The Round Up by Roselyn Bosch shows that the mass arrest of Jews did not only happening in Germany and it also emphasized the cruel dramatic irony of this historical moment.
Analysis of “The Girl in Red” from Schindler's List and the “Franz Suchomel’s interview with Claude Lanzman” from Shoah” Introduction: The evolution of political and social establishment of humans have been followed by several holocausts. Some of the most vehement perpetrators of such holocausts were witnessed around the II World War. There were many instances of mass scale slaughter, genocide, annihilation, and exploitation (just to acquire political hegemony during the World War 2) which were surreptitiously disavowed and concealed from the contemporary world. The in-depth study of such holocausts assimilates several contradictions and inconsistencies which were revealed through post-war testimonies, documentaries, movies, and literature,
The atrocities of the Belgian Congo and the Holocaust are two of the main events in history that have been responsible for the mass murdering of millions of people. Although these events significantly changed the course of humanity, and the story behind each one is very different, there are significant factors that make them alike as well as different. Many would agree that comparing two atrocities that affected the lives of so many people and gave a 180-degree turn to each of their countries would be something very difficult to achieve. However, by comparing the behavior of both the perpetrators and the victims of both cases we might be able to further understand the lack of morality and the inspiration that led to these awful events. The perpetrators in both atrocities tended to have a similar pattern of behavior when it came to the way they saw their victims. But, they also acted in ways where you can draw the conclusion that one set of events was not inspired by the other. These two sets of atrocities were reported to have a very similar number of victims. However, the Holocaust is one of the most reminded events in history as a period of shame, tragedy and sadness, while many still ignore the atrocities in the Belgian Congo.
The Rwandan Genocide “It is our responsibility to empower the powerless while giving voice to the voiceless” -(Irwin Cotler “Six Lessons from the Rwandan Genocide”) When the Rwandan Hutu majority betrayed the Tutsi minority, a destructive mass murdering broke out where neighbor turned on neighbor and teachers killed their students; this was the start of a genocide. In this paper I will tell you about the horrors the people of Rwanda had to face while genocide destroyed their homes, and I will also tell you about the mental trauma they still face today. Hutu and Tutsi Origins When Rwanda was first settled, the people there raised cattle, the ones with the most cattle were considered “Tutsi” and everyone else was ‘Hutu”.
The movie hotel Rwanda was produced in 2004 by an American company. The movie narrates the plight of a hotelier in the midst of the Rwandan genocide and the various steps and decisions he makes in order to save his family and a number of refugees who had taken refuge in his hotel. Civil war breaks out between the two major communities in Rwanda, the Hutu and Tutsi. Hutu tribesmen make up to 70 percent of the country’s population during this time, while the Tutsi are a minority with only 30 percent making up the total population of the country. After the death of the Hutu president civil war escalates and more than a million Tutsi are crudely massacred.