Percival and Waititi explore the power of propaganda and indoctrination with an example of Hitler youth during WWII. By differing tone, Waititi and Percival both educated the indoctrination process on children’s and Nazis suppression during book burnings in WWII. Waititi and Percival both underline the impact of war on children’s in a children’s point of view, both physical and mental. Both the directors with different motifs present how understanding and educating ourselves helps have a perspective during difficult times. Despite being different in tone, both the film JoJo Rabbit and The Book Thief share a similar purpose of educating the audience about the indoctrination of children and the suppression of Nazis during the book burnings. JoJo …show more content…
The rough costumes and facial reactions of JoJo provide an insight into how children were impacted by the war both physically and mentally during WWII in Germany. Percival, on the other hand, presents his idea on the impacts of war on children through children’s perspective in a very similar manner. The costume of Liesel, when she is taken out is shown as extremely damaged, filled with dirt, torn and her facial presentation of her messed up face represents the physical impact a war can have on children during WWII. The mid shot of Liesel’s facial reaction and acting of crying hard while grieving for each family member highlights the fear of children during the war for losing their loved ones, and the mental impact war potentially had on children during WWII. In conclusion, both Waititi and Brian Percival explore the devastating impact of war on children through camera angles, acting, and costumes, ultimately providing the audience with a powerful and poignant perspective of children on the harsh realities of war during …show more content…
But as the movie continues, the motif recurs in different scenes, providing the audience with an idea of JoJo’s maturity. Waititi further shares the idea of maturity by, having low-angle shots of JoJo tying Elsa’s shoelaces at the end of the film, which symbolizes JoJo’s maturity, and independence. By emphasizing maturity, Waititi aims to educate the audience on how maturity helped JoJo have ideas against Nazi ideology, like at the beginning of the movie, JoJo is shown being highly innocent and indoctrinated by Nazi ideology, but as the movie progresses and JoJo learns to tie shoelaces, and is shown questioning the ideology and eventually disagreeing with it. Percival, however, delivers the idea of maturity and the characters' perspective through similar film techniques. At the start of the movie, the midshot of Liesel picking up a book influences the audience to realize how powerless, hopeless, and uneducated Liesel is. However, Liesel is shown trying to read books in a recurring scene throughout the movie, proving Liesel's maturity every
In Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, characters such as Paul and his friends become indifferent to shocking elements of war through constant exposure to them. For example, the characters are unconcerned about the dangers of the front because they are accustomed to being on the front. In another instance, Paul’s friends show no emotions when they witness snipers killing enemy soldiers. Also, Kat finds the unusual effects of mortar shells amusing. These examples prove that through war, characters of the book have become indifferent to things that they would normally find shocking.
...it may help us arrive at an understanding of the war situation through the eyes of what were those of an innocent child. It is almost unique in the sense that this was perhaps the first time that a child soldier has been able to directly give literary voice to one of the most distressing phenomena of the late 20th century: the rise of the child-killer. While the book does give a glimpse of the war situation, the story should be taken with a grain of salt.
Kracauer, Siegfried. From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film. Princeton University Press: Princeton and Oxford, 2004.
In his memoir, A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah deals with his loss of innocence as he is forced to join the children army of Sierra Leone in the country's civil war after being conscripted to the army that once destroyed his town in order for Ishmael to survive. His memoir acts as a voice to show the many difficulties that the members of Sierra Leone's child army had to suffer through and their day to day struggle to survive in the worst of conditions. In order to escape the perils and trials of war, Ishmael loses his innocence as he transitions from a child who liked to rap with his friends to a cold blooded solider in the army during the civil war in Sierra Leone. Through his transition, Ishmael is forced to resort to the addiction of drugs such as cocaine, marijuana, and “brown-brown” just so that he, along with the other members of the child army can have the courage to be able to kill their fellow countrymen and slaughter entire towns who stand in their paths. In order to portray his struggles in the army, Ishmael uses the dramatic elements of memories explained using flashback, dialogue, and first-person narration in order to establish the theme of the memoir being how war causes for a child to lose its innocence. The transition shown in the memoir illustrates how the title of the novel, A Long Way Gone, was chosen because it demonstrates how he is a long way gone psychologically, emotionally, and physically, from the child that he was when the memoir begins to the soldier that he is forced to become.
"Nominated for a 1998 National Book Award for Young People's Literature, No Pretty Pictures: A Child of War is Anita Lobel's gripping memoir of surviving the Holocaust. A Caldecott-winning illustrator of such delightful picture books as On Market Street, it is difficult to believe Lobel endured the horrific childhood she did. From age 5 to age 10, Lobel spent what are supposed to be carefree years hiding from the Nazis, protecting her younger brother, being captured and marched from camp to camp, and surviving completely dehumanizing conditions. A terrifying story by any measure, Lobel's memoir is all the more haunting as told from the first-person, child's-eye view. Her girlhood voice tells it like it is, without irony or even complete understanding, but with matter-of-fact honesty and astonishing attention to detail. She carves vivid, enduring images into readers' minds. On hiding in the attic of the ghetto: "We were always told to be very quiet. The whispers of the trapped grown-ups sounded like the noise of insects rubbing their legs together." On being discovered while hiding in a convent: "They lined us up facing the wall. I looked at the dark red bricks in front of me and waited for the shots. When the shouting continued and the shots didn't come, I noticed my breath hanging in thin puffs in the air." On trying not to draw the attention of the Nazis: "I wanted to shrink away. To fold into a small invisible thing that had no detectable smell. No breath. No flesh. No sound."
War slowly begins to strip away the ideals these boy-men once cherished. Their respect for authority is torn away by their disillusionment with their schoolteacher, Kantorek who pushed them to join. This is followed by their brief encounter with Corporal Himmelstoss at boot camp. The contemptible tactics that their superior officer Himmelstoss perpetrates in the name of discipline finally shatters their respect for authority. As the boys, fresh from boot camp, march toward the front for the first time, each one looks over his shoulder at the departing transport truck. They realize that they have now cast aside their lives as schoolboys and they feel the numbing reality of their uncertain futures.
Throughout their lives, people must deal with the horrific and violent side of humanity. The side of humanity is shown through the act of war. This is shown in Erich Remarque’s novel, “All Quiet on the Western Front”. War is by far the most horrible thing that the human race has to go through. The participants in the war suffer irreversible damage by the atrocities they witness and the things they go through.
Children exposed to violence within their communities are left with emotions of hopelessness, insecurity, and doubt. Historical events such as the war on terrorism, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the tragic events of September 11th have had a detrimental effect on the entire nation, including the children. Although every child is not directly affected by the aspects of war, it somehow has an emotional effect on all. The involvement of a nation with war affects every individual differently, whether it is out of fear, anger, doubt, hope, or love. In the short novel A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, he narrates the story by telling his own involvement in the Civil War in Sierra Leone as young boy and the many issues he faces while living in horror. Also, author Garbarino points out in his book Raising Children in a Socially Toxic Environment in the chapter involving the security of children that:
Through Baümer, Remarque examines how war makes man inhuman. He uses excellent words and phrases to describe crucial details to this theme. "The first bomb, the first explosion, burst in our hearts," (page #). Baümer and his classmates who enlisted into the army see the true reality of the war. They enter the war fresh from school, knowing nothing except the environment of hopeful youth and they come to a premature maturity with the war, their only home. "We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces. We are not youth any longer" (page #). They have lost their innocence. Everything they are taught, the world of work, duty, culture, and progress, are not the slightest use to them because the only thing they need to know is how to survive. They need to know how to escape the shells as well as the emotional and psychological torment of the war.
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.
While soldiers are often perceived as glorious heroes in romantic literature, this is not always true as the trauma of fighting in war has many detrimental side effects. In Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet On The Western Front, the story of a young German soldier is told as he adapts to the harsh life of a World War I soldier. Fighting along the Western Front, nineteen year old Paul Baumer and his comrades begin to experience some of the hardest things that war has to offer. Paul’s old self gradually begins to deteriorate as he is awakened to the harsh reality of World War 1, depriving him from his childhood, numbing all normal human emotions and distancing the future, reducing the quality of his life. At the age of nineteen, Paul naively enlists in World War 1, blind to the fact he has now taken away his own childhood.
Quentin Tarantino’s 2009 film Inglourious Bastards entails a Jewish revenge fantasy that is told through a counterfactual history of events in World War II. However, this story follows a completely different plot than what we are currently familiar with. Within these circumstances, audiences now question the very ideas and arguments that are often associated with World War II. We believe that Inglourious Basterds is a Jewish revenge fantasy that forces us to rethink our previous understandings by disrupting the viewers sense of content and nature in the history of World War II. Within this thesis, this paper will cover the Jewish lens vs. American lens, counter-plots within the film, ignored social undercurrents, and the idea that nobody wins in war.
The simple definition of war is a state of armed competition, conflict, or hostility between different nations or groups; however war differs drastically in the eyes of naive children or experienced soldiers. Whether one is a young boy or a soldier, war is never as easy to understand as the definition. comprehend. There will inevitably be an event or circumstance where one is befuddled by the horror of war. For a young boy, it may occur when war first breaks out in his country, such as in “Song of Becoming.” Yet, in “Dulce et Decorum Est” it took a man dying in front of a soldier's face for the soldier to realize how awful war truly is. Both “Song of Becoming” and “Dulce et Decorum Est” are poems about people experiencing the monstrosity of war for the first time. One is told from the perspective of young boys who were stripped of their joyful innocence and forced to experience war first hand. The other is from the perspective of a soldier, reflecting on the death of one of his fellow soldiers and realizing that there is nothing he can do to save him. While “Song of Becoming” and “Dulce et Decorum Est” both focus on the theme of the loss of innocence, “Song of Becoming” illustrates how war affects the lives of young boys, whereas “Dulce et Decorum Est” depicts the affect on an experienced soldier.
Lawrence Hill Books, c2009 Bracken, Patrick and Celia Petty (editors). Rethinking the Trauma of War. New York, NY: Save the Children Fund, Free Association Books, Ltd, 1998.
Director Mark Herman presents a narrative film that attests to the brutal, thought-provoking Nazi regime, in war-torn Europe. It is obvious that with Herman’s relatively clean representation of this era, he felt it was most important to resonate with the audience in a profound and philosophical manner rather than in a ruthlessness infuriating way. Despite scenes that are more graphic than others, the films objective was not to recap on the awful brutality that took place in camps such as the one in the movie. The audience’s focus was meant to be on the experience and life of a fun-loving German boy named Bruno. Surrounding this eight-year-old boy was conspicuous Nazi influences. Bruno is just an example of a young child among many others oblivious of buildings draped in flags, and Jewis...