[Two posts below.]


1.
From: Merel Boers [mailto:blackbird@bollywoodmail.com]

Dear list members,

In light of some of the less critical responses to this series, I have one
question that keeps gnawing at my mind since _Schindler's List_, that I
would like to put to you. It has been asked many times, but deserves
discussion again: have we come to a point where dramatizing (and not only of
history) means oversimplifying to an extent that even the best intentions
become a knee fall to commercialism? Have we given up on people to be able
to understand a not so clear, maybe even conflicting message? In other
words: have we given up on the idea of people thinking for themselves (or
even teaching them to do so)?

Best,
Merel Boers


2.
From:   Clare Spark [mailto:cspark@ix.netcom.com]

Although the discussion so far of the CBS film treatment of the Hitlerian
"rise of evil" has been interesting, there are some questions I would like
to put to those scholars and students of nazism who have posted and to those
who have not.

There is a certain air of helplessness in some of the postings, as if
professional historians were unable to affect the content of mass media.
And even if they were, there is so much disagreement in the field that a
film treatment of the culture and politics of the interwar period in Germany
would be impossible, or, as Dan Macfarlane also asserts, the nature of the
film medium is itself hostile to such an effort.

I find such comments startling and disturbing. There are millions of persons
who revere Hitler and Nazism; there are neo-Nazi websites in the English
language that are not only numerous but terrifying.  And who knows what
viewers of the History Channel are thinking and feeling as they appear not
to tire of the subject. During the last year the swastika has been plastered
on buildings here and in Europe as part of a confident and resurgent
antisemitism.

I know that the historians who have thrown up their hands with respect to
the CBS fiasco, finding some saving grace in the film's existence, are not
immoral or unconcerned about the continued prestige of Nazism around the
world.

I have a suspicion that there is something about structuralist social theory
(embraced by many on the Left, including Marxist-Leninists, social
democrats, and New Leftists alike) that excuses scholars from intervening in
the media, or from imagining forms and formats that could present a
biographical treatment of Hitler that would go beyond portrayals of the man
as an emblem of mass politics (the effluent of modernity) and its
catastrophic consequences. For instance, in the first pages of his Hitler
biography, Ian Kershaw calls Hitler an "empty vessel", a man "without
substance", unlike the world leaders who have emerged from traditional
elites. So Kershaw explains (in the lingo of Talcott Parsons's structural
functionalism) to look at Hitler's power as determined by his roles. He will
treat him as a charismatic leader whose effectiveness is dependent on the
adoring (and incompetent?) masses who filled him up.

No wonder that a biography of Hitler is impossible in the eyes of some. He
is a man without qualities, without "personality" as a Freudian or
neo-Freudian would understand the term. And no wonder that we cannot help
the deplorable situation of bad Hitler biographies, for the masses are in
control, or they are debased by controlling commercial interests that are
resistant to good history.

So I am suggesting that there is nothing "natural" in the film form or in a
conflicted historiography that militates against intervention and better
public education through the media, but rather a lethargy that may be the
product of a particular antimodern narrative of dubious (i.e. aristocratic)
origins, and that we are witnessing a widespread cultural despair, shared
apparently, by some historians, that seems to me to be increasingly
inappropriate and dangerous.

Clare Spark

Humanities & Social
Sciences Online

Copyright © 1995-2006 - Contact Us
RSS | Validate: XHTML | CSS