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1. JUDGING 'PRIVILEGED' JEWS Holocaust Ethics, Representation, and the 'Grey Zone'

Author:
Adam Brown
Publication Date:
01-2018
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Berghahn Books
Abstract:
The Nazis’ persecution of the Jews during the Holocaust included the creation of prisoner hierarchies that forced victims to cooperate with their persecutors. Many in the camps and ghettos came to hold so-called “privileged” positions, and their behavior has often been judged as self-serving and harmful to fellow inmates. Such controversial figures constitute an intrinsically important, frequently misunderstood, and often taboo aspect of the Holocaust. Drawing on Primo Levi’s concept of the “grey zone,” this study analyzes the passing of moral judgment on “privileged” Jews as represented by writers, such as Raul Hilberg, and in films, including Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah and Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List. Negotiating the problems and potentialities of “representing the unrepresentable,” this book engages with issues that are fundamental to present-day attempts to understand the Holocaust and deeply relevant to reflections on human nature.
Topic:
Mass Media, Film, Holocaust, World War II, and Anti-Semitism
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, California, Germany, and Central Europe

2. A Foreign Affair: Billy Wilder's American Films

Author:
Gerd Gemünden
Publication Date:
01-2018
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Berghahn Books
Abstract:
With six Academy Awards, four entries on the American Film Institute’s list of 100 greatest American movies, and more titles on the National Historic Register of classic films deemed worthy of preservation than any other director, Billy Wilder counts as one of the most accomplished filmmakers ever to work in Hollywood. Yet how American is Billy Wilder, the Jewish émigré from Central Europe? This book underscores this complex issue, unpacking underlying contradictions where previous commentators routinely smoothed them out. Wilder emerges as an artist with roots in sensationalist journalism and the world of entertainment as well as with an awareness of literary culture and the avant-garde, features that lead to productive and often highly original confrontations between high and low.
Topic:
Immigration, Media, Film, and Material Culture
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, California, Germany, and Central Europe

3. Transaction with the World: Ecocriticism and the Environmental Sensibility of New Hollywood

Author:
Adam O'Brien
Publication Date:
01-2016
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Berghahn Books
Abstract:
In their bold experimentation and bracing engagement with culture and politics, the “New Hollywood” films of the late 1960s and early 1970s are justly celebrated contributions to American cinematic history. Relatively unexplored, however, has been the profound environmental sensibility that characterized movies such as The Wild Bunch, Chinatown, and Nashville. This brisk and engaging study explores how many hallmarks of New Hollywood filmmaking, such as the increased reliance on location shooting and the rejection of American self-mythologizing, made the era such a vividly “grounded” cinematic moment. Synthesizing a range of narrative, aesthetic, and ecocritical theories, it offers a genuinely fresh perspective on one of the most studied periods in film history.
Topic:
Environment, Mass Media, Culture, and Media
Political Geography:
United States, California, and North America