Holocaust Film: The Political Aesthetics of Ideology
Author: Terri Ginsberg
Date Of Publication: Sep 2007
Isbn13: 9781847182630
Isbn: 1-84718-263-1
This timely new monograph takes as its starting point the provocative contention that Holocaust film scholarship has been marginalized academically despite the crucial role Holocaust film has played in fostering international awareness of the Nazi genocide and scholarly understandings of cinematic power. The book suggests political and economic motivations for this seeming paradox, the ideological parameters of which are evident in debates and controversies over Holocaust films themselves, and around Holocaust culture in general. Lending particular attention to four exemplary Holocaust “art” films (Korczak [Poland, 1990], The Quarrel [Canada, 1990], Entre Nous [France, 1983], and Balagan [Germany, 1994]), this book breaks disciplinary ground by drawing critical connections between public and scholarly debates over Holocaust representation, and the often sophisticated cinematic structures lending aesthetic shape to them in today’s global arena.

Terri Ginsberg received her Ph.D. in Cinema Studies from New York University and is most recently Visiting Assistant Professor of Film Studies at North Carolina State University. She is co-editor of Perspectives on German Cinema. Her numerous published articles appear in journals such as Holocaust and Genocide Studies; Review of Education, Pedagogy and Cultural Studies; Quarterly Review of Film and Video; Gay & Lesbian Quarterly; and Genders. She is currently completing a term as co-chair of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies Middle East Caucus.

“What Norman Finkelstein has done in exposing the political foregrounding of the Holocaust Industry, what Giorgio Agamben has done in extrapolating the contemporary implications of homo sacer from the horrors of the concentration camps, Terri Ginsberg is doing with astonishing command and competence about Holocaust cinema. Ginsberg’s voice is clear, concise, liberating, and the harbinger of an entire new generation of scholarship in cinema studies."

Hamid Dabashi, Columbia University; Editor, Dreams of a Nation: On Palestinian Cinema

“Terri Ginsberg's Holocaust Film: The Political Aesthetics of Ideology is a much needed intervention in the field of Holocaust Studies in general and in Holocaust Cinema Studies in particular. What Ginsberg has fashioned is a reading of the Holocaust that is both immanent and materialist and much needed in these times when Holocaust scholarship is being shanghaighed by both ends of the political spectrum. It is Ginsberg's achievement that Holocaust cinematic texts are here restored to their historical moment in a way that must be accomplished if there is ever to be an understanding of how these texts might grasp the original moment of the tragedy. Her painstakingly thorough scholarship and theoretical rigor ensures that her work at least will not serve to promote the type of easy, knee-jerk response that simply adds flame to the fire and in the name of scholarship contributes to the perpetuation of other tragedies in the present Israeli–Palestinian situation.”

Dennis Broe, Graduate Program Coordinator, Media Arts Department, Long Island University

“Ginsberg ably demonstrates how the subgenre known as ‘Holocaust cinema’ has been co-opted by the culture industry. Bypassing the usual Hollywood touchstones, she focuses on four relatively neglected films that illuminate several key motifs that permeate many films on the subject: the “Christianization” of Jewish oppression, the commodification of genocide by both commercial and art house cinema, and the ethnocentric appropriation of the Holocaust by filmmakers with reactionary agendas. Eschewing the conformist platitudes of previous studies, Ginsberg’s book is a salutary and necessary provocation.”

Richard Porton, co-editor, Cineaste; Author, Film and the Anarchist Imagination

“Hollywood has produced more than 175 films on the Holocaust since the 1980s, and in fact by now the category is considered by some to constitute a virtual genre. Ginsberg challenges the under-examined status of these films and analyzes the work they perform to construct a revisionist discourse. Ginsberg’s astute understanding of cinematic strategies in addition to her confidence in distilling and unpacking even the most fraught of ideological discourses promise a groundbreaking and eminently useful study. Hers are important contributions which we very much need.”

B. Ruby Rich, University of California-Santa Cruz; Author, Chick Flicks: Theories and Memories of the Feminist Movement

“The importance of the Holocaust is beyond doubt. The importance of continuing the analysis and wide-ranging discussion of it is, at least in some circles. Here, in response, is an extremely scholarly and insightful treatment of Holocaust films and the aesthetic ideology that informs them. Sheds much light on several controversial problems connected to these horrific events. Highly Recommended.”

Bertell Ollman, New York University; Author, Dance of the Dialectic

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