Satire and the Holocaust
What is Satire?
Cambridge Dictionary defines satire asa humorous way of criticizing people or ideas to show that they have faults or are wrong, or a piece of writing or a play that uses this style. Examples of satire include political and editorial cartoons, websites like The Onion, television shows such as Saturday Night Live and Veep, books such as Catch-22 by Joseph Heller and Animal Farm by George Orwell, and films such as Network and Get Out.
Satire and the Holocaust
• Charlie Chaplin, best known for the films The Kid, City Lights and Modern Times, wrote, directed, and starred in the 1940 film, The Great Dictator. Filmed in 1939 and premiering in 1940, the film takes place in fictional country of Tomania. A Jewish barber, who bears a striking resemblance to Tomania’s dictator Adenoid Hynkel, is mistaken for the dictator. In his autobiography, Chaplin wrote, “Had I known of the actual horrors of the German concentration camps, I could not have made The Great Dictator; I could not have made fun of the homicidal insanity of the Nazis.” • Ernest Lubitsch, a German-Jewish filmmaker, directed the 1942 satire film, To Be or Not To Be. Set in Warsaw, Poland in 1939, the film focuses on how a theatre group adapts to life under German occupation. Lubitsch believed that spoofing the Nazis was an act of patriotism. • Mel Brooks, a Jewish-American veteran of World War II, made his directorial debut with the 1967 film,The Producers. The film depicts the production of a Broadway play, Springtime for Hitler. Brooks once quipped, “If you can reduce Hitler to something laughable you win.”
Jojo Rabbit
Based on Caging Skies, a novel by Christine Leunens, Jojo Rabbit takes place in the fictional town of Falkenheim, Germany. The film, directed by Taika Waititi, takes place in the waning days of World War II. The WWII satire follows a young German boy, Jojo, who discovers that his single mother is hiding a young girl in their attic. Aided by his imaginary friend, Adolf Hitler, the boy must confront his naive patriotism. Waititi stated, “Adults are supposed to be the people who guide children and raise them to be better versions of ourselves. Yet when children look at us in times of war, I think adults seem ridiculous and out of their minds. So, I
approached the story as a child trying to make sense of his world the best he can in the most Taika Waititi and Roman Griffin Davis in a still from absurd and chaotic time in history.” Jojo Rabbit. ™ and © Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
© 2019 USC Shoah Foundation