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Antisemitism in Film Comedy in Nazi Germany
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Book Presentation:
Today many Germans remain nostalgic about "classic" film comedies created during the 1930s, viewing them as a part of the Nazi era that was not tainted with antisemitism. In Antisemitism in Film Comedy in Nazi Germany, Valerie Weinstein scrutinizes these comic productions and demonstrates that film comedy, despite its innocent appearance, was a critical component in the effort to separate "Jews" from "Germans" physically, economically, and artistically. Weinstein highlights how the German propaganda ministry used directives, pre- and post-production censorship, financial incentives, and influence over film critics and their judgments to replace Jewish "wit" with a slower, simpler, and more direct German "humor" that affirmed values that the Nazis associated with the Aryan race. Through contextualized analyses of historical documents and individual films, Weinstein reveals how humor, coded hints and traces, absences, and substitutes in Third Reich film comedy helped spectators imagine an abstract "Jewishness" and a "German" identity and community free from the former. As resurgent populist nationalism and overt racism continue to grow around the world today, Weinstein's study helps us rethink racism and prejudice in popular culture and reconceptualize the relationships between film humor, national identity, and race.
About the Author:
Valerie Weinstein is Associate Professor in the Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and affiliate faculty in German Studies, Judaic Studies, and Film and Media Studies at the University of Cincinnati. She is editor (with Barbara Hales and Mihaela Petrescu) of Continuity and Crisis in German Cinema, 1928–1936.
Press Reviews:
"Antisemitism in Film Comedy in Nazi Germany offers an intriguing point of departure for future inquiries into the functions of coded antisemitism in mainstream Western culture today."
-Ofer Ashkenazi- The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Antisemitism Studies
See the publisher website: Indiana University Press
> From the same author:
Rethinking Jewishness in Weimar Cinema (2023)
Dir. Barbara Hales and Valerie Weinstein
> On a related topic:
The Triumph of Propaganda (1997)
Film and National Socialism 1933-1945
Entertaining the Third Reich (1996)
Illusions of Wholeness in Nazi Cinema
Cinematically Transmitted Disease (2024)
Eugenics and Film in Weimar and Nazi Germany
The Nazi Past in Contemporary German Film (2014)
Viewing Experiences of Intimacy and Immersion
by Axel Bangert
Hitler's Heroines (2003)
Stardom & Womanhood In Nazi Cinema
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