JS 230 - The Holocaust and Genocide on Film

3 credit(s)
The twentieth century has seen humans rise to the heights of technological innovation and descend to the depths of ultimate evil. Humans perfected the use of the motion pictures as the most significant form of communication, entertainment, and mass media, while also using television and film to spread the most vile forms of propaganda. And in the twentieth century, murderous regimes unleashed genocide as a tool of mass extermination on victims in Armenia, Cambodia, Rwanda, and most destructively, through the Holocaust of European Jewry. In the aftermath of these events, television and film have attempted to educate and entertain on the extreme trauma endured by victims of these catastrophes. However, filmmakers and viewers have confronted the dilemma when representing the Holocaust and genocide, between the obligation to bear witness, and the impossibility and even obscenity, of documenting such horror on film. This seminar will examine that tension through the study of a series of films on the Holocaust and other genocides that have tried to walk the fine line between commemorating catastrophe and creating entertainment on the back of human suffering.

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