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Abstract

This article examines the roles that genre and revisionist history play in popular culture depictions of the Holocaust, focusing on examples of contemporary films and TV series that incorporate elements of comedy, fantasy, melodrama, and revenge as cinematic devices that offer new ways of understanding the Holocaust. Genre acts as an agent of resistance—both in the sense that the existence of these films and series stake a claim for the artistic merit of unconventional approaches to Holocaust narratives and, perhaps more importantly, in the sense that the possibilities offered by these alternative genres facilitate a potentially deeper and more significant exploration of the social, cultural, and political consequences of fascism, antisemitism, Nazism, victimhood, and indifference. Yet, at the same time, given the current rise of antisemitism, the widespread decline in Holocaust education, and the proliferation of Nazi rhetoric on social media, these works prove controversial in their respective approaches. Who are these depictions of the Holocaust for, what messages do they send to their various audiences, and how does the cinematic approach to the Holocaust change as the temporal distance from the Shoah increases? This article will ultimately pose an answer to these questions using an analysis of Amazon Prime’s Hunters (2020–2023) and Taika Waititi’s 2019 film Jojo Rabbit as case studies that consider the social, pedagogical, and moral consequences of approaching the Holocaust through the lenses of revisionist history, comedy, fantasy, and other genres that encourage viewers to think about genocide, victimization, and antisemitism in transgressive and potentially transformative ways. In doing so, this article will trace the relationship between genre, popular culture, and the Holocaust, identifying patterns of narrative content, political context, authorship, and audience/critical reception, both in the contemporary case studies explored in this paper, and in classic examples (such as Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds or Brooks’s The Producers) that have claimed space for wish fulfillment, revenge, and fantasy in the canon of Holocaust cinema.

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