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THEME:
THE HOLOCAUST
During the past half-century, the Holocaust became a prominent presence in American public culture. Films and broadcasts have not only presented the Holocaust to the largest number of Americans, but have played leading roles in shaping the nation's relationship to this forbidding subject. |
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Toward the end of the war in Europe, radio reported details of Nazi atrocities, and cinemas screened footage of recently liberated concentration camps in newsreels. American audiences were told that viewing these gruesome images was a morally galvanizing, transformative experience — a notion that continues to inform their use in films, telecasts, and museum displays.Among the most influential works of Holocaust remembrance are George Stevens's The Diary of Anne Frank (1959), the Holocaust miniseries (1978), and Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List (1993).
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Courtesy Ralph Edwards Productions and NJAB
(click image for more)
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Reaching vast, international audiences, these works have exported distinctively American visions of the Holocaust to other countries, including those where it took place. At the same time, the appearance of the Holocaust on episodes of American television series, from science fiction to situation comedy, has made the subject a familiar element of the nation's repertoire of moral issues. Despite — or because of — their popularity, these works have engendered contentious debates on Holocaust representation, questioning whether America's popular media can adequately and effectively portray an event understood as testing the very limits of representation.
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