“With comedy, we can rob Hitler of his posthumous power” -Mel Brooks. Question and debate about the ethicacy of approaching the Holocaust through humor has been going on since before the US even entered World War II, and it will probably carry on well after the event leaves living memory. The arguments against doing so are easily found and understood. However an equally, possibly stronger, argument could be made for it being the most important genre in which the subject matter is approached. Laughter is the most powerful weapon one can yield against evil.
Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator (1940) was a controversial film even before it came out. In a pre-war America, one full of fasciast sympathizers, there was not much appetite for a film openly mocking Hitler. The scene most often cited from the film is Chaplins monologue at the end, but of course prior to this is two hours of brutal satire of Hitler, his Third Reich, and the plight of the Jews in the camps and ghettos. At this time Nazi Propaganda was at somethign of a peak, being diseminated unopposed in all German occupied territory, and being largely uncountered in the United States. In the face of such a powerful, and still quickly growing, evil Chaplin does possibly the most effective thing he can in his film, he denies them dignity. Chaplin pulls back the curtain of the propaganda and reveals the ridiculousness of Hitler and the Nazis.
Ernst Lubitsch’s 1942 film To Be or Not to Be is an American, war-era black comedy, asks this question of itself in the film. Should it be acceptable to be making jokes about Hitler? Should he not be serious? He’s a dangerous man with gravitas after all! We don’t want the audience to laugh when Hitler is on stage! Claims the actors playing actors in the film. To Be or Not to Be also received heavy blowback upon its initial release, this time however with the United States having since entered the war and being far more aware of the extent of the Third Reichs evil, the controversy came from people uncomfortable with making light of such a serious and dangerous threat. Much like The Great Dictator, To Be or Not To Be is now remembered as among the best of its respective filmmakers career. According to the memoir of Jack Benny, one of the principal actors of the film, his father initially walked out of the film in disgust, only later to view the film forty six times, (Benny, 1991, p. 232).
Jumping forward a decade and a half, no conversation about comedy about Hitler is complete without talking about Mel Brooks, who himself has a surprisingly complex and nuanced take on the issue of comedy regarding the Holocaust. His 1967 film The Producers, about two scam artists who attempt to produce the worst stage show imaginable, features extensive satire of Nazi propoganda, and a flamboyant parody version of Hitler. The film caught controversy when it first came out for “trivializing the Holocaust”. However as Brooks himself put it “Hitler must have had a magnetic attractive force, like a rock star he used his voice to spellbind umpteen thousands of listeners. So it’s only fitting when comic actors make him the limelight hog of world history. We take away from him the holy seriousness that always surrounded him and protected him like a cordon,” (Spiegel 2006). Brooks very passionately takes the stance that comedy and satire is how best he can fight against antisemitism and other evils of the world. Hitler can only continue to be a monstrous boogie man, who’s shadow haunts his victims, without comedy to rip him down off his pedestal.
It could in fact be argued that these humorous, satirical portrayals of white supremacy are more effective weapons against- and condemnations of- Nazis and their modern neo-movements than many dramas. Tony Kaye’s 1998 film American History X, a brutal and blunt condemnation of white supremacy, has been largely embraced by many neo-nazi groups, who co-opt the hyper serious imagery and enjoy it free of context. The beauty of Springtime for Hitler is that that can not happen with it. The entire sequence is designed to reveal the ridiculous pageantry of facism, no version of the dance number could achieve anything but making the Nazis appear laughable.
However even the man who wrote Springtime for Hitler and directed Blazing Saddles believes in a line. In the same interview where he explained the importance and power of his Hitler satire, Brooks expressed his problems with the 1997 Holocaust comedy Life is Beautiful, “Roberto Benigni's comedy Life Is Beautiful really annoyed me. A crazy film that even attempted to find comedy in a concentration camp. It showed the barracks in which Jews were kept like cattle, and it made jokes about it. The philosophy of the film is: people can get over anything. No, they can’t. They can’t get over a concentration camp,” (Spiegel 2006). Brooks take on the issue generally seems to be: make fun of Hitler, the Nazis, and their propaganda all you like, but there is nothing funny to be found in the barracks and crematoriums of a concentration camp.
This is an important point to bring up- especially coming from a Jewish comedian who’s bread and butter has been comedy at the expense of Hitler- in response to a Gentile film that features sight gags about burning Jewish bodies. There is a filp-side to that coin though. As Slavoj Zizek put it in his essay Camp Comedy “it is the comic aspect of survival that such films thrive on. No matter the difficulties, the hero finds a way out,” (Žižek 2000). Žižek comes down on an ultimately positive view on comedies such as Life, functionally making the case that the comedic take on concentration camps is ultimately a therapeutic power fantasy, one of always being able to out smart the people who would do you harm.
“The value of a comic approach is by setting things at a distance it allows us a more active response,” (Holmes & Meier 1988). This quote was written near the closing of Holmes and Meiers 1988 book Writing and the Holocaust, in which they debate the varying merits of this very issue. The argument that comedy can numb the pain of the Holocaust by holding it at arms length and poking it with a stick. There are several scenes in Life is Beautiful that are deeply moving and effective, and only are so because if the comedy aspect. There’s a heroic tragedy surrounding the humor in the film, because while it is making jokes, it never lets you forget why Guido is making these jokes, in an effort to shield his son from the horror he’s been trapped in the middle of. The scene in which he incorrectly interprets what the Nazi guards are saying in order to convince his son that it is just a game, is an utterly heart breaking scene, despite it being made up entirely of jokes. Perhaps humor keeps painful things at arms length, but just as often humor reveals more pain than it hides.
Laughter is the best medicine, they say. The Holocaust is an evil, tragic event, that should be spoken of with weight and reverence. However to wrap it in a vacuum sealed bag and treat it as sacred can only serve to hold its harm in place, never letting it breath or heal. To look at history’s greatest tragedy, at history’s greatest monster, and laugh in its face, is to steal away their lasting power.
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