Transcript Document

Mediated Evil:
Reenacting the Holocaust for a Global Audience
Steven Alan Carr, PhD
Associate Professor of Communication
2002-03 U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Center for
Advanced Holocaust Studies Postdoctoral Fellow
Some Basic Questions
• Why should we address this
catastrophe?
• What historical knowledge must we
possess?
• How is this knowledge mediated?
• How is the Holocaust becoming
globalized?
• What is a “media literacy” approach to
the Holocaust, and how is it useful?
Figure No. 1
Photo postcard of lynching of five
African American males - Nease
Gillespie, John Gillespie, “Jack”
Dillingham, Henry Lee, and George
Irwin - with onlookers
6 Aug 1906 Salisbury NC
withoutsanctuary.org
Figure No. 2
Photos of a woman beaten during
a violent deportation, from an
personal photo album kept by a
German police officer
Szydlowiec, Poland 1942
yadvashem.org
Holocaust History
Topic Areas
• 1933–1939
– Dictatorship under the
Third Reich
– Early Stages of
Persecution
– The First Concentration
Camps
• POST 1945
– Postwar Trials
– Displaced Persons
Camps and Emigration
• 1939–1945
– World War II in Europe
– Murder of the Disabled
(“Euthanasia” Program)
– Persecution and Murder
of Jews
– Ghettos
– Mobile Killing Squads
(Einsatzgruppen)
– Expansion of the
Concentration Camp
System
– Killing Centers
– Additional Victims of Nazi
Persecution
– Resistance
– Rescue
– United States/World
Response
– Death Marches
– Liberation
Figure No. 3
Alan Schechner, Self-Portrait at Buchenwald-It’s the Real Thing (1993)
Terezin: A Documentary Film of
the Jewish Resettlement (1944)
QuickTime™ and a
H.264 (x264) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
Night and Fog (1955)
QuickTime™ and a
decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
Basic Questions When Taking a
Media Literacy Approach
• Narrative: What Is the Story? Who Tells It?
How Is It Told?
• Genre: What Kind of Story Is It?
• Camerawork: What Appears in the Frame?
How Is the Action Staged? How Does It
Appear?
• Editing: How Do Shots Begin and End? What
Is Their Relation to One Another?
• Sound: What Do We Hear? How Do We Hear
It?
A Media Literacy Approach
• Complicate complex representations
• Consider how an image is shown, not
just what is shown
• Make distinctions between different
kinds of visuals
• Consider context and audience