Our Nazis: Representations Of Fascism In Contemporary Literature And Film

Description

An analysis of the resurgent cultural fascination with Nazism since 1989. Why has a fascination with fascism re-emerged after the Cold War? What is its cultural function now, in an era of commemoration? Focusing particularly on the British context, this study offers the first analysis of contemporary popular and literary fiction, film, TV and art exhibitions about Nazis and Nazism. Petra Rau brings this material into dialogue with earlier responses to fascism and demonstrates how, paradoxically, Nazism has been both mediated and mythologised to the extent that it now often replaces a critical engagement with actual, violent history. In 5 thematic chapters on Nazi Noir, Men in Uniform, Vile Bodies, The Good German and Meta-Cinematic Farce, Rau provides close analysis of contemporary novels such as Jason Lutes’ graphic novel series Berlin, historical crime fiction by Philip Kerr and others, Robert Harris’ Fatherland, Ian McEwan’s Black Dogs and Justin Cartwright’s The Song Before It Is Sung; films such as Bryan Singer’s Valkyrie and Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Bastards; art installations including Mirroring Evil: Nazi Imagery/Recent Art, and Fucking Hell by Jake and Dinos Chapman; and Piotr Uklanski’s photo frieze, Untitled (The Nazis). Key Features: • Broad interdisciplinary approach which includes literature, film, TV and art • Wide coverage of popular forms and High Art • Comparison with earlier material about fascism which reaches back to the 1930s Cover ......Page 1 Title Page......Page 4 Copyright......Page 5 Contents......Page 6 Acknowledgements......Page 7 Sources of Illustrations......Page 9 Series Editors’ Preface......Page 10 Introduction: ‘Having Your Nazi Cake and Eating it’......Page 12 1 Nazi Noir: Hardboiled Masculinity and Fascist Sensibility from Ambler and Greene to Philip Kerr......Page 54 2 The Fascist Corpus in the Age of Holocaust Remembrance......Page 81 3 ‘Fascism’ as Excess and Abjection: Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones......Page 104 4 The Good German: The Stauffenberg Plot and its Discontents......Page 136 5 ‘Operation Kino’: Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds as Meta-cinematic Farce......Page 169 Coda......Page 201 Bibliography......Page 206 Index......Page 222