Mediated Evil:Reenacting the Holocaust for a Global

Audience

Steven Alan Carr, PhDAssociate 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. 1Photo 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 NCwithoutsanctuary.org

Figure No. 2Photos of a woman beaten during a violent deportation, from an personal photo album kept by a German police officer

Szydlowiec, Poland 1942yadvashem.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 aH.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