1st Edition
Holocaust vs. Popular Culture Interrogating Incompatibility and Universalization
Holocaust vs. Popular Culture debates and deconstructs the binary responses to the representation of the Holocaust in European and non-European forms of Popular Culture.
The binary is defined in terms of “incompatibility” between the Holocaust and Popular Culture on the one hand and the “universalization” of the Holocaust memory through Popular Culture on the other. The book does emphasize the anti-representation argument. Nevertheless, the authors make a case for a productive understanding of “Holocaust Popular Culture” as contributing to the expansion of Holocaust studies as well as cultural studies in the transnational context. The book theorizes Popular Culture in broad terms and highlights the diversity of Holocaust Popular Culture mainly but not exclusively produced in the twenty-first century. This interdisciplinary collection covers a wide variety of Popular Culture genres including language, literature, films, television shows, soap operas, music, dance, social media, advertisements, comics, graphic novels, videogames, and museums. It studies the (mis)representation of the Holocaust trauma, not only across genres but also across nations (Western and Asian) and generations (from testimonial remembrance to post-memory).
This book will be of interest to students and scholars from a wide range of disciplines and subjects, including Popular Culture, Holocaust studies, cultural studies, genocide studies, postcolonial and transnational studies, media and film studies, visual culture, games studies, race and ethnicity studies, memory studies, and Jewish studies.
Holocaust versus Popular Culture: A Critical Introduction
Mahitosh Mandal and Priyanka Das
Part I: Explicating Incompatibility
1. Popular Fiction, Literary Culture, and Artistic Truth: Thane Rosenbaum’s The Golems of Gotham and Twenty-First Century Holocaust Representation
Craig Smith
2. Playing with the Unspeakable: The Holocaust and Videogames
Iker Itoiz Ciáurriz
3. Representation, Appropriation, and Popular Culture: Food and the Holocaust in Roman Polanski’s The Pianist
Ved Prakash
4. Nazi Linguistics and Mass Manipulation: An Analysis of Holocaust Primary Sources vis-à-vis Popular Culture
Sarah Spinella
Part II: Rethinking Universalization
5. Hitler’s Popularity and the Trivialization of the Holocaust in India
Navras J. Aafreedi
6. Decoding Holocaust Narratives in Japanese Pop Culture: Through the Lens of Anne no Nikki (1995) and Persona Non Grata (2015)
José Rodolfo Avilés Ernult and Astha Chadha
7. Holocaust Representations through Popular Music: Ferramonti di Tarsia amidst Documentation, Commemoration and Mystification
Silvia Del Zoppo
8. Holocaust Museums: A Study of the Memory Policies of the USA and Poland
Adriana Krawiec
9. Trace and Trauma: Early Holocaust Remembrance in American and Canadian Popular Culture
Roger Chapman
Part III: In Defence of Popular Culture
10. Mothers, Daughters and the Holocaust: A Study of Miriam Katin’s Graphic Memoirs
Sucharita Sarkar
11. Superheroes and the Holocaust in American Comics
Michaela Weiss
12. Unearthing the Real in the Magical: Holocaust Memory and Magic Realism in Select Post-Holocaust Fictions
Tiasa Bal
13. "Once-upon-a-very-real-time": Fairy Tales and Holocaust in Jane Yolen’s Novels
Anisha Sen
14. Retelling the Holocaust With Children: A Pedagogic Study of Stephen King’s Apt Pupil and Jane Yolen’s The Devil’s Arithmetic
Diganta Ray
15. "Is it safe?": Marathon Man as Holocaust Drama
Douglas C. MacLeod, Jr.
16. Child’s Play, Fantasy and the Holocaust in Jojo Rabbit and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
Medha Bhadra Chowdhury
17. Incorrectamundo?: Holocaust, Humor, and Anti-Hate Satire in the Works of Brooks and Waititi
Kyle Barrett
Biography
Mahitosh Mandal is Assistant Professor of English at Presidency University, Kolkata, India.
Priyanka Das is Assistant Professor of English at Presidency University, Kolkata, India.
