Synopses & Reviews
Each month brings new scientific findings that demonstrate the ways in which human activities, from resource extraction to carbon emissions, are doing unprecedented, perhaps irreparable damage to our world. As we hear these climate change reports and their predictions for the future of Earth, many of us feel a sickening sense of
dandeacute;jandagrave; vu, as though we have already seen the sad outcome to this story.
and#160;
Drawing from recent scholarship that analyzes climate change as a form of andldquo;slow violenceandrdquo; that humans are inflicting on the environment, Climate Trauma theorizes that such violence is accompanied by its own psychological condition, what its author terms andldquo;Pretraumatic Stress Disorder.andrdquo; Examining a variety of films that imagine a dystopian future, renowned media scholar E. Ann Kaplan considers how the increasing ubiquity of these works has exacerbated our sense of impending dread. But she also explores ways these films might help us productively engage with our anxieties, giving us a seemingly prophetic glimpse of the terrifying future selves we might still work to avoid becoming.and#160;
and#160;
Examining dystopian classics like Soylent Green alongside more recent examples like The Book of Eli, Climate Trauma also stretches the limits of the genre to include features such as Blindness, The Happening, Take Shelter, and a number of documentaries on climate change. These eclectic texts allow Kaplan to outline the typical blind-spots of the genre, which rarely depicts climate catastrophe from the vantage point of women or minorities. Lucidly synthesizing cutting-edge research in media studies, psychoanalytic theory, and environmental science, Climate Trauma provides us with the tools we need to extract something useful from our nightmares of a catastrophic future. and#160; and#160;
Review
"This is a passionate book of exemplary moral integrity. Anne Rothe provides a straightforward, unflinching indictment of the way that contemporary mass culture gorges itself on the display of human suffering."
Review
andquot;By focusing on the concept of sadism and drawing on holocaust atrocities, Kerner offers original insights into the relationship between torture porn and American culture in the post-9/11 period.andquot;
Review
andquot;The Phantom Holocaust traces the story of a shadow Soviet film industry that only rarely managed to represent the tragedy that filmmakers, directors, and screenwriters sought to warn against or memorialize. Gershensonandrsquo;s work is a monumental achievement in giving a voice to the lost Soviet Holocaust filmsandmdash;to the filmmakers, and to also the millions whose fates they attempted to memorialize.andquot;
Review
andquot;Aand#160;pioneering book on the history of Holocaust representation in Soviet cinema. Gershenson's book unearths much about the history of the cinematic representation of the Holocaust beyond Hollywood's iconic take on the subject, tracingandmdash;and occasionally breathing new life intoandmdash;the phantoms that the Soviet cinema industry has left behind.andquot;
Review
andquot;Nearly a dozen long-lost, rarely seen Soviet films and scores of screenplays that were never produced about the persecution of Jews during World War II have been revived to offer decades-old evidence of a side of the Holocaust few people recognize today. From the dusty archives of Moscow and elsewhere across Russia, the works are featured in The Phantom Holocaust, a startling new book.andquot;
Review
andquot;The story of the Holocaust, as told by Soviet filmmakers, is very different from the Hollywood versions shown on U.S. movie screens. The Russian films were not about concentration camps, ghettos, and deportations, for that was not the doom to befall Soviet Jews. Rather, in Soviet films that were made about World War II, a viewer had to read between the linesto catch the subtle, almost hidden messages that the screenwriters and film directors managed to get past theand#160; censors. Olga Gershenson has interviewed those filmmakers and spent many months digging through censorsandrsquo; documents and film criticsandrsquo;and#160; reviews of their films for her new book The Phantom Holocaust: Soviet Cinema and Jewish Catastrophe.andquot;
Review
andquot;The first voice in an important conversation about an entirely new canon in the history of film.andquot;
Review
andquot;This knowledgeable researched history of the Holocaust in Soviet and Russian cinema is a voyage into the unknown. Olga Gershenson not only tells us about those few movies that exist but those that were unmade and those that could never be made.andquot;
Review
andquot;In this work of prodigious scholarship, Gershenson makes an important contribution to the depiction of the Holocaust in the Soviet Union. Highly recommended.andquot;
Review
andquot;This remarkable contribution to the scholarship on todayandrsquo;s most reviled film cycle expertly demonstrates the continued relevance of trenchant cultural criticism, from Saw to Bush and beyond.andquot;
Review
andquot;Despite its tragic subject, this is an entertaining book, rich in vivid details and narrative turns.andquot;
Review
andquot;Proposing a powerful new analytic in the and#39;pretraumaand#39; concept, Kaplanand#39;s fresh and insightful work goes directly to the heart of the matter:and#160; cinemaand#39;s role in negotiating a dire circumstance we humans neglect at our peril.andquot;
Review
"A fascinating and meticulously documented history."
Review
"Shneer’s book challenges the accepted rhetoric that came out of the Cold War's distortions of Soviet history. In particular, Shneer examines previously neglected work to show that the often-repeated claim that the Soviet Union’s attempt to cover up Nazi atrocities is not only untrue, but completely the opposite. Jewish photojournalists in Russia were able to keep Nazi atrocities on the front page and continually emphasized the Jewish aspect of Nazi violence."
Review
"Shneer has written a fascinating and ambitious book that deserves a wide readership among scholars of twentieth-century Jewish, Holocaust, East European, and Russian history. His pioneering chapters on the war years enhance substantially our understanding of the complex ways that Jews and non-Jews responded to the Holocaust."
Review
"Focusing on an area of Holocaust representation largely overlooked in the scholarly literature, this meticulously illustrated volume provides a wealth of information about individual Soviet Jewish photographers and their work. Shneer’s analysis integrates the work and the complex identities of photographers who documented both the construction and devastation of Soviet society, Axis atrocities against Jews and other Soviet civilians, and the Soviet defeat of the invaders"
Review
"An excellent history of Jewish photographers in the Soviet Union from the Bolshevik revolution to the post-Stalin decades following WWII. Shneer not only traces the essential role Jewish photographers played in the creation of photojournalism in the Soviet Union, but also chronicles the manner in which these elite artists photographed the war against Nazi Germany (the book includes many rare photos). Highly recommended."
Review
"In this handsomely produced volume, David Shneer offers a compelling and nuanced analysis of how photojournalists plied their craft as photographers of the early Soviet experience.
Through Soviet Jewish Eyes is as much about photojournalism as a profession as it is about documentation of the Holocaust and Soviet Jewish identity. A first-rate book that is intellectually ambitious, cogently argued, and analytically sophisticated."
Review
"
Through Soviet Jewish Eyes is in a class all its own. Shneer’s sophistication in dealing with visual culture, in Jewish Studies and contemporary history, has few if any equals. In addition, it is one of the only studies of photojournalism that seriously engages ethnic difference and religious origins that often played significant roles in the evolution and life of the field. It is one of the most brilliant books, ever, in the immense field of media studies. It is difficult to think of any single work on photojournalism, in any national setting, that rivals Shneer’s deep archival forays, expert use of memoirs and interviews, and sharp analysis."
Review
"With this book Shneer has created a worthy tribute to these courageous photojournalists and to the survival of their legacy under extraordinarily difficult conditions."
Review
The term andquot;torture pornandquot; was coined by film critic David Edelstein. and#160;Kerner (San Francisco State Univ.) notes that the andldquo;money shotsandrdquo; of this film genre are scenes highlighting the destruction of the human body. and#160;These scenes are the andldquo;payoffandrdquo; that viewers have been waiting forandmdash;yes, there will be blood. and#160;Kerner argues that torture porn films, which date from roughly 2004, are a direct response to 9/11. and#160;Deeply rooted in a uniquely American fascination with violence, these films create a andldquo;safe spaceandrdquo; for torture within society as well as cinema. and#160;As the filmography at the end of the volume makes clear, Kerner has watched an enormous number of torture porn films. and#160;He views them with a clear, cold eye, continually drawing readers back to his central point, which is that viewers are complicit in the creation and reception of torture porn films. and#160;This offers a bleak signpost to what one can next expect in the shared stakes of cinematic representationalism.
Synopsis
In Popular Trauma Culture, Anne Rothe argues that American Holocaust discourse has a particular plot structure—characterized by a melodramatic conflict between good and evil and embodied in the core characters of victim/survivor and perpetrator—and that it provides the paradigm for representing personal experiences of pain and suffering in the mass media. The book begins with an analysis of Holocaust clichés, including its political appropriation, the notion of vicarious victimhood, the so-called victim talk rhetoric, and the infusion of the composite survivor figure with Social Darwinism. Readers then explore the embodiment of popular trauma culture in two core mass media genres: daytime TV talk shows and misery memoirs.
Rothe conveys how victimhood and suffering are cast as trauma kitsch on talk shows like Oprah and as trauma camp on modern-day freak shows like Springer. The discussion also encompasses the first scholarly analysis of misery memoirs, the popular literary genre that has been widely critiqued in journalism as pornographic depictions of extreme violence. Currently considered the largest growth sector in book publishing worldwide, many of these works are also fabricated. And since forgeries reflect the cultural entities that are most revered, the book concludes with an examination of fake misery memoirs.
Synopsis
In Popular Trauma Culture, Anne Rothe argues that American Holocaust discourse has a particular plot structure—characterized by a melodramatic conflict between good and evil and embodied in the core characters of victim/survivor and perpetrator—and that it provides the paradigm for representing personal experiences of pain and suffering in the mass media. The book begins with an analysis of Holocaust clichés, and then explores the embodiment of popular trauma culture in two core mass media genres: daytime TV talk shows and misery memoirs.
Synopsis
Torture Porn in the Wake of 9/11 challenges the conventional wisdom about horror movies like Hostel and the Saw series. Aaron Kerner argues that, even as these films express anxieties and sadistic fantasies that have emerged from the War on Terror, they are rooted in a much longer tradition of American violence. He also reveals how the andldquo;torture pornandrdquo; aesthetic has gone mainstream, popping up in everything from the television thriller Dexter to the reality show Hellandrsquo;s Kitchen.and#160;and#160;
Synopsis
Saw,
Hostel,
The Devilandrsquo;s Rejects: this wave of horror movies has been classed under the disparaging label andldquo;torture porn.andrdquo; Since David Edelstein coined the term for a New York magazine article a few years after 9/11, many critics have speculated that these movies simply reflect iconic images, anxieties, and sadistic fantasies that have emerged from the War on Terror. In this timely new study, Aaron Kerner challenges that interpretation, arguing that andldquo;torture pornandrdquo; must be understood in a much broader context, as part of a phenomenon that spans multiple media genres and is rooted in a long tradition of American violence.and#160;
and#160;Torture Porn in the Wake of 9/11 tackles a series of tough philosophical, historical, and aesthetic questions: What does it mean to call a film andldquo;sadistic,andrdquo; and how has this term been used to shut down critical debate? In what sense does torture porn respond to current events, and in what ways does it draw from much older tropes? How has torture porn been influenced by earlier horror film cycles, from slasher movies to J-horror? And in what ways has the torture porn aesthetic gone mainstream, popping up in everything from the television thriller Dexter to the reality show Hellandrsquo;s Kitchen?and#160;
and#160;Reflecting a deep knowledge and appreciation for the genre, Torture Porn in the Wake of 9/11 is sure to resonate with horror fans. Yet Kernerandrsquo;s arguments should also strike a chord in anyone with an interest in the history of American violence and its current and future ramifications for the War on Terror.and#160;
and#160;and#160;and#160;
Synopsis
Focusing on work by both celebrated and unknown Soviet directors and screenwriters, this is the first book written about all Soviet narrative films dealing with the Holocaust from 1938 to 1991. In addition to studying the completed films, it analyzes the projects that were banned at various stages of production. Archival research and in-depth interviews are used to tell the stories of filmmakers who found authentic ways to represent the Holocaust in the face of official silencing.
Synopsis
Even people familiar with cinema believe there is no such thing as a Soviet Holocaust film.
The Phantom Holocaust tells a different story. The Soviets were actually among the first to portray these events on screens. In 1938, several films exposed Nazi anti-Semitism, and a 1945 movie depicted the mass execution of Jews in Babi Yar. Other significant pictures followed in the 1960s. But the more directly filmmakers engaged with the Holocaust, the more likely their work was to be banned by state censors. Some films were never made while others came out in such limited release that the Holocaust remained a phantom on Soviet screens.
Focusing on work by both celebrated and unknown Soviet directors and screenwriters, Olga Gershenson has written the first book about all Soviet narrative films dealing with the Holocaust from 1938 to 1991. In addition to studying the completed films, Gershenson analyzes the projects that were banned at various stages of production.
The book draws on archival research and in-depth interviews to tell the sometimes tragic and sometimes triumphant stories of filmmakers who found authentic ways to represent the Holocaust in the face of official silencing. By uncovering little known works, Gershenson makes a significant contribution to the international Holocaust filmography.
Synopsis
Examining a variety of films that imagine a catastrophic future, from
Children of Men to
The Book of Eli, E. Ann Kaplan considers how they have exacerbated our sense of impending dread, triggering what she terms andldquo;Pretraumatic Stress Disorder.andrdquo; But
Climate Trauma also explores ways these films might help us productively engage with our anxieties about climate change, giving us a prophetic glimpse of the terrifying future selves we might still work to avoid becoming. and#160;
Synopsis
Most view the relationship of Jews to the Soviet Union through the lens of repression and silence. Focusing on an elite group of two dozen Soviet-Jewish photographers, including Arkady Shaykhet, Alexander Grinberg, Mark Markov-Grinberg, Evgenii Khaldei, Dmitrii Baltermants, and Max Alpert,
Through Soviet Jewish Eyes presents a different picture. These artists participated in a social project they believed in and with which they were emotionally and intellectually invested-they were charged by the Stalinist state to tell the visual story of the unprecedented horror we now call the Holocaust.
These wartime photographers were the first liberators to bear witness with cameras to Nazi atrocities, three years before Americans arrived at Buchenwald and Dachau. In this passionate work, David Shneer tells their stories and highlights their work through their very own images-he has amassed never-before-published photographs from families, collectors, and private archives.
Through Soviet Jewish Eyes helps us understand why so many Jews flocked to Soviet photography; what their lives and work looked like during the rise of Stalinism, during and then after the war; and why Jews were the ones charged with documenting the Soviet experiment and then its near destruction at the hands of the Nazis.
About the Author
E. ANN KAPLAN is a distinguished professor of English and Cultural Analysis and Theory at Stony Brook University, where she also founded and directed the Humanities Institute. The past president of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, she is also the author and editor of over a dozen books, including
Trauma and Cinema and
Trauma Culture (Rutgers University Press).
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments andmdash; ix
1 Screening the Holocaust in the Soviet Union:
Jews without the Holocaust and the
Holocaust without the Jews andmdash; 1
2 Soviet Antifascist Films of the 1930s:
The Earliest Images of Nazi Anti-Semitism and
Concentration Camps on World Screens andmdash; 13
3 The First Phantom: I Will Live! (1942) andmdash; 29
4 How a Soviet Novel Turned into a Jewish Film:
The First Depiction of the Holocaust on Soviet
Screens, The Unvanquished (1945) andmdash; 40
5 The Holocaust on the Thawing Screens: From The Fate
of a Man (1959) to Ordinary Fascism (1965) andmdash; 57
6 The Holocaust at the Lithuanian Film Studio:
Gott mit Uns (1961) andmdash; 71
7 The Holocaust without the Jews:
Steps in the Night (1962) and Other Films andmdash; 82
8 Kalik versus Goskino: Goodbye, Boys! (1964/1966) andmdash; 91
9 Stalemate (1965) between the Filmmaker
and the Censors andmdash; 102
10 Kalikandrsquo;s Last Phantom: King Matt and the
Old Doctor (1966) andmdash; 115
11 The Film That Cost a Career: Eastern Corridor (1966) andmdash; 127
12 Muslims Instead of Musslmans: Sons of
the Fatherland (1968) andmdash; 145
13 Commissar (1967/1988): The End of the Thaw andmdash; 158
14 An Alternative Track: Jewish Soldiers
Fighting on Soviet Screens andmdash; 173
15 The Last Phantomandmdash;the First Film:
Our Father (1966/1990) andmdash; 190
viii Contents
16 Perestroika and Beyond: Old Wine in New Bottles? andmdash; 206
17 Conclusions andmdash; 223
Abbreviations and Acronyms andmdash; 229
Notes andmdash; 231
Index andmdash; 269