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
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