Gendered viewing strategies: a critique of Holocaust-related films that eroticize, monsterize and fetishize the female body

ABSTRACT

This piece unpacks how Holocaust-related films – ranging from Nazisploitation cinema (Love Camp 7, 1968; Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS, 1975) through to ‘art house’ (The Night Porter, 1974) and mainstream representations (Schindler’s List, 1994) – eroticize Nazi atrocities and violence against women. Following on from Caldwell’s analysis of gender ‘realness’ we argue that there has been a tendency for such films to present masculinity as the dominant power-simulacra. Using Schweickart’s (1986) androcentric reading strategy and Mulvey’s (1992) scopophilic male gaze, we ask whether gender hierarchies and inequalities are reproduced in these cinematic representations.

KEYWORDS:

• Eroticization of fascism
• S/M
• male gaze
• female-as-object
• simulacra gender code

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Stacy Banwell is a Principal Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Greenwich. Stacy’s research addresses the gendered impact of war and armed conflict. She is currently researching structural forms of Gender-based Violence committed against women and girls within and beyond the conflict zone.

Michael Fiddler is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Greenwich. His published research explores the ways in which space, architecture and visual arts coalesce to inform understandings of crime and punishment. His current research project draws upon these ideas through the lens of Derrida’s notion of hauntology.

ORCID

Stacy Banwell http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7395-2617

Michael Fiddler http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0695-6770

Notes

1. Schweickart, “Reading Ourselves”; and Shapiro, “Patriarchy, Objectification.”

2. Shapiro, “Patriarchy, Objectification,” 91.

3. Horowtiz, “But it is Good,” 130.

4. Horowtiz, “But it is Good,” 130.

5. Picart and Frank, Frames of Evil, 61.

6. Love Camp 7, Frost; Il portiere di notte (The Night Porter), Cavani; Ilsa, Edmonds; Schindler's List, Spielberg.

7. Please see Appendix A for the film narratives.

8. Magilow, “Introduction: Nazisploitation!,” 2. For a discussion of exploitation cinema see Baron, Projecting the Holocaust; Betz, “High and Low”; Geuens, “Pornography and the Holocaust”; and Hake, “Art and Exploitation.”

9. Hake, “Art and Exploitation,” 16.

10. Stiglegger, “Cinema Beyond Good,” 29.

11. See Williams, “Film Bodies” and her work on body genres.

12. Marrone, The Gaze, 6.

13. Hake, “Art and Exploitation,” 15.

14. Betz, “High and Low.”

15. See Hake, “Art and Exploitation”; Herzog, Sex After Fascism; Frost, Sex Drives; and Ravetto, The Unmaking.

16. Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure”; and “Pandora.”

17. S/M is used to denote indeterminacy and an opposition without fixed content. For a more detailed account see Noyes, “S/M in S/A.”

18. Brown, “Screening Women’s Complicity.”

19. Meiri, “Visual Responses,” 448. See also Picart and Frank, Frames of Evil.

20. Waterhouse-Watson and Brown, “Mothers, Monsters, Heroes.”

21. Banwell, “Rassenschande, Genocide.” See Friedman, “Togetherness and Isolation”; and Speaking the Unspeakable; Goldenberg, “Sex-Based Violence”; Katz, “Thoughts”; Ringelheim, “Women and the Holocaust”; Saidel, The Jewish Women; and Sinnreich, “And it was Something.” See also the edited collections by Hedgepeth and Saidel, Sexual Violence; Ofer and Weitzman, Women in the Holocaust; and Rittner and Roth, Different Voices.

22. Banwell, “Rassenschande, Genocide,” 229.

23. Brown, “Screening Women’s Complicity”; Heschel, “Does Atrocity?” Rowland provides an interesting discussion in “Reading the Female Perpetrator,” where she uses queer theory to unpack representations – both on and off screen – of females’ involvement in the Holocaust and the reductive masculinization of their behavior.

24. Lover, Hitler’s Furies; Browning, Ordinary Men. See Brown, “Screening Women’s Complicity” for a specific focus on cinematic representations of female camp guards.

25. Heschel, “Does Atrocity?” See Brown’s The Beautiful Beast.

26. See Bock, “Ordinary Women”; Heschel, “Does Atrocity?”; and Rapaport, “Holocaust and Pornography.”

27. Bock, “Ordinary Women”; Heschel, “Does Atrocity?”; and Rapaport, “Holocaust and Pornography.” See also Banwell, “Rassenschande, Genocide,” who includes testimonies from survivors who talk about women’s involvement in sadistic rape and violence.

28. Shapiro, “Patriarchy, Objectification,” 90.

29. Fetterley, Resisting Reader, xiii cited by Schweickart, “Reading Ourselves,” 42 (emphasis in the original).

30. Fetterley, The Resisting Reader, xx cited by Schweickart, “Reading Ourselves,” 41.

31. Caldwell, Fallgirls, 113–114 (emphasis in the original).

32. Caldwell, Fallgirls.

33. Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 1.

34. Caldwell, Fallgirls, 115.

35. Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 2.

36. Caldwell, Fallgirls, 116 (emphasis in the original).

37. Caldwell, Fallgirls, 116 (emphasis in the original).

38. Caldwell, Fallgirls, 118.

39. Horowitz, “But it is Good”; Meiri, “Visual Responses”; Shapiro, “Patriarchy, Objectification”; and Waterhouse-Watson and Brown, “Mothers, Monsters, Heroes.”

40. Waterhouse-Watson and Brown, “Mothers, Monsters, Heroes,” 9.

41. Williams, “Film Bodies,” 6.

42. Copeland, “Double Victims”; Horowitz, “But it is Good”; and Picart and Frank, Frames of Evil.

43. Copeland, “Double Victims,” 42.

44. Cavani touched upon this theme in a 1975 interview for Films and Filming:

The Nazis really loved the cinema and adored filming everything; they did it very well – they had some very good cameramen. A lot of the SS possessed Leicas – like the one Max has in the film: it’s a genuine 1940s Leica. They just loved filming. Everything, even the worst scenes of torture. Not just the reporters – the professionals – but all of them. lt was a hobby. This had a great impact on me. But the Americans are just the same: when they go to war, they like to film everything. It seems to me an attempt to become more objective, to ‘distance’ oneself from what is going on. (12)

See Stuart, “Consciousness and Conscience.”

45. Horowitz, “But it is Good.”

46. Valentine, “Those that the Gods.”

47. Valentine, “Those that the Gods,” 447.

48. Copeland, “Double Victims.”

49. Kerner, Film and the Holocaust, 7.

50. Horowitz, “But it is Good,” 128.

51. Kerner, Film and the Holocaust. See also Picart and Greek, “The Compulsion of Real/Reel.”

52. Picart and Frank, Frames of Evil.

53. Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure.”

54. Serfozo and Farrell, “From Sex-Vixens to Senators.”

55. Serfozo and Farrell, “From Sex-Vixens to Senators.”

56. Copeland, “Double Victims.”

57. Frost, Sex Drives, 155.

58. Picart and Frank, Frames of Evil, 133.

59. Picart and Frank, Frames of Evil, 130.

60. Ravetto, The Unmaking, 58.

61. It is widely believed that Ilsa’s character is based on Ilse Koch, wife of Karl-Otto Koch, commandant of Buchenwald concentration camp. Ilse was known for her sexually sadistic behavior.

62. See Rapaport, “Holocaust Pornography”; and Serfozo and Farrell, “From Sex-Vixens.”

63. Serfozo and Farrell, “From Sex-Vixens.”

64. Rapaport, “Holocaust Pornography.”

65. Rapaport, “Holocaust Pornography.”

66. Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure.”

67. Mulvey, “Pandora,” 68.

68. Mulvey, “Pandora,” 68.

69. Mulvey, “Pandora,” 58–59.

70. Picart and Frank, Frames of Evil.

71. Ravetto, The Unmaking, 84.

72. See Smith, Freud-Complete Works. See also Hook, Psychoanalysis, Sexual Difference; and Lacan.

73. Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure.”

74. Serfozo and Farrell, “From Sex-Vixens.”

75. Mulvey, “Pandora,” 7.

76. Serfozo and Farrell, “From Sex-Vixens.”

77. Kerner, Film and the Holocaust, 145. See also Rapaport, “Holocaust Pornography.”

78. Horowitz, “But it is Good,” 127. See Flaschka, “Only Pretty Women”; Friedman, “Togetherness and Isolation”; and Katz, “Thoughts.” All discuss beautiful Jewish women being selected for rape and sexual violence.

79. Copeland, “Double Victims”; Valentine, “Those that the Gods”; and Wilson, “The Power of Eroticism.”

80. Wilson, “The Power of Eroticism,” 3.

81. Wilson, “The Power of Eroticism.”

82. Wilson, “The Power of Eroticism,” 3.

83. See also de Lauretis “Cavani’s ‘Night Porter’,” who discusses Lucia as a protagonist.

84. Ravetto, The Unmaking, 84.

85. Kerner, Film and the Holocaust. For such an analysis see the edited collection Deluze and von Sacher-Masoch, Masochism, which contains Deluze’s essay “Coldness and Cruelty” and von Sacher-Masoch’s “Venus in Furs.” See also Geuens, “Pornography and the Holocaust,” who apples this more philosophical reading of S/M to the Nazisploitation genre.

86. Frost, Sex Drives; Geuens, “Pornography and the Holocaust”; Noyes, “S/M in S/A”; Ravetto, The Unmaking; and Valentine, “Those that the Gods.”

87. Williams, “Film Bodies.”

88. Serfozo and Farrell, “From Sex-Vixens.”

89. Wilson, “The Power of Eroticism.”

90. Serfozo and Farrell, “From Sex-Vixens.”

91. Wilson, “The Power of Eroticism,” 2.

92. See Wilson, “The Power of Eroticism.” See also de Lauretis, “Cavani’s ‘Night Porter’,” who also regards Max and Lucia as self-aware, conscious actors.

93. Valentine, “Those that the Gods.”

94. Valentine, “Those that the Gods.”

95. Hake, “Art and Exploitation.”

96. Schweickart, “Reading Ourselves.”

97. Baudrillard, Seduction; and Caldwell, Fallgirls.

98. Serfozo and Farrell, “From Sex-Vixens.”

99. Waterhouse-Watson and Brown, “Mothers, Monsters, Heroes.” See also Bartov, “Spielberg’s Oskar,” who discusses the heroism of Oskar Schindler.

100. Doneson, The Holocaust.

101. Cited in Rapaport, “Holocaust Pornography,” 65–66.

102. Rapaport, “Holocaust Pornography,” 68.

103. Rapaport, “Holocaust Pornography,” 70.

104. De Lauretis, “Cavani’s ‘Night Porter’”; Mailänder, “Meshes of Power”; Renga, “Staging Memory and Trauma”; and Wilson, “The Power of Eroticism.”

105. Wilson, “The Power of Erotcism,” 4. See also Renga, “Staging Memory and Trauma.”

106. Copeland, “Double Victims,” 34.

107. Copeland, “Double Victims,” 36.

108. De Lauretis, “Cavani’s ‘Night Porter’,” 35.

109. Meiri, “Visual Responses.”