This week I thought I’d discuss an academic essay that, frankly, I found riveting — and I hardly ever say that about an academic essay, believe me. The subject is a controversial one — humour and the Holocaust — but the findings surprised me; they may surprise you.
It begins back in 2004. In that year, the movie Downfall (Der Untergang) was released, directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel. The film details the Battle for Berlin and the final days of Hitler. Starring the late Bruno Ganz in the lead role, the film was very successful, both critically and commercially.
Many people, however, know of the film not through having actually seen it but through the Hitler Rants parodies. Taking the scene in which the Nazi leader is holed up in his bunker, the first of these appeared in August 2006, with Hitler criticising Microsoft’s in-flight simulator. Since then he has ranted against everything from Usain Bolt breaking the 100 metres world record:
…To the change in Amazon Prime’s pricing structure:
In 2016, an Israeli academic, Liat Steir-Livny (below), decided to look into this meme1. She’s an Associate Professor in Holocaust Studies at Sapir Academic College. Her prime interest? She wanted to know how the Hitler Rant meme was being used in Israel.
The first Hebrew-subtitled Hitler Rant appeared in 2009. In the years that followed the most successful, by viewing numbers, is Hitler is looking for a parking space in Tel Aviv (Hitler mechapes hanaya betel-aviv): so far, almost 300,000 people have watched it.
In this version, the dictator thunders about the fact there aren’t enough parking spaces and he has had to park in a bike bay. This has earnt him a fine of $65. He tells everyone in the bunker who ‘lives in Tel Aviv and has private parking spaces, or doesn’t have a car’ to get out. Then he lets rip at Tel Aviv’s parking inspectors.
And here’s where it gets surprising. Out of curiosity, Steir-Livny analysed the number of Hitler Rants memes created in Israel. This is what she discovered:
Hitler Rants memes are much more successful and popular in Israel than in any other country around the world.
But this is, at the very least, problematic. For a predominantly Jewish audience, are these rants…?
Utterly tasteless
Using the comic potential of Hitler, so making him into a laughing-stock
Disrespectful towards Holocaust survivors
Depicting Hitler as unhinged, as he only falls apart when confronted with trivialities
Continuing a long tradition of Jewish humour as the defence mechanism of an entire people2
Desecrating the memory of those who were murdered in the Holocaust
A sign of maturity as Israel faces the Holocaust in a different way than national memory
A sign of normalisation as a younger generation wants to abandon the taboo, untouchable notion of the Holocaust
…Intriguing questions.
Steir-Livny argues that these memes function as a way of softening the national trauma of the Holocaust, through humour: ‘In Hitler Rants parodies, the web users [who create these parodies] silence the original soundtrack that deals with Hitler, the Third Reich and the behaviour of absolute evil and, by doing so, silence the traumatic events.’3 The fact that these memes seem to be healing national trauma, in her view, explains why they have been so successful.
Why is this of interest? For one thing, it shows how humour is intrinsically related to society, history and culture. Humour is a magpie subject in so many ways, tapping into so many other disciplines. This is why, when a brand decides to use humour, there are many ‘non-humour’ factors to take into account.
The second reason it’s interesting is because it wrongfoots what we think we might know about national humour. We might assume — for obvious historical reasons — that Israelis loathe depictions of Nazism, even in comic form. But in this case that assumption is lazy and, indeed, wrong.
Why we look for humour, what we gain from it, and what exactly we are laughing at — these are all interesting questions. And the answers are often unexpected.4
Many thanks for reading,
Paddy
Book a meeting with me here / www.studiogilmore.com / pg@studiogilmore.com / +44 7866 538 233 / Twitter: @mrpaddygilmore
Stier-Livny, Liat: ‘Is it OK to laugh about it yet? Hitler Rants YouTube parodies in Hebrew,’ European Journal of Humour Research, Vol. 4 No. 4 (2016).
Sliwa, J: ‘Jewish Humour as a source of research on Polish-Jewish relations’ in Greenspoon, L. J. (ed.) Jews and Humour, West Lafayette, Purdue University Press, pp. 67-82, 2011.
Steir-Livny, Liat: op cit., p. 116.