Why Holocaust jokes can only be told by a Jewish comedian
This article by , Professor of Film Studies at the School of Ctreative Studies & Media was originally published on . Read the .
When Larry David joked about chatting up women in Nazi concentration camps recently he . As part of a monologue on Saturday Night Live, David mused:
"I鈥檝e always been obsessed with women 鈥� and I鈥檝e always wondered: If I鈥檇 grown up in Poland when Hitler came to power and was sent to a concentration camp, would I still be checking out women in the camp? I think I would.
鈥淥f course,鈥� he continued, 鈥渢he problem is there are no good opening lines in a concentration camp. 鈥楬ow鈥檚 it going? They treating you OK? You know, if we ever get out of here, I鈥檇 love to take you out for some latkes. You like latkes?鈥欌��
David has joked about the Holocaust before. In the comedy show he co-created, Seinfeld, an entire episode is . In his own show, Curb Your Enthusiasm, he plays Wagner (a favourite composer of Adolf Hitler) to a co-religionist who accuses him of being a self-hater. He invites a cast member of the reality show Survivor to meet a Holocaust survivor and they proceed to argue over who had it worse off. Many suggested David鈥檚 jokes weren鈥檛 in good taste, that he had crossed a line this time. But had he?
David is building upon a tradition of Holocaust humour which is nothing new. In the early 1960s, following the kidnap, trial, and execution of Adolf Eichmann, , had a joke in which he鈥檇 say in a redneck used car salesman鈥檚 voice: 鈥淗ere鈥檚 a Volkswagen pickup truck that was just used slightly during the war carrying the people back and forth to the furnaces.鈥� Or he held up a newspaper with the headline: 鈥淪ix Million Jews Found Alive in Argentina.鈥�
In 1964, Stanley Kubrick鈥檚 movie Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb parodied contemporary fears of nuclear destruction by conflating it with the Holocaust through its title character, a pantomime Nazi played by Peter Sellers. Three years later, in 1967, Mad Magazine鈥檚 , produced the parody Hokum鈥檚 Heroes. 鈥淎nd here it is 鈥� the brand new weekly TV situation comedy featuring that gay, wild, zany, irrepressible bunch of World War II concentration camp prisoners 鈥� those happy inmates of 鈥楤uchenwald鈥� known as 鈥� 鈥楬ochman鈥檚 Heroes鈥�.鈥�
Then, in that same year, Mel Brooks directed a film which featured a bad taste musical named Springtime for Hitler, complete with Busby Berkeley-style routines of SS troops dancing in swastika formation.
Knowledge beats outrage
Such Holocaust humour has grown exponentially in recent decades. This is particularly evident in mainstream American cinema where the Holocaust often appears as an incidental, gratuitous, superfluous throwaway line, or in-joke. Take Woody Allen 鈥� who has had a career-long fascination with the Holocaust. When asked in Deconstructing Harry (1997): 鈥淒o you care even about the Holocaust or do you think it never happened?鈥� Allen has his protagonist Harry Block respond: 鈥淣ot only do I know that we lost six million, but the scary thing is records are made to be broken.鈥�
As Holocaust scholar Lawrence Baron has pointed out in his book, , images and themes from the Holocaust permeate popular culture like particles of dust filling the air. The Holocaust has become the benchmark and paradigm for evil. It is invoked 鈥� and, the more the term is used, the less powerful it becomes. This saturation has its consequences: it becomes ripe for humour. It is no longer taboo.
But it is also generational. For those born towards the end or soon after World War II, the Holocaust was a narrative they heard secondhand. For those born later, it is an historical event. They don鈥檛 know anyone who was murdered by the Nazis.
At the same time, Holocaust education has worked. In mainstream politics, it鈥檚 considered unacceptable to publicly deny the Holocaust 鈥� and is . For their part, younger Jews have learned that a low profile is useless, given that anti-Semites aren鈥檛 so discerning in their discrimination. At the same time, anti-Jewish prejudice has in many countries 鈥� particularly towards the end of the 20th century and beginning of the 21st.
A generation of Jewish producers, directors, actors, actresses and screenwriters emerged that was less anxious, less afraid of stoking an antisemitic backlash. This is evidenced by the lack of outrage to so many of these jokes over the years, many of which have passed by barely noticed.
Larry David鈥檚 shtick on SNL is merely the latest in a 60-year trend. He is locating himself in a venerable tradition of gallows humour at which Jews have historically excelled. We have before so why not the worst of them all? It does not mean that we are forgetting the Holocaust 鈥� on the contrary, the jokes are a form of remembrance. Having said that, I think that younger Jews are more likely to laugh than older Jewish people or non-Jews 鈥� we are more familiar with this humour and hence it鈥檚 less shocking.
But the key thing is: who is doing the telling? All the examples noted above are by Jews and that鈥檚 the principal point 鈥� if someone non-Jewish were to engage in this type of humour, it would have an entirely different connotation. It would not be appropriate.
Publication date: 9 November 2017