Literature of the Holocaust Blog

All of the talk about representation and the recent death of Chadwick Boseman had me thinking about how important the movie Black Panther was. The representation in that film was amazing. The nearly all black cast, black writer, and black director made it a remarkable way to showcase black culture in a way that wasn't confined to the sidekick type roles so many black action characters have had in the past. Though a fictional country, Wakanda seemed like a fully developed and wonderful place where science and knowledge thrived, and stayed hidden from the world. Colonization and white destruction of culture was presented in a thought provoking way that gave even the villain's motives some truth to them. Though it's a tragedy that Boseman died of cancer at the crazy young age of 43, he left a legacy with just this film alone. Fortunatley, Black Panther and it's world is bigger than any actor that portrayed him so it can carry on in a respectful way.

With films like Inglorious Basterds and series like The Man In The High Tower and the Amazon series Hunters , we see stories that are based on actual events, but highly fictionalized. Quentin Tarantino's "Basterds" ends with Hitler getting point blank shot in the face with automatic rifles. Of course it never happened, but it's sort of a retroactive propaganda akin to the first issue of Captain America in 1941, who's cover famously featured Captain America punching Hitler in the jaw! Works of fiction that portray Nazis often ignore The Holocaust completely. The Nazis in the TV SHow "Hogan's Heroes" were portrayed as laughable, and the living condition of Hogan and his jovial crew were better than many people living in poverty. It's clearly not the type of show that could exist anymore. Indiana Jones famously fought Nazis in some of his films. It's weird to think about how Dr. Jones had to get The Lost Ark to keep the Nazis from destroyi...