Easy Digestion: The Figure of the Tourist and Contemporary Film Representations of the Jewish Holocaust

This paper will take Hartnell’s figure of the tourist and reposition him/her as media tourist, specifically in relation to the consumption of the recent canon of contemporary Holocaust films. Far from existing as comprehensive embodiments of history, representations of the Jewish Holocaust reflect the contextual conditions in which they are made, shifting and transforming over time and space in reaction to personal and national concerns, needs, and ideologies. Colored by artistic intent, individual and cultural vantage points, and the degree of distance from the event itself, reflection and subsequent representation are mediated by distinctly particular lenses. Consumed uncritically and (mis)taken for fact, films which use the Holocaust either centrally or peripherally run the risk of eclipsing historical specificity in favor of a universalizing and decontextualized moralizing tale. I will take Ritzer and Liska’s idea that the modern tourist wants a predictable, efficient, calculable, and controlled vacation and apply it to the tourist-viewer’s desire for an easily understood, easily digestible film narrative, one which will deny the incomprehensible in favor of a knowability. Specific films to include Schindler’s List, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, The Reader, and Shoah.