1. Presentation Script
Run Audio: Mozart piano from Schindler’s List, evacuation of Krakow Ghetto
scene.
Projector: BCU image of a Nazi Stormtrooper in Schindler’s List
Presenter: Since the end of WWII and the subsequent fall from power of the
Nazi Third Reich, there have been countless documentaries, cartoons and
feature films that tell the story of the most infamous evil in western culture –
the Nazi’s. The way that they have been represented varies hugely, but all hold
one fact in reserve – the Nazi’s are a definition of evil.
Video Clip: Scene featuring Nazi Zombies attacking the survivors in Dead Snow
{0’30”}
Presenter: This research project looks at the development of the historical
representation of Nazi’s across a number of films, focusing on their
representation by Director Steven Spielberg. Two films central to this
examination will be Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and
Schindler’s List (1993)
Presenter: In this presentation I will cover:
Nazi Representation in Indiana Jones
Music
Cinematography
Mise-en-scene
Nazi representation in Schindler’s List
The Nazi’s and Schindler
The real Oskar Schindler
Nazi Representation in Dead Snow
Nazi’s in society
Presenter: Distributes handouts containing these points
Video Clip: Scene featuring interrogation of Marian Ravenwood by Major Toht
from Indiana Jones {1’36”}
Presenter: Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark is very two
dimensional in it’s representation of Nazi’s. They exist in the film only as an
enemy to Doctor Jones, and evil force to oppose him. Binary opposition is key
to the audience’s understanding of the film, owing largely to its mainstream
American target audience. As such, the Nazi’s are represented as pure evil from
an American perspective, whilst Indiana Jones represents good from an
American POV. He is an ex-american war hero who upholds ideals of justice,
freedom and liberty – US audiences will recognise this and these qualities add
even more to his appeal. For example, the non-digetic music in the scene you
have just watched changes from fairly light and hopeful, to dark and ominous
as Major Toht bars Marianne’s escape. This music is influenced by Nazi
anthems from the Nuremburg trials, according to Richard Evans;
“the Nazi anthems were key to the great rallies…foreboding tracks that
promoted military might”

2. This idea that the music actually used by the real life Nazi’s has influenced the
soundtrack of raiders adds a sense of realism to the villains, and the danger
that Marianne currently finds herself in; alone with the Nazi’s, and without the
protection of the very American Doctor Jones. In contrast to this, when Doctor
Jones himself is on screen, the music is orchestral and heroic, with IMDB rating
it as the 4th best soundtrack of all time. This causes both soundtracks to reflect
the characteristics of their respective sides. Another binary opposition here is
the fact that Indiana Jones is known as ‘Doctor Jones’. Doctors save lives,
whereas the Nazi’s take them away. The word Doctor also connotes American
strength and intelligence prevailing over the brute force of the Nazi’s.
John Williams is renowned for his music, and is credited by many with the
resurrection of a ‘soundtrack’ as essential to the success of a Hollywood
blockbuster. This music style holds many connotations for the audience; Nazi,
imperial and powerful, as this type of music is used in many films as a theme to
evil organisations. However, Williams also wrote the score for the main theme
of NBC’s nightly news programme, which he names; the mission. This score is
almost identical to one of his Hollywood soundtracks, and connotes to the
audience that this music is related to real events and facts; the representation
of Nazi’s in Indiana Jones is as reliable as the News itself, and the music
becomes associated with the War stories in real life.
Projector: Freeze frame of Major Toht with menacing looking rod
Presenter: As the scene develops we see Major Toht take out a black metal
rod, that looks somewhat like a nunchuck. He flexes it menacingly, playing on
the audience’s existing knowledge of Nazi interrogation methods. However,
when he folds it into a coat hanger, the illusion is broken, and Spielberg makes
a tongue in cheek reference to convention in order to make the Nazi’s appear
vain as well as evil, that he must carry around a coat hanger so as not to crease
his jacket. In fact Spielberg may hit on a small truth, as in the Nuremberg trials,
many of the accused Nazi’s gave the smart uniform as an original reason for
joining the party. As one young German is quoted in ‘The Third Reich in
Power’;
“The uniform was very smart…I joined to get money and ladies”
Projector: Freeze frame of Dr Jones fist fighting with a Nazi guard.
Presenter: Here we see Dr Jones pitted against a Nazi guard. The
cinematography presents Jones as stronger and superior to the Nazi, connoting
that good prevails over evil, and essentially that American culture prevails over
Nazi culture. However, we can still see many other Nazi guards in the back of
the shot, adding to the representation of Nazi’s as powerful and dangerous,
whilst also reinforcing Dr Jones as the underdog.
Projector: Freeze Frame of Nazi’s looking into a pit, in which Dr Jones is
trapped.
Presenter: In this shot however, the Nazi’s are again represented as powerful
and numerous. As they walk away and leave Dr Jones to die, the ‘Sinicism’ that

3. they embody is reinforced. This contradicting distribution of power in the film
connote the shifts in power that were experienced between the American’s and
the Nazi’s in WWII; there was no real side that was ‘more powerful’ in any
outright manner than the other. This also shows that even when Dr Jones is
not beaten and locked up by Nazi’s, the best he can do is fist fight against a
hopeless number of them, which connotes the Nazi’s superiority regarding
technology in the war, and in turn makes Jones’ victory even more rewarding
to the audience.
Run Audio: Theme tune from Indiana Jones
Presenter: This idea of American culture being strong and good is explored
through Indiana Jones, but is made most effective through the use of the Nazi’s
as juxtaposition to American culture. Essentially, the Nazi’s are represented as
nothing more than movie villains, or something for Doctor Jones to battle
against in order to drive the narrative forward. The monsters of cinema are
after all, depictions of monsters, or representations of monsters, not the actual
things themselves. This is not to say that they are necessarily fictional
monsters however; the Nazi’s are non-fictional, along with many of the deeds
they are represented doing in cinema. These are still just actors attempting to
recreate through representation the Nazi regime, and therefore the Nazi’s still
exist only as movie villains, and are not an attempt to document the events of
the Third Reich. So if the Nazi’s within Indiana Jones attempt only to scare the
audience and create a rival for Doctor Jones, why is the film not scary? As
Stanley Cavell puts it;
"terror is of violence, of the violence I might do or that might be done
me. I can be terrified of thunder, but not horrified by it."
This states clearly that whilst the Nazi’s as an idea may scare us, it is likely that
within film, they actually make the least terrifying villains cinema has ever
seen. This is down to the fact that we as a society, know that the Nazi’s were
powerful, evil and terrible; we also, however, know subconsciously that they
were defeated by the Allies, and exist no longer. This therefore provides the
audience with a ‘subconscious resilience’ to the Nazi’s in film, which explains
why any films featuring the Nazi’s tend to fall into sub-genre of horror, because
they do not make effective narrative devices that allow the filmmaker to scare
his audience in the way that is expected in horror.
Schindler’s List represents Nazi’s in an entirely different way. Inspired by
Spielberg’s first ever visit to Krakow, the film documents the life of Oskar
Schindler, as he saves more than 1,000 Jews from death at the hands of the
Nazi’s. However, the Nazi’s in Schindler’s List ostensibly appear to be a much
more accurate representation of the real life Nazi’s, and has been accepted by
many younger generations as the most widely used source regarding what the
Nazi’s were actually like. Again supporting the theory of ‘Simulacra and
Simulation’, this suggests that the representation of Nazi’s is more important
now than the actual reality of the Nazi regime; it is almost irrelevant if these

4. particular Nazi’s did or did not morally approve of the regime they were taking
part in, because they are not represented this way through the media. In this
way, there is a distinguishable difference between what is real, what we
pretend is real, and the simulation that we accept is real. As Emíle Littré1 says;
“"Whoever fakes an illness can simply stay in bed and make
everyone believe he is ill. Whoever simulates an illness produces in
himself some of the symptoms"
This example can be applied to Schindler’s List, as the Nazi guards may be in
reality good, honest people, trying to earn a living. However, the simulation
that society has created shows them as evil, heartless and cruel beyond
measure; this has therefore become what they are.
“Each film... must be analyzed not only in terms of who ... is being
represented, {but also} for what purpose, at which historical
moment, for which location, using which strategies, and in what
tone of address.”2
Projector: Clip of wife being shot by Nazi guard during the evacuation of
Krakow {0’32”}
One example of this within the film is within this clip. It is irrelevant whether
the real life Nazi’s would have actually committed this clearly unnecessary
murder or not, because Spielberg has represented it this way, and it is thus
accepted by the audience as a realistic interpretation of the Nazi’s. However,
many revisionist Historians now question whether the Nazi SS would have
actually done things like this. It is now believed that Himmler, who was the
leader of the SS, was so incredibly strict when it came to the etiquette of the
Nazi guard, that he would not have allowed the killing of people in the street
unless he himself had ordered the brutality. Historians believe he felt this gave
him greater control over the regime, and allowed him to more effectively set up
a mass genocide on the scale of the Holocaust. As Simon Woodward put it;
“Himmler saw the SS as his own personal branch of the party; he
would spare no expense to ensure that his word was seen as law
– if he said it, you did it. Cooperation was forced through
violence.”
How can Schindler’s List be seen as a sympathetic view towards the Nazi’s
then, if it exaggerates the casual violence committed by the standard Nazi
officers? This suggests that the Nazi’s in cinema almost have a set of
conventions that must be followed if the representation is to be accepted into
1 French Philosopher
2
The Struggle over Representation: Casting, Coalitions, and the Politics of Identification,

5. the ‘Simulacrum’ held by society. They must be Evil, almost unbelievably cruel
and violent, dressed smartly and with a bizarre German/English accent. This is
because this is the reflection of the reality that society has now taken as it’s
reality. It is therefore unimportant to the film if the Nazi’s were actually like
this, because the audience already believe that they were.
Projector: Splitscreen image of Nazi Zombie from CoD: Black Ops and Nazi
Zombie from Dead Snow
Presenter:. When we hear the word ‘Nazi’, most of us think of A bloodthirsty
killer with no aim other than to kill, dehumanised to the point that the
audience retains no empathy whatsoever for the people involved in these
atrocities. Increasingly, ‘Nazi’ has begun to take on its own meaning in society.
‘Nazi’ means ‘Evil’ without condition, unrealistically evil even, as is seen with
the insanely popular ‘Nazi Zombies’ branch of Call of Duty, as well as in Dead
Snow.
Projector: Clip of Nazi Zombie being killed in Dead Snow
Presenter: More alike with Indiana Jones than Schindler’s List, Dead Snow in
no way attempts to show what the Nazi’s were actually like, in fact taking it
much further than Indiana Jones, degrading the Nazi’s to be subhuman,
unintelligent monsters that will do anything to kill. This new archetype of
Nazi’s has become prevalent and the dominant representation of Nazi’s in
society. The pre-conception society now holds is the idea of Nazi’s as movie
monsters in the same sense that Dracula or Frankenstein are movie monsters –
they originally began as the embodiments of cultural fears and paranoia’s but
have since out lived those fears, concluding in the de-sensitization of the
audience towards Nazi’s in the sense of anything ‘scary’. Nazi’s (in Dead Snow)
are a symbol of ‘evil’ not genocide and are slowly becoming less associated
with real life events and more associated with generic symbols of evil. One
theory that supports this point is French Philosopher John Baudrillard ‘s theory
of Simulacra and Simulation. This states that reality in modern society is lost
amongst a series of ‘signs and symbols’ referred to by Baudrillard as ‘the
procession of simulacra’. Rather than see Nazi’s in cinema as a fictional
representation of a very real danger and terror, the audience conceives them as
the actual Nazi’s, and takes this reflection of reality as more relevant and
important than the reality itself.
Run Audio: Animal Alpha – Fire! Fire! Fire! From Dead Snow soundtrack
Projector: Quote from Tommy Wirkola;
" What is more evil than a zombie’? A Nazi-zombie! And you know
Nazis have always been the ultimate villains in movies. I like to
think of them as Nazi zombies. Nazis first, then zombies."

6. Presenter: Using a variety of techniques, including the music you can hear
playing, Wirkola created the perfect movie villain – disgusting beyond
measure, evil for evil’s sake, and totally impossible to sympathize with, due to a
lack of humanity. It could also be argued however, that it shows great
disrespect to the victims of the Nazi’s to represent them as unintelligent and
crude. Critics claim that Dead Snow is nothing more than a homage to a history
too cruel to make fun of – but Wikola does it anyway.
Personally however, I believe that the Nazi Zombies add to the film in a way
that no other villain could, a sense of ridiculous fiction, whilst still remaining
anchored in history and reality.
Handout: Containing information on the Einsatzgruppen (Death Squads)
responsible for the murder of Jews in Norway and Poland.
Presenter: The film is based on the Einsatzgruppen talked about in your
handouts, responsible for the mobile extermination of the ‘underclass’
according to the Nazi’s. Though relatively little known, they were responsible
for the killing of almost 1,000,000 within two years, and it was these ‘Death
Squads’ that first had the idea of using poisonous gas as a method of mass
murder. Would it really be fair to ask any director or film maker to have to
represent something this emotional to so many people? Perhaps it is better
that we do not attempt to replicate the animosity and discrimination of the
Nazi party in Film.
Projector: Triple freeze frame – Major Toht of Indiana Jones, Oskar Schindler
and the Einsatzgruppen from Dead Snow.
Presenter: The position of Nazi’s in our society is ever changing, but never far
below the surface, with the next Valkyrie or Inglorious Basterds just around the
corner.