What is a Cinema of Jewish Vengeance?: Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds

Abstract

The question at the heart of our panel’s considerations is that of filming the Shoah,1 which is therefore the question of the relations between the cinematic image and the possibility that it has, or perhaps does not have, to show something about, or of, the historical event which is the Shoah. To answer such a question, we need to answer three things. First, what, in general, is an artistic image for? What can it, and what in particular can a cinematic image, show? Second, what is the relation between what the cinematic image can show and the question of history, or of a historical event; that is, what does the image have to do with history? And third, what is the particularity of the Shoah as a historical event and what, more specifically, is the relation between this particularity and the question of showing? That is, if the question of filming the Shoah is of particular significance, this seems to suggest that the Shoah as a historical event is itself implicated in the question of showing and of the image in a unique way. I cannot of course develop these questions very far in such a brief presentation, but nevertheless I would like them to inhabit the background of what follows.