The Great Dictator and the Others: Primary and Secondary Satire
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Chaplin’s politically engaged film The Great Dictator constituted a “primary” cinematographic satire of Nazism and forced all later comedies to refer to it or to affect not to refer to this great model whose coherent vision and whose lucidity remain astonishingly impressive even today. After 1945, the cinematographic satire of Nazism becomes “secondary”: it no longer deals with real danger, but with life after Auschwitz. The Great Dictator and numerous other anti-Hitler comedies—which appeared at the same time or later—are examples of evidence that the movie sector of the “cultural industry” has been capable of reflecting Auschwitz and life after Auschwitz in a satirical way that proved to be not only more efficient, but also more adequate than any right—or left-wing Kulturkritik which looks down upon popular arts of the industrial and technical era. Nevertheless, cinema also appears to be profiting from the emerging market for the memory of Nazi crimes with its accompanying bad taste and has not remained untainted by advertising and falsifying strategies common to that market.
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