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DRESDEN (2006), TEAMWORX AND TITANIC (1997): GERMAN WARTIME SUFFERING AS HOLLYWOOD DISASTER MOVIE
Author(s) -
Cooke Paul
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
german life and letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.1
H-Index - 12
eISSN - 1468-0483
pISSN - 0016-8777
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-0483.2008.00424.x
Subject(s) - hollywood , german , movie theater , context (archaeology) , epic , ideology , presentation (obstetrics) , history , art history , representation (politics) , literature , media studies , art , sociology , political science , law , politics , medicine , archaeology , radiology
This article examines the extraordinary success of Roland Suso Richter's recent television mini‐series Dresden (2006), one of a number of major television projects produced by Nico Hofmann's TeamWorx company, with the support of the television mogul Jan Mojto. It explores the way this and other productions have exploited both the recent upsurge of cultural interest in German ‘wartime suffering’ and the rediscovery of the disaster movie as a genre by Hollywood. Of particular interest to the discussion is the fact that Dresden avoided much of the controversy that often accompanies the representation of German wartime suffering. Yet while the film's presentation of the bombing of the city was largely accepted by critics, its use of certain genre conventions proved more troubling. Specifically, the manner in which Dresden employs James Cameron's 1997 epic disaster film Titanic as an intertext is examined, along with a number of films by Steven Spielberg, whose production company, DreamWorks, TeamWorx clearly sees as a role model. The controversy the film did generate, it is suggested, is due to the problematic ideological connotations the film's intertexts bring with them, a cultural context that tests the limits of contemporary German ‘normalisation’.