Mats Jönsson

Innocence by Association? Everyday Nazism on DVD

This chapter focuses on films recorded during what arguably constitutes the most destructive era of modern history — World War II. The material consists of silent, amateur short films of everyday life under the Nazis, which in 2004 were digitally restored, compiled and dubbed with sound on the DVD Das Dritte Reich privat: Leben und Uberleben. Because of the conventional and traditional narrative strategies at work on this DVD, it will function as a metonym for how many mass media of today describe the past. The prime reason for studying this kind of compilation disc in more detail is the apparent lack of discussion about the subtle, positive and indeed almost revisionist ways in which commercial DVD producers present the past to the general public. Furthermore, an analysis of how such producers turn something negative into something positive lies at the centre of this study.