Horrors of the Second World War: Nazi monsters on 21st century screens
Whittall, Abigail (2020) Horrors of the Second World War: Nazi monsters on 21st century screens. PhD thesis, University of Winchester.
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This thesis identifies a previously neglected corpus of horror films, those which feature an explicitly Nazi or Nazi-created monster, and establishes Nazi horror as a prolific and persistent subgenre. In particular, it considers that more examples of the Nazi horror subgenre have been released in the 21st century than ever before, prompting two central research questions: why does the Nazi monster still occupy our screens and why does it continue to horrify us in the 21st century? In order to answer these questions, the thesis develops a psychoanalytic methodology which draws together the uncanny, the abject and trauma theory in order to understand the meaning of these monsters and connect them to their socio-political contexts. Such an approach thus considers whether these films are indeed a product of trauma, and if so whether they relate to historical events, the current political and cultural landscape, or both.
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