In early September 2019, the “anti-hate satire” JOJO RABBIT by New Zealand filmmaker Taika Waititi premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). Goethe-Institut Toronto program curator Jutta Brendemühl and program intern Charlotte Wittenius had been watching the pre-release hype around JOJO RABBIT build for weeks, huge red-and-black (anti-?)“propaganda” billboards across town and all. They decided to (separately) watch JOJO and then sit down and discuss the film’s historical and cultural framework and impact. This proved to be more difficult than expected: Despite winning TIFF’s prestigious People’s Choice Award (a rumoured Oscar indicator), the film seemed to evaporate in contrast to what it had been hyped up to be.
Friday, February 14. 2020
JOJO RABBIT wins Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay – and teaches a lesson about overzealous marketing
In early September 2019, the “anti-hate satire” JOJO RABBIT by New Zealand filmmaker Taika Waititi premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). Goethe-Institut Toronto program curator Jutta Brendemühl and program intern Charlotte Wittenius had been watching the pre-release hype around JOJO RABBIT build for weeks, huge red-and-black (anti-?)“propaganda” billboards across town and all. They decided to (separately) watch JOJO and then sit down and discuss the film’s historical and cultural framework and impact. This proved to be more difficult than expected: Despite winning TIFF’s prestigious People’s Choice Award (a rumoured Oscar indicator), the film seemed to evaporate in contrast to what it had been hyped up to be.
Waititi has a young boy, Jojo, grow up in Nazi Germany and look to his imaginary friend Adolf Hitler for guidance as Jojo tries to negotiate the clash of rampant fascist beliefs as well as the personal resistance around him against the regime. The film went into the Oscar race with a total of six nominations for Best Editing, Best Sound Design, Best Costume Design, Best Supporting Actress (Scarlett Johansson as Jojo’s mother), Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Picture.
At the 92nd Academy Awards, it won Best Adapted Screenplay, the same award it had received at the BAFTAs a week before. It seems fitting that JOJO should succeed in this category rather than winning the coveted Best Picture award in a ceremony that placed great emphasis on films ‘having an impact’. Waititi’s writing is excellent and effective, bringing both levity and emotional pull into the dark subject matter of life in World War II Germany. Particularly in view of the fact that the film is an adaptation of the much grimmer novel CAGING SKIES by Christine Leunens, Waititi’s creation of a colourful and empathetic tragicomedy is an achievement (with the humour working for some but not for others, as is true for all comedies).
This, however, was not the film the pre-release hype had us believe was coming.
With JOJO RABBIT’s world premiere at TIFF 2019 drawing near, every week saw interviews, trailers, and social media promotion drop, along with reports about alleged concerns by US distributor Disney about the Nazi subject matter being damaging to the company’s family-friendly image. Clever social media marketing (broadcast by Taika Waititi himself) played with recognizable Hitler memes and the rejection of orthodox approaches to historically-based films – e.g. Waititi’s famous statement in an interview with Deadline in May 2019 that his interpretation of Hitler was deliberately as far from the historical person as possible “because he was such a f*cking c**t” the audience would not be able to relate to. The marketing tagline “anti-hate satire” seemed as puzzling as it seemed ominously promising and agitative. The mantra “it’s what we need right now,” which Waititi and his team repeated in interviews, stuck too as an intriguing teaser.
So was it “what we need right now,” we both asked ourselves, having studied history and working in film presentation, both of us socialized in post-war, post-Wall Germany and Europe. What perspective could this film offer on (Nazi) Germany’s history and which taboos would or could it break? What could be new here?
Jutta went to see JOJO at a press & industry screening at 8:30 a.m. the morning after its world premiere, alongside mostly appreciative American industry professionals. Anticipating the high demand, TIFF had reserved its two largest theatres for a parallel screening –both cinemas sold out without a seat to be had. When Charlotte went to see the film a few days later at the second public screening, she waited in the rush line for over three hours as she hadn’t been able to get a ticket beforehand. Waiting in line, the audience’s excitement was palpable. Charlotte chatted with a librarian who had taken the afternoon off work because she had heard a rumour that Waititi himself would attend and answer questions; a group of high-strung festival enthusiasts were discussing JOJO’s chances of winning the TIFF People’s Choice Award; two teenagers on a date were following Waititi on Instagram and were already convinced this was going to be hilarious. The film delivered joke-wise as well as emotionally, there were the calculated oohs and ahhs for the cathartic scene towards the end (you know it when you see it), which earned applause and cheers. There were standing ovations by the time the credits rolled. The press & industry screening was a bit more controlled but even there the film had people laughing out loud and excitedly identifying with the relatable child characters. As Jutta rightly predicted, those are the kinds of sentiments that wins a film the People’s Choice Award (see SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE). Somehow though, we both left the theatre feeling slightly disillusioned or deflated, if not betrayed. The diverting viewing experience turned out to be a passing fling.
Is that an offense for a Hollywood movie?
Given all the early concerns about JOJO’s potential for controversy, no one got hurt. In the pre-release phase, a conversation had started around the question “But is he allowed to make fun of Hitler and the Nazis?”, with Waititi joking that as a “Polynesian Jew” he was predestined to do so. Jutta and Charlotte quickly agreed, though, that the author- and ownership question around fascism and its criticism seems outdated. Hitler and Nazi parodies have been around since … well, Hitler, from Lubitsch to Chaplin to Disney. “Hitler” or the term “Nazi” had, like it or not, by now become fair game online as shorthand for any unwanted/biased/violent behaviour. Hitler memes, both funny and unsavoury, have been creeping into the comment sections of social media platforms.
Waititi was well aware of this when he used a popular Hitler meme to promote his film in late July 2019. https://www.instagram.com/p/B0ZAGN9n1RT/ It’s a video sequence from Oliver Hirschbiegel’s 2004 German historical drama DOWNFALL that shows Hitler (Bruno Ganz) fly into a rage after a military manoeuvre goes wrong and which has been used humorously for years by replacing the English subtitles with new ones, making Hitler rant about whatever the creator wants him to. Waititi used this meme to make Hitler fume about the news of JOJO RABBIT’s impending release. This was fun marketing but also goes to show that the type of Hitler parody we see in JOJO is neither new nor shocking.
That being said, there is a lot that is great, even original about JOJO RABBIT. It is an incredibly funny film in one instant and heartbreaking in the next. The jokes work on multiple levels: There is clever and crafty wordplay (simply put an S in front of Hitler and see what happens), physical comedy and excellent comedic timing especially in the child actors Roman Griffin Davis (Jojo), Thomasin McKenzie (Elsa) and Archie Yates (Yorki). The film is told through their eyes, which makes for most of its appeal -- and of course is a smart dramaturgical ploy. The child perspective justifies naïve and sometimes fragmentary storytelling as well as the bright aesthetics in the production design. On a meta level, it makes you laugh about the innocent and quirky conclusions Jojo and his friend Yorki reach in order to make sense of the non-sensical Nazi propaganda they are being fed. It also paves the way for the most original choice in Waititi’s directing: As Jojo discovers Elsa, the Jewish girl his mother is hiding in the attic, he has been so thoroughly indoctrinated into fearing and hating Jewish people that he is at first too scared to even confront her. When Elsa slowly follows him downstairs to stop him from possibly reporting her, the scene is shot like a horror sequence, Elsa being the monster that Jojo sees in her. While most films about this subject matter tend to overstate the obvious too soon –all humans are the same, regardless of faith or perceived ‘race’– JOJO RABBIT goes along with the insanity and lures Jojo into this perception of the Jewish girl as a monster for a while -- before finally coming to that same humane conclusion. But it does so only when Jojo is ready for it.
The child perspective also enables Waititi to play his character, the imaginary Hitler who accompanies Jojo and switches between several roles: the goofy mentor who gives extremely silly advice, the father and/or mother figure, the caring, comforting friend, then the overbearing, controlling partner – at one point we literally see Hitler lying in Jojo’s bed and complaining where Jojo has been when he enters his room – , and finally the predator who tries to frighten and coerce Jojo into staying with him. Besides providing the obvious physical comedy that an awkward, manic, mustached man offers, this imaginary Hitler is a walking allegory: of the hate creeping into our heads and reeling you in, but in the end controlling and deserting you. You can only rid yourself of it of your own free will, out of your own head.
It is a simple message for a relatively simple story that is meant to be uplifting and entertaining, a comedy. One could argue that taking this approach to Nazi Germany of all topics is potentially harmful: National Socialism here boils down to having ridiculous prejudices against Jewish people or burning books (not genocide), the Nazis themselves are goofy and mostly pitifully harmless (minus a fantastically menacing Stephen Merchant), only war itself is really portrayed as the big evil. Of course, this reduction of historical and societal complexity, underscored by The Beatles and Bowie, comes at the risk of giving some people the impression (not factual knowledge) that ‘maybe it wasn’t so bad’ in reality. But at the same time, it is clear that this film is not meant to be historically accurate. As Jutta remarked in our discussion, this is not a Holocaust film, not SON OF SAUL, not SHOAH. We can’t apply the same standards we would apply to a historical drama or documentary.
Although that might not hold true for the opening scenes, which irked both Charlotte and Jutta more than sweeping historical inaccuracies or plot omissions: In the opening sequence we see Jojo excitedly set out on his Hitler Youth weekend, and as he runs through the streets, Heil-Hitler-saluting everyone he sees, this is accompanied by the Beatles song “I wanna hold your Hand” (in the Beatles’ own German version) while the film cuts to sequences of original propaganda footage of Nazi rallies and parades, uniformed party members marching, children cheering, everyone saluting. The composition of these three elements —documentary footage, fictional recreated scene, and pop score— is supposed to invoke a sense of mass hysteria, a Beatlemania transferred to the personality cult around Hitler. Here, Waititi takes one shortcut too many and crosses the line as the historical authenticity is directly diluted. Original propaganda sources, and audio-visual ones in particular, have an incredible inherent pull not to be underestimated. Taking these Nazi shots out of context and putting a fun spin on them –Germany’s obsession with Hitler over-simplistically equated with pop fandom – produces a “real” claim about historical reality that doesn’t stand up to the facts (and we are not even sure general global audiences will understand any tongue-in-cheekness at that point in the film). Here, the film seems to tell the audience: “Yes, this is a fictional story, but ‘based on real events', we have the footage to prove it.” But who created this footage? What was their agenda? That crucial information is lost and the film does not encourage us to question any of it. In short: Why do the Nazis the favour of validating their world view expressed through their rigorous propaganda film production? Playing devil’s advocate, Jutta speculated for a moment that Waititi might counter that he exactly wanted to show the fiendish, lasting appeal of the Nazi’s propaganda (film) machine.
Except for this surprising and at least jarring editing choice, it cannot be overstated how safe and simple the rest of the story stays, and that is what produces the eventual disappointment Jutta and Charlotte felt after JOJO RABBIT had settled weeks after viewing. This is probably the main takeaway here: Overly ambitious marketing that shoots past the mark and tries too hard to make a film seem du jour and relevant in the current discourse can backfire against the (perfectly fine) experience of watching an enjoyable movie. Yes, you can make fun of Hitler and fascism without a research dossier. But don't sell JOJO RABBIT as some ground-breaking satirical commentary on past or present hate that leaves you reconsidering how you behave in the world. It seems not ‘what we need right now’, unless you believe what we need right now around the rise of hate and neo-fascism is 108 minutes of good entertainment with a comfortable, affirming ending: Don’t hate, keep your friends and family close, and trust that everything will be fine.
by Charlotte Wittenius & Jutta Brendemühl
image: TIFF 2020 holiday card
At the 92nd Academy Awards, it won Best Adapted Screenplay, the same award it had received at the BAFTAs a week before. It seems fitting that JOJO should succeed in this category rather than winning the coveted Best Picture award in a ceremony that placed great emphasis on films ‘having an impact’. Waititi’s writing is excellent and effective, bringing both levity and emotional pull into the dark subject matter of life in World War II Germany. Particularly in view of the fact that the film is an adaptation of the much grimmer novel CAGING SKIES by Christine Leunens, Waititi’s creation of a colourful and empathetic tragicomedy is an achievement (with the humour working for some but not for others, as is true for all comedies).
This, however, was not the film the pre-release hype had us believe was coming.
With JOJO RABBIT’s world premiere at TIFF 2019 drawing near, every week saw interviews, trailers, and social media promotion drop, along with reports about alleged concerns by US distributor Disney about the Nazi subject matter being damaging to the company’s family-friendly image. Clever social media marketing (broadcast by Taika Waititi himself) played with recognizable Hitler memes and the rejection of orthodox approaches to historically-based films – e.g. Waititi’s famous statement in an interview with Deadline in May 2019 that his interpretation of Hitler was deliberately as far from the historical person as possible “because he was such a f*cking c**t” the audience would not be able to relate to. The marketing tagline “anti-hate satire” seemed as puzzling as it seemed ominously promising and agitative. The mantra “it’s what we need right now,” which Waititi and his team repeated in interviews, stuck too as an intriguing teaser.
So was it “what we need right now,” we both asked ourselves, having studied history and working in film presentation, both of us socialized in post-war, post-Wall Germany and Europe. What perspective could this film offer on (Nazi) Germany’s history and which taboos would or could it break? What could be new here?
Jutta went to see JOJO at a press & industry screening at 8:30 a.m. the morning after its world premiere, alongside mostly appreciative American industry professionals. Anticipating the high demand, TIFF had reserved its two largest theatres for a parallel screening –both cinemas sold out without a seat to be had. When Charlotte went to see the film a few days later at the second public screening, she waited in the rush line for over three hours as she hadn’t been able to get a ticket beforehand. Waiting in line, the audience’s excitement was palpable. Charlotte chatted with a librarian who had taken the afternoon off work because she had heard a rumour that Waititi himself would attend and answer questions; a group of high-strung festival enthusiasts were discussing JOJO’s chances of winning the TIFF People’s Choice Award; two teenagers on a date were following Waititi on Instagram and were already convinced this was going to be hilarious. The film delivered joke-wise as well as emotionally, there were the calculated oohs and ahhs for the cathartic scene towards the end (you know it when you see it), which earned applause and cheers. There were standing ovations by the time the credits rolled. The press & industry screening was a bit more controlled but even there the film had people laughing out loud and excitedly identifying with the relatable child characters. As Jutta rightly predicted, those are the kinds of sentiments that wins a film the People’s Choice Award (see SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE). Somehow though, we both left the theatre feeling slightly disillusioned or deflated, if not betrayed. The diverting viewing experience turned out to be a passing fling.
Is that an offense for a Hollywood movie?
Given all the early concerns about JOJO’s potential for controversy, no one got hurt. In the pre-release phase, a conversation had started around the question “But is he allowed to make fun of Hitler and the Nazis?”, with Waititi joking that as a “Polynesian Jew” he was predestined to do so. Jutta and Charlotte quickly agreed, though, that the author- and ownership question around fascism and its criticism seems outdated. Hitler and Nazi parodies have been around since … well, Hitler, from Lubitsch to Chaplin to Disney. “Hitler” or the term “Nazi” had, like it or not, by now become fair game online as shorthand for any unwanted/biased/violent behaviour. Hitler memes, both funny and unsavoury, have been creeping into the comment sections of social media platforms.
Waititi was well aware of this when he used a popular Hitler meme to promote his film in late July 2019. https://www.instagram.com/p/B0ZAGN9n1RT/ It’s a video sequence from Oliver Hirschbiegel’s 2004 German historical drama DOWNFALL that shows Hitler (Bruno Ganz) fly into a rage after a military manoeuvre goes wrong and which has been used humorously for years by replacing the English subtitles with new ones, making Hitler rant about whatever the creator wants him to. Waititi used this meme to make Hitler fume about the news of JOJO RABBIT’s impending release. This was fun marketing but also goes to show that the type of Hitler parody we see in JOJO is neither new nor shocking.
That being said, there is a lot that is great, even original about JOJO RABBIT. It is an incredibly funny film in one instant and heartbreaking in the next. The jokes work on multiple levels: There is clever and crafty wordplay (simply put an S in front of Hitler and see what happens), physical comedy and excellent comedic timing especially in the child actors Roman Griffin Davis (Jojo), Thomasin McKenzie (Elsa) and Archie Yates (Yorki). The film is told through their eyes, which makes for most of its appeal -- and of course is a smart dramaturgical ploy. The child perspective justifies naïve and sometimes fragmentary storytelling as well as the bright aesthetics in the production design. On a meta level, it makes you laugh about the innocent and quirky conclusions Jojo and his friend Yorki reach in order to make sense of the non-sensical Nazi propaganda they are being fed. It also paves the way for the most original choice in Waititi’s directing: As Jojo discovers Elsa, the Jewish girl his mother is hiding in the attic, he has been so thoroughly indoctrinated into fearing and hating Jewish people that he is at first too scared to even confront her. When Elsa slowly follows him downstairs to stop him from possibly reporting her, the scene is shot like a horror sequence, Elsa being the monster that Jojo sees in her. While most films about this subject matter tend to overstate the obvious too soon –all humans are the same, regardless of faith or perceived ‘race’– JOJO RABBIT goes along with the insanity and lures Jojo into this perception of the Jewish girl as a monster for a while -- before finally coming to that same humane conclusion. But it does so only when Jojo is ready for it.
The child perspective also enables Waititi to play his character, the imaginary Hitler who accompanies Jojo and switches between several roles: the goofy mentor who gives extremely silly advice, the father and/or mother figure, the caring, comforting friend, then the overbearing, controlling partner – at one point we literally see Hitler lying in Jojo’s bed and complaining where Jojo has been when he enters his room – , and finally the predator who tries to frighten and coerce Jojo into staying with him. Besides providing the obvious physical comedy that an awkward, manic, mustached man offers, this imaginary Hitler is a walking allegory: of the hate creeping into our heads and reeling you in, but in the end controlling and deserting you. You can only rid yourself of it of your own free will, out of your own head.
It is a simple message for a relatively simple story that is meant to be uplifting and entertaining, a comedy. One could argue that taking this approach to Nazi Germany of all topics is potentially harmful: National Socialism here boils down to having ridiculous prejudices against Jewish people or burning books (not genocide), the Nazis themselves are goofy and mostly pitifully harmless (minus a fantastically menacing Stephen Merchant), only war itself is really portrayed as the big evil. Of course, this reduction of historical and societal complexity, underscored by The Beatles and Bowie, comes at the risk of giving some people the impression (not factual knowledge) that ‘maybe it wasn’t so bad’ in reality. But at the same time, it is clear that this film is not meant to be historically accurate. As Jutta remarked in our discussion, this is not a Holocaust film, not SON OF SAUL, not SHOAH. We can’t apply the same standards we would apply to a historical drama or documentary.
Although that might not hold true for the opening scenes, which irked both Charlotte and Jutta more than sweeping historical inaccuracies or plot omissions: In the opening sequence we see Jojo excitedly set out on his Hitler Youth weekend, and as he runs through the streets, Heil-Hitler-saluting everyone he sees, this is accompanied by the Beatles song “I wanna hold your Hand” (in the Beatles’ own German version) while the film cuts to sequences of original propaganda footage of Nazi rallies and parades, uniformed party members marching, children cheering, everyone saluting. The composition of these three elements —documentary footage, fictional recreated scene, and pop score— is supposed to invoke a sense of mass hysteria, a Beatlemania transferred to the personality cult around Hitler. Here, Waititi takes one shortcut too many and crosses the line as the historical authenticity is directly diluted. Original propaganda sources, and audio-visual ones in particular, have an incredible inherent pull not to be underestimated. Taking these Nazi shots out of context and putting a fun spin on them –Germany’s obsession with Hitler over-simplistically equated with pop fandom – produces a “real” claim about historical reality that doesn’t stand up to the facts (and we are not even sure general global audiences will understand any tongue-in-cheekness at that point in the film). Here, the film seems to tell the audience: “Yes, this is a fictional story, but ‘based on real events', we have the footage to prove it.” But who created this footage? What was their agenda? That crucial information is lost and the film does not encourage us to question any of it. In short: Why do the Nazis the favour of validating their world view expressed through their rigorous propaganda film production? Playing devil’s advocate, Jutta speculated for a moment that Waititi might counter that he exactly wanted to show the fiendish, lasting appeal of the Nazi’s propaganda (film) machine.
Except for this surprising and at least jarring editing choice, it cannot be overstated how safe and simple the rest of the story stays, and that is what produces the eventual disappointment Jutta and Charlotte felt after JOJO RABBIT had settled weeks after viewing. This is probably the main takeaway here: Overly ambitious marketing that shoots past the mark and tries too hard to make a film seem du jour and relevant in the current discourse can backfire against the (perfectly fine) experience of watching an enjoyable movie. Yes, you can make fun of Hitler and fascism without a research dossier. But don't sell JOJO RABBIT as some ground-breaking satirical commentary on past or present hate that leaves you reconsidering how you behave in the world. It seems not ‘what we need right now’, unless you believe what we need right now around the rise of hate and neo-fascism is 108 minutes of good entertainment with a comfortable, affirming ending: Don’t hate, keep your friends and family close, and trust that everything will be fine.
by Charlotte Wittenius & Jutta Brendemühl
image: TIFF 2020 holiday card
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