Questions of (Re) Presentation in Uwe Boll’s Auschwitz (2011)

Abstract

In September 2010 an online trailer appeared for Uwe Boll’s latest film, Auschwitz. Featuring a German SS (Schutzstaffel) officer dozing whilst Jewish men, women and children suffocate to death in a gas chamber, the 49-second clip instantly provoked public and critical outrage from both within Boll’s native Germany and around the world. Tom Goldman from the online magazine The Escapist described the trailer as ‘disturbing and gruesome’ and ‘likely to push moviegoers over the edge’ (Goldman, 2010), whilst the critics Sophie Albers and Matthias Schmidt from the German magazine Stern reflected that ‘the words Auschwitz and Uwe Boll in one breath rightly leads one to fear the worst’ (Albers and Schmidt, 2010). Writing for the online blog Slashfilm, David Chen possibly most accurately summarized the reaction caused by the incongruity of subject matter and director in his comment that, ‘The trailer itself is extremely disturbing and I’d dare say effective. Judged on its own merits, the teaser conveys the horrors of Auschwitz with some graphic imagery and quasi-decent editing. But attach Boll’s name to it and the picture changes a bit’ (Chen, 2010).