Just Remembering by Tumolo Michael Warren;

Author:Tumolo, Michael Warren;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Monster in the Glass Box: PBS’s The Trial

of Adolf Eichmann

Arendt’s provocative and challenging approach to remembering Eichmann and, by extension, re-experiencing justice is widely criticized. For instance, The Trial of Adolf Eichmann, produced by ABC News Production for PBS, contrasts Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem by offering an alternative rendering of the trial and the lessons to be derived from it. The documentary is noteworthy for how it renders the trial and its meaning in a way that allies itself with scholarly work that is dismissive of Arendt. It offers a prototypical recounting of the Eichmann trial designed for a mass audience. A set of pedagogical tools for teaching the film were produced alongside the film and were housed on PBS’s homepage. These tools suggest that this film was designed to disseminate more than a historical account of the events. The central ethical claims in this text are that evil is radical and that the responsibility for evil resides primarily in the individual.

In the notes on making the documentary, the filmmakers state that Eichmann’s “performance in the glass booth caused the coining of the famous phrase ‘the banality of evil’ by the writer Hannah Arendt, but Eichmann’s testimony was far more nuanced [than] that popularly accepted observation.”[39] This indicates that the banality of evil was not a radical claim on the part of Arendt, but rather a popular and overly simplistic observation. The “more nuanced” resignation pronounced by the judges, Ben-Gurion, and the documentary alike was that

Justice can and must be delivered to the perpetrators, if for no other reason than to not dishonor the victims and ourselves. More importantly, it is our duty to publicly affirm loud and clear that killing is wrong and that individuals are responsible for their choice to participate. It might prevent a future Eichmann or two, despite the evidence which, sadly, disputes this wish. What else can we do?[40]

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