Cognitive Approaches to German Historical Film: Seeing is Not Believing by Jennifer Marston William (review)

William offers several compelling preliminary case studies demonstrating the value of cognitive-scientific approaches to the analysis of what are, in the realms of German and film studies, controversial and problematic historical films. She points out in the introduction that her project is not about undermining work being done in the humanities by claiming film criticism and analysis are the prerogative of science, but rather contributes to interdisciplinary scholarship by outlining ways that scholars in the humanities and the sciences can use some cognitive principles, in particular conceptual blending, theory of mind (ToM), and perspective taking, to productively interrogate the structure of and audience response to film.

William analyzes controversial films such as Der Untergang(2004), Goodbye, Lenin!(2003), Das Leben der Anderen(2006), and Der Baader-Meinhof Komplex(2008) precisely because of the ways in which they manipulate and retell history. William agrees with the various critics of these films that they humanize, sanitize, and valorize, at various points, the Nazi regime, sympathizers, collaborators, the East German state in general and the Stasi in particular, and left-wing West German terrorism. However, she also contends that, as a result of the unconscious application of these cognitive principles, audiences are not duped into uncritically siding with the perpetrators, but rather are drawn into critical reflection. In her chapter on the controversial yet widely popular Der Untergang, William agrees with Christine Haase that the film "[fails] to acknowledge any representational dilemma" (85); she claims that ToM not only helps explain the film's popularity, but also highlights the film's redemptive qualities. She argues that, despite the problematic status of the film's "authenticity," within this context "the ambiguous representation of mental states should be highlighted as one of its strengths," because it "offers psychological verity" but "[discourages] the audience from expecting unequivocal insight into the precise motivations and mental states of the figures represented" (92). This leaves open questions of humanity, perpetration, complicity, and victimhood that are at the heart of the debate over German historical film and representations of Hitler and the Holocaust.

It is worth noting that all of these films fall under the conceptual umbrella of what Lutz Koepnick calls the German heritage film ("Amerika gibt's überhaut nicht" [2004], 193). One of the reasons the relationship between these films and cultural scholars is so fraught is that German culture and history are reified, condensed, and commodified in order to respond to the transnational and economic pressure of Hollywood. The fact that these films are as popular as they are in America should indicate how well they fit into the grammar of Hollywood film. By flattening (in terms of breadth and complexity) history and personalizing (and perhaps trying to redeem) oppressive regimes and bureaucracies, these films encourage audiences to identify with their protagonists and rewrite German history in the service of some abstract and consumable vision of national identity. According to Koepnick, these films are part of a project to reinvent and reclaim the now-homogenized past by means of gritty or nostalgic "realism" in the form of psychological verisimilitude and melodrama ("Amerika gibt's überhaupt nicht" [204], 204.)

William, however, is unwilling to condemn these films as irredeemably bad or dangerous in terms of the ways they represent history. She argues that, through the use of these cognitive principles, students, teachers, and scholars—not to mention lay viewers—can still productively interrogate these films or exercise their finely tuned psychological and emotional tools to broaden their emotional and intellectual perspectives, without necessarily identifying with the characters (in the sense of being similar to them) or accepting the filmic representation of events as fact. While all of these films have been widely criticized for their representation of history, historical figures, and political bodies or movements, their popularity suggests that there is a space in the films' critical reception to discuss their redemptive...