On the screen, horrific images of World War II flicker, showing the skeletal figures of Jewish men, women and children in Nazi concentration camps being marched into the horrors of the “Final Solution.”

It is a sombre cinematic and television ritual we have come to expect. Yet, if one observes the scheduling of these screened tragedies, a pattern emerges.

Whenever the state of Israel faces widespread condemnation for its brutal excursions in the Middle East, the Western entertainment industry develops a sudden, renewed obsession with Jewish victimhood during the last world war.

This is what media scholars call “affective management”, a term describing how our emotional responses are curated by those who control the narrative. In 1988, academics Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky examined this as an attempt to mitigate the public relations (PR) disaster of the present with the trauma of the past.

By re-running the tragedy faced by the Jewish people at the hands of the Nazis, the Western entertainment industry provides a moral counterweight that often dilutes contemporary criticism of Israeli state violence. The criticism becomes ‘antisemitism’.

In the 1970s and 1980s, as Israel’s image gradually mutated from the ‘underdog’ of 1948 to a regional leviathan, especially following its 1982 invasion of Lebanon, Western airwaves were hit with a wave of Holocaust dramas. The 1978 NBC miniseries Holocaust did not just win Emmys. It reached hundreds of millions of viewers precisely as the international community began to grapple with Israel’s diplomatic isolation at the United Nations (UN).

From acclaimed Holocaust dramas to nationalist blockbusters, the strategic revival of past trauma can influence public perception, shifting attention from present-day violence to the moral weight of historical suffering

When the First Intifada broke out in the occupied territories of Palestine in the late 1980s, during which young Palestinians fought Israeli troops with slingshots, the American broadcasting network ABC responded with the expensive multi-part epic War and Remembrance.

As the world watched nightly news footage of Israeli soldiers using violent tactics against Palestinian stone-throwers, War and Remembrance provided an emotional diversion. It ensured that the image of the Jew as the eternal victim remained the dominant cultural framework, even as the Israeli state was acting as the primary aggressor.

In 1997, media scholar Yosefa Loshitzky noted that the “sacralisation of the Holocaust” provides a moral shield, creating a binary where the memory of a past genocide is used to silence discourse on Israel’s contemporary human rights violations.

Films such as The Zone of Interest (2023), which depicts a troubled German commandant of a concentration camp during World War II, do not simply appear by chance. They are launched with massive fanfare at film festivals, precisely when discourse on apartheid or genocide in the Middle East reaches a boiling point.

In the age of Netflix and streaming, this reflex has become even more frequent. During the recent ‘Gaza War’, in which Israeli forces killed tens — if not hundreds — of thousands of Palestinian men, women and children, and during Israel’s recent attacks on Lebanon and Iran, streaming platforms seemed to have gone into overdrive.

Suddenly, films such as Schindler’s List (1993) and The Pianist (2002), meditations on the horrors of the Holocaust, were pushed to the top of ‘recommended’ lists, while old and new documentaries on World War II appeared to tell the same story repeatedly.

This is what the American literature professor Michael Rothberg, in his book Multidirectional Memory, identifies as “screen memory.” The term describes a historical trauma brought forward specifically to obscure a problematic contemporary reality. Viewers become so preoccupied weeping for the victims of the 1940s that they find themselves with very little emotional bandwidth left for the families currently being pulled from the rubble in Gaza and Iran.

However, this is not exclusively a Western speciality. Bollywood has also mastered this art of cultural deflection. Whenever the Modi government in India faces international heat over its increasingly exclusionary treatment of minorities, the Mumbai dream factory starts to churn out ‘epics’ about internal enemies whose ancestors supposedly sought to destroy Hinduism.

This is the Indian version of “competitive victimhood”, or the act of shouting about the past sufferings of the ‘self’ so loudly that the current suffering of ‘the other’ becomes mere background noise.

For example, 2020’s Tanhaji: The Unsung Warrior reimagined India’s historical Muslim rulers as monstrous invaders while elevating Hindu warriors as the ultimate defenders of Hinduism. Similarly, films such as The Kashmir Files (2022) or Article 370 (2024) framed the Indian state’s military presence in Kashmir not as an occupation but as a moral necessity, to prevent a return of past tragedies that befell Hindus.

In this narrative, the ‘other’ (largely Muslim) is cast as the eternal aggressor. This shift has been described by the US-based academic Nilanjana Bhattacharjya as the “new Bollywood”, where the screen memory of past conflicts is used to displace the immediate reality of contemporary state-led violence.

This trend went into overdrive after the Indian air force suffered major losses against Pakistan in May 2025. This time, instead of resurfacing a past trauma, a past victory from the 1971 Indo-Pakistan war was brought forward to displace the reality of a recent defeat. This year’s Border 2 is an example.

The Turks, under the banner of ‘Neo-Ottomanism’, have followed a similar script. While Ankara’s regional ambitions draw Western criticism, Turkish television has been dominated by historical fantasies such as Dirili: Erturul. Such shows re-imagine the Ottoman past as a period of heroic resistance against the West and internal traitors. As the Germany-based transcultural studies scholar Josh Carney points out, these dramas function as a “moral reset” for the modern state, priming the audience to view Turkiye as a beleaguered fortress defending its sacred heritage.

The early 20th century Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci wrote that dominant groups shape “cultural common sense”, making their version of history the absolute moral benchmark. When the Western entertainment industry consistently rewinds material on the violence against Jews, it establishes a framework where the security of the Jewish state is an ethical necessity that transcends international law.

By flooding the public sphere with historical trauma, the industry effectively moves the focus from the present to the past. The result is a self-reinforcing loop, where the market for historical tragedy becomes most active exactly when that tragedy serves a political purpose.

Across the board, from Hollywood to Mumbai, the industry’s reflex turns complex contemporary human rights issues into a binary struggle of survivors versus villains. It is a potent form of cultural hegemony, ensuring that the ghosts of the past remain more real to us than the dying children of the present.

Published in Dawn, EOS, March 29th, 2026

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Director Silvio Soldini’s wartime drama The Tasters is a gripping and deeply affecting film. Inspired by the testimony of Margot Wölk, who claimed in 2012 that she had been forced to taste Adolf Hitler’s food during the Second World War, the film examines survival and moral compromise among those caught inside the machinery of the Nazi regime.

The film is adapted from Rosella Postorino’s 2018 historical fiction novel The Women At Hitler’s Table (also known as At The Wolf’s Table in the US), itself inspired by Margot Wölk’s account.

At its centre is Rosa Sauer (Elisa Schlott), a young woman who leaves Berlin in 1943 to live with her parents-in-law in rural East Prussia while her husband fights on the Russian front. Hoping to escape the bombing of the capital, she quickly finds herself facing a different danger when Nazi soldiers arrive and force her into a van with several other women from the village.

They are taken to the nearby Wolf’s Lair, Hitler’s secret headquarters, where the women are ordered to taste every meal prepared for the Führer, to confirm that the food has not been poisoned. They sit together under guard to eat dishes prepared by the kitchen staff and then wait under supervision to see whether anyone falls ill.

The Tasters is a quietly devastating film about the women forced to test Hitler’s food for poison

The film unfolds within a muted visual palette that reflects the bleakness of its rural wartime setting. The countryside is drained of colour and the interiors appear subdued. This restraint extends to Hitler himself, whose presence is constantly acknowledged but never shown. The unseen dictator hangs over the film and shapes the lives of the women without ever appearing to them.

Elisa Schlott delivers a quietly commanding central performance. Her Rosa is observant and uneasy, a woman trying to understand a situation imposed on her without explanation. Schlott conveys the character’s anxiety through small gestures and careful silences, creating a performance with steady emotional weight that anchors the film.

The ensemble surrounding Schlott is equally impressive. The other women gradually come into focus, each drawn carefully with her own complexities. Emma Falck gives a strong performance as the wide-eyed and optimistic Leni, while Alma Hasun is compelling as the guarded Elfriede. Their shared circumstances create moments of closeness, as well as distrust, so that survival becomes a matter of constant adjustment.

Rivalries emerge and alliances shift as the women spend long hours together under surveillance. Bonds form through conversation and secret gestures of care and, even within a system that treats them as expendable, the women continue to recognise one another as individuals.

The Nazi soldiers are a constant threatening presence. Their authority over the women is absolute and the violence behind it surfaces in sudden moments. One lieutenant, Albert Ziegler (Max Riemelt), begins to single out Rosa and the two enter a clandestine sexual relationship that offers a brief escape for both of them, before the reality of their situation and their own role in the horror of war intrudes.

Soldini’s patient, understated direction allows the story to unfold through confined interiors and careful observation. Composer Mauro Pagani’s impressive score carries an insistence beneath the action, evoking the war beyond the boundaries of the film. The conflict remains outside the frame, while the score intrudes at key moments and unsettles the fragile calm of the women’s routines.

In the crowded field of Second World War films, The Tasters is a rare story that places women at its centre. These women continue their lives as best they can within the constraints of their reality. They talk and confide in one another, and small acts of kindness carry enormous weight in an environment shaped by control and fear.

Exploring the fragile humanity which persists within an oppressive system, The Tasters is a thought-provoking, compelling and quietly powerful film that will devastate you softly.

The writer is a PhD candidate at the School of English at the Dublin City University in the UK

Republished from The Conversation

Published in Dawn, ICON, March 29th, 2026

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Petrol Blues?

Mahira Khan knows how to hog the limelight. Don’t get us wrong. We say this in a positive way. For example, she recently surprised everyone by hailing a rickshaw to reach a TV studio. The video of her little trip had everyone talking about how happy she looked in a rickshaw. She reportedly even sang the song Hum Tau Aise Hain from the Bollywood film Laaga Chunari Mein Daagh during the ride! Isn’t that nice? Wait… this wouldn’t have anything to do with rising petrol prices, would it? Wise gal, Mahira K, saving on the hi-octane.

Chuck Norris Dies

Chuck Norris — one of Hollywood’s most popular action stars and a former world karate champion — died in Kauai, Hawaii on March 20. He was 86. Chuck N shot to international fame by acting alongside the legendary Bruce Lee in the film The Way of the Dragon (1972) and continued to give commercial hits such as Missing in Action (1984) and The Delta Force (1986). He also worked in the successful TV series, Walker, Texas Ranger, in the 1990s. Sad as this news is, the one thing that doesn’t help Chuck N’s image is that he was a close friend of Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s genocidal prime minister, as can be gauged from the latter’s tweet after the actor’s death. Still, may he rest in peace.

Phantom Wars

The film Dhurandhar — The Revenge was released on March 19. Like its prequel, it is expectedly full of violence and anti-Pakistan narratives. Instead of further commenting on that, we’d like to quote what acclaimed writer Arundhati Roy stated recently when she was talking about the US-Israeli-led war on Iran and the role of the Indian government: “Some of you will remember how we used to joke about that florid, overblown Chinese communist term, ‘running dog of imperialism’. But right now, I’d say it describes us well. Except, of course, in our twisted, toxic movies, in which our celluloid heroes strut on, winning phantom war after war, dumb and over-muscled. Fuelling our insatiable bloodlust with their gratuitous violence and their s*** for brains.” Spot on, Arundhati R!

AL in the Family

On March 12, the film I Live Here Now, directed by Julie Pacino, daughter of actor Al Pacino, premiered at a theatre in Los Angeles, California. The Oscar-winner Al P made a rare red carpet appearance for his daughter. He was accompanied by two of his other children, 25-year-old twins Anton and Olivia. Their mother is actress Beverly D’Angelo (Al P’s ex-wife) and Julie P’s mum is acting coach Jan Tarrant (his ex-girlfriend). Al P also has a two-year-old son, Roman, with former girlfriend and film producer Noor Alfallah. Well, given his age (he will be 86 in April), we’d like to suggest to the legendary actor that he should now only occupy himself with reading, writing and producing… films.

Billie As Sylvia

In the 1960s, poet Sylvia Plath wrote a novel titled The Bell Jar. It is a semi-autobiographical account of her rather disturbed and creative life. Now, a film directed by Sarah Polley (Women Talking) based on that book is in the works. News is that American singer-songwriter and Grammy-winner Billie Eilish is going to essay the role of Sylvia P. We think it’s a good choice, because Billie E is a fearless, conscientious artist who, by the way, has some acting experience as well — she worked in a television series called Swarm. So, we can’t wait to see the singer-songwriter turning into a poet.

Daal Gadot

Like every year, this year’s Oscar awards reverberated with political comments made on stage. For example, Spanish actor Javier Bardem came out with Indian actress Priyanka Chopra to present the best international feature film award, and used the opportunity to proclaim, “No to war! Free Palestine.” It elicited a loud applause from the audience (most of whom haven’t yet spoken on the subject, by the way). While Javier B was making such a strong and brave statement, Priyanka C — who has never uttered a word against the Israeli genocide in Palesine and has mostly supported her own government’s belligerent policies against Pakistan and India’s minorities — stood still and kept smiling, somewhat awkwardly, we think. What made this incident rather funny, however, was that many people online quickly dubbed Priyanka C ‘Daal Gadot’, after Israeli actress Gal Gadot, who has been widely criticised for her support for Israel. No PR campaigns can protect you from social media wit, we tell you.

Published in Dawn, ICON, March 29th, 2026

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