Testing the Limits of the Middlebrow: The Holocaust for the Masses

This essay explores how analyzing popular Holocaust films as a representation of Middlebrow cultural production changes conventional assessments of each. Unlike those writers who have suffered the opprobrium of too much accessibility, of being relegated to Middlebrow marginalization from canonical cultural status, Holocaust writers struggle to find the language and forms through which to bear witness to their experiences, in short, to achieve accessibility. In turn, just as popular Holocaust films defy the promises of escapist fantasy, so they demonstrate how Middlebrow culture can be seen as questioning and revising traditional forms of realism and modernist experiment.