Out With the Jew!

Although both The Eternal Jew and Jud Suess both portray the mentality of the Nazi party towards the Jewish people and the undeniable propaganda against them, the two films operate in two very different directions. On one hand, The Eternal Jew directs its point to its audience very bluntly. Images and comparisons are crude and raw footage, used to show the worst and only the worst. Anything of aesthetic appeal in the German ideal gets to a play a role in the film only if it can serve a comparison role as the Good example to the Bad and the Ugly. The hate for the Jews is not merely apparent, but thrown into the face of the audience and practically forced upon the viewer. The film is built to play the strings of human aesthetic distastefulness, and indeed when watching the film, I had the feeling of wanting to hate and shun the subject at hand - if it weren't that the subject at hand happens to be an entire living, breathing race of people.

Jew Suess, on the other hand, has no less underlying hatred for the Jews in its message, but instead of simply dumping the entire mess of statistics and gruesome imagery of the festering Jewish cancer on the viewer, it rather invites the audience to come and hate the Jew. The film plays to an entirely different aspect of human empathy. In a way, it is similar to The Eternal Jew in that both use aesthetics to show differences and contraries. But Jew Suess itself begins in an aesthetically appealing setting, which is then tainted by the foul Jewish presence. In this way, it seems to draw out a more defensive, protective feeling rather than one of plain disgust. The audience has a side to root for, which is a thoughtful tool of its own, for the audience has only an even clearer understanding of what is right and what is wrong. Through this, Jew Suess gets it purpose across just as effectively of pitting the viewers against the Jewish population.