Imagining Friends and Foes: The (Re)Education of Jojo Rabbit

Abstract

The film Jojo Rabbit is a coming-of-age story that explores the power of the imagination in constructing and deconstructing Nazi ideals. Ten-year-old Johannes (Jojo) Betzler was educated by Nazi society to imagine Hitler, the Nazis, and the “Aryans” as his friends and the Jews as his diabolical foes. Only when he meets and befriends Else, a Jewish girl hidden in his attic, is he able to break free and begin to recognize and deconstruct these imagined friends and foes. Moreover, Jojo Rabbit demonstrates how friendship is a context in which vice or virtue can develop (depending on the friend) by enabling transformation, training the emotions, and enslaving or setting free. The filmmakers turn the Nazi imagination upon its head: they dismantle the Nazi view of jungle animals fighting each other for survival to show that it is only by laying down hatred and animosity that we can rely on each other and survive together amid the chaos.

Keywords

• Jojo Rabbit
• Nazi Germany films
• World War II films
• Nazi Volksgemeinschaft
• Taika Waititi