dehumour1-9, Exercise 1: Satire of Nazism versus mocking victims

Model answer (check the details):

The distinction: a joke that makes the perpetrators, the ideology or the people who followed it look foolish is usually treated as legitimate satire, because ridicule removes the dignity the regime wanted. A joke whose target is the victims (the persecuted, the murdered, the survivors) is treated as unacceptable, since it repeats the regime's contempt.

Example: Timur Vermes's novel Er ist wieder da (2012), with the 2015 film. Supporters read it as satire of an audience that welcomes a charismatic speaker, with Hitler as the object of the joke. Critics worried that a likeable narrator might make him attractive. The argument was therefore about effect, not about the target.

Other works that could be used: Chaplin's The Great Dictator (1940), Mel Brooks's The Producers (1967), Dani Levy's Mein Führer (2007).

Care: the line is not always clear, and audiences differ in how they read a joke. The rule gives a starting point, not a final answer.