Instead of engaging in those questions and in the possibility of Riefenstahl’s rehabilitation, I am personally more drawn to examining Sontag’s description of a fascist aesthetic. While the Nuba photos portray an aboriginal society dedicated to ritualistic wrestling, Sontag sees various preoccupations in the Nuba photos that work in a continuum from Triumph of the Will. Both sets of images deal with domination and submission within the context of spectacle.
The above image could as well have been taken from Riefenstahl’s work during the Nazi era if not for the race of the wrestlers. We see here domination, submission, and ritual spectacle on the part of the tribal group amassed for the matches. Sontag further defines this fascist aesthetic in part as “the ideal of life as art [and] the cult of beauty."
In this kind of analysis lies Sontag’s strength. She wraps huge ideas into each component. How else to look at the Third Reich if not as a saga of domination and submission? Many would argue that the stakes were never higher. Whether the domination had to do with territory or the conquering of individual human spirit, the Nazis’ aim was total victory. With the movement into country after country until the Germans occupied most of Europe and North Africa, Hitler’s forces seemed insatiable. On a personal or human level, anyone who was different from the Aryan ideal had to flee or submit completely to the Nazi authority which lead to loss of rights, imprisonment, and death. These persecuted people included the mentally retarded, homosexuals, political opponents, and Gypsies, as well as Jews.
Eric Rentschler, in his book, The Ministry of Illusion speaks to Sontag’s next point that top Nazis held to the ideal of life as art: “If the Nazis were movie mad, then the Third Reich was movie made”(1). Ample evidence exists that much of the orchestration and scheduling of the Nuremberg Rallies coordinated with their filming. Rentschler points out that Goebbels successfully used various media to accomplish such ends: film, of course, celebrations, light shows, rallies, and mass extravaganzas filled with “flags, uniforms, and emblems.” Many of the leaders lived lives surrounded by the documentation remained at the heart of the Nazi aesthetic with the intent that these materials would live, along with the regime, for a thousand years.
Sontag is correct that the cult of beauty is central to both Riefenstahl’s work and to the fascist aesthetic. Whatever else critics say about the films, their visual content seems undeniable. Her sense of mise-en-scène, which refers to everything that appears before the camera, the equivalent of scopic regime in photography, is impeccable. Whether she shows men wrestling or repetitions of form seen in workers marching, inherent beauty remains an essential element. When Riefenstahl shows Aryan faces along a parade route, we have a clear picture of this alliance of beauty in art and in the racial beauty prized by the National Socialists.
So, what to make of all this? When I ask myself about my own sense of Riefenstahl’s images, whether of the Nuba tribe or of her films, and about Sontag’s assessment in terms of defining them, I don’t seem to make much progress. I first saw Triumph of the Will in 1985. I still remember where I was personally and the way the airplane came in through the clouds, how Riefenstahl created Hitler as a god, the crowds of people enthralled, beyond thought, a vast machine of people ready to do whatever the regime required. If the filming of that was beautiful, if the destruction that came from the domination and submission of peoples was nearly absolute, if this was a world complete at that moment, I still cannot lose the sense of horror that always accompanies the work. This is work I cannot come to terms with. Sontag helps me analyze elements of that work. The horror I feel has nothing to do with analyis.
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