In Defence of A*azon’s Hunters
CW: Racial violence
For anyone not familiar with A*azon’s Hunters, it’s a fictionalised narrative based on the true story of the nazis who were brought into the US after WWII so that the Americans could pick their brains about chemical warfare and rockets. While the main characters in the show are not based on real people, they represent very real stories. The punishments we see inflicted on the Jewish prisoners of Auschwitz are mostly historically accurate, with only a few inventions for the sake of symbolism in the show. While the scene where Jewish people are forced to play as pieces on a chess board is brutal, these scenes of unbelievable cruelty refuse to let us be desensitised to the horrors Jewish people suffered at nazi hands. What propels the show forward is the alternation between these scenes of darkness and scenes of real joy and playfulness (my personal favourites are a recreation of The Bee Gees Staying Alive and a quick PSA on how to spot a nazi in the wild). If it weren’t for this careful balance one might feel that the pain and suffering frequently on screen is exploitative, but instead the contrast of these scenes impresses only more poignantly the true extent of the damage done and life stolen.
To swing back to the more upbeat aspects of the show, what I thought was a particularly nice touch was the use of superheroes throughout as analogies for the characters’ experiences and arcs. Protagonist Jonah is a big fan of comic books and often uses them as a way to understand what’s going on in the world around him, while the comic book style is often employed in scenes which break away from the main action. While this is fun in and of itself, it also has real significance. Historically many American comic book artists have been Jewish. If we look beyond the obvious Stan Lee, Superman (arguably THE American superhero) was created by Jewish artists Jerry Siegal and Joe Schuster. The show celebrates Jewish culture in many direct ways — with the scenes of weddings and community celebrations — but this subtle nod to comic book history highlights just one of the many overlooked ways that the Jewish community are integral to American culture.
Generally speaking, if you like good story telling and dislike nazis you’ll enjoy Hunters, but alas that bar seems to be set a little too high for the average A*azon Prime viewer. There are seemingly endless complaints that the show glorifies the murder of white people and is ‘antifa’s wet dream’ (despite the fact that the only people killed by the Hunters are nazis), and that the cast is ‘unrealistic’ in its diversity. To an extent these comments are laughable, I mean if you think that killing nazis equates to ‘white genocide’ what does that say about how you view white people and, therefore, yourself. These views are ridiculous to an extreme, but they are also unsettling. So, while I’m not usually one to wax lyrical about the brilliance of a tv show, I think the best revenge for these comments is to encourage anyone that I can to share in what I personally think is a brilliantly made series.
On that note season 2 of Hunters is in the works, so if you like seeing nazis get punched now is the time to catch up! If you’re of the view that storming certain unnamed seats of democracy and ignoring election results is a good idea, then this may not be the show for you…
