Reading the troubling case of Leni Riefenstahl through aesthetic and feminist lenses

Abstract

ABSTRACT Leni Riefenstahl was one of the most talented and one of the most notorious women of the twentieth century. Her gift as a filmmaker secured her a place in the history of cinema. She put this gift to the service of the Nazis. Throughout her life, she steadfastly defended her identity as an artist who merely documented events in Nazi Germany. However, she was unable to escape dominant representations of her in Germany as a woman of evil who seduced the nation into following Hitler to catastrophe. In this article, I offer a reading of Riefenstahl through aesthetic and feminist lenses in international relations. In relation to narratives on Riefenstahl as instrumental in the rise of German fascism and also her self-representation as a political naïf and misunderstood artist, I make the case that she is a more ambiguous figure. Contra representations of Riefenstahl as a monster, I argue that she is better understood as serving as a scapegoat in a tragic drama on the fall of the German nation and its eventual redemption. I conclude with some final reflections on how Riefenstahl’s case speaks to debates on aesthetics, narrative, agency, and accountability in international relations.