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  • 2017-12-29 (xsd:date)
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  • Is the Song 'Over the Rainbow' About the Holocaust? (en)
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  • Which single movie has had the greatest influence, in both artistic and economic terms, on the film industry? Anyone born in the last half century or so might venture that the ongoing massive appeal of the Star Wars universe means that film should claim the crown. Many cinema buffs would argue that elements of Orson Welles' Citizen Kane can be found in virtually every film that followed it. Fans of Casablanca would likely point out that it is probably the most-referenced movie of all time. Yet the winner of that honor, according to a 2018 study, is the beloved 1939 MGM musical The Wizard of Oz. One of the most iconic moments in that most iconic of films was Judy Garland's rendition of the song Over the Rainbow, a ballad that resonated with Depression-era audiences for its expression of Dorothy Gale's yearning wish to be somewhere better, somewhere other than the current bleak landscape. And ironically, that magic moment almost didn't make it into the final version of the movie: Originally popularized by Judy Garland's rendition in the film, the standard received new attention when it was covered in 1993 by Hawaiian artist Israel Kamakawiwoʻole (as Somewhere Over the Rainbow). By 2014, Over the Rainbow, penned in 1938 by Yip Harburg, had become became attached to a new legend: that its lyrics were about the Jewish experience during the pattern of suppression, oppression, and violence that comprised the Holocaust: In some versions of the rumor, a Holocaust survivor wrote the words during the events of World War II -- even though The Wizard of Oz debuted before the start of the war, and Harburg was not a Holocaust survivor. (He spent the 1940s writing music in Hollywood.) In December 2014, Rabbi Bernhard Rosenberg published an editorial about the song from a Jewish perspective which began by establishing some context for his subsequent musings: Portions of Rosenberg's column were pasted into e-mail forwards claiming that the song was about the Holocaust, but his actual published words contradicted that claim (albeit subtly): Rabbi Rosenberg's words indicated that his perspective was one of looking back at the song through the lens of historical events, not that he was suggesting those events inspired the song itself. In 2004, Democracy Now profiled Yip Harburg and interviewed his son Ernie Harburg. The segment included an archival interview featuring the elder Harburg (who died in 1981) discussing the manner in which Over the Rainbow was written for The Wizard of Oz. Although the interview addressed broader political themes in Harburg's body of work, neither the Holocaust nor World War II was cited as inspiration for the song. One passage quoted Yip Harburg on how he worked out the song's lyrics as Harold Arlen wrestled with composing the music for the classic tune: Although the song Over the Rainbow may be have come to be retrospectively viewed as a message of hope and resilience contemporaneous with the Holocaust period, no evidence supports that the song was written with the horrors to come in mind. Neither the outspoken Yip Harburg nor his son Ernie indicated that the song had any connection to the Holocaust, even as they analyzed the political meanings of Yip's works years after they first emerged on screen and stage. (en)
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