Jojo Rabbit: A Bildungsroman Disguised as a Hitler Comedy

Written by Nujhat Tabassum

The Necessity of a Whimsical Tone

At first glance, Jojo Rabbit seems to be a typical black comedy, one that makes light of one of the most controversial time periods in human record, the final days of World War II in Nazi Germany. As expected of the Hitler comedy, it is filled to the brim with slapstick humor in the form of gratuitous violence and absurdest dialogue poking fun at the Nazis and their silly bigoted worldview. The adults around Jojo, except for his mother, are portrayed as incompetent idiots, most notably Jojo’s imaginary friend, a heavily caricatured, fractured version of Adolf Hitler, who comes across as more of a scatter-brained fool than the fearsome leader, responsible for the death of millions.

Shortly prior to the film’s release, there were growing concerns from critics and the general public that using such a flippantly humorous tone to portray one of the darkest times in human history would not only be ineffective as a storytelling device, but it would also be insulting to the victims of the war. Contrary to these beliefs, however, Jojo Rabbit manages to use its whimsical tone to its advantage, using it to immerse the viewer into the perspective of a child living in that time.

The presence of the film’s silly tone can partially be attributed to traditional satire – the film can be viewed as social commentary, poking fun at the enemy, as the absurdity behind the Nazi Party’s doctrines and modes of operation are presented and picked apart. The film is silly because the situation it is based on is ridiculous – young kids aged ten and up, who were barely able to tie their own shoelaces, were expected to join the Deutsches Jungvolk, where they were handed guns and grenades, and trained in military warfare. By 1944, the Nazis, short on eligible adults, and desperate to keep the war going, resorted to employing these children into the Volkssturm militia, sending them off to the frontlines to fight against the enemies. German children and adult alike were heavily indoctrinated into the Nazi ideology, being brainwashed into believing the ridiculous propaganda that was being spread about the Jews, one that painted them as horned bogeymen that belonged in folk tales rather than real life.

However, there is another layer to the outlandish, nonchalant nature of the film’s tone. Even more than being the so-called “anti-hate satire” film that it is marketed as, Jojo Rabbit is the story of a child, one living in the midst of a deteriorating wartime Germany during the ebbing tides of World War II, one who, at the outset of the film, has already faced a lifetime’s worth of trauma in his young life. He has lost his older sister to illness, and his father has disappeared in the war, being labeled by his bullies as a traitorous deserter. To cope with and make sense of the chaos surrounding him, he has become a blind devotee of Nazi fanaticism. In the eyes of such a child, the daily atrocities committed by the Nazis have not only become ordinary, but also necessary to the cause he has aligned himself with. However, as expected of a naïve 10-year old, his fascination with the Nazi Party is only surface-level. He is enticed by the charismatic leader and the patriotic machismo that comes with being in the army but is blissfully unaware of the true cruelty of the party he worships. As he lives in an environment where even families report each other to the Gestapo for merely voicing their concerns on Hitler’s actions, his mother doesn’t correct his skewed point of view, in order to keep him safe. The tone of the film reflects Jojo’s mental state, delivering a sort of numbing effect – public hangings and allusions to the Holocaust are shown and discussed, but the audience is rarely given time to dwell on them, because Jojo would not dwell on them. Rosie’s involvement with a resistance group is alluded to throughout the movie, but never made explicit until the end, because Jojo does not know about his mother’s involvement in the war.

The dialogue benefits from the viewer knowing more than the protagonist, and a casual comment about the war carries a heavier emotional weight for the viewers than it does for the frustratingly naïve Jojo. The movie starts off with the viewers waiting for Jojo to catch up with what is already known, to grow and see the truth – the real truth, their truth. In the movie, this truth, and Jojo’s growth, comes straight from the enemy’s serpentine tongue.

Hitler versus the Rabbit: The Road to Embracing the “Monsters” Around Jojo

In the beginning of the film, Jojo is a weak, unpopular kid with only one friend and one parent. He is fueled by a strong desire to find purpose in his life and to grow into a man, one who is strong and respectable enough to take care of his mother, and one who can finally gain the acceptance and admiration of all his peers. In his eyes, joining the Nazi Party is the best way to reach this goal. The manifestation of this blind desire comes in the form of an imaginary Adolf Hitler. Imaginary Adolf is Jojo’s role model – he serves, at least in the beginning, as Jojo’s primary advisor in all his plans, perhaps occupying the role of a guiding father figure to replace the one Jojo has lost. But as he is a creation of Jojo’s mind, Adolf is an inaccurate representation of Hitler, being portrayed as aloof, childish, inconsistent. He initially comforts Jojo and encourages him, but

his reassurances are empty, insincere fluff – his stories and plans are things that only an imaginative child could come up with. (“The rabbit is no coward. The humble little bunny faces the dangerous world every day, hunting carrots for his family, for his country. My empire would be full of all animals. Lions, giraffes, zebras, rhinoceroses, octopuses, rhinoctopuses. Even the mighty rabbit.”) The fragmented nature of Hitler not only highlights the fact that Jojo’s knowledge of the Nazis is heavily flawed and surface-level, but it also represents the flawed nature of the identity Jojo has chosen to pursue in the beginning. Fully immersing himself in the Nazi Party will not allow him to grow into the man he truly wants to be, as it would require him to kill the part of him that wants to protect the rabbits.

As much as Jojo tries to suppress the innate compassion inside of him, it is shown throughout the film with the rabbit motif. He refuses to kill the rabbit in Hitler Youth Camp, instead choosing to set it free, despite the jeering of his peers. The rabbit is a representation of the weak and vulnerable. Humans see themselves as being superior to rabbits, and they hold in their hands the power to either kill the rabbit, like what is expected of Jojo, or to save it, as Jojo does. In Nazi Germany, Jewish people have been forced into the vulnerable role of the rabbit – other Germans view themselves as superior to them, and their lives fall in the hands of the others, those who would readily sentence them to death when given the opportunity, and a kind few, like Rosie, who would give up their lives to protect them. Jojo has this inherent kindness within him, but in his blind urge to impress his peers and be a true Hitler Youth, he chooses to suppress it, thereby preventing any real growth he may achieve. This is also highlighted in the beginning of the film, where Jojo is portrayed as an immature child who is unable to tie his own shoelaces without his mother’s assistance, one who refuses to accept the presence of the rabbit in his life (“Grab the rabbit by the tail, wrap it around his ear. Tie it all up and then stuff him back down the hole.”) However, a real opportunity for growth presents itself for Jojo after he gets injured after a failed plight to impress his bullies. On the surface, the aftermath of the grenade explosion leaves Jojo at his lowest point – he is left feeling even more rejected by his peers than before, living as a disfigured monster that can no longer fight for his country. However, finding Elsa hiding in the walls of his dead sister’s bedroom restores his sense of purpose. He plans to gather intelligence from the creature in the dark to write an informative book about Jews that will aid the army in their identification. He hopes the book will allow him to rejoin the military, still foolishly believing that joining the Nazis is the only way for him to grow into a man. Little does he know, chasing after this false sense of growth is what ends up being the avenue for his true growth, through the stories of Jewish “monster” concealed in the shadows.

Freeing the Rabbit: How Elsa Breaks the Nazi’s Spell on Jojo

The exchanges between Jojo and Elsa are silly, typical of a conversation between an imaginative ten-year old and a fifteenyear old that humors him, with Jojo’s nonsensical questions,“Jews love ugliness. That’s another thing we learned in school. You love them, yes? Ugly things”and Elsa’s sarcastic replies,“Obviously, we are demons, who love money, right?... But what people don’t know is that we also allergic to food. Cheese, bread, meat. That stuff will kill us instantly. So, if you are thinking of ending my life, that’s the fastest way.” This sarcasm proves to be more effective to get through to Jojo than any earnest answers ever would. Jojo has been blinded by the false knowledge that has been fed to him all his life, and it is Elsa’s imagination, laced subtly with her opposing perspective, that coaxes him out of the veil the Nazis have placed over his eyes. Through their interactions, their collective myth-building on the Jewish race, and Jojo’s made-up letters to Elsa from her fiancé in France, Jojo starts to see Elsa less as a creature hiding in the shadows and more as a real person, and more significantly, as an important person to him. At the same time, Jojo’s blind admiration in Hitler steadily fades, as he increasingly rebukes imaginary Adolf’s suggestions, finally pushing Hitler’s ideology out of the window along with him by the film’s end.

Not only that, the end of the film showcases Jojo’s true growth. After seeing the drawing Elsa made of him, he learns to embrace the compassion within him, deciding to set the rabbit free from the cage she has been locked in. He chooses to let go of his selfish desire to keep Elsa with him forever, and finally tells Elsa that she can leave the house. With this action, Jojo has finally grown into a man, a fact that is further highlighted by him successfully tying Elsa’s shoelaces for her before she steps outside for the first time. In the end, as the Germans have lost the war, Jojo Rabbit has been freed from his cage of ignorance and grown into a man, finally catching up with the audience, finally learning to accept the truth.