TY  - JOUR
T1  - “Cruelty and Goodness,” “Beauty and Terror”: Initiation and Moral Awakening in Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit
TT  - “Zulüm ve İyilik,” “Güzellik ve Dehşet”: Taika Waititi’nin Jojo Rabbit’inde Erginlenme ve Ahlaki Uyanış
AU  - Deniz, Deniz Cansu
AU  - Ersöz Koç, Evrim
PY  - 2025
DA  - October
Y2  - 2025
DO  - 10.31122/sinefilozofi.1757950
JF  - SineFilozofi
PB  - Serdar ÖZTÜRK
WT  - DergiPark
SN  - 2547-9458
SP  - 177
EP  - 190
IS  - 2025 10. Yıl Özel Sayısı
LA  - en
AB  - Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit (2019) portrays the initiation process of Jojo, a ten-year-old Nazi fanatic boy, whose mother hides a Jewish girl in the attic of their house, during the final stages of World War II. Befriended by an imaginary Adolf Hitler and being a member of the Hitler Youth camp, Jojo, in the beginning, is a proud child indoctrinated by the Nazi ideology. Then Jojo, through his interactions with his mother Rosie and the Jewish girl Elsa, changes, welcoming love instead of hate, further becoming aware of moral choices. Both Rosie’s peaceful worldview that embraces active goodness in the face of cruelty and Elsa’s educatory companionship guide Jojo in his initiation process, which finalizes in his emancipation from the Nazi ideology.  The film portrays, on the one hand, institutional cruelty (not the cruelty in the battlefields and concentration camps), in which the young generation also learns to internalize the justification of cruelty, but also goodness represented by the courageous mother who dares to be a victim of cruelty to fight against it. Arguing that Jojo’s initiation is shaped by the conflict of cruelty and goodness, this study scrutinizes Jojo’s initiation through the philosopher Philip Hallie’s ethical lens, in which he reexamines cruelty with its multilayered aspect, analyzing institutional cruelty and ways of goodness that would serve as an attitude to cruelty.
KW  - Jojo Rabbit
KW  - Taika Waititi
KW  - Initiation
KW  - Cruelty
KW  - Goodness
N2  - Taika Waititi'nin Jojo Rabbit (Tavşan Jojo, 2019) isimli eseri, İkinci Dünya Savaşının son demlerinde annesi tavan arasında Yahudi bir kız saklayan 10 yaşında fanatik bir Nazi genci Jojo’nun erginlenme sürecini anlatmaktadır. Başlarda hayali bir Adolf Hitler ile arkadaşlık kuran ve Hitler Gençlik Kampının bir üyesi olan Jojo, Nazi ideolojisi ile beyni yıkanmış bir çocuktur. Sonrasında annesi Rosie ve Yahudi kız Elsa ile yaşadığı olaylar sonucunda Jojo birtakım değişiklikler yaşamakta, nefret yerine sevgiyi kucaklamakta ve ayrıca ahlaki seçimlerinin farkına varmaktadır. Hem Rosie'nin zulme karşı aktif iyiliği benimseyen barışçıl dünya görüşü hem de Elsa'nın eğitimci refakati Jojo'ya erginlenme sürecinde rehberlik etmektedir. Bu süreç ise Jojo'nun Nazi ideolojisinden kurtulması ile sonlanmaktadır. Bir yandan filmde (savaş alanlarındaki veya toplama kamplarındaki zulüm yerine) genç nesle zulmü benimsemeyi öğreten kurumsal zulüm gösterilirken öte yandan bu zulme karşı savaşmak uğruna kurban olmayı göze alan cesur bir annenin iyiliği de resmedilmektedir. Jojo'nun erginlenme sürecinin zulüm ve iyiliğin çatışmasıyla şekillendiğini öne süren bu çalışma, bu süreci filozof Philip Hallie'nin zulmü çok katmanlı yönleriyle tekrar inceleyen ve kurumsal zulüm ile zulme karşı bir duruş olarak kabul edilebilecek iyilik yöntemlerini analiz eden etik bakış açısından irdelemektedir.
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CR  - Bauman, Z. (1989). Modernity and the Holocaust. Polity Press.
CR  - Davis, C. (2024). ‘I’m massively into swastikas’: Jojo Rabbit as a counter-protest to Trump-era nationalist extremism. Holocaust Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/17504902.2024.2397162
CR  - Hallie, P. (1981). From cruelty to goodness. The Hastings Center Report, 11(3), 23–28.
CR  - Kalloli, A. T., & Tyagi, S. (2022). Retelling through the eyes of innocents: A study of Jojo Rabbit and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. Studies in Media and Communication, 10(2), 192–200.
CR  - Littell, F. H. (1980). The credibility crisis of the modern university. In H. Friedlander & S.
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CR  - Mishra, P. (2024). Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit: The satirical power of cinema and the reimagining
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CR  - Ni, W., & Wang, T. (2022). The absurdist doctrine of Jojo Rabbit and absurdism in personalized characters. In Proceedings of the 2022 5th International Conference on Humanities Education and Social Sciences (ICHESS 2022) (pp. 1984–1990). Atlantis Press. https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-494069-89-3_226
CR  - Oktavia, N., & Aris, Q. I. (2024). From darkness to laughter: Tracing the ecranisation transformations of Caging Skies into Jojo Rabbit. Geliga: Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 1(1), 28–35.
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CR  - Reji, S., & Nandha, A. (2022). Carnivalesque subversion and the narrative gaze of children: Taika Waititi’s Boy (2010), Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016), and Jojo Rabbit (2019). Studies in Australasian Cinema, 16(1), 2–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/17503175.2022.2050591
CR  - Sánchez Souto, M. (2024). Jojo Rabbit: Love and tenderness defeating Nazism. In S. Martín (Ed.), Beautiful vessels: Children and gender in Anglophone cinema (pp. 194–199). UAB.
CR  - Schargel, S. (2022). An interview with Christine Leunens about Caging Skies and Jojo Rabbit: On Literature and Politics. ANTARES: Letras E Humanidades, 14(33), 564–585. Recuperado de https://sou.ucs.br/etc/revistas/index.php/antares/article/view/10666
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CR  - Waititi, T. (2019b). Jojo Rabbit: A screenplay [Film Script]. Deadline. https://deadline.com/wpcontent/uploads/2020/01/jojo-rabbit-final-script.pdf
UR  - https://doi.org/10.31122/sinefilozofi.1757950
L1  - https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/download/article-file/5121293
ER  -