Ilsa is the definitive example of the victimizer archetype. Through her abuses of power, science and sexuality she represents the ultimate
‘[…] metaphor for transgressions of sexuality and morality.’16 She routinely abuses her power and the power of the Nazi regime to further her twisted scientific and sexual goals. As such, she becomes a mythic representation of the cinematic Nazi, coded both in terms of sexual fetish and historical horror. As an enduring image, the power to repulse and shock has become diluted through transference to mainstream film; the power of the mythic Ilsa/Nazi image is weakened, separated from the historical horrors from which it was born. We can see this process through a comparison of Ilsa to Dr Elsa Schneider (Alison Doody) in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), a character clearly constructed as a mainstream iteration of Ilsa.
Nazis have played an important role in the Indiana Jones films as the perennial antagonists. With Nazis the evil motivating force behind the adventures, Indiana (Harrison Ford) uses his particular brand of adventure archeology to keep ancient and powerful relics out of their hands. As the representative signifier of historical evil, the existence of the Nazis as the films’ collective and symbolic antago-nists immediately legitimizes Indiana’s actions, which under different circumstances could be seen as ethically dubious archeology. However, their constant presence and the lack of contextualization around their specific historical actions serve to remove the Nazis from history, signi-fying them as ‘[…] interchangeable forces of darkness’.17 The films
ostensibly offer no differentiation between the Nazis or any other villains; they would all serve the same purpose, to act as Indiana’s foil.18 When in The Last Crusade Indy realizes that Nazis kidnapped his father, he deadpans, ‘Nazis; I hate these guys’ with the same level of emotion he gave to the swarm of rats he had just battled in an under-ground crypt.19 They are an annoyance to his plans, something to work around, and nothing more. Indeed, the strongest criticism a character makes of the Nazis comes from Dr Henry Jones, Sr (Sean Connery), who calls them ‘goose-stepping morons’ for burning books.20 This insult is a decidedly understated comment for a group that destroyed countries and murdered millions of innocent individuals, yet it is as far as any of the Indiana Jones films will go to place Nazis in a historical context.
What The Last Crusade is willing to do, however, is to translate for a mainstream audience the established character trope of Ilsa as victimizer into the form of Elsa, in the process creating a more palatable and sympathetic Nazi for a wider audience. The film first introduces Elsa as the elder Jones’s research partner. Indy trusts her implicitly at first sight, and so does the audience. However, his instincts prove wrong when it is later revealed that Elsa, if not a Nazi herself, is at least working with the Nazis to find the Holy Grail. Yet it is not this duplicity but the character construction of Elsa that makes her so similar to Ilsa both in form and function. Apart from the similarity of their first names, there are aesthetic connections. Elsa has blonde hair and blue eyes, as does Ilsa. Both wear white, button-down silk shirts and black leather gloves. Both are highly educated and in professions traditionally the province of men. This comparison notably conflicts with some strains of Nazi philosophy that restricted women to tradi-tional roles and that the ‘[…] man’s world was the state, woman’s the home, and the two world’s complemented each other; women ought not attempt to penetrate the world of men.’21 For transgressing this ideology, both women are punished, fulfilling the prophecy of Nazi philosopher Alfred Rosenberg, who posited that it was both improper and dangerous for women to encroach on the world of men.22 Indeed, for transgressing into non-normative female occupations, both characters will be punished by death.
One of the most interesting transpositions of a generic trope is Elsa’s undoing by an ‘outsider’, an American man, a direct link to both Ilsa and to the Nazisploitation films of the 1970s. Ilsa’s downfall
is her lust for an American prisoner named Wolfe, who is portrayed as unmistakably American. His confidence in his abilities is a by-product of his belief in his own mythic American individualism and paternal-istic pride. Two key scenes demonstrate this belief. When Wolfe first meets Ilsa, he stands proudly before her gaze, although the other male prisoners cower during her inspection. His overwhelming paternalism leads him to challenge her sexually; her status as Nazi commander and prison warden cannot subjugate her gender inequality in his eyes. An accompanying scene that codes Wolfe and his domination of Ilsa as uniquely American builds on this gender dynamic. During their first night together Ilsa’s radio plays militaristic drum and fife music, which to American audiences evokes the Revolutionary War. This musical cue signals Wolfe’s impending overthrow of the foreign ruler Ilsa, just as the early American colonists overthrew foreign British rule during the Revolution. Elsa is also defeated by an individualistic American, Indiana Jones, a more clearly established American mythic character.
These shared character traits and aesthetic designs link Ilsa and Elsa as cinematic Doppelgänger. They simultaneously subvert the imported tropes of Nazisploitation films in a mainstream context. The defeat of Nazis by foreign others is a common thread in the film of the 1970s.
For example, the Nazis in SS Camp Women’s Hell are taken down by a female Jamaican resistance fighter; in SS Experiment Love Camp they are undone by the Russians; and in SS Hell Camp they are destroyed by a group of occupied Italian villagers.
Perhaps the most important similarity between Ilsa and Elsa is their dedication to knowledge and achievement. The blinding commitment to achievement that Ilsa and Elsa share leads to ethical and moral compromise through their association with the Nazi party. However, Ilsa has unapologetically bound herself to Nazism and enjoys the physical and psychological torture that she can inflict under the Nazi banner. The outright torture that Ilsa perpetrates translates into Elsa’s double-crossing, sterilizing the horror at the core to present a more palatable character for mainstream audiences. Elsa, then, is portrayed as a much more sympathetic figure, something more akin to the
‘hooker with a heart of gold’ stereotype; someone who appears to be bad or acts badly, but who is truly a good person. At numerous times in the film she expresses regret for double-crossing the Joneses, shows open contempt for her Nazi bedfellows, and objects to harming either Indy or his father. These actions undermine her connection with the
atrocities of Ilsa and the Nazis, painting her instead as a tolerable and misunderstood character.
These consistencies in characterization position Elsa as a mainstream iteration of Ilsa. However, because Spielberg takes care to divorce Elsa not only from Ilsa’s horrific actions but also from an affinity for the Nazi party as a whole, the film excuses her association with the Reich.
It whitewashes her participation and allows her a sense of redemption at the end of film. Although her motivations can be read as ambiguous, she does hand the wrong grail to Donovan (Julian Glover), killing him and allowing this act to serve as reparation. Indeed, Indiana mourns her death and forgives her free association with the Nazis. Looking at Elsa through the prism of Ilsa reveals how the trope of the Nazi victimizer has been translated into an ahistorical context devoid of the reality of the atrocities portrayed by Ilsa and her cohort in the films of the 1970s. Consequently, this historical disassociation creates the mainstream character of the sympathetic Nazi, one whose affiliation with the party and actions in its name are forgiven, or at the very least redeemed, through a demonstrated lack of ideological fervor for the Reich.