Quax In Africa Film Analysis

In 1943, Helmut Weiss directed a film called Quax in Africa, staring Heinz Rühmann, and Lothar Firmans (Sander). This comedy was filmed in Germany and the plotline involves a flight instructor, named Quax Guschenbugel, who participates with his students in an international plane race. However, the protagonist ends up crashing his plane into an African jungle, along with several others of his flight passengers. While being stuck in this jungle, Quax and his female passenger, who is also his love interest in the film, encounter an indigenous African tribe and spend several days trying to survive their new surroundings. Judging by the title of this film, "Quax in Africa," viewers are lead to believe that the point of this film is to feature an exotic

This trip ends up being a very traumatic experience for Massaquoi because, while standing in front of the African exhibit, the white Germans standing beside him begin to point at him and mistake him for one of the Africans ' children (Massaquoi 26). This relates back to the film because by mentally associating the Africans from this jungle with the Africans from the Berlin Zoo, Quax is shown to prejudicially think that all Africans are alike and that they are more closely related to animals on display in a zoo than to humans. And by doing this, Quax is mentally creating distance between himself, as a white Nazi German, and this tribe of African natives in order to justify treating them like his servants and commanding them around. Throughout the portion of the film that Quax is in Africa, he constantly is commanding the African tribe to give him things like an antelope for food and a hut for shelter, attempting to showcase his racial