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If every one of the 6.5 million Jews in America -- including infants -- bought tickets to Quentin Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds," the film would have made $65 million, less than its $70 million production cost.

That's why, in order to cater to a broader audience and satisfy the economic demands of Hollywood, increasingly popular Holocaust films look more like "Spaghetti Westerns" than serious portrayals of history, The Nation magazine film critic Stuart Klawans explained March 11 at The Allen and Joan Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Life's "Hollywood and the Holocaust" panel discussion in New Brunswick.

"Inglourious Basterds," a 2009 action-packed film telling the story of a fictional plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, and grossing $320 million in the process, is the most extreme example of that trend.

"There is inevitably a degree of impurity that's involved in that," Klawans said.

David Greenberg, associate professor of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University and a moderator for the evening, asked the panel if the expanding definition of what constitutes a Holocaust film poses a problem.

"It's possible that anything with spiffy Nazi uniforms becomes a Holocaust film," Klawans replied. "I would prefer that Holocaust films have something directly to do with the Holocaust."

Alan Mintz, a professor of Modern Hebrew Literature at the Jewish Theological Seminary, said it's important to keep in mind that Holocaust films are defined by the different communities and audiences who view them -- audiences that vary in their knowledge of Holocaust history and their personal connection to it. Steven Alan Carr, associate professor of communication at Indiana University, said that while Holocaust film becomes its own genre, like the Western or horror film, it is taking on its own "iconographies," familiar pictures that define it.

Regarding the recent proliferation of Holocaust films after they were absent for so many years from mainstream culture, Klawans noted the distinction between Hollywood films and documentaries, in that the Holocaust genre has seen far more small documentaries than feature films. Holocaust documentaries often fall into the "let's drag grandma back to Poland so she can see where her whole family was killed" genre, Klawans said, a style of film he called "creepy." The most interesting Holocaust films, he said, are ones that deal with the memory of the Holocaust and how it is taught to young people.

Mintz said "Schindler's List," rather than small-scale documentaries, was "the watershed in this entire process" because of who made it -- prominent director Steven Spielberg. The fact that Spielberg, not a Hollywood outsider, combined his personal passion on the Holocaust with the "weight of his career" was what gave the genre "buzz" and brought it to prominence, Mintz said.

Klawans noted that "Schindler's List" actually rejected the look of a traditional Spielberg adventure film like "Raiders of the Lost Ark".

"By appearing not to be a Hollywood movie, it succeeded in Hollywood," Klawans said.

On the other hand, "Inglourious Basterds" embraces a more mainstream Hollywood look. Mintz asked why that didn't lead to a "human cry" about the film, since it was in some senses a "cheap re-imagining" of Holocaust history. Klawans said there were no cries, but complaints that "you're turning the Holocaust into just another action movie" with "Inglourious Basterds."

Klawans explained that Holocaust films, just like any others, are defined by economics, because "your budget determines what kind of statement you are going to make." Spielberg can afford to take the risk of making a "$130 million statement" on the Holocaust, Klawans said, because "if it wouldn't have worked, he could have made Jaws 5 and it would all be fine."

Mintz said that society has higher expectations for film than literature because of the power of images, which are "radioactive, in some way," and that especially holds true for a sensitive subject such as the Holocaust.

"There is an attractive danger that's part of the medium itself," Mintz said.

It's wise to curb our expectations for Holocaust films because of the limits of the medium, Mintz said. He noted that while "Schindler's List" only told an atypical part of the Holocaust story without explaining what happened to people who weren't saved, the 1978 made for TV mini-series "Holocaust" allowed "many strands of the Holocaust experience to be told." The mini-series, however, was heavily criticized in America at the time for reducing the Holocaust to a "soap opera," Klawans said.

In an essay, Klawans once asked for a moratorium on Holocaust films because of a controversy surrounding a group of black students in Los Angeles who laughed when they saw a Jew being murdered in "Schindler's List." The students, Klawans said, were actually following the rules of movie watching, which dictate that when someone is shot, you can laugh because it's a fun moment in the action. When action is coupled with a subject matter like the Holocaust, laughter isn't warranted -- and that's why Holocaust and the medium of film is often a volatile combination, Klawans said.

"What this incident told me was that these kids knew what an action movie was," Klawans said.

The upside to a larger audience for Holocaust films, Carr said, is that a greater audience means more opportunities for people to become literate and critical of films, and engage with films in new ways. With technology like Netflix, there are not just more people viewing Holocaust films, but "more screens."

"If you want to find out about that obscure European film on the Holocaust, you can do that," Carr said.

Greenberg asked the panel when humor is acceptable in Holocaust films, and Carr explained how "The Producers," whose musical numbers like "Springtime for Hitler" were originally considered "atrocious bad taste," turned into a classic because it pokes fun at American attitudes about the Holocaust.

"The Producers," Klawans said, reveals the dirty truth about what's acceptable for Holocaust film or any other genre. Ultimately, standards are set when audiences say "Hey, that's funny, that's entertainment now," Klawans said.