Fake News? Sad.
My brother was being shown around a potential employer’s offices and was being introduced to various employees. One man had a completely bald head, and my brother pointed to his own bald and shaven head and said, “It looks like we have the same barber.”
The man responded, “Chemotherapy?”
5 Likes
Correct. As it happens, I was re-(re-re-re-re)reading Two Towers last night, and that’s the part I’m at now.
1 Like
I agree about Masucci, he was absolutely great. Also, the scene with the dog… brilliant.
1 Like
Ah! Yeah. Not something I’m likely to agree with for sure. Thanks.
Yeah… I thought that was… wow. Right on the money.
I can see that being an issue. Comedy is weird like that, right? Like Dave Chappelle, and the reason why he left his show was because he thought that people weren’t getting the jokes in the way he hoped, especially white people. He felt that some people thought it gave them permission to say racist things, when he hoped that people would examine their racist world view. I can see the same happening here.
But I did feel a certain horror at how the scenes played out, how people just sort of accepted what was coming out of his mouth, and didn’t really question that it was FREAKIN’ HITLER saying it… There was the one guy who said something when Hitler was doing the pictures in that city to get money…
But OMG, the dog.
1 Like
It’s called the ‘Hitler and Mannerheim Recording’. You can Google it.
It’s blocked for viewing in Germany also.
2 Likes
Saw you already got the link to Wikipedia. The point is that Sarrazin, Pirinçci and even Sloterdijk did set a certain tone in public debate, while at the same time the book and film had some popularity. I am not convinced the normalisation of Hitler is actually helping to prevent a creeping in of naziism.
That said, I didn’t watch this film, and didn’t read the book, so I don’t have a informed opinion. But I found it noteworthy that the critics were underwhelmed, and now it has been mentioned I vaguely recall that laughing with instead of laughing at the main character might have been an issue… I might need to check on that.
1 Like
I can see this being an issue and I imagine it has been for a while. I think the film is pretty obviously a satire of modern day anti-immigration movement in Germany, but then again, as I noted above with how many people completely misconstrued Dave Chappelle’s comedy, I’m guessing that many people did the same here. I personally love this kind of satire, probably because it often reinforces beliefs I already have, but I can also see how it can be problematic and misunderstood.[quote=“LutherBlisset, post:48, topic:100994”]
I vaguely recall that laughing with instead of laughing at the main character might have been an issue
[/quote]
Yeah, I can see that happening, unfortunately. I was most surely laughing at the character. I do think the film does directly address this problem. Same with Bamboozled, if you’ve seen that film, where the producer wants to make a show so offensive and over the top, that he’ll get fired from his job writing for TV. Instead, white America loves the revival of that sort of minstrel shows, which include black face and racist stereotypes. I seem to remember that some loved it for the satire, while everyone else seemed to enjoy the ability to bask in open racism in a 30 minute variety show.
1 Like
The German language is spoken in some filthy-rich countries, and is nowhere near endangered status. German-speakers aren’t an oppressed minority. Therefore, there is absolutely no need to resort to “you’re just being insecure, and I have a black friend”.
Or were you just trying to “invalidate my experience” and say that there is no long-standing tradition in the English world to call the German language “ugly”? 
I’m not traumatized by that experience. I’ve got too much privilege for that. I’ve just heard it often enough to say “it’s getting old”. Nothing more.
I’m not sure, either, but then we’ve had plenty of other things that don’t help either. We’ve had plenty of action movies with cartoon nazis, which leads to everyone agreeing that nazis are evil, but not recognizing them unless they voice the desire to conquer the whole world and cleanse it of all “weakness”.
Whether you view a certain policy as “nazi” differs a lot from place to place. I’ve compiled a list of various policies and statements below and annotated each with whether I think it would be labeled as “nazi” (or something close to it) by my friends and family in Austria:
- having school kids pledge their allegiance to a flag - nazi
- a publicly-funded anti-smoking campaign - not nazi (even though the nazis were the first to do that)
- “Europe is taking in more middle-Eastern refugees than it can handle” - not nazi
- “Our country needs a strong leader” - nazi
- “Our country has a long-standing old culture and it’s impossible to truly to be a part of that unless you’ve grown up here” - not nazi
- “If one of your grandparents were X, you are part of the X people” - nazi
- “Immigrants should stop identifiying with their culture of origin after a generation - It is undesirable if the children of immigrants from X still feel as X people” - not nazi
- “Even if the war is wrong, we should thank the soldiers willing to fight for us” - definitely nazi
Your suggestion that saying “half my family is German” is akin to saying “I have a Black friend” is perfect.
3 Likes
I am under the impression that you feel offended for reasons which are not within the intention or control of others in this thread. I suggest we step back a bit.
Regarding the language, I don’t see why you care. Having grown up with German myself, I can’t even properly tell how out sounds like to native speakers of other languages, but by all indications it’s definitely neither perceived melodious nor mellow. Not even Schubert’s Lieder. (And, just for the record, German music and classical song seem to be held in higher regard in the UK than in Germany, and possibly also Austria and Switzerland.)
Regarding what is “Nazi” and what isn’t, neo-fascism and naziism do have some quite widely accepted definitions and indicators. I can assure you that being a non-smoking vegetarian are not among them.
This is no contest. Fascism must be smashed, and this is a Sisyphean task. The means to that may differ, and we can still discuss if watching a mockumentary with a genocidal Überzeugungstäter is getting us anywhere nearer to understanding how naziism takes root.
After re-reading some reviews, I doubt it and still wouldn’t want to watch it.
1 Like
I went back to the reviews and found criticism regarding more points.
I just paraphrase here, and have to emphasise v that I didn’t watch it and those are not my points, neither do I claim to represent them properly.
Hitler seems to be the only one not playing an act i.e. the only person of integrity. Even physically, Hitler is appealing, and likable, while his counterparts (who, in part, play satirized roles of their real life profession) are not figures of identification. Viewers are also bound to identify with Hitler’s viewpoint that Germany/Germans are degenerate.
More than in Cohen-Baron mockumentaries, people thrown into situations with a actor playing a historical (and monstrous) figure have no “proper” way out of it. They are this depicted as idiots.
Furthermore, which reactions are honest and which are staged even stays unclear. This adds to the problem that viewers are laughing with the (clearly staged) perpetrator.
The depiction of media as essentially dishonest with totalitarian strokes might be meant as critique, but could be right out of the right-wing playbook.
The film essentially doesn’t come to any conclusion in regard to the fascination with the figure of Hitler in plays and films, and the apparent longing of PEGIDA-protesters for a strong political leader figure. It just uses this figure for first creating complicity, and only near the end changed towards a certain discomfort.
Well, that’s that. And that’s quite across the spectrum, from left-leaning to right-leaning press. I left out some positive bits, of course. 
1 Like
If I was smarter, I would think up a Godwin-like rule where any sufficiently long discussion of Hitler eventually will turn to Trump.
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
