Inglourious Basterds

Saw it last night. Enjoyed it. One of the major concerns of reviewers was that it was too violent, even sadistic. But for several reasons, including a cameo by Mike Myers, it's just too hard to take the film seriously enough for that charge to really stick. Some very real moments, like the inclusion of Emil Jannings, who really was awarded the title "Artist of the State" by Goebbels, ground the film in just enough fact to mean something beyond fantasy, but it was self-consciously an exercise in fantasy. Or, as some people have less generously offered, Tarantino is a parody of himself. For the same reasons, my concerns about portraying Jews as vengeful, a long-established stereotype that dominated my thinking about the film since I first heard of it, didn't seem significant.

On the other hand, there were several things that were worthwhile. Or perhaps could have been with more attention. An early speech by the "Jew Hunter" explains a particular sort (or aspect) of antisemitism. (It's early enough in the film that I don't really think of it as a spoiler. On the other hand, there are, naturally, later parts of the movie this scene relates to, which I am concealing.) This clip is shortened from what's in the film. In it the Jew Hunter explains that Germans are like hawks while Jews are like rats. Missing from that clip, however, is his explanation for why he's so good at hunting Jews. Unlike most Germans, he doesn't think it's a bad thing to be like a rat, and so he's able to think like a Jew. He goes to great lengths to compare rats to cute and cuddly squirrels to explain that there's nothing really wrong with rats -- before offering that "You don't like them [rats/Jews]. You don't really know why. You don't like them. All you know is you find them repulsive." So it isn't really that Jews are necessarily bad or even different. The Jew Hunter is the same. But not. Jews and the Jew Hunter are as alike as rats and squirrels. "Except for the tail, they even look alike."

And it really can't be that Jews are different. Even for the Nazis who went to such great lengths to explain why Jews are different, the laws they implemented went to great lengths to make it so that Jews were different. "Jews" (as the Nazis defined Jews, rather than how various German individuals would have identified) were forced to wear yellow stars, not because of difference, but to make difference. It's not Jewish difference that frightens; it's similarity. Or specifically, uncanniness. Most people have probably heard of the uncanny valley. So long as robots are obviously robots, we have no problem, but as they become too similar, we reject them as grotesque. And many antisemites have great love for Jews so long as Jews are oppressed, but they recoil at Jewish liberation.

The same is at work when Aldo carves a swastika (same spoiler disclaimer as above - it's an early moment) into a Nazi. After the war, he'll take off the uniform and become like everyone else. But even in a revenge fantasy, isn't there a real difference between an Nazi and a Jew?

On the other hand, like most Tarantino films, I don't think any theme is really carried through. There's a moment here and a reprise there. The analysis of this one moment (though there are many interesting moments and one or two elements I'd particularly like to discuss, but that really would be giving too many spoilers) shouldn't be taken as the suggestion that there's really anything heavy about the movie -- perhaps in a few years I'll return and decide -- or not -- beyond Tarantino's claim that Jews deserve an uncomplicated fantasy of killing Nazis. On that score, it delivers pretty well.

Still a national secret

"Many who had such experiences won't talk about it, or they will try to turn themselves into victims, or they will lie,” said German filmmaker Malte Ludin, who wants to launch a project to record the ex-Nazis’ stories and build an archive of perpetrators’ testimony.

h/t Normblog

Oh, that Hitler! (hits forehead)

U.S. Congressional candidate Tony Zirkle is facing criticism from one of his primary opponents, and a host of people on the Internet, for speaking at an event over the weekend that celebrated Adolf Hitler's birthday.

Yet he has our best interests at heart:

Let's save our Jewish brothers and sisters from this tyrant king porn dragon before we get to another world-wide pogrom after a war with Iran or some other conflict and after the Jews get blammed again.

He is, fortunately, something of a fringe figure:

Zirkle received 30 percent of the vote in the 2006 primary, losing to incumbent Chris Chocola, who was defeated in the general election. Zirkle said Tuesday that winning the election is not his primary goal.

But, that fringe figure makes a point. This response to criticism is about the only thing I'd agree with him on:

He compared his speech to other politicians appearing at Bob Jones University.

Yes, those other Republicans need to stop appearing at Bob Jones University. That points to how Zirkle is maybe just the fringe of an ugly trend that is much broader in society.

His campaign website is a hoot. For evidence that Jews were disproportionately represented among early, male performers in pornography, that Jews are major players in international sex slavery, and that Jews make kiddie-porn snuff films, he cites a number of sources. Including David Duke, the wakeupfromyourslumber blog, the Historical Review Press (I'd expect it's a branch of the Holocaust-denying Institute for Historical Review), and the JewWatch website. No wonder he didn't realize that the group that invited him to speak in front of a giant picture of Hitler, with swastikas all around was a bunch of Nazis.

When asked if he was a Nazi or sympathized with Nazis or white supremacists, Zirkle replied he didn't know enough about the group to either favor it or oppose it... He also told WIMS radio in Michigan City that he didn't believe the event he attended included people necessarily of the Nazi mindset, pointing out the name isn't Nazi, but Nationalist Socialist Workers Party.

But this quote may damn him more than anything else:

I'm considering discussing divorce aids and my plans for a "Derrenger's for Dildos" policy to put guns in American women's hands instead of divorce aids... When a women turns in her stash of divorce aids, then give her a free gun to defend America when the jihadists follow us home.

I may discuss the historical fact that before there were Nazi doctors, there were divorce aid doctors who used these divorce aids to "treat" "hysterical" women. Is there an etymological connection between hysterical and hysterectomy? http://www.dailycal.org/article/9535/sex_on_tuesday_history_69

I may also call attention to the fact that one of the biggest commercial frauds is that divorce aids market themselves as being for "novelty purposes only" so that they can avoid all consumer safety inspections; yet ,they then go to court and claim they have a 1st Amendment so called right to privacy to abuse their bodies. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19333870/page/2/ Who knows what toxic chemicals these women are inserting into the most intimate areas of their bodies and how many men chase children because they can not find comfort from an adult women.

Ezekiel noted women made male images and committed whoredom with them just before their 70 years of slavery, and Bertrand of Worms implored women to set aside their divorce aids about a generation before the crusades began. (I'm still looking for the cite on Bertrand (sp?) of Worms).

Jeremiah 3:9: And it came to pass through the lightness of her whoredom, that she defiled the land, and committed adultery with stones and with stocks.

Ezekiel 16:17 (Whole Chapter)
Thou hast also taken thy fair jewels of my gold and of my silver, which I had given thee, and madest to thyself images of men, and didst commit whoredom with them.

Ezekiel 16:26 (Whole Chapter)
Thou hast also committed fornication with the Egyptians thy neighbours, great of flesh; and hast increased thy whoredoms, to provoke me to anger.

(That last one did not sound like a ringing endorsement for Jungle Fever to me. Maybe that should go into the self-determination segregation section).

By giving our soccor moms guns, they will be better able to take out the suicide bombers once they start following us home. Isn't that what the republicans are saying will happen if the deomcrats get elected and even dare to withdraw our troops from Iraq prematurely?

So, maybe we need a whole army of Sen. Hillary Clinton styled Annie Oakleys? Didn't Sen. Obama recently say that one would think she was Annie Oakley or something.

If the Derrengers for Dildos idea doesn't get me an invite to John Stewart's Comedy Center or the Colbert bump, I'm not sure what will.

That's right, he actually says the crusades were the result of dildos. And, in case you missed it, he's not too fond of the mixing of the races. But he expects we ought to forgive his ignorance for speaking before the sort of Nazis who wear their bigotry on their sleeves.

h/t David Neiwert at Orcinus