Spielberg: the Janet Cooke of the Cinema

[Steelhead]

>Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 16:02:20 -0700
>To: davemarc <davemarc at panix.com>
>From: sitka at teleport.com (Steelhead)
>Subject: Re: Goldhagen & Spielberg's Zwolfkinder
>Cc:
>Bcc:
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>
>davemarc, the Oscar de la Hoya of the pynch-list, goes for the knock-out and
>almost gets it:
>
>>Here we go again.  Making a point about Schindler's List and Spielberg by
>>referring to...Nazis!  Talk about cliched (and hyperbolic).  Anyway, Steely,
>>go ahead and believe you can read Spielberg's mind.  It's amazing, though,
>>that Spielberg would go ahead with the SHOAH project if he felt that he had
>>already made the definitive statement on the Holocaust.
>
>Well, to paraphrase Gregory Corso, hyperbole is just part of my parabola. But
>Spielberg told the NYT that he was personally funding the showing of SL to
>thousands of schools across the country because he believed it "deserved a
>permanent place in memory." Seems like the celluloid equivilent of a vanity
>press.
>
>I think I said "the definitive filmic treatment of the Holocaust"--or some
>similar pseudo-scholarism--, but then my Alzheimer scores are popping off the
>charts these days.
>
>I do think there are grounds to question the motives of Spielberg's "funding"
>of the SHOAH project, though I'll leave that one to students of Michel
>Foucault's theory of "condescending philantropy."
>
>davemarc catches me in a contradiction, lashing out at Spielberg for expunging
>Kenneally's description of the value of slave (read: death camp) labor to
>industrialists like Schindler, while at the same time not giving Steve enough
>credit for retaining some elements of Peter Benchley's prescient satire on
>eco-tourism run amock in Jaws.
>
>>So if something in a book source is missing, it's Spielberg's
>>responsibility.  But if something in a book source is present, it's the
>>author's.  Tell me, what is it like to have your cake and eat it too?  It
>>must be heaven.  Or perhaps, it's...
>
>The point is not that Spielberg isn't a critic of capitalism, but that he
>hardly seems aware of it as a de-humanizing force at all.
>
>>I won't argue with your personal assessment or the one of
>>your companion; I'll just point out that many others don't share it.
>>Incidentally, what's your opinion of the SHOAH project, anyway.
>
>Well, obviously many, many others don't share our interpretations. I'm about
>as abashedly eccentric as they come and so is Arnost. I think the SHOAH
>Project's goal of cataloguing videotaped oral histories of Holocaust survivors
>is fantastic. If the profits from Schindler's List were really the primary
>impetus behind this, then great. More power to Spielberg. I don't think this
>compensates for the damage done by the "gray propaganda" of his film, but it's
>a start.
>
>By the way, I hope the SHOAH project collects interviews with non-Jews. Elie
>Weisel, for one, has objected strenously to the inclusion of stories about
>non-jewish victims of the Holocaust in the Musuem--gypsies, communists and
>socialists, intellectuals, and Slavs. Like Goldhagen, Weisel believes the
>Holocaust was exclusively geared toward Jews. I think they are both wrong.
>
>>Got it.  Just one thing:  Is his name really Jonas?
>
>Actually, his name is Jonah, Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hah-vurd's Gunzburg
>Center for European Studies.
>
>>>Kenneally's book wasn't fiction.
>>
>>Yes it was.  I've got a copy in front of me.  Just below the title it's
>>identified as "A Novel."  On the back it's classified as "Fiction/Judaica"
>>and "A stunning novel based on the true story...."  Can't tell a book by its
>>cover?  From the intro:  "To use the texture and devices of a novel to tell
>>a true story is a course that has frequently been followed in modern
>>writing.  It is the one I chose to follow here...."
>
>I admit to having read Kenneally's book, with its ironical narrative voice, as
>a historical novel, ala Mailer's Executioner's Song or Capote's In Cold Blood.
>If its all a Janet Cooke-like fiction, then I'll leave it to the
>multi-talented post-modernist critics to deconstruct.
>
>>>Spielberg ends his film with the
>>>"Schindlerfolk" in Isreal doesn't he? That's a stab at reality, isn't it?
>>>No. SS played this film as a scrupulously faithful docu-drama. That it
>>>wasn't, is a big part of the problem.
>>
>>We disagree.  But maybe you'll modify your opinion upon realizing that the
>>original source is a work of fiction.
>
>I absolutely modify my opinion. I now have none. Only questions: Were those
>people in the movie's final scene "real" Schindler-Jews or just actors playing
>them in the movie? Who can tell, and why bother.
>
>>Well, you can go ahead and make that version.  There were definitely
>>"personification of evil" officials at death camps.  Your own
>>former-professor pal was butt-fucked at 11 by guards.  Maybe they did go
>>home at night for a stereotypically German version of a relaxing evening.
>>There were others who should have.
>
>They weren't "personfications of evil." They were just regular Germans,
>mechanics, shopkeepers, tuba-players, biermeisters, and sausage-makers, the
>uncles and aunts of Marge Schott.
>
>Steely