Nazi Jews

[rich]

On 9/17/09, kelber at mindspring.com <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
> I think one of the issues with movies about the Nazis is that there've been
> an awful lot of them.  There are superlative ones and mediocre ones, but
> there doesn't seem to be any end in sight (I've "worked" as an unpaid
> screenplay reader for three years now, and there's a steady supply of
> Holocaust scripts).  There's something akin to diminishing returns when you
> have that many movies telling the same story.  I'm not talking about movies
> like Come and See (I haven't seen it yet, but I take your word that it's a
> masterpiece).  But you get the feeling after awhile that the directors
> (Spielberg, for example) are going for easy critical acclaim by their choice
> of subject matter.  It's kind of what prompted Heeb Magazine (a culture mag
> for "hip" young Jews)to run a Fake Holocaust Memoir contest recently.  Very
> irreverent, but making the point that too many people try to capitalize off
> the tragedy.  For Jews like me who were raised on a steady stream of
> Holocaust guilt-tripping ("Y!
>  ou don't want to go to school?  Maybe you'd rather be in Bergen-Belsen?"),
> the irreverence makes the point almost as effectively as the straightforward
> stuff.
___________
I agree with yr sentiments

>
> Rich, I can sympathize with the disgust you felt when the theater audience
> cheered as people were dying in the movie (I've seen it twice.  One audience
> cheered, one didn't).  I felt the same way when I saw Clockwork Orange years
> ago.  The audience laughed during the rape scene and I felt like walking
> out.  I don't think Kubrick (or the audience, even) thought that rape is
> funny.  I understand that they were laughing at the juxtaposition of a
> vicious rape and a song-and-dance number.  But it was a repulsive
> experience, and I've never been able to sit through that movie again (and
> Kubrick is one of my all-time favorite directors).  I guess the audience
> reaction to IB didn't bother me because I've grown accustomed to audiences
> cheering at cartoon-ish violence.  That's a lament, not a brag.
____________
I couldn't watch ACO for a while-that scene in particular. I saw
Schlinder's List in a theater in a poor neighborhood, mostly young
kids, in the audience--they rooted for the Nazis and cheered when Jews
were shot, etc. I am constantly amazed at what people laugh at at the
theater or think amusing. that numbing effect of so much visual
violence? where it gets to the point where the serious and the satire
are no longer discernable by a audience easy manipulated.
>
> In terms of the Jews (or whoever) becoming no better than the people who've
> victimized them, I think the movie Waltz With Bashir makes that point really
> well.  I guess so does the old Fritz Lang movie M.
_____________
a great film that.  the ending is devastating--real footage of wailing
women, hard to watch but a perfect coda to that film

Rich