When talking about the making of Jojo Rabbit (a must see movie, in my opinion), I remember Taika Waititi making a point out wanting to represent the colourful fashion and more lively sides of Germany under the Third Reich. War movies tend to portray Nazis as dark and dull figures with no inner life other than murdering Jews and plotting for world domination. This is probably dangerous, as we won’t recognize the fascists when they’re in front of us. They’ll be laughing and dancing as they murder the innocent.
Similar to how we study Eichmann to learn about the banality of evil, I think pictures like this one should be in every text book. This is what evil looks like — pretty much like anything else, if you’re willing to ignore the atrocities.
Highly recommend The Zone of Interest as well. An unusual film about everyday life of nazis.
Very different from Jojo Rabbit of course, but fantastic for showing what humans can come to consider the trivialities of ordinary life.
I’m very happy I saw it in the cinema. Also very happy I was somehow completely oblivious to the thematic when the movie started: I first saw the swimsuits, thinking “huh, is this the 30s?”. Then I heard the German, at which point I realized nothing good was going to go down. I guess the sound during the intro also gave a hint.
Anyway, amazing movie. Worth seeing without distractions.
Except maybe for children and the dumber types, most people already know what evil looks like. They are willing to pretend, so what more lifelike portrayals will do is irritate them.
Except maybe for… the dumber types,
A non-negligible portion of the electorate, unfortunately.
The latter portion, which wants portrayed evil to be grotesque and not like reality, because they are not going to avoid evil anyway, is even bigger.
I mean, I don’t like fools. Like half of my family are terrible fools. But the “smart” people with no idea of kindness, fair conduct or at least sport are worse, and in my experience more common than fools, not less.
It’s the guys who twirl their mustaches or have skulls on their uniforms, isn’t it?
No, it’s the “neutral” types. Who are all good when the guys with skulls are defeated, and all compliant when the guys with skulls are in charge.
Guys with skulls themselves are usually more peculiar types, not really discomforted by open public discourse. Just not limiting themselves to any moral boundary. You’d probably find them interesting.
This is probably dangerous, as we won’t recognize the fascists when they’re in front of us.
Speak for yourself.
Considering how much fascism is on the rise globally and the results in the latest US election, most people do not in fact recognize fascism. Nor see it as the threat it is
Good to not forget that normal people are capable of atrocious behavior.
Normal people are very adaptive to the boring routine, may it be counting inventory or counting skulls. I’m pretty much afraid not of psycos who do evil things intentionally, but of normal people who do them 9to5 without a thought, and then go back to shopping, care for their children and elderly, and resting like that.
the occupants of the internet use a similar photo as a joke all the time
And it all meant this: that there are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal, kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.
Vorbis loved knowing that. A man who knew that, knew everything he needed to know about people.
-Terry Pratchett - Small Gods
(Finding the actual quote was really hard, SEO spam has ruined google, and the LLMs kept hallucinating things that were near, but not real… I had to actually search the raw text of the book)
Once I tried to look up the song that was playing in a part of the book Mila 18 when this one nazi soldier was taking a bath. I encountered the same problem as you, never did figure it out.
Oberfuhrer Alfred Funk soaked luxuriously in a deep warm sudsy tub and sniffed the rising scented steam. The tones of Wagner’s Tannhauser “Overture” crashed in from the phonograph in the living room. Between low points in the crescendo Funk could hear the sound of gunfire from the ghetto. He hummed in tune. “Da dam dam dam.”
Just ordinary people living their lives. That’s what makes the nazis so fucking horrifying. How they managed to make their people disassociate from the atrocities.
