No More Nazis for Me
I can’t take anymore movies set in the Holocaust. It’s become a cheap dramatic shortcut used by writers to amp up the stakes without having to bother with things like say, character development. Am I supposed to take the movie seriously just because it is set in a serious time? Nope.
It’s gotten so trivialized that movies sites now have their own category for them here and here and even here at a site called Third Reich (you can find it yourself if you want to, I’m not gonna link to them).
Schindler’s List is the end-point for all Holocaust movies, with perhaps a slight detour to Life is Beautiful.
No more, I tell you. Nobody is going to do it any better than that.
December 31, 2008
• Posted in: Culture
2 Responses to “No More Nazis for Me”
I agree wholeheartedly with your point, but I would like to put the Czech movie “Divided We Fall” alongside “Schindler’s List” and “Life Is Beautiful.” The reason is because “Divided We Fall” is decidedly not grief-porn–in fact, none of the main characters die and the actual fact of massive deaths is not in any way central to the plot. I also like it because it is largely /funny/–not in a way that trivializes the Holocaust, but funny in a way that is a /result/ of Nazi occupation.
What I like about studying totalitarian periods and seeing art/movies (that are well done) about them is because sometimes the human character is far more interesting when it is pushed to the extreme. And as a lot of people discovered, when life is pushed to the extreme, it often becomes simply absurd.
Schindler’s List (and, although to a lesser extent, Life is Beautiful) disarms the audience’s ability to laugh–constantly holding up the message “This was a horrible event.” But “Divided We Fall” says, “Look at what people are actually like! Isn’t that weird? Isn’t that funny? Isn’t that sad?” It’s a much more well-rounded picture of what life under Nazis might have actually been like for a bunch of average people, rather than cruel insane dictators and innocent saintly victims.
But yes. I’m sick of holocaust (and, to a certain extent, cancer) grief porn.
Interesting point, Guy. I’m trying to come up with a clever way of what the difference is between Holocaust movies with a false sense of seriousness because of their setting and those with compelling characters that happen to be in the Holocaust.
But honestly, I can’t come with anything better than grief porn.
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