Today my wife and I saw "Inglorious Basterds" by Taretino.
It ROCKED!
This is certainly NOT a war film, or even mildly historically accurate. But it was vastly entertaining. It went from being funny to "ewwww, that is a bit graphic", to a mix of both.
And it was absolute proof of a something I have noticed. That item is this: no one cares if you do bad things to Nazis.
No lie, they showed a Nazi being beaten to death by a guy with a bat and the audience was laughing at the one liner. I was, and so was my wife. Of course the idea behind the unit was that they were going to be as bad as the Nazis (and they were and then some), but no one had any issues with US Troops doing this to Nazis.
Nazis are the one group that absolutely NO ONE will defend at all. The absolute bad guy, the perfect villan, the one undeniable product of WWII in that you have someone that no one can ever possibly root for. And everyone is tickled pink if you are doing something to them that would repulse you if it was someone else and make the ACLU call the President.
Don't get me wrong, I like the fact that Nazis are thought of this way. They should be. But so should Communists, Maoists and Stalinists. AQ and Hamas too. They are not, and that is a pity. I really don't like how the term Nazi gets tossed around so much and how many on the left use it paint those on the right (especially since the Nazis were actually socialists, irony can be thick in history). Call someone on the left a Nazi and you will get a strong reaction to be sure. My biggest issue isn't the labling, its the fact that this label runs the risk of loosing the sting of due to over use. Nazi might join the legion of other words that no longer pack the punch that they once did due to over use. Remember when "damn" was something you never heard on TV?
The Nazis were as close to pure evil walking the earth as has even been (and they had some good company who got off light). I really hope that the term never looses its punch and that no one ever has a qualm about laughing when watching a Nazi getting beaten to death.
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Looks like a good movie - I would like to think I'll have time to see it on the big screen but I still haven't even had a chance to see District 9 yet. :(
ReplyDeleteAnd I fully agree with the Nazi thing - they have been made into the ultimate villans but the AQ and Hamas groupies have been just morped into the Hollywood "Arab Menace" rather than bothering with the nuances of explaining which group is which.
Yeah, it is a big screen movie certainly. And I have to ask "What Hollywood Arab Menace?" I haven't seen a movie with arabs as the bad guys in years (True Lies was the last one I think I saw). I am not counting TV here, but movies.
ReplyDeleteSorry, should have been more clear. I was referring more to TV, but even that has been toned down.
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