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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   28722 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023

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This feels a little like the Eric Turkheimer argument against HBD. Where the actual truth value of HBD doesn't really matter because of the potential consequences of belief in it could be negative. The peculiarity of that view is that it pays no heed to whatever problems the anti-HBD narrative causes for whites.

I kind of care that Germans are painted as remorseless monsters that murder for sport in mainstream Holocaust propaganda. I find it kind of gross to see a people dehumanized in such a way. When the 'Bear Jew' is depicted as smashing a German soldiers skull in, and his actions are seen as righteous and jovial, I kind of get sick in my stomach.

To what end do I owe the mainstream reassurance, and of what?

I think the whole intention of the Bear Jew scene is to make you sick and uncomfortable. Tarantino knows that the Nazis are widely depicted as the great monsters of history and jews as their innocent victims. So he goes and creates a situation where the jews have the power and engage in needless cruelty, while the Nazi exhibits the noble virtue of courage. It's no accident that the scene includes the exchange about the Iron Cross. He could have included stuff to show the Nazi doing evil things so you felt better about him getting clubbed. But instead he showed him staring down death with bravery and resolve.

The point of this of course is not to make some grand point about shared humanity and how even the worst people have good aspects or anything like that. It's Tarantino. The point is to make you feel sick and uncomfortable because he thinks it's fun. And also to show brutal cruelty because he thinks that's fun too.

The movie is a revenge fantasy. The point of the scene is to desecrate the virtues of the outgroup and humiliate them. Which is why the latter part of the scene includes a German soldier submitting immediately after the brave soldier is beaten to death.

Yeah, when the war broke out and people started unironically reposting a deepfake of this scene with Zelensky and Putin I was deeply weirded out: how could all of them ignore the mood of the scene? It's not like it's some subtle undercurrent that you need to be a film connoisseur to notice. I guess people are too Pavlovian and can't help reacting to "punching nazis" with anything but applause.

A lot (probably the majority) of mainstream ‘Holocaust fiction’ (Schindler’s List, The Boy In Striped Pyjamas etc) ‘humanizes’ German characters as a relatively central part of the plot.

Tarantino’s performative leftism (also seen in e.g., Django) as a distraction from his love of the n-word and his weird foot fetish isn’t a central illustration of writing about the Holocaust/WW2 dehumanizing Germans. Tarantino isn’t even Jewish.

Inbetween German children playing, they have a crazed German soldier screaming Valhalla as he shoots into a bonfire filled with dead jews. This shit is surreal, not humanizing. It perverts the image of a normal German as being just a goosestep away from maniacal slaughter. The individual humanized German characters are the exception in every piece of media I remember consuming about the topic, not the norm.

I kind of care that Germans are painted as remorseless monsters that murder for sport in mainstream Holocaust propaganda. I find it kind of gross to see a people dehumanized in such a way. When the 'Bear Jew' is depicted as smashing a German soldiers skull in, and his actions are seen as righteous and jovial, I kind of get sick in my stomach.

Yeah. Assumed the Bear Jew scene was intended as intentionally lampooning the audience for denying the humanity of the aged German officer, but from what I know of Tarantino it seems far more 'lul Nazi died' geared.

To mark yourself as someone that is interested in 'the thing', rather than a particular agenda. The specifics of death count estimates are fine, pick your number and justify it with evidence but point out underestimates as well, point out that it's hard to retrospectively figure it out. Point out the work of established scholars and point out differences in methodology that are relevant so the person can make up their own mind. Find the common ground and then be fair minded about data gaps, not being able to track every individual doesn't definitely mean they weren't part of a camp execution does it? Do you expect every death to be recorded in camp records that have survived to this day.

Or, if your concern is about depictions of German's in media, focus on that. I probably agree with you about parts of this. I think people can become complacent when they view Nazis as an other. The next Nazis will not be called Nazis.

Or point out the Jewish network as controlling the world if you can do it in a new way without tropes.

But don't do it all together. Actually I haven't read enough of your posts to know much so feel free to ignore anything I say that's not relevant.

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