I shouldn't have taken my wife to "Inglourious Basterds," I should have known how upset she would be by it, and today I find that my own response to the movie, which I mostly enjoyed, is overshadowed by her (predictably) negative one. I agree with a lot of her criticisms. Brad Pitt is a bad actor. The fiction of the movie--killing Hitler--is a distinct step down from the reality. "Hitler killed himself. That showed how pathetic he was. Why would anyone want to change that?" The movie tells you nothing at all interesting about the Holocaust or the Germans or the occupation of France and Paris; it is just about violence.Tarantino created an equivalence between the Nazis watching a movie that glorifies violence in the film's climax with us watching our American movie that glorifies violence. So was that the point, she said, that we all love violence? I said Tarantino doesn't think that much.
Trying to recover what I liked about the movie: I found it entertaining. I enjoyed the scope and the pace, and there were a few really good scenes and great actors. The bad guy Christoph Waltz was superb. Tarantino knows how to do action and blood. This was Grindhouse in Europe.
The surprise for me involves Jews. The first scene in the film includes the murder of a Jewish family, and yet they are all but faceless; and then I braced myself for the movie to make me sick/angry about the extermination of the Jews, but it didn't do that. The only Jews after that were Revenge Jews, plotting violence against Nazis. You didn't see anything of the final solution, the cattle cars, starving Jews or work camps. Nothing at all. Tarantino is cartoons; and his Jewish cartoons were the Basterds themselves: American revenge Jews going to Europe to kill Nazis. One of them, the Bear Jew, played by Eli Roth, who kills with a baseball bat, was particularly grotesque and impossible to connect with, oafish. (And when he declares that he is "going yard," when he smashes a Nazi's head, I thought, That expression for hitting a home run didn't exist in 1944. It came into baseball coverage in the last ten years.)
Tarantino's other Jewish portrait in the film is the artistic survivor Shoshanna, played by Melanie Laurent. She is also a revenge Jew, because her family was murdered and she plots angry revenge even as a sensitive Jew.
But her character is a hip cinephile and the lover of a black man. So really, Shoshanna isn't about the Holocaust, she is about being a Jew in America. It seems like a lot of Tarantino's Jew-feeling in the movie is connected to his philosemitism, as a Hollywood player.
The movie was also revealing about Jeffrey Goldberg, the journalist who will one day have his own wing in the museum of the Israel lobby. Goldberg served in the Israeli army and he too was entertained by the movie-- and also put off by the film's reverence for violence. Goldberg's piece on Tarantino was rightly titled, "Hollywood's Jewish Avenger"; Goldberg dug that philosemitism I have just talked about; he revelled in the Eli Roth character, and reports that Eli Roth was Tarantino's rabbi on the plotting of the movie.
And Tarantino's murderous Jewish feelings called on Goldberg's:
"When I came out of the screening room the night before our interview [with Tarantino], I was so hopped up on righteous Jewish violence that I was almost ready to settle the West Bank—and possibly the East Bank."
Goldberg's confusion about the real enemies of the Jews--the Nazis or the Palestinians-- is a very old theme on this website. I have often quoted Avraham Burg's genius statement that the Jews forgave the Nazis too quickly--in part because of German remuneration-- and put their rage on to the Arabs. Goldberg is confused in that very way. What the fuck do the Palestinians have to do with this European evil?
The good thing about the movie is that it reconnected me to the potent feeling of Jewish rage at the Nazis. That's an important feeling. I'm still angry about what they did, no matter how much water goes under the bridge. And I liked a lot of the Basterds in the movie, even if my wife thinks none of them can act. I identified with the nerdy ones.
I thought with sympathy of the neoconservative Douglas Feith. His father Dalck Feith lost 7 brothers and sisters in the Holocaust and his parents too, and so Dalck became a warrior in World War II. Of course he did. I would have done so too. But Douglas Feith experienced Jeffrey Goldberg's confusion. He put all that unresolved rage on to the Arabs. And then, in a further motion of non-straightforwardness, Feith lied about Jewish power, lied about pushing the Iraq war in his book War and Decision, and put it all on Bush.
I liked the pure undeflected Jewish rage, liked being connected to it. The Jewish avengers are all so angry at the Nazis they are willing to give up their lives to kill them. Two or three of the Jewish characters plan to be suicide bombers.
So in that way, the movie goes to Palestine too, and makes me feel sure that some day, if only the conflict is resolved and our culture ceases to demonize Arabs, we will watch a film about how Deir Yassin fired the Palestinian basterds.
So, we go from the Golem, to Superman to these Basterds. I guess the terrible actor
Brad Pit won’t be adopting any Palestinian kid with wifey, eh? Wonder why Madonna
didn’t have a cameo in this movie?
I’d like to see a Palestinian Basterds, but I don’t think I’d like to see the backlash.
Well, Palestiniansmake better movies. Have you seen divine intervention? It ends on that note.
Phil – I’ve not seen this film, but it sounds as if you’re sounding off. First of all, your wife is probably right, there probably is a great deal in common between these two violence-loving cultures. Even if there isn’t, setting the two side-by-side is a valid way to compare them and encourage the weeding out any teeny-weeny nasty bits in the modern version.
And the rest of it from you doesn’t seem to add up. I don’t recall any post-war rage against the Nazis, even in Israel. The survivors were made fun of, told they’d been “lambs to the slaughter”. Even when it was discovered that collaborators had made large sums of money tricking Jews into the transports, the Mapai defended them. The whole “Holocaust rage” thing would be entirely valid – were it not discovered quite a lot later. It only gained any traction after 1967 and didn’t get past 2nd gear until 1978 and the release of the documentary.
What you write about post-war rage is precisely what I was told by my old Jewish mentor who lived through WWII.
You never heard of the Morganthau Plan? The abuse of Germans simply for being Germans? Ike’s POV that the German people had to suffer to learn a lesson–something I hope beyond Might Makes Right, but it doesn’t appear so. The murderous
boot given to millions of ethnic Germans from the East? I am the first to agree
the Nazi regime punished people collectively, but hey, you “don’t recall any post-war rage against the Nazis”? How about the rage against the whole German population? Well, here’s a book start towards Memory Speak:
link to amazon.com
Many German were raped all over the places where the Allies gained control–that’s news to you? You don’t know how American occupation toops treated the German
prisoners, especially by the Jewish American ones? Come on, get real. Basterds may only be
a movie for emotional release, but blind revenge was very real after Germany surrendered, and it was so for about five years for all Germans, and for a decade
double that for Germans under USSR control.
Again, just to repeat: An eye for an eye, revenge, is understandable regarding
what Nazi Germany did to other peoples. However, the reality of Allied occupation
of Germany in the initial aftermath of WW2 is quite different than what makes
Saving Private Ryan a justification for war. Of course, in the USSR case, everything’s
reduced simply to power versus vanquished power.
Basterds is just a cartoon movie, like shooting at Bin Laden’s face in a carnival
booth to obtain a stuffed animal, but what is this cartoon movie teaching the USA
audience? Is it really just a harmless Jewish wet dream, or is it something very cheezy and more harmful?
And as a follow up, is there a Palestinian Goldhagen out there? No? Is that due
to the effect of the discriminatory dual school system and respective disparate funding in Israel?
Citizen – there was certainly a general rage against Nazis, but I don’t recall any of it coming from groups of those who’d been selected for victimisation.
Oops, there is one such incident I now recall, in Elie Wiesel’s “Night”, according to a review in the NYT. link to nytimes.com
– … strong notes of vengeance in the Yiddish version. In the final scene, after the camp has been liberated, Wiesel writes of young men going into Weimar “to rape German girls.” But there’s no mention of rape in the subsequent French or English translations. Wiesel said his thinking had changed between versions. “It would have been a disgrace to reduce such an event to simple vengeance.”
MW, you should do some research, especially now that old Soviet archives have been opened and some Americans are looking into what the Western Allies did to Germans immediately following WW2, especially what Jewish troops in the Allied armies did.
Again, I am not saying there’s a moral equivalence in terms of numbers, but in terms
of what most Americans thinks of the purity of the USA as victors with humanistic values, the truth is pretty sad.
I have not seen the Basterds yet, but I am sure it is not unlike the satisfaction I feel when watching Simon Wiesenthal Nazi hunter stories (even though most arose from fantasy, it proves to be a catharsis). There are many stories that arise from being victims, we plot revenge over and over again in our minds and when it bursts on the movie screen it brings a form of synthetic satisfaction.
It is another reason for a healthy reaction to the same being done to other innocents. This is why there are so many worthy charities that are a quest to save others from a fate both natural (as disease) and contrived (racism, prejudice, persecution). However when it twists and is practiced on others like the Palestinians it needs to be wholly condemned, and should be a passion as strong or stronger to bring such atrocities to a halt.
Your second paragraph is a beaut: commendable.
The people who see this film and are motivated to expand Israel’s borders react similarly as the Germans who saw propaganda films and were motivated to expand the Third Reich with arms. Goldberg and other like minded Zionists are Schicklegrubers.
I’d say more like Streichers. Remember Julius? He was hanged ex post facto for
his exercise of free speech. A notch up, would be Spielberg–he’s on a level closer
to Goebbels–here, I am talking only of the level of nuance in propaganda a la
Bernays. And my point is solely: beware of entertainment loaded with a political bias–that’s all.
I can remember the terror I used to feel as a young child (not being in the best neighborhoods, or near them, on the East Coast). In public school, the little “four eyed” (glasses) child that would not join any group for the “protection” it was supposed to provide. Running too and from school and hiding often, I am sure it is not what my parents intended from the stories of tragedy and pain they told me about their relatives and parents – just informing me about the world and to be careful. It would have been easy to develop a unreasonable phobia that everyone is out to “get us.” However, they instilled in me along with this, to never participate in the persecution of another person – no matter how different or whether others were doing this or not, but instead to protect them.
As I grew and became stronger and more self assured of my ability to defend myself the latter half of that advice I received began to bear fruit. I would never participate in the various forms of groundless bullying of others, and when I could would provide a shield for the “targets,” and have practiced this to this day in my personal life. So in reality the never again would be a never again in my small sphere of influence for everyone. This is why it is so infuriating and painful to watch others on a grand scale do it to the weak and defenseless, it has to be exposed for what it is and halted.
V, thank you for sharing your personal motivations and ideals. My family found themselves in many different environments growing up; in each the bullies were there, often subscribed to something contrary to the previous local;
and I and my siblings had to adapt: not a whole nation or major part of one, but one
nuclear family in modern times. The analogy of the school lot bully is as real today
as it is in the biblical narrative of David & Goliath. Americans (USA citizens) have
identified with the underdog since colonial times, as have the Jewish collective,
yet within both communities, in my lifetime I have seen both have a large log
in their eyes.
Perhaps we need a new teen movie, the Palestinian version of Bring It On showing
the battle of competing High School cheerleaders–with the female hero being–guess who?
Revenge is a soul sickness. It needs to be examined and uprooted if possible. Of course there is a certain satisfaction with being on the “right side”. I avoid all movies that exploit fear and vengeance, because they all to easily seep into action. A misinterpretation can foster deep resentments. We need to think with our higher selves, not the animal within.
“Fear empowers authority”. (forgot who said it)
Dunno, but I bet Dick Chaney dreams it every night.
I’ve had it up to here with Holocaust/holocaust movies, holocaust museums/holocaust holocaust holocaust.
Enough.
It happened.
It’s over.
Are we to conclude that the soul-searing quest for vengeance that gnawed at Doug Feith’s soul is the dynamo that propelled him to collaborate with his law partner, Marc Zell, to make a deal with Ahmad Chalabi for a pipeline from Iraq to Israel, once Saddam was toppled and Chalabi seated in his stead?
PG – I’d be very happy indeed if all this Holocaust Education were being used to identify and control hatred. But it’s not just failing to do that, it’s been dreadfully twisted, lied about, profiteered from and is still being used to excuse the most appalling treatment of complete innocents.
I can very easily forgive traumatised people who make things up – but not “Holocaust Scholars” who’ve given credibility to some really nasty inventions. Kozinski spent the war with his parents, being sheltered by Polish peasants who risked their lives to save them – how did he repay these communities of generous people? By writing the Painted Bird and making out they were all sadists and peverts! He made a fortune. Wilkowirski spent the whole war in Switzerland, he wasn’t Jewish. “Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years,” had been in print for 11 years, translated into 18 languages and is the basis for a French movie. The author wasn’t Jewish either – and spent the war “safely” in Belgium.
The profiteering, or attempts thereat, go on – the “Apples over the fence” story had been circulating for years, only in Dec 2007 was it sort-of exposed by Deborah Lipstadt (but without naming the author) link to lipstadt.blogspot.com
Preparations were in hand to for a book and a film before the story was properly punctured and publication cancelled in Dec 2008.
Elaine Scarry opens her book, “On Beauty And Being Just,” with this passage:
In the relentless establishment of holocaust memorials all over the globe, where man’s inhumanity to man and images of death and horror”glide into the perceptual field” and are “copied over and over again,” death and horror are impinged on the senses and the soul, and far from “the whole body want[ing] to reproduce” the image of beauty, the whole body recoils from the ugliness and the rather than surrendering to the impulse to reproduce, the horrified senses are compelled to seek revenge.
That is why I advocate for closing the Holocaust Memorial in Washington, DC. I believe it is counterproductive. Its mission, and outcome, is the replication of horror and hate.
Evil happens in this world. Evil is cured by antidotes to evil, by an insistence on replicating beauty and justice rather than by rehearsals of evil.
I’m puzzled by hearing of a Holocaust Memorial in Washington -what’s it got to do with you? There’s no memorial to the slaves or the native Americans in Berlin – and it would be weird if there was.
I think there is an analogy in current American politics, best exemplified by Obama himself, but aped by many pundits, American blacks of mixed race. The usual scenario is that
the political pundit has a white mother and black father, and he or she confesses he or she views themselves as Black. Is this pattern simply a part of the I am David and you Are Goliath stage craft, merely a legacy from the underdot colonial period?
Kozinski or Obama,what are we to make of these humans–it’s very important in light of the truism that the test of virtue is power. I think many here will be morally and ethnically
annoyed by what this pattern will bring, is bringing.
Michael Weiz — You’re not an American?
The Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, was negotiated between Jimmy Carter and Golda Meir in 1979. Iran’s revolution removed it from usefulness to the US as a bulwark against USSR, and Israel was eager to step into the vacuum.
The “Israel Lobby’s” influence has been on the ascent since about that time. It’s nearing a peak; the downslope may be very painful.
Indeed, what does the holocaust have to do with Americans?
The theme of Jewish revenge plays well in the US: Jacob Heilbrunn wrote in, “They Knew They Were Right,” that the neocons, (mostly Russian and East European Jews) who have gotten the US into such a dreadful state in Middle East were motivated by their rage that FDR did not do enough to help Jews, and by their anger at having been forced to attend state colleges rather than Ivy Leagues, where Jews were not welcome 50 years ago.
PG – so the meteoric rise of the lobby dates from Iran 1979 and not the documentary! Makes sense. Poor Carter, did so much for Israel and they’ve now turned on him so savagely. As far as I can tell, FDR’s conference (Evian 1938) and all other efforts to save Jews were scuppered by the Zionists.
The golden rule, whether articulated in the proactive (Christian) or affirmative negative (Jewish) is the hardest moral/ethical principle to fully support. But the commision and ommission of it is everything in terms of enhancing human life on earth. How hard it is to implement is shown by how seldom it is implemented when push comes to shove.
Psychopathic god- The holocaust museum was not negotiated between Jimmy Carter and Golda Meir. Golda Meir was dead at the time.
According to David S. Wyman and Charles H. Rosenzweig in their book “The World Reacts to the Holocaust”, a commission was established in 1978 called The President’s Commission on the Holocaust in reaction to the rift that had developed between Carter and the Jewish community as a result of Andrew Young’s meeting with PLO representatives and Carter’s decision to sell F-15′s to Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The Commission had several recommendations including the construction of the museum. After the Commission submitted its report Carter established the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, to plan the museum and raise funds for its creation. (page 728)
Delicious annihilating revenge is part of any soul. Most individuals realize its savor has too high of an opportunity cost and therefore do not make it a defining characteristic of their selves. Some even become enlightened and learn to forgive, overcoming their natural rage with a spirit dominated by love. Those who do embrace and use annihilating revenge as a reason for being become the most ugly of souls, using the dead to not only fulfill their blood lust, but to line their pockets, which creates another justification for the institutionalizing of oppression for those with just greedy souls.
Ever see the movie Carrie?
Revenge means taking action (often violent action) against someone who has wronged you. It is… well, I frown upon the use of the word “natural”… but a common enough desire.
However, this is not what we’re talking about here. We are talking about violence against people who are associated with people who wronged people you are associated with. Or, to avoid that monster sentence, group-based “revenge”.
But group-based “revenge” no longer has the ring of being “natural”, since the groups in question are social constructs – and thus it becomes simple nationalist, or racist, or religious hatred.
Additionally, in many cases, the “revenge” angle can easily be demonstrated to be a sham. Consider the “revenge” the Soviets allegedly took on the Germans after WW2, mentioned above. Sounds logical, right? The Germans devastated their country and murdered many of their family members, so the Soviets took revenge.
Not so. When the Soviet Union declared war on Japan just a few months later, and invaded Manchuria and Korea, you had more of the same – rape, murder, pillage, expulsion, slave labor.
Japanese troops, however, had not committed any atrocities against the Soviets. There was no reason for Red Army soldiers to take revenge against them. And in that light, attributing the Red Army atrocities in Germany to “revenge” seems doubtful as well.
The bottom line is that “revenge”, when applied to nations, ethnic or religious groups, is just another component of conditioned group-based hatred, and not at all a halfway understandable personal cry for justice. We can see the ugly results of this type of thinking daily in the Middle East and elsewhere.
There’s no question the Soviets took blanket revenge on the German collective in the final days and aftermath of WW2–for another decade at least. True, the Soviets
had no violent poetic justice to pursue against Japan in that time period–the Chinese
held that just card. I don’t see how you get from from that square to the Red Army
rape of German women,for example.
It was not revenge. That was the point.
There is no feasible way to construe what the Soviets did to the Japanese as “revenge”. To assume it would be “revenge” in the case of Germany and… something else in the case of Manchuria, Korea, Sakhalin would be illogical and unscholarly.
There are, of course, other hints pointing in the same direction. Red Army units which were recruited from areas never touched by the Germans were no less brutal (one work I read even says: more) than those from regions which were ravaged by the Nazis. Red Army soldiers took this alleged “revenge” out on hapless Polish, Yugoslavian and other eastern European women, nationalities who were supposed to be allied with, or at least, liberated by the Soviets.
Instead of revenge, I’d say we have a typical case of military brutality, fueled by hatred, enabled by unwillingness/inability to enforce discipline. It’s a common enough phenomenon.
“Revenge”, not exactly the most noble emotion to begin with, is nothing more than an excuse. This is especially obvious for me when it comes to such absurdities as group-based “revenge” or even “revenge” by proxy. Brought to their logical conclusion, these concepts would basically allow anybody to kill anybody.
One more thing: In an attempt to refute Daniel Mendelssohn’s criticisms (link below), which basically said the Jews became carbon copies of Nazis, one reviewer said there was a difference between revenge against someone who wronged you and eliminationist hatred.
Except that the Holocaust, in the eyes of most Nazis, was revenge against someone who wronged them.
They said: The Jews were responsible for Germany’s defeat in WW1.
They said: The Jews have been plundering Germany after WW1.
They said (depending on the audience): The Jews murdered Jesus.
They said: The Jews were behind the hated socialist revolution.
They said: The Jews are behind the cowardly partisan activities in the East.
The hated “other” is always and collectively an evildoer who deserves to be hated – and who must be punished. It’s easy to see the connection to current issues.
Of course you can say “Well, but the Jews actually didn’t do anything, but the Nazis really were guilty”. Let us leave aside for the moment the question why this also seems to include everybody vaguely associated with “the Nazis”.
Do you really want to accept that as justification? “Well, your honor, back then all the information I had pointed towards the Jews being evil.” “Point taken. We can’t blame you for this Holocaust thing, then.”
I hope not.
link to newsweek.com
I also really enjoyed the movie, and immediately saw interesting implications for the Israel-Palestine situation. (And also incidentally noticed a gender difference in responses to the movie in my own group.)
These are what I saw as the “lessons” of the movie: violence can be constructive (and cool), when it is used against injustice or evil; but fetishizing violence, or obsessing over revenge, crosses a line and takes on a basic (and ultimately self-destructive) Nazi characteristic.
You can’t really disagree with the decision to take out Hitler and the senior Nazi leadership in that theater. What you can be alarmed by is the spirit that leads the two Basterds to continue personally killing Germans who are already going to die, rather than trying to get themselves out of a blazing inferno. (And by your own reaction to the violence, which presumably mirrors that of the Germans watching their own violent film.)
I would guess that the implicit comparison between this self-destructive and “Nazi” spirit of revenge would be some of the things that actually came out of WWII, like Nuremberg, the Geneva Conventions–in other words, the principles of justice and human rights. Universal respect for human life. So I guess I interpret Tarantino as saying (very indirectly) that those are what should guide us, even if revenge is a natural impulse that we can all identify with. But maybe I’m just projecting my own views here.
Of course, more superficially it is a total glorification (even sanctification) of violence, which is probably how most people will experience it, unfortunately. In Goldberg’s defense, he is talking about his immediate reaction to the film, which he later became more uncomfortable with. Of course he never explains why settling the East/West Bank would be wrong and why Palestinians are nothing like Nazis.
Thanks, Robin. The movie seems to me (I’ve only see a few cuts) to be a generic
horror movie, not unlike Carrie. We are happy when Carrie is empowered to
even the score against the bullies with her magical powers. The set up is of course
how much she, an innocent, has suffered. We want revenge, moral symmetry, poetic
justice–especially since we see so little of it in real life…
What was the different gender reaction you observed? Simple macho man versus
a deeper analyis, as you imply? Who’s dick is bigger, versus, this is not good for anyone?
Violence is cool as in a video game? Just shooting at abstract alien targets out to get you?
What does your self-destructive “nazi spirit of revenge” mean, and how does it apply to the I-P scenario currently? How does the film support the Nuremberg and Geneva principles? I don’t see that it does; you say you may be jumping to such a conclusion–I only say there’s nothing in the film segments I’ve seen that support
anything other than that Taranitino has not even thought about it. He simply
erects various cultural icons and slams them together–as in a comic book. Goldberg by his directed commissions and ommissions agrees, which is why
he never explains why the Israeli settlements are wrong and why Palestinian are
more like WW2 resistence fighters than Nazi occupiers.
In Thomas Jefferson’s understanding of Jesus, as TJ spelled out in “The Life and Morals of Jesus,” the radical shift Jesus introduced to the world was precisely the shift from an ‘eye for an eye’ mentality to the ethics of the Beatitudes. It turns out that the even in a secular context, life lived in accord with the Sermon on the Mount is healthier, happier, and more richly lived.
The different gender reactions were a more visceral phenomenon–the men (including myself) had a generally positive feeling about the film, while the women were more upset by it and disapproving. But I think we all had a fairly nuanced view of it.
By “spirit of revenge” I guess I meant the characteristic of revering violence or taking pleasure in it, rather than seeing it is an (perhaps necessary) evil. I think I agree that Tarantino has not necessarily thought about alternatives to this, but I guess I think of the ones I provided as the logical opposites of the “spirit of revenge” that Tarantino seems to question.
I also really like what Koshiro says above about revenge in the form of group-based hatred. I don’t know if the movie addressed that part of it (the Basterds’ victims presumably all had some personal responsibility in Nazi crimes), but it’s an important observation.
Robin, please fit in Goldhagen’s thesis here, and that is the Average German was guilty
for what came to pass, an anti-semite. What does the Goldhagen POV tell you about
Israel in its interaction with the Palestinians?
RE: “Tarantino doesn’t think that much…Tarantino is cartoons” – Phil(l)
MY COMMENT: And that frequently equates with success in Hollywood. Expect numerous Oscars!
RE: “One of them, the Bear Jew, played by Eli Roth, who kills with a baseball bat, was particularly grotesque and impossible to connect with, oafish.”
MY COMMENT: “Don’t f*ck with the Jews.” – Marty “Macho Man” Peretz during the Gaza slaughter, December 2008
RE: “I’m still angry about what they did…” – Phil(l)
MY COMMENT: And I’m still very, very angry about what we humans did and/or what WE humans are capable of doing!
NOAH CROSS: “I don’t blame myself. You see, Mr. Gitts, most people never have to face the fact that at the right time and the right place, they’re capable of ANYTHING.” – from the film “Chinatown” (1974)
P.S. Pardon Roman Polansky!
If “kosher porn” was the point, wouldn’t it have been better to make the Basterds’ leader actually Jewish? Instead of which, their CO is Brad Pitt (acting and looking like a wooden and sleazy internet porn king), the good ol’ boy from Tennessee, a part of the world in which progressive sympathies with European Jewry are – how can I put it? – atypical.
Does the Hollywood Jewish powers get to have their cake and eat it too, once again?
For how long will this this go on? They continally diss white trash and then resurrect
one to hold up the star of david? LOL
RE: “And I’m still very, very angry about what we humans did and/or what WE humans are capable of doing!”
MY COMMENT: Oh, I forgot! There is nothing to blame humans for according to Israel’s good friend, the “Pastor” John Hagee. According to him, God sent “Hitler the great hunter” to herd all the world’s Jews into Israel. I guess that makes the Holocaust nothing more than a little divinely inspired, collateral damage. “Oh, what a relief it is” to be absolved of one’s sins! For God’s sake, God denounce this false prophet!
Interesting to contemplate the anthropomorphic motives attributed to The Creator
by various religions. Not exactly the Robbe-Grillet perspective…
Jews who take satisfaction in the theme of this film — Jews hunting and scalping Nazis as vengeance for the Holocaust — are no better, or worse, than Christians who took satisfaction in Nazis hunting Communist Jews in retaliation for what Stalinists and Jewish Bolsheviks did in Soviet Russia.
So why is it that the West regards the former as appropriate entertainment fair, but would never produce a film where the audience was induced to cheer for Jewish Communist-hunting Nazis?
The entire fist half of the 20th century was tribal vengeance writ large, but the West has (mostly) only blown the retrospective recriminatory whistle on the Nazis, but not on the Communists.
I guess its not the killing, but who is getting killed that matters. All men are created equal, but some more equal than others.
The Palestinians have been given a painful lesson in the liberal, post-Christian West’s Judeophile double standard, as well. In fact, I strongly suspect that a lot of “secular” post-Christian Westerners — from the Bushcon/Neocons through left-liberal authoritarians as epitomized by Tom Friedman and other muscular liberal interventionists would like to see the entire Islamic world taught “a lesson” as well.
Thus, Jews (or anyone) cheering themes like the one in Inglorious Basterds are hardly in a position to complain about the mentality of Jews like Tom Friedman and the Neocons. Or the mentality of Bush and Hagee, for that matter.
People like that learned absolutely nothing from the 20th Century, because they’ve only studied half the picture.
The Allies ignored Wilson and inacted revenge on Germany; the impact of this
revenege left a thirst for revenge in the Weimar Era Germans. The “stab in the
back” theory of that then recent history upped the righteous fever. Nazi films
reflected their own version of Basterds.
And not just the European allies after WWI. According to Patton, Morgenthau and Baruch were bent on “a Semitic revenge against all Germans,” after WWII, and powerful Jewish-American elements probably sabotaged Patton’s agenda and desire to finish the weakened Communists then and there in the wake of the war. Imagine if he had — the entire American military-industrial complex would have never been constructed, the Vietnam war would have never been fought, and we would be living in a very different world today — and likely at peace with Islamic civilization instead of at war with it.
Fascinating article:
Patton On Communism And The Khazar Jews
General Patton’s Warning
link to rense.com
CM – there’s a recent article on Churchill wanting to drive back the Russians in 1945 – link to dailymail.co.uk
However, it doesn’t mention Patton’s theory that the Russians had brought no supplies and were very weak.
So Truman had no qualms whatsoever about nuking the Japanese, but he was in no way interested in listening to Churchill or Patton about the Communist menace (which after all had already murdered millions of its own citizens by then, and at one point collaborated with Hitler) and vanquishing it from Europe.
I think Patton was right. To the Democrat pols in Washington, the Nazis vs. the Communists really was all about the Republicans vs. the Democrats, with the Communists as stand-ins for the Dems. The FDR/Trumanites weren’t interested in driving back Stalin because they really did believe socialism was the future, or wanted it to be.
Look at what their stupidity wrought. Korean War. Vietnam War. Cold War. Military-industrial complex.
Starry-eyed idiots. And of course, surrounded by Jewish opportunists, as always.
Scalping is cool, depending on who does it. It thrills you with righteous tangible revenge.
Rape too.
I’m a woman and I liked the film right away. The more I thought about it, the more I liked it. The other woman I saw it with liked it also, so I don’t see the gender split.
In fact, I thought the movie was oddly feminist in a way. Both plots to destroy the Nazis were designed by women. The men in the movie kept screwing up, often underestimating the women, and kept getting their balls handed to them. Nice touch considering that both the Nazis and the war film genre he is making fun of were unbelievably sexist.
I think the first chapter might be the most beautiful thing Tarantino has ever shot. And the actor who played the french dairy farmer was amazing. The fact that Tarantino didn’t show the faces and didn’t try to show the holocaust was, I think, a tribute to the fact that you can’t make the holocaust any more obscenely violent. Tarantino can’t do anything with it, so he left that alone.
The criticisms of Brad Pitt really miss the point. He is making fun of war movies. Old war movies always had a bad actor who was very good looking. We cheer for him because he is Brad Pitt, even though his character is horrible. And those heroes were also often good ole country boys who didn’t take shit and saw the world as good v. evil (a la GW Bush). He’s making fun of that.
Finally, just because someone draws a line between different types of violence doesn’t mean one is being equated with the other. He has us cheering as we watch them cheering. He has us cheering for people with bombs strapped to their bodies who are about to blow up, not just soldiers, but their wives and girlfriends. It doesn’t mean there is equivalence, but if that makes people feel a little dirty, maybe that isn’t such a bad thing.
You mean like in The Dirty Dozen? So you cheered for models who don’t take shit
in a world of pure good versus pure evil? Is that what you are saying is the switch that
ignited your cheers? If not, please further explain. Thanks.
If I were to look at why one atrocity is risen above another one particular scenario comes to mind with the Nazi, that is they did their deeds to what was seen as part of a perceived tribe, internally. Most of Europe sees itself as linked, a typical power bloc or a white haven if you choose. The “unforgivable” nature of the deed is that the Nazi’s went after what could ostensibly be called “their own.”
No one minds doing it to people, from the Euro/American centric , that are not perceived as part of the circle. This entire dominant bloc does not mind colonizing, plundering, and murdering what is perceived as the “other.” The West and later the alliance competed for who would exploit whom, that is why it was so easy for the “allies” to sit down and divide up the booty after WW2. No one cared who sacked Africa or the ME, because they knew that all the spoils would be accessible for a given discounted price among the alliance.
The reason why the Holocaust is so prominant is not merely because of its horrendous nature, to be frank there are other and worse atrocities – it is held up because this is something we would never do to ” our own (granted that later there was massacres in the new Soviet Union, and this is constantly pointed to as what is supposed to happen with Communism, we receive the lectures in school – along with the lack of “freedom”) .” The Holocaust is also highlighted as being the worst in the sense of who did it, but other holocausts are fine as long as we do not goose step. So that everything has been so finely defined that we can ignore the one who coined the word “genocide” and its original definition, restrict its parameters allowing us to do what we choose. So as long as the Holocaust is held high, and genocide is confined and described within this rarefied meaning, the dominant can do as they please and do so with impunity to the other.
Granted, I went to upper ed after the Vietnam dabacle, but I can’t remember much anti-Communist indoctrination in school, other than perhaps Orwell’s 1984. And certainly nothing coming even close to all the anti-Nazi/Holocaust/Jewish victim cultural propaganda emitted by Hollywood.
Perhaps that’s because FDR collaborated with the mass murderer Stalin; perhaps that’s because a lot of the cultural concepts and perspectives of modern left-liberalism are uncomfortably close to those of Marxism; perhaps it’s because Jews have for a long time had disproportionate power in America, and the overwhelming majority of Jews (who dominate Hollywood) have always been Democrats or sometimes socialists, but from my perspective, even though Communism has murdered hundreds of millions, and Nazism was a relative flash in the pan, the latter has always been presented and propagated as the ultimate evil.
I’m not defending Nazism, which I perceive to be, like Zionism, a warped politco-culural hyper-reaction to a real menace (Communism and Allied strangulation efforts in the case of the former, anti-Semitism in the case of the latter), but I can’t help but notice that in the modern West, and America in particular, those ideologies/movements that feature large casts of Jewish movers and shakers get soft peddled, whereas those that explicitly oppose them (Nazism, Islam, traditional Christianity) get demonized no end.
I think organized Jewry discovered a long time ago the history-altering power of mass media, and has been leveraging it on its own behalf since.
“He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future.” Orwell
Yes Bernays got us smoking by showing us leggy gals smoking and smiling; Goebbels
learned from Bernays; and Hollywood learned from both of them.
I think everyone here is overanalyzing this movie.
This is a snuff movie.
The guy who plays the sadistic, inhuman, unfeeling baseball bashing head guy is Eli Roth – he played the same sadistic, gimp in Hostel.
I have not seen Hostel – I simply do not believe that a movie that shows torture for over an hour – we are talking continous, hard core torture, with guts, blood, things cut out – is entertainment.
Debasement, vile, trash – yes, entertainment – no.
Tarantino’s movie (haven’t seen it, er, in its completeness) is snuff entertainment a la Hostel.
That it is set during WW2 or involves American soldiers or Jews is incidental.
Hostel could have been set in Latin America, or Deep South USA, or Africa.
Same here.
“Hostel could have been set in Latin America, or Deep South USA, or Africa.”
Are you seriously comparing the Deep South with Africa or Latin America?
Inglorious Basterds isn’t on my list of movies to watch. I’m tired of the holocaust, and I’m bored with Jewish rage. I’ve seen and heard enough of both.
Hostel takes place in Slovakia; two young American recent college grads and an Icelandic peer they meet on the way go there because they heard due to civil war
young males are in demand there–nothing but sex, booze, and parties. At first
it’s like that for them but soon the Icelandic guy vanishes…. eventually we join
the remaining two in increasing dread as the purchased methods of torture and snuff are revealed. American goy is merely saying the basic “plot” of Hostel could take
place anywhere where it’s reasonably conceivable young men like those we follow
in the movie could be lured without thinking twice–until it’s too late.
“Hostel” is a mixture of many of the most terrifying things about human nature and the world at large, culled from many impossible-but-true stories of human trafficking, international organized crime, and sex tourism. You are right Hostel
gradually turns into an extended snuff movie, a really gory one equal to say, the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre–with the twist that the carnage is the result of
a secret regular business offered to filthy rich customers who get to enact their
deepest torture wet dreams.
Inglourious Basterds is perhaps the most antisemitic film ever made:
Richard Spencer on Inglourious Basterds:
But what’s so striking about all this, again, is the depictions of victim and perpetrator. Though the Nazi Top Brass are evil buffoons, the average Germans who appear in the film—and usually end up tortured or hacked to pieces—are, to a man, upright, honest, and handsome. Teen heartthrob Daniel Brühl (famous for his sensitive, cute portrayal of “Alex” in Goodbye Lenin) is given a starring role as Fredrick Zoller, a German propaganda film idol. And it’s made clear by Tarantino that he’s genuinely in love with the blonde-haired, blue-eyed Jewess who runs the movie theater, Shoshanna Dreyfus (Melanie Laurent). In turn, the New York Times’s Manhola Dargis could barely put a lid on his unease over just how attractive Christoph Waltz was as an anti-Semitic mastermind of the SS: “Mr. Waltz’s performance is so very good, so persuasive, seductive and, crucially, so distracting that you can readily move past the moment [when his character talks about how Jews are all rats] if you choose.”
The Jewish “basterds,” on the other hand, are all lowlife sadists straight out of the rogue gallery of Pulp Fiction, and they possess about as much moral fiber as the famous “Gimp” of Tarantino’s 1994 masterpiece.
In the German weekly Junge Freiheit, Claus Wolfschlag expresses his repulsion at the “All Germans are Nazis, ergo Kill ‘em All!” premise of the film, as well his contempt at the German media, who’ve treated the premier of Basterds as some Great Public Guilt Festival. (For evidence of this, look no further than the coverage Basterds has been receiving in Der Stern.) Echoing Eli Roth, Wolfschlag calls the film “pornography for anti-Germans.”
Wolfschlag’s point is legitimate, of course; however, it kept hitting me that on a dialectical level, the film’s message might actually be the exact opposite of what it’s purported to be (and what The Producers think it is.) Basterds might offer Jeffrey Goldberg the chance to experience a kosher wet dream—and another opportunity for Germans to scold themselves—but then, as incredible as it may sound, this Bob and Harvey Weinstein-produced film includes some of the most anti-Semitic portrayals of Jews that have ever seen the light of day in America. Both Steve Sailer and Stefan Kafner have suggested that Tarantino, in many ways, puts himself in the position of Joseph Goebbels in his filmmaking. Put another way, if one were to imagine the ultimate anti-Semitic, neo-Nazi propaganda film about how the Second World War was marked by distinguished German officers being terrorized by a band of Jewish maniacs, would it look much different than Inglourious Basterds?
Nor is this kind of double meaning foreign to Tarantino’s earlier work. Much like Masters of the Universe wannabes have been, for years, quoting the Randian wisdom of “Gordon Gekko,” the evil capitalist in Oliver Stone’s anti-capitalist propaganda film, Wall Street, the “Sicilians were spawned by n——-s” scene from True Romance has been an endless source of insults for millions of jerks who love to make fun of their friends of southern Italian descent. That True Romance was written by Tarantino, an Italian-American, and the words were spoken in a scene of gritty realism, only act as layers of irony that allow Tarantino to get away with it all—much like one can present Jews as inhuman scumbags in a movie about the heroic killing of evil Nazis.
… Tarantino is clearly more fascinated with the villains than the “heroes.”
Inglourious Basterds by Trevor Lynch
“Even though the Germans are supposed to be the bad guys, they are the only people in the film with whom most white [gentile] people can readily identify themselves. This means that [gentile] audiences can only feel revulsion at the sadistic Jews who murder them.
Hitler, of course, is portrayed as a monster. He first appears wearing a cape, which is appropriate, since he is played as nothing more than a comic book villain. (Martin Wuttke is surely the ugliest Hitler ever.)
Goebbels, although he is portrayed as somewhat arrogant (like a film director, perhaps), comes off overall as warm, sincere, playful, and even a bit lovable(!). Tarantino has obviously immersed himself in German films of the era, and it is clear that he has some admiration for what Goebbels accomplished. (In a scene set in England, it is stated as plain fact that Jews run Hollywood, and Goebbels is given credit for giving them a run for their money.)
The true star of the film is Christoph Waltz, whose portrayal of Hans Landa is absolutely riveting. He is such a magnificent character that Tarantino had to turn him into a traitor in the end, otherwise he would be the true hero of the film as well…
The climax of Inglourious Basterds is obviously based on the Oscar night massacre in neo-Nazi Harold Covington’s novel The Brigade. If you don’t believe me, read the novel for yourself.
The symbolism and the message could not be clearer: Jews use movies and movie theaters as tools to destroy their enemies. And since the white people in the audience can most readily identify with the Germans, the message gets through: the Jewish movie business is a tool of hatred and vengeance directed against all white [gentile] people.
Why would Quentin Tarantino make a movie about World War II in which Germans are portrayed as attractive human beings, Americans are portrayed as sadistic buffoons, Englishmen are portrayed as effete wankers, and Jews are portrayed as cold-blooded, inhuman mass murderers?
Why would Quentin Tarantino borrow plot elements from neo-Nazi Harold Covington’s The Brigade to craft a climax for his movie? Why would he use that climax to expose the true anti-[gentile] agenda of Hollywood?
Is Quentin Tarantino a Nazi-sympathizer?
Of course not. Nothing could be further from the truth. Quentin Tarantino is simply a nihilist with an unfailing instinct for finding and desecrating anything sacred. In Pulp Fiction — his one great movie, and his most sincere — Tarantino showed a profound grasp of the spiritual meaning of the duel to the death over honor, symbolized by the Samurai sword. In Kill Bill, vol. I, he made a giant joke of it.
In Inglourious Basterds, Tarantino has taken the one truly sacred myth in modern … America — especially in modern Hollywood — namely WW II and the holocaust, and he has desecrated it by inverting all of its core value judgments and reversing its stereotypes. In the process, he has exposed the true anti-[gentile?] agenda of Hollywood. Why? Just because he can.
The fact that Quentin Tarantino could desecrate the holocaust, expose Hollywood’s agenda, and sell it back to Hollywood’s Jews is a testament to his twisted genius and their shallowness and moral imbecility.”
“Though the Nazi Top Brass are evil buffoons, the average Germans who appear in the film—and usually end up tortured or hacked to pieces—are, to a man, upright, honest, and handsome. ”
Many Americans who served in the US military as a grunt will identify with
those average Germans (except perhaps the Handsome bit). I’ve not seen the full
movie, but the clips I’ve seen turned me off precisely because of this aspect in the
scenes I’ve seen. The assumption of the movie is Goldhagen’s on steroids. I prefer a macro
such as found in All Quiet On The Western Front. Things change, yet remain the same–especially for the pawns.
Off subject –
Gideon Levy calls for boycott
THE LAST REFUGE
Eli Roth is an example of the pathological association of the Holocaust with the contemporary. In the ‘Atlantic’ article, he says,
“It’s almost a deep sexual satisfaction of wanting to beat Nazis to death, an orgasmic feeling,” Roth said. “My character gets to beat Nazis to death. That’s something I could watch all day. My parents are very strong about Holocaust education. My grandparents got out of Poland and Russia and Austria, but their relatives did not.”
Eli’s father, Sheldon Roth, is a Harvard psychiatrist who viewed ‘Hostel II’ (the product of his son) with a panel of mental health professionals. Dr. Roth concluded the following after watching his son’s masterwork, which includes the scene of a naked woman torturing another naked woman to death with a scythe:
“Plato said, ‘The good dream of what the bad do, ‘ ” [Sheldon Roth] said in the lobby of the Fenway Regal 13. “Eli, in his own life, was a very good boy, got along with everyone and never made any trouble. I think he handles all these violent feelings through art.”
link to boston.com
So Roth, Sr.’s education of his son about the Holocaust produced a child who identifies violence and gore with sexual satisfaction.
I disagree with the reviews of the movie which find it anti-Semitic. Rather the message is that murderous, pathological anti-Semitism is an immutable characteristic of non-Jews. It is safer to be able to easily identify, and even align yourself, with the anti-Semites (by carving a swastika in their forehead, for example) than to rely upon weepy, but well-meaning gentiles, who will, in any case, give up ‘the Jews’ in the end. See e.g. the brave, wholesome French father who risked his life and the lives of his daughters to protect his Jewish neighbors, only break down in tears (metaphorically wetting his pants) when pressed by the smooth-talking ‘Jew Hunter’.
I think it’s anti-semetic in the sense that most Christians (not the end timers) do
not agree that the G-D of the Old testament is a first cause any one can love, and emulate.
I have never been able to watch a Tarantino film for more than about 30 minutes. The only thing Tarantino really seems to excel at is being childish. I’m not certain he has ever really had an original thought or idea. From a directorial standpoint, he seems to just borrow from older Hollywood films and not particularly good ones at that. Scorsese he most certainly is not. And as for his “acting”, please pass me the super-sized barf bag! Vanna White’s “acting” is more accomplished. But just look at the IMBD score for “Basterds” compared to some films I liked. My guess is that “Basterds” feeds on ‘American exceptionalism’ and our predisposition towards violence. When Liz Cheney sees this film, she will be in hog heaven.
Inglourious Basterds (2009) 8.6/10 54,297 votes
Capote (2005) 7.6/10 37,522 votes
Match Point (2005) 7.8/10 57,305 votes
Swimming Pool (2003) 6.8/10 18,224 votes
Invincible (2001) 6.6/10 1,846 votes
Sliding Doors (1998) 6.8/10 22,353 votes
Shine (1996) 7.6/10 20,875 votes
“I liked the pure undeflected Jewish rage, liked being connected to it.”
Another Ziocaine addict is born. And of course everything you see in a movie is real. After all if it wasn’t, how could they film it?
Holy Shit, Phil, grow up. I mean that in a completely American non-Jewish way.
A connection to and enjoyment of vicarious cinematic brutality is our national illness, and I’m glad to know you’re completely assimiliated.
I am guessing that Phil meant to say, given the Nazi philosophy affecting the Jews,
he, Phil, saw poetic justice in being connected to the Jewish rage. The problem is
that, e.g., do not the Arab Palestinians also deserve fair treatment or finish? And if not by the enabling USA superpower, than by whom?
Personally, I say simple revenge is stupid. But the Old Testaments’s G-D praises it.
So what do we do with AIPAC?
The problem is that, e.g., do not the Arab Palestinians also deserve fair treatment or finish?
A fair point, if I understand your comment. If the Roths are admittedly driven to fantasies of psycho-sexual rage over the murder of unknown relatives (“My grandparents got out of Poland and Russia and Austria, but their relatives did not.”), why then pathologize the anger of a Palestinian whose infant child was murdered by Israeli soldiers?
Personally, I say simple revenge is stupid. But the Old Testaments’s G-D praises it.
So what do we do with AIPAC?
Huh?