Spielberg accused of glorifying Nazi regime

[emad]

Indo-Asian News Service

London, May 23, 2005


Director Steven Spielberg has been accused of glamourising the Nazi regime through his films on Hitler's regime such as Schindler's List.

Prominent British historian Antony Beevor describes his movies as "cinematic pornography" that actually encourage neo-Nazism, reports Internet portal Femalefirst.

"One has to be very careful about the way in which we approach history because very few people can tell the difference between fact and fiction," he said.

"Although film-makers such as Steven Spielberg believe that they're making anti-Nazi films, what they produce is a type of cinematic pornography - the image of power of the Nazis, the colourful marches of their troops in the streets, end up being attractive to some young males in societies in which the social structure or order is disintegrating."

http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1372704,00110003.htm

[ET Awful]

1. Ummmm. . .. yeah. Okay.

Yup. Sure.

He really glamorized it alright. What a load of horseshit.

[mopinko]

2. that's just crazy

let's just bury history, then.

[prole_for_peace]

3. did he SEE Schindler's List?

what a nut job

[Jack Rabbit]

4. Schindler's List encourgages neo-Nazism?

I've seen it a couple of times. I must have missed the parts to which Beevor refers.

[alcibiades_mystery]

5. Anthony Beevor's books are awesome

Both his Stalingrad and his Berlin - The Downfall 1945 are incredible reads and really well done. We might disagree with his point here, but I cannot speak against the man's credentials to make a point on this topic. He's far more an expert on Nazism than Spielberg, that's for sure. Whether he's more of an expert on the effects of cinema is another question altogether.

[MemphisTiger]

6. Riiightt? Don't they know Spielberg is Jewish?

What a bunch or morans

[Ian David]

7. That will always be true for a small fringe with Republican mindsets

They've been saying the same thing since the first "war movie," Birth of a Nation. It was originally intended not just to be anti-black, but also anti-war. There was a debate about if you could condemn war while at the same time showing it in a grand, mythic fashion.

Other examples:

Full Metal Jacket
Platoon
Apocalypse Now
Casualties of War

However, I think a real case where an anti-Nazi film backfired is American History X.

[bunkerbuster1]

9. About Apocalypse Now, for example...

how many Freepers completely miss the point and borrow phrases like "I love the smell of <whatever> in the morning? smells like... victory."

[Ian David]

12. I had a boss who saw Citizen Kane and used it as a blueprint for his life

Buy a newspaper... don't worry if it loses money... buy friends and respect with money...

Yeah, works for him.

His last words will probably be "DrayYYYyYYyyy...DellLLlLLllll.."

[alcibiades_mystery]

8. I'm gonna play devil's advocate here

Primarily because I like Anthony Beevor's work.

His argument is NOT, of course, that Spielberg supports Nazis or Nazism. That would be stupid. So he's not claiming that Spielberg is intentionally glamorizing Nazism. Let's get that off the table first.

Rather, Beevor is arguing that Spielberg - in order to achieve some cinematic effect - portrays Nazis in a way that makes the way of life of Nazism seem more attractive to particular kinds of viewers (I'm guessing young, working class men as the usual constituency of muscular fascism). That is the point that should be argued. Now, the article doesn't provide much in the way of direct evidence for this claim. Beevor brings up "colorful marches" in his one quote here, but that's obviously insufficient to establish the point. I'm guessing he has a much more systematic analysis of Spielberg's portrayal of Nazism that would make this point more plain. We should note that Spielberg has been accused before of a kind of "formal fascism" in his presentation. There was an article in Vanity Fair just after Saving Private Ryan came out that argued that Spielberg's cinematographical technique and the rhetorical structure of the film closely resemble the fascist films of the Nazi era, including Triumph of the Will. Nevertheless, I'd like to see the more systematic argument from Beevor.

Some say that Spielberg is merely presenting the history, and any attempt to "de-glamorize" Nazism would be "revisionist history." I find it difficult to believe that a historian of Nazism as thorough as Anthony Beevor would make any such argument. Rather, he'd probably make the valid historiographical argument that there were many modes of life of Nazism, even within the SS, say. Spielberg just seems intent on selecting the most attractive modes of life of Nazism from the perspective of a particular class of viewers, and then presenting those modes of life in a formal way that even increases their attraction. And that he does so for narrative reasons rather than for any legitimate historical or rhetorical reasons. That's the argument as I perceive it from this obviously truncated newspaper piece. I'd like to see more of the argument.

[RaleighNCDUer]

10. Funny, I don't remember any magnificent colorful marches in

'Schindler's List'. The only marching troops in the movies were small units, not parades, and while the movie did show Nazi power, it emphasized the perversion of power, the brutality of unchecked power. Has Spielberg made another movie that I missed?

[rock]

11. It's a movie

as I often say.

[alcibiades_mystery]

13. Movies being the one form of symbolic expression

That produce absolutely no effect on its audience?

Symbols do things. First rule of rhetoric.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

14. Many years ago, I saw a German-made film on TV

(can't remember the details), but what struck me was that the rank-and-file Nazis (not the leaders) from the prewar period were portrayed as ignorant, mean-and-dumb types, the sort of guys who would have posted on FR if there had been an Internet in the 1930s.

U.S. films tend to portray high Nazi officials having elegant banquets with fine wines and fashionably dressed women when they're not out committing atrocities.

Both portrayals probably have a grain of truth in them, but I'd like to see more of the mean-and-dumb portrayals, which were undoubtedly more typical of the people who filled the ranks at the Nuremburg Rally.