Since I rambled on at length yesterday, and am liable to do it again
before the week is out, I̢۪m going to try to keep it short and sweet today. I gots other stuff to do.
Also, the husband has disc one from Led Zeppelin̢۪s box set playing in
the Cake Eater Office right now, and while I like it, the resultant
headbanging is not really conducive to clear and effective thinking.
--- Gasp in awe and wonder at the shock of it. We have Multiple Chuckle of the Day̢۪s today.

- Reality TV shows-2,435,123. Common Sense-1. People who hate "American Idol" UNITE!

Can I move to Cambodia? Pretty please with sugar and a cherry and hot fudge on top?

- Where̢۪s it been all these years?
I don̢۪t know if I̢۪d want to see what was in a suitcase belonging to
the husband in his single years. It would probably be jam-packed with
condoms. But---then again---perhaps it would finally solve the mystery
of the long lost one-hitter? - And a Chuckle of the Day for
the Cake Eater Chronicles' only reader in France. Our lone French
reader is one of those disgustingly clever trilingual people who makes
her living as a professional translator. I can only imagine what
she̢۪ll have to say about this. If it̢۪s really good, which
undoubtedly it will be, I̢۪ll pass it along. --- I don̢۪t care if
it̢۪s a PR ploy to sell movie tickets! I really, really don̢۪t.
I̢۪m sure Bill the Cat is happy for his puffin-like friend though, and I will echo his sentiments in my elation.

Aaaack Thppt!

--- I hope the afterlife treats her better than life on Earth did.
No need to freak out. I know what she did and I think it abhorrent, so
just don̢۪t go there. For me, Leni̢۪s interesting in that she was one
of the few German citizens who actually had to pay a price for their
support of the Third Reich. Let̢۪s face it: most were allowed to crawl
back into obscurity, as if their support of Hitler and his cronies,
while assuredly less prominent than hers, was like that lost season of Dallas.
(It was all a dream, Pam.) After all, she only filmed the Nuremberg
rallies: they just lined the streets and cheered on their conquering
hero. Most Germans were not forced to pay a price for their
disillusionment: she was, and I find the idea of that interesting. And
it̢۪s possible we̢۪ll never know why she was chosen to be the
whipping boy when there were so many other qualified candidates for the
job. I saw Triumph of Will, in one of my history classes back in
college and I have to agree with the critics when they say it was a
technically brilliant piece that was disgusting in its subject matter.
It was brilliant. It̢۪s a stunning piece of work that broke new ground in filmmaking, much like Birth of a Nation
did, which, for all intents and purposes, when viewed in today̢۪s
context, is a Klan recruitment film. D.W. Griffiths died long before it
became readily apparent how abhorrent his political views were. Leni
lived to a ripe old age and had to live with the infamy of the subject
matter she̢۪d celebrated, while her technological achievements were,
for the most part, ignored. I suppose this is one of the reasons why I
don̢۪t like ideology mixed in with my art. It makes it very hard to
defend the art when the ideology is proven to be bassackwards and
downright violent. But that̢۪s really beside the point and has been
commented on by people far more interesting to read than myself. A few
years back, I read a much celebrated book called Hitler̢۪s Willing Executioners
by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, and it was fascinating. For his doctoral
dissertation, he̢۪d gone and researched how prevalent anti-Semitism
was in everyday German society, and how the average German citizen
willingly played a role in the Holocaust, and he̢۪d done it in a
clever and well-researched way: he went to the police blotters. By
tracking down the average, well documented infringement (those crazy
Germans and their love of paperwork), he was able to prove that
ordinary German citizens of the time were not ignorant of what their
government was doing in regards to Jews; that they could not claim
ignorance as a defense, which they always did because, honestly, there
was no foolproof method of checking up on it. But I didn̢۪t know! And what could I have done about it anyway? They would have killed me.
This book was a revolutionary way of disproving the accepted notion
that the German populace really had nothing to do with any of it and
couldn̢۪t have stopped it if they̢۪d tried. The book was way too
late, in the scheme of history, to change anything, but it was
interesting nonetheless because it proved what most already knew: that
ignorance wasn̢۪t a defense; that most Germans were behind Hitler all
along. Leni was never allowed this luxurious defense.
I find her case to be fascinating, not for her films, but because no
one ever bought her arguments that she didn̢۪t know how bad the Nazis
really were. Most everyone else was let off the hook, but not her. She
was one of the very few forced to pay a price after the war for her
support of the Nazis. I don̢۪t know if this hypocrisy is because she
kept opening her mouth to defend her work and subsequently it was
implied she supported the subject matter still. It̢۪s completely
possible. Perhaps it was because she was an easy target in that she was
a woman. Of
course, she was sleeping with Hitler, didn̢۪t you know? She had to
have been! No one would have given her a job in the first place if she
hadn̢۪t. . Whatever it was, she was never let off the hook, like
some other prominent Germans were, such as Karl Orff. I still hear the Carmina Burana
on our very politically correct classical music station at least once a
week. Never does the announcer separate the music from the ideology
that was behind it. They don't feel the need to. For them, it's a
beautiful, stirring piece of music that just happened to be composed
during the Nazi era. Now flip the coin. When was the last time anyone
saw Triumph of Will outside of an academic setting without numerous disclaimers attached?

Orff defended his work, just like Leni did. Why are their two cases so dramatically different in outcome?

Posted by: Kathy at 02:30 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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