I have to confess: I’ve always thought Nazis were cool.
There is a certain theme in culture where people identify with Evil. In some cases it’s because of image (or as one supervillain called it, PRESENTATION!). We think of great villainy as being cool, badass and invincible, like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxL8bVJhXCM
When in point of fact, villainy is usually a lot more like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU
If you actually read about history, especially Shirer’s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, you’ll see that most of the Nazis were pathetic mediocrities, and even the ones who had brains, like Albert Speer, essentially gave up their free will to become robots operating on faulty programming. Why? Fear. Fear of the people they hated, certainly, but also fear of themselves: fear of making a mistake, fear of taking responsibility for bad or unpopular decisions. Far better to join a personality cult where the Leader says he can do everything.
And if you wonder how, in Nazi Germany, one-third of the country could exterminate another third while the last third looked on, it’s because that last third was in fear of what the bad guys would do. You can see the psychology even now. Friday November 15, former Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovich, was giving her public testimony to Adam Schiff’s Congressional committee, as to how and why she was fired by the Viceroy for Russian North America. During the session, that person currently running the occupation government tweeted, “Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad. She started off in Somalia, how did that go? Then fast forward to Ukraine, where the new Ukrainian President spoke unfavorably about her in my second phone call with him.” Apparently he didn’t know (or care) that Schiff’s people were reading Twitter in real time and gave Schiff the tweet to read to Yovanovitch. Even Ken Starr, who knows a thing or two about impeachment, told Fox News, “The president was obviously not advised by counsel in deciding to do this tweet. (It was) extraordinarily poor judgment.” But after Schiff read the tweet to Yovanovitch, he asked what she thought, and she replied, “It’s very intimidating… I can’t speak to what the president is trying to do, but I think the effect is to be intimidating.”
Well, enough of that. Half of the reason this is going on is because a third of the country is intimidated by people that we can all perceive to be incompetent clowns, and the other half is because another third of the country identify with said clowns and think they’re badass. What we need is to let the air out of their tires. We need to go back to the approach of Mel Brooks and Hogan’s Heroes.
We need to Make Nazis Funny Again.
Jojo Rabbit is a film by New Zealand filmmaker Taika Waititi (most famous in this country for Thor: Ragnarok). It is about Johannes “Jojo” Betzler (Roman Griffin Davis), a 10-year old going to youth camp with the Deutsches Jungvolk, or junior arm of the Hitler Youth. This was a literal Nazi Boy Scouts where kids were expected to learn manly fascist pursuits like hunting and military exercises, as opposed to suspicious activities like reading and thinking. Jojo is a short unpopular boy whose sister has died of illness and whose father is presumed missing in action on the front, and so for companionship he has turned to an imaginary friend – Adolf Hitler (Waititi himself).
At first, Waititi’s character seems like a wonderful playmate for a 10-year old boy (apart from the whole Hitler thing). But after his peers brand him as “Jojo Rabbit” because he refused to kill a bunny rabbit with his bare hands, Jojo’s imaginary friend inspires him to a reckless act that renders him unfit for military training. Thus, he has to go back to live with his free-spirited mom (Scarlett Johannson) and soon discovers that Mom has sheltered a Jewish teenager (Thomasin McKenzie) in the walls of the upstairs room. And as with other stories about Jewish girls being forced to hide from the Gestapo, wackiness ensues.
In addition to Waititi using Hitler as the chorus of Jojo’s subconscious, the film has a whole slew of absurdities, like Aryan clones, the inevitable “German shepherds” joke, British rock songs and American actors using contemporary slang and fake German accents as they talk about “blowing schtuff up.” In short, Jojo Rabbit takes Nazism with all the seriousness it deserves, which is to say, none.
I mean, yes, there is a very sad turn of events in the last act, but you can’t set a movie in the last two years of Nazi Germany and expect it to be a complete barrel of laughs.
And at the end, what is the moral of the story? Some might say: “Love conquers all.” Others might say: “Don’t assume that your imaginary friend always has the best advice, especially when he’s Hitler.” My take is: “Don’t turn your government over to racist Know-Nothings who are only going to get people killed.” You would think we wouldn’t need to hit people over the head with that message, and yet, here we are.
Well, that’s the review. So until next
time:
“Heil Hitler, guys.”