You know, considering the events of last year, I really thought we had turned a new page in America, that hate was to become a thing of the past.
But now there are not one, but two movies in theaters about the indiscriminate killing of Nazis. There’s Valkyrie, of course, and now there’s Defiance. This winter, it is a veritable holocaust of German fascists on the silver screen.
I wish I could say I expect more out of Hollywood, but I can’t. We have a long, inexcusable past when it comes to bigoted depictions of Nazis in our film history, starting with Casablanca to The Incredible Mr. Limpet to Raiders of the Lost Ark.
When George Lucas and Steven Spielberg silently moved on from killing Nazis to killing Soviets in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, I wasn’t pleased with the way they whitewashed over Indy’s prior genocide: “Oh, that was, like, 20 years ago.”
Yes, Indiana Jones of the first three movies was a product of his times, but is that any excuse for the depiction of Nazis in general, much less the blasé manner in which they’re annihilated? In Last Crusade, he shoots three Nazis with a single luger shot. I mean, come on!
Still, they moved on. Perhaps Spielberg’s bloodlust for Nazis was finally quenched after Saving Private Ryan. Unfortunately, his peers did not pay heed.
So, here we are, 2009, on the verge of a new decade in the second millennium, and we still castigate the Nazis, chasing extras in squib-lined uniforms to every end of the earth that will let us film. The very idea: wiping out an entire race of people because of their political and quasi-religious beliefs! I am appalled to the core.
You’re probably wondering, “Why’s it OK to kill communists on screen then?”
Have you seen a communist lately? It’s usually some neckbeard in your college lit class who complains about the struggle of the working man every chance he gets. A petit bourgeois in training.
But the Nazis, what have they done to anyone lately? Nothing since 1945. But at this point, we’ve spent more money on pretend-fighting them than the Allies spent on World War II. (Unless you’re counting lives, but that’s only if you use the whole body like the Native Americans.)
I’m calling on you, readers, to stop the on-screen plight of Nazis, for if you have an opportunity to stop a genocide and don’t, then aren’t you responsible?
Get the word out to your friends and not-so-friends! Start a Facebook group: “Killing Nazis is Wrong!”*
And maybe, once we’re all marching in lockstep together, we can finally take care of some other problems, like
*I’d start it myself, but … uh … I don’t want to look like a Nazi.
Saving Private Ryan wasn’t the end of it for Spielberg, he went on to produce Band of Brothers three years later, so we could get hours more of killing Nazis.