2,244 words
The Victors
Directed by Carl Foreman
Starring George Hamilton, George Peppard, Eli Wallach, et al.
1963
In American culture today, there is a sticky-sweet worship of veterans that is about as enjoyable to experience as stepping barefoot on the dried-up syrup from a spilled soda pop on the concrete surface of a rundown public pool. The worst of this veteran worship involves the veneration of veterans of World War II. (more…)
4,795 words
Standard narratives of the Third Reich have long emphasized the concept of “subhumans” (Untermenschen) as central to National Socialist thought and policy on race. Here is a typical example from Wikipedia (as of 23 March 2016):
Untermensch . . . underman, sub-man, subhuman; plural: Untermenschen) is a term that became infamous when the Nazis used it to describe “inferior people” (more…)
3,662 words
The flap caused in May 2011 at the Cannes Film Festival by Danish film director Lars von Trier is no doubt destined to share the same fate as other racial-toned public outbursts from celebrities in recent years, when the lies hiding the realities of modern life in the West are momentarily torn back so that the tensions lying underneath are savagely revealed. I am thinking, of course, of such incidents as the Michael Richards “nigger” incident at a comedy club in 2006 or Mel Gibson’s drunken “Jew” outburst to a policeman during the same year, among others. (more…)
