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A spectrum of Nazi portrayals, from dehumanized demons to sex objects
After a week's recess I finished the Bunker book -- anticlimactic after the mess of suicides, and more melodramatic than I remembered when I jumped back in, unless O'Donnell's tone changed when writing about the breakout. But it did boast a quote featuring, bizarrely, some sex advice from Hitler (e.g. "below the umbilicus, all men are goats or satyrs"), as well as a petty catfight between Hans Baur and Albert Speer. I don't mean that last bit to sound silly, though I did chuckle at it. Actually, I do mean it to sound silly, but I don't mean to make light of the men themselves. They and their actions shouldn't be reduced to a joke about bickering Reich officials, but at the same time they were men, people, humans, who had the same urges and flaws and strengths and stupid disagreements as anyone else.
That's one of the toughest parts of contemplating Nazi Germany, I think -- grasping at the same time the horrific deeds performed/orders given and the fact that they were simply men behind them. That's what got some people so riled up over the so-called "humanization" of Hitler in "Downfall," (a) as if he weren't human to begin with, and (b) when all it did was show that there was more to him than histrionic public speeches, a fact not only common-sensical but also already well-documented. They'd prefer a two-dimensional portrayal, as though any hint of humanity in him would -- what? Inspire imitators? As if the best way to prevent a repeat of history were to strip all recognizable psychology and personality from the perpetrators, teaching us that everyone involved was an aberrant, immoral superhuman/demon instead of confronting the frightening prospect that it was normal people who did, and can, descend to such evil, or let it happen around them. Portraying them as inhuman might be easier but it prevents a sympathy, however scary or uncomfortable a bond to enter into, that allows us to say, Yes, these were people who made incomprehensible choices, just as people today could make incomprehensible choices. Those moments of humanity -- being nice to dogs and secretaries, bickering over trees and lampposts, calling each other names -- remind us that people committed these acts and others could commit them again. It's the historical equivalent of 'Make them laugh and drive the dagger home' -- open us up to comprehending them as humans, then tell or remind us what they did. Pushing them away from us, ostracizing them from humanity, denies that others can become like them.
On the other end of the spectrum, I was sifting through LJseek results for "Thomas Kretschmann" and found not only actor slash (Kretschmann/Brody after "The Piano," for instance) but Nazi RPS. I was fairly stunned, not by the existence of the stories themselves so much as by the barrage of ethical issues that strafed my brain upon seeing them and by the comprehension of the difficulty of answering them for oneself, let alone trying to reach a consensus among fanfic writers or readers or the general public. Questions about the extent to which these traditionally evil figures ought to be "humanized"--the risks and benefits of considering them as sex objects, particularly based on film portrayals--the place of fiction in WWII/Holocaust studies--about using fanfic to break these people down, integrate them into ourselves, digest them, make them our own.
I didn't read any of the stories, nor do I remember the pairings, so I can't comment on the quality of the work, whether the writer(s) used the opportunity to tackle some of the really tough subjects or whether it was PWP of clearly actor-inspired characters. Probably it's like any other group of fic: mostly bad. Is -- should mostly-bad Nazi RPS be somehow worse than mostly-bad Boy Band RPS, ignoring their heinous acts for the sake of titillation? Or is this a harmless, even progressively healthy, way of proving the earlier point, taking these infamous figures and making them human, even making them sex objects as easily as is done with any other person -- saying "you will not frighten me," "I will tame you and what you did"? That's the theoretician talking. Hoping. In reality, probably, some or many Nazi RPS writers are basing their characters on movies and not thinking much of the implications at all.
It's just ... it's not quite accurate to split identities this way, but as a woman and a born-and-raised Jew who by nature and education sympathizes with the victims, it's uncomfortable to think of a PWP with, say, Speer and Baur, but as a slash fan I can also understand the temptation. The scholar part of me sees both sides, too. I think it's easier to do FF on fictional(ized) versions rather than the real thing; to write or read a story about Amon Goeth as played by Ralph Fiennes in "Schindler's List" or Hermann Fegelein as played by Thomas Kretschmann in "Downfall," for example, rather than one about Speer after reading his memoirs or Goering after reading his biography. That way they're already one level removed from reality -- two, I suppose, the first being the history or interviews or books on which the characters are based.
Thoughts, please?
That's one of the toughest parts of contemplating Nazi Germany, I think -- grasping at the same time the horrific deeds performed/orders given and the fact that they were simply men behind them. That's what got some people so riled up over the so-called "humanization" of Hitler in "Downfall," (a) as if he weren't human to begin with, and (b) when all it did was show that there was more to him than histrionic public speeches, a fact not only common-sensical but also already well-documented. They'd prefer a two-dimensional portrayal, as though any hint of humanity in him would -- what? Inspire imitators? As if the best way to prevent a repeat of history were to strip all recognizable psychology and personality from the perpetrators, teaching us that everyone involved was an aberrant, immoral superhuman/demon instead of confronting the frightening prospect that it was normal people who did, and can, descend to such evil, or let it happen around them. Portraying them as inhuman might be easier but it prevents a sympathy, however scary or uncomfortable a bond to enter into, that allows us to say, Yes, these were people who made incomprehensible choices, just as people today could make incomprehensible choices. Those moments of humanity -- being nice to dogs and secretaries, bickering over trees and lampposts, calling each other names -- remind us that people committed these acts and others could commit them again. It's the historical equivalent of 'Make them laugh and drive the dagger home' -- open us up to comprehending them as humans, then tell or remind us what they did. Pushing them away from us, ostracizing them from humanity, denies that others can become like them.
On the other end of the spectrum, I was sifting through LJseek results for "Thomas Kretschmann" and found not only actor slash (Kretschmann/Brody after "The Piano," for instance) but Nazi RPS. I was fairly stunned, not by the existence of the stories themselves so much as by the barrage of ethical issues that strafed my brain upon seeing them and by the comprehension of the difficulty of answering them for oneself, let alone trying to reach a consensus among fanfic writers or readers or the general public. Questions about the extent to which these traditionally evil figures ought to be "humanized"--the risks and benefits of considering them as sex objects, particularly based on film portrayals--the place of fiction in WWII/Holocaust studies--about using fanfic to break these people down, integrate them into ourselves, digest them, make them our own.
I didn't read any of the stories, nor do I remember the pairings, so I can't comment on the quality of the work, whether the writer(s) used the opportunity to tackle some of the really tough subjects or whether it was PWP of clearly actor-inspired characters. Probably it's like any other group of fic: mostly bad. Is -- should mostly-bad Nazi RPS be somehow worse than mostly-bad Boy Band RPS, ignoring their heinous acts for the sake of titillation? Or is this a harmless, even progressively healthy, way of proving the earlier point, taking these infamous figures and making them human, even making them sex objects as easily as is done with any other person -- saying "you will not frighten me," "I will tame you and what you did"? That's the theoretician talking. Hoping. In reality, probably, some or many Nazi RPS writers are basing their characters on movies and not thinking much of the implications at all.
It's just ... it's not quite accurate to split identities this way, but as a woman and a born-and-raised Jew who by nature and education sympathizes with the victims, it's uncomfortable to think of a PWP with, say, Speer and Baur, but as a slash fan I can also understand the temptation. The scholar part of me sees both sides, too. I think it's easier to do FF on fictional(ized) versions rather than the real thing; to write or read a story about Amon Goeth as played by Ralph Fiennes in "Schindler's List" or Hermann Fegelein as played by Thomas Kretschmann in "Downfall," for example, rather than one about Speer after reading his memoirs or Goering after reading his biography. That way they're already one level removed from reality -- two, I suppose, the first being the history or interviews or books on which the characters are based.
Thoughts, please?