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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Making a joke out of Hitler

By: Staff Writer

27/07/2009 1:00 AM | Comments: 3

TORONTO -- They are the final days of the Second World War and Adolf Hitler, bespectacled and weary-looking, sits at his desk, a map of Germany before him.

One of his generals points at the map, tracing the enemy's progress towards Berlin. With a wave, Hitler dismisses the idea that the city is in danger. Another unit, he calmly predicts, will take care of the advancing soldiers.

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Actress Jessica Lange arrives at the 63rd Annual Tony Awards in New York, Sunday, June 7, 2009. (AP Photo/Peter Kramer) (CP)

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Then the revelation: there aren't enough Nazi troops left to mobilize. Berlin, in all likelihood, will fall. Hitler removes his glasses with a trembling hand, dismisses almost everyone from the room, and blows his top.

The scene is from 2004's Downfall, the Oscar-nominated German film that initially courted controversy by portraying Hitler as a three-dimensional character but has proven popular, frequently ranking among the Top 100 films on the Internet Movie Database.

Yet if people are familiar with the clip, it's likely because they've seen it on YouTube, not in a movie theatre. That's because over the past two years, the scene has been remixed more than 100 times by people who've replaced the original subtitles with their own.

In the remixes, Hitler -- played in the film by Swiss actor Bruno Ganz -- loses his cool not at the impending end of the Third Reich, but at less politically significant topics.

In July, videos were posted in which he rants at the death of Michael Jackson ("I never even got the chance to go to Neverland," Hitler despairs) and the sudden resignation of former Alaska governor Sarah Palin.

Some of the videos have been viewed nearly two million times. In one clip, Hitler even rages that he's been reduced to nothing more than a viral Internet phenomenon.

When Warner Bros. Entertainment announced last year it would be delaying Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince until this summer, Greg Gershman and his wife aired their grievances with their own Downfall clip.

"I think we'd just seen one recently (and) we thought this was a good way to, in a fun and joking way, express our discontent," says Gershman, who runs a Baltimore-based podcast on the Harry Potter novels.

Since being uploaded in August 2008, their clip has been watched more than 160,000 times. The response has mostly been positive, but Gershman says they've received a few emails from people calling them "sick."

He's tried not to let those opinions bother him. "I'm Jewish, so I know that for certain people it hits a little bit closer to home than for other people," he says.

"From our perspective, it's kind of making a joke out of Hitler, so that's OK, I guess -- not to trivialize the Holocaust or anything."

The online popularity of the Downfall clip can be attributed to the fact it plays into a well-established caricature of Hitler as an outright madman, says Tim Blackmore, a media studies professor at the University of Western Ontario.

"When we're worried about complex things, the easiest thing to do is to jump for something which is simple, find a hero and find a villain," Blackmore says. "For the western world, Hitler is our easy target."

Hitler has long been an inspiration for humour, from the films of Charlie Chaplin to more recent references in Bruno.

Blackmore says that when he's shown the Downfall clips to his students, they tend to have mixed reactions, finding them amusing yet also vaguely unsettling.

His concern is the remixes will strip Downfall -- a serious exploration of how young Germans responded to the Nazis -- of its moral gravity.

-- The Associated Press

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition July 27, 2009 D2

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3 Comments

Posted by: smarterthanyou

July 27, 2009 at 11:19 AM

Dear J Galt

Perhaps it is all up to you to derive a new way to deal with this country's economic woes BASED ON THE ECONOMIC SENSE OF ADOLF HITLER.

You note that if our financial leaders had HALF the "economic" sense of Hitler, we'd be in great shape. Well, being the expert you are (and obviously not just someone talking out of your ass) I say you should use your knowledge based on the WHOLE "economic" sense of Hitler, and thus, we can be the world leader in robust economies!

I, for one, welcome our new economic leader J Galt, who will bring us the saving grace of a Hitler-based economy!!

PS I particularly love this line: "But, since we're not allowed to learn from the past, especially anything Hitler did, hundreds of thousands will lose their jobs, pensions, etc."

Neither time nor available space allows for the true dissection this quote deserves. You clearly have it all figured out, don't you?

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Posted by: Yamahammer

July 27, 2009 at 9:56 AM

Don't worry, we're building a $400 million dollar museum that will be mostly dedicated to exposing Hitler and his messed up mind.

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Posted by: J Galt

July 27, 2009 at 8:58 AM

"film that initially courted controversy by portraying Hitler as a three-dimensional character "

Yes, how dare he, or anyone else for that matter be portrayed as an actual human being and not a cartoon depiction of evil. If Hitler was a human being, things he did could be repeated by today's "leaders," and we aren't supposed to notice that.
Although if our "leaders" had half the economic sense Hitler did this whole economic collapse would never have happened. But, since we're not allowed to learn from the past, especially anything Hitler did, hundreds of thousands will lose their jobs, pensions, etc.