Sontag

For my German Cinema class, I'm reading a Susan Sontag article, "Fascinating Fascism" (written way back in '74), about Leni Riefenstahl, the infamous actress, chum of Hitler, and director of several Nazi propaganda films (Triumph of the Will [1935] is probably the most well-known -- and while highly disturbing, it is impressive visually/cinematically in terms of the sheer choreographed spectacle and constructedness of it as a piece of propaganda). Sontag argues that Riefenstahl's later image was white-washed as she was "rediscovered" and celebrated within some film circles for her artistry, many focusing on the visual beauty of her films and the fact that she was a female director, all of which Sontag finds highly problematic (for obvious reasons) and characterizes as "Riefenstahl's current de-Nazification and vindication as indomitable priestess of the beautiful"(!). But, I think it is possible to recognize the cinematically impressive aspects of a film (which is part of understanding the effectiveness of a piece of propaganda) without white-washing Riefenstahl's Nazi-tool past.

But, without summarizing the article, I just wanted to point to one line that struck me due to its current relevance: "A principle accusation against the Jews within Nazi Germany was that they were urban, intellectual, bearers of a destructive corrupting 'critical spirit'" (emphasis mine). It sounds like something straight out of someone like Ann Coulter's mouth, describing liberals, although she would probably add "weak," and "sissies" to the list.

I know this is nothing new, but I am continually struck by the way in which the same rhetoric and/or ways of thinking (or not thinking) seem to be forever recycled. And of course there's been even more recent recycling of the homosexual/"sexual psychopath"/Communist panic rhetoric of the 50s... it's the same shit over and over again, sometimes with different objects of oppression, sometimes the same.