Inglourious Basterds

[henry]

I found the following in an interview with Eli Roth, who plays one of the characters in Tarantino's latest film, Inglourious Basterds. Roth and Tarantino are good buddies.

_http://www.cbc.ca/arts/film/story/2009/08/14/f-inglourious-basterds-eli-roth.html

Q: I read that you became Tarantino’s unofficial advisor on Jewish matters. What did that involve?

A: Well, this is me as a friend, talking to Quentin, in the way he’d be an advisor when I’m writing a screenplay. He called me up and he’d ask, you know, “Would you be able to forgive the Nazis if it meant ending the war?” We’d have philosophical discussions. And my answer was, ‘No way, I’d kill all of them, there’s no questions asked. There’s no forgiveness. I said absolution is a Christian concept. Jews, we don’t forget anything. We collect interest, we get more angry about stuff. And I think if you want a good example of Jewish psychology, you should come to my family’s Passover seder.”

He’d never been to a seder. He came over and it was a really moving experience. We talked about the Jews who were enslaved, telling the story of how we were slaves in Egypt and how we never forget that. We always talk about the Holocaust. My father read letters from Holocaust survivors. My father was a psychoanalyst at Harvard, he’s recently retired. He gave papers in Israel about the Holocaust. I was trying to explain to Quentin that they tried to exterminate us. So, there’s no negotiating with people like that. They’ve lost their humanity. When there are people that are successfully wiping you out, you want to kill them. And that, I think, helped confirm certain creative instincts Quentin had about creating the ending.

:O

 

[Vulcan59]

It's really shocking to see how he fails to see the irony vis-à-vis the situation in Palestine.

 

[Breton]

I did not see this movie, but based on the few minutes I took to look at the article presented I had this thought:

So, some actor, Eli, relished playing the role of a vengeance-dispensing soldier, and seems to reveal that he REALLY wished he could be such a person and not just acting, due to his own personal harsh and bloody convictions about revenge and justice.

I suppose he could never consider that those Nazi skulls that he was so righteously smashing in pretend for a movie, but would have been ok if it were real, actually belonged to real human beings who were duped into following a pathocratic and ponerized system.

Further, little does he consider the possibility that any soldier fighting in a war are also mere dupes and pawns, not understanding how wars are created by the powers that be to further an end, and "fighting for freedom" is, and always has been, a sham.

How things could be different if people simply had knowledge? What if people knew about the pathocracy and ponerization? "What if they gave a war and nobody came?"

He does not realize how much Jews had in common with the average Nazi soldier. They had common enemy, and the enemy exists to this day: the pathocracy.

_Breton_

 

[alphonse]

It's really shocking to see how he fails to see the irony vis-à-vis the situation in Palestine.

The above quote form Vulcan59, is very much the point. The plight of Palestinians and the way they are treated by the Israelis , supported by other nations is deplorable.

Bretons comments were interesting too:

“I suppose he could never consider that those Nazi skulls that he was so righteously smashing in pretend for a movie, but would have been ok if it were real, actually belonged to real human beings who were duped into following a pathocratic and ponerized system.”

But why would the actor be able to consider that, if he too, is a victim of Pathocracy?
Are any acts of extreme violence and terror toward other people excusable by claiming “they were duped” by Ponerisation? It is not how I understood Lobaczewsci, but I genuinely may have misunderstood something..

Could one then also argue that the actor expressing those sentiments of deep seated hatred and a desire to kill his enemies also the result of Ponerization?

The opening paragraph from the following SOTT page tells us that:
http://www.cassiopaea.org/cass/political_ponerology_lobaczewski.htm

Pathocracy is a disease of great social movements followed by entire societies, nations, and empires. In the course of human history, it has affected social, political, and religious movements as well as the accompanying ideologies… and turned them into caricatures of themselves…. This occurred as a result of the … participation of pathological agents in a pathodynamically similar process. That explains why all the pathocracies of the world are, and have been, so similar in their essential properties

So it would it not follow that Eli Roth, is also a Ponerized victim of Pathocracy?

“He does not realize how much Jews had in common with the average Nazi soldier. They had common enemy, and the enemy exists to this day: the pathocracy.”

He wouldn’t, if he was so deeply Ponerised himself.

I did see the movie and it was brutal and violent. I must confess that it stirred mixed emotions in me. I was uncomfortable with the way the glorification of brutality and murder was portrayed, (but tried to remember the title was “Inglorius”) The ending however (Spoiler Alert!) is purely one man's fantasy on how he would like to have seen the second world brought to an abrupt end and if it had ended as portrayed in the film, the Middle-East may have been a totally different place today.

 

[Beau]

Eli Roth is also the guy who directed the 2 Hostel films, and is basically a guy who likes to make horror-gore movies. He apparently is going to be working on a remake of The Bad Seed as well...

 

[henry]

Eli Roth is also the guy who directed the 2 Hostel films, and is basically a guy who likes to make horror-gore movies. He apparently is going to be working on a remake of The Bad Seed as well...

Based upon his own life?

 

[Third_Density_Resident]

I did see the movie and it was brutal and violent. I must confess that it stirred mixed emotions in me. I was uncomfortable with the way the glorification of brutality and murder was portrayed, (but tried to remember the title was “Inglorius”) The ending however (Spoiler Alert!) is purely one man's fantasy on how he would like to have seen the second world brought to an abrupt end and if it had ended as portrayed in the film, the Middle-East may have been a totally different place today.

Can't stand Tarantino films, can't stand Tarantino, and I certainly don't care how "clever" some of his films may or may not be. The glorification of violence and torture cannot be excused. And as for Eli Roth, well his comments all make perfect sense when you realise he did the Hostel movies.

 

[manitoban]

Can't stand Tarantino films, can't stand Tarantino, and I certainly don't care how "clever" some of his films may or may not be. The glorification of violence and torture cannot be excused.

I'll second that - Its just horrible how watching people being tortured has somehow become acceptable as entertainment. Just another sign of the times I suppose, the ponerization of our society.

 

[T.C.]

I'd just like to mention the performance of Christoph Waltz.

He plays a Nazi Colonel named Hans Landa. Before the war, he was a detective and using his skill in that area (and he IS an incredible detective), has worked his way up through the ranks. His main job is to go around the occupied countries and find any Jews who may be hiding, and has earned the nickname, "the Jew hunter".

Landa is an essential psychopath and Waltz portrays that superbly. In the first scene, he spews out a long paramoralism as a justification of his job ("hunting" Jews). He is hyperactive and baroque; he toys with his interviewees the way a cat toys with a mouse before eating it. Every time he walks into a scene, you hold your breath.

So the film is worth seeing for this portrayal. Plus, I think in any film set in an occupied country (this being set in Nazi-occupied France) there are themes useful to contemplate.

 

[Beau]

I agree T.C. Walt's take on the SS colonel Landa was magnificent, he truly conveyed the complete psychopathy that enveloped the Nazi hierarchy. The tension he brought to every scene was palpable. Also, the themes from the film are very relevant today so despite the short bursts of violence their is a lot more to see IMO.

 

[Nević Nenad]

I did see the movie and it was brutal and violent. I must confess that it stirred mixed emotions in me. I was uncomfortable with the way the glorification of brutality and murder was portrayed, (but tried to remember the title was “Inglorius”) The ending however (Spoiler Alert!) is purely one man's fantasy on how he would like to have seen the second world brought to an abrupt end and if it had ended as portrayed in the film, the Middle-East may have been a totally different place today.

Can't stand Tarantino films, can't stand Tarantino, and I certainly don't care how "clever" some of his films may or may not be. The glorification of violence and torture cannot be excused. And as for Eli Roth, well his comments all make perfect sense when you realise he did the Hostel movies.

I can second that. It looks like idiot, it speaks like idiot, so it’s must be idiot.

 

[go2]

Gilad Aztmon’s wrote an essay on denial of reality and Zionist identity, titled “Vengeance, Barbarism, and Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds,” here.

I have read Gilad Aztmon’s essays on Counterpunch for a number of years. He is an articulate critic of Zionism and
Judaism. His service in the IDF convinced him of the racist nature of the Zionist ideology. He is accused of being a self hating Jew and an anti-semite. His fascinating biography can be read on Wikipedia.

I do not view Shoa movies as a matter of principle. They are usually Zionist myth making. However, after reading Aztmon’s essay I will make an exception and see Inglourious Basterds when I am next in town.

Here are a few paragraphs from Aztmon’s essay on Counterpunch.

[….]

One may wonder, how it is that a Jewish producer affiliated with Israel and Zionism is standing behind such a film that portrays the Jews in such a horrifying light. The answer is actually very simple. Zionists love to see themselves as revengeful and merciless. In Israel, Samson who is nothing less than a genocidal murderer is regarded as an eternal hero. He even managed to get an IDF battalion called after him. It is not a secret that the fantasy of retribution is deeply imbued within the Zionist psyche and Israeli politics. “Never Again” is there to suggest to Israelis that Jews will never again be sent as lambs to the slaughter. What it means in practice is that Jews will fight back and hit as hard as they can. Reprisal is a key element in the understanding of Israeli conduct. As much as the film depicts a horrifying image of the revengeful Jew, Jews and Zionists happen to support the film and even love it.

[…]

It is almost impossible to deny that Tarantino is out there shouting ‘The Emperor is Naked’: he is neither a victim nor an innocent. The fact that many Jews fail to see it and instead, end up praising the film, may stand as another disturbing indication that Zionist collective identity has managed to detach itself from any recognized notion of humanist reality. As sad as this may sound, it explains world Jewry’s institutional support of Israel. It may also explain why Zionists as a collective failed to internalize the meaning of the Shoa. Instead of searching for grace in themselves, Zionists keep engaging themselves in Nazi hunting and carving others with different labels and symbols.

For too many years, Zionist lobbies around the world have managed to dismantle any criticism of Israel. They have managed to turn the history of WWII into an internal Jewish restricted research zone. They have managed to transform our knowledge of the past into a symbolic exchange, but they somehow failed to silence the dream. This is where Tarantino comes into play. Through the fantasy he manages to tell us what our reality is all about.

As much as the Inglourious Basterds, Shoshanna and the Israelis (who gathered on the hills around Gaza to watch their army spreading death) gain some pleasure out of vengeance, it is possible that through two and half hours of therapy led by Tarantino we may, after all, learn to enjoy our symptoms and say it loudly: E nough is Enough. No more Old Testament vengeance and barbarism. We want grace and mercy instead.

 

[nemo]

I'd just like to mention the performance of Christoph Waltz.

I absolutely agree that his perf. makes it worth seeing. I didn`t know this actor before.
Apparantly they shot this one in English, German and French. Waltz speaks all three languages in this film + Italian. Impressed me.
Tarantino is a movie nerd who only knows about movies. I found it watchable* but apart from Waltz not very interesting. The violence
was toned down compared to his older films.
*it varies between quite amusing, stupid and totally inept. Highly depends on your pop cultural mindset.
The jewish gang comes across as disgusting and stupid.

For those who think Tarantino is cool:
Watch Bad Day At Black Rock (1955) with Spencer Tracy

 

[Cyre2067]

Been avoiding this one b/c of all the stuff I've read in Prouty's books detailing how we helped Nazi's escape Germany as WW2 was winding down. Figured it was just a action-packed attempt at rewriting history.

 

[Breton]

Bretons comments were interesting too:

“I suppose he could never consider that those Nazi skulls that he was so righteously smashing in pretend for a movie, but would have been ok if it were real, actually belonged to real human beings who were duped into following a pathocratic and ponerized system.”

But why would the actor be able to consider that, if he too, is a victim of Pathocracy?
...
So it would it not follow that Eli Roth, is also a Ponerized victim of Pathocracy?

I guess that was what was trying to point out in my post, but I did it in too indirect way I guess.The actor is part of a ponerized society.

I am supposing also then, that soldiers in general have also not identified their REAL enemy. That is because soldiers do not have enough knowledge, or else they have succumbed to the ponerization process in their society. "They had common enemy, ... the pathocracy."

Are any acts of extreme violence and terror toward other people excusable by claiming “they were duped” by Ponerisation? It is not how I understood Lobaczewsci, but I genuinely may have misunderstood something..

Excusing people who are duped into doing violence is not a good idea, and I don't think Lobaczewski implied that. However I was thinking that when one has the knowledge of ponerization then one does not need to be relishing smashing of their skulls like Roth does!

I would want to work towards spreading knowledge of the pathocracy and ponerization and therefore try to reduce the number of people who can be fooled in this way, such as vindictive actors like Roth and real soldiers in general.

Or so I would hope.

Cheers,
_Breton_