# Petty rants against well liked movies **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 5, 2009, 11:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/petty-rants-against-well-liked-movies/484550 "2009-02-05T11:16:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2009, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/petty-rants-against-well-liked-movies/484550/101 "2009-02-10T15:14:22Z")
> [@crowmanyclouds](#): > > If he really had balls he would have ended the film with Schindler’s breakdown ([the first three minutes here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvyZnOukZLg&feature=related)) and left us all asking why there are no Someothernamejuden, no Churchilljuden, no Stalinjuden, no Rooseveltjuden. Are you saying that I should have felt guilty about something? > [@crowmanyclouds](#): > > We didn’t need the feel-good scene with all the actors and the real people they portrayed placing stones on Schindler’s grave. That scene was the whole point of the movie. It was there to prove that the Holocaust _failed_. The Germans wanted to kill us all, and yet we survived. > [@crowmanyclouds](#): > > I look in the mirror and I want to see Oskar Schindler, but history makes it pretty clear, it’s more likely it’s Amon Göth that’s looking back at me. And when I look in the mirror, I see Stern. ---
**Author:** ![BlinkingDuck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/eada6e/32.png) [@BlinkingDuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlinkingDuck)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2009, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/petty-rants-against-well-liked-movies/484550/102 "2009-02-10T15:19:54Z")
> [@lissener](#): > > What bugged me most about Shrek is that, for all it’s about the insignificance of exterior appearances, the ugly guy still didn’t get a pretty girl: she had to be uglied down to his level before they could be together. I remember thinking of that at the time I saw it…that they better not have her be ugly or that would also shoot the premise of their own show. Sure enough… The real teaching of Shrek is “learn your place and stay there”. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2009, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/petty-rants-against-well-liked-movies/484550/103 "2009-02-10T15:37:40Z")
FWIW, I agree with **Lissener**. I also agree with Art Spiegelman, who’s position is that we should stop making art about the Holocaust. Why? Because we’ve churned out so much fiction that it’s eclipsed the reality. We are losing sight of what actually happened, and turned the Holocaust into a tidy little lesson about the good that hides in the midst of great evil (the ultimate moral of just about every Holocaust film.) We’ve developed a whole mythology of the Holocaust and a stable of one-dimensional stereotypes to populate it. And then we shove it into a traditional plot line- one where everything is about the actions of individuals and not systems, where all the loose ends get tied up, and where the world is eventually put back into order. And I don’t believe this is something that should be mythologized. This is something that needs to stay very, very real. ---
**Author:** ![Dob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b2d939/32.png) [@Dob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dob)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2009, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/petty-rants-against-well-liked-movies/484550/104 "2009-02-10T15:40:10Z")
The _Little Mermaid_ - Great score, etc… but, really. You let your 16yr old daughter marry the first boyfriend she has who happens to be a prince and human! I know the story was set in the “old” days, but come on… Is that a message you want your kids to get? - Toy Story \* - Loved the movie, but it always bugged me that Woody comes alive for the bully next door neighboor and uses all the mutilated toys to scare the shit out of him. I mean, that poor kid!! He is going to spend the rest of his life with panic attacks everytime he sees a toy! Isn’t stuff like this how serial killers are born?? ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2009, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/petty-rants-against-well-liked-movies/484550/105 "2009-02-10T15:44:38Z")
> [@Dob](#): > > The _Little Mermaid_ - Great score, etc… but, really. You let your 16yr old daughter marry the first boyfriend she has who happens to be a prince and human! I know the story was set in the “old” days, but come on… Is that a message you want your kids to get? I hated the Little Mermaid, not for that reason, but because it violated the spirit of the original. Which also would have meant marrying the prince if she’d been able to convince him to… ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2009, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/petty-rants-against-well-liked-movies/484550/106 "2009-02-10T15:48:43Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > FWIW, I agree with **Lissener**. I also agree with Art Spiegelman, who’s position is that we should stop making art about the Holocaust. But people have to make stories about things in order to remember them. We are hardwired to see the world in terms of narratives. Besides, history is eventually forgotten by everyone but the historians. Stories endure. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2009, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/petty-rants-against-well-liked-movies/484550/107 "2009-02-10T15:54:15Z")
> [@delphica](#): > > Good Will Hunting > And it’s also demeaning for a smart person to do manual labor. Because only stupid people do manual labor? He was a janitor by choice. Nobody forced him to take that job. In fact, a major point of conflict in the film is that others are pressuring him to do what they think smart people are supposed to do, and they’re wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Koxinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4af34b/32.png) [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2009, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/petty-rants-against-well-liked-movies/484550/108 "2009-02-10T16:05:02Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > But people have to make stories about things in order to remember them. We are hardwired to see the world in terms of narratives. > > Besides, history is eventually forgotten by everyone but the historians. Stories endure. To our great detriment as a civilization. Generations later people buy the stories and forget the reality, and the same evil shit happens again and again, each time made worse by dehumanizing technology. We forget that each of us (including you, Alessan) is a perfectly capable perpetuator of the [banality of evil](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banality_of_evil). Eichmann’s story doesn’t make for a good Spielberg flick, though–regardless of the fact that it was only through the Eichmanns that the Amon Göths were possible. We focus on the latter, since Göth is such a convenient archetypical monster, pat ourselves on the back for being nothing at all like that, and ignore utterly the real evil that we ourselves share. In short, Alessan, you seem to be championing the collective stupidity that’s the curse of our species. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2009, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/petty-rants-against-well-liked-movies/484550/109 "2009-02-10T16:13:41Z")
> [@lissener](#): > > If you’re serious here–although your tone is dismissive and sarcastic, so I suspect not–but if you are, I should point out that the reason \*SL \*is a denier’s Holocaust movie is precisely \*because \*“some Jews live.” The movie minimizes the Holocaust, and reduces it to about the level of “Well THAT’S not so bad” that deniers attempt to reduce the Holocaust to. But again, I’m sure you got that and were just being sarcastic. > > The real tragedy of \*SL \*is that it’s simply the horrific context of his actions that make Schindler seem heroic, when he was only heroic by default: he was merely decent. But in a vacuum of decency, one man’s simple, everyday decency \*plays \*like heroism. The most important part of the story of Oskar Schindler is NOT what he did, but the fact that no one else was doing it. That’s the horror of his story, and Spielberg relegates it to the background; uses it to deify Schindler, rather than directly condemning it as the real point of the story. > > YMMV–probably does, in fact; I’m aware of how critic-proof this movie is. I don’t expect to \*convince \*anyone to agree with me; I’m just trying to explain my own reaction to this movie. I must say, the notion that a movie portraying some Jews surviving the Holocaust is _anti-semitic_ for actually stating that some Jews survived is, well, bizzare. 😕 I do not think it reduces the horror and tragedy one bit to point out, quite truthfully, that some people survived it. Does this POV extend to all accounts by survivors? Are they all self-hating anti-semites, for allowing people to know that they lived? ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2009, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/petty-rants-against-well-liked-movies/484550/110 "2009-02-10T16:17:23Z")
I think that at the bottom of this debate are two very different ways at looking at the Holocaust. In a nutshell, most people take a “universal” approach to the Holocaust, and ask themselves “How can we prevent ourselves from doing this sort of thing again?” However, many Jews - such as myself and perhaps Spielberg - see the Shoah as a \*personal \*event. We study it not to understand the minds of the perpetrators, but rather those of the survivors - because we know it will happen again, and next time we want to be ready. You can’t prevent evil. You can only defeat it, or survive it. That’s what “Never again” means. It means, “That’s the last time we let you do that to us.” ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2009, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/petty-rants-against-well-liked-movies/484550/111 "2009-02-10T16:18:49Z")
> [@Koxinga](#): > > To our great detriment as a civilization. Generations later people buy the stories and forget the reality, and the same evil shit happens again and again, each time made worse by dehumanizing technology. We forget that each of us (including you, Alessan) is a perfectly capable perpetuator of the [banality of evil](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banality_of_evil). Eichmann’s story doesn’t make for a good Spielberg flick, though–regardless of the fact that it was only through the Eichmanns that the Amon Göths were possible. We focus on the latter, since Göth is such a convenient archetypical monster, pat ourselves on the back for being nothing at all like that, and ignore utterly the real evil that we ourselves share. In short, Alessan, you seem to be championing the collective stupidity that’s the curse of our species. There is no rational connection between telling a particular story about some specific person who was _not_ taken in by the herd approach to wrong-doing, and somehow perpetuating the “banality of evil”, let alone “championing the collective stupidity that’s the curse of our species”. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2009, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/petty-rants-against-well-liked-movies/484550/112 "2009-02-10T16:20:48Z")
> [@Dob](#): > > - Toy Story \* - Loved the movie, but it always bugged me that Woody comes alive for the bully next door neighboor and uses all the mutilated toys to scare the shit out of him. I mean, that poor kid!! He is going to spend the rest of his life with panic attacks everytime he sees a toy! Isn’t stuff like this how serial killers are born?? Do you really believe that kid wasn’t already pretty far down the serial killer pre-planning checklist already? ---
**Author:** ![Koxinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4af34b/32.png) [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2009, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/petty-rants-against-well-liked-movies/484550/113 "2009-02-10T16:27:59Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > However, many Jews - such as myself and perhaps Spielberg - see the Shoah as a \*personal \*event. We study it not to understand the minds of the perpetrators, but rather those of the survivors - because we know it will happen again, and next time we want to be ready. You can’t prevent evil. You can only defeat it, or survive it. Or perpetuate it. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2009, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/petty-rants-against-well-liked-movies/484550/114 "2009-02-10T16:29:47Z")
Are you saying that the Jews were in any way responsible for the Holocaust? ---
**Author:** ![Koxinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4af34b/32.png) [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2009, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/petty-rants-against-well-liked-movies/484550/115 "2009-02-10T16:37:15Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > Are you saying that the Jews were in any way responsible for the Holocaust? I’m saying that **human beings** are responsible for evil, both back then and and in the here and now, and this artificial construct of “us vs. them”–_they_ will never do that to _us_ again–puts you down just the same path to evil that individual human beings have always tended to follow. ---
**Author:** ![Jester](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jester/32/8223_2.png) [@Jester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jester)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2009, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/petty-rants-against-well-liked-movies/484550/116 "2009-02-10T16:44:00Z")
> [@Koxinga](#): > > To our great detriment as a civilization. Generations later people buy the stories and forget the reality, and the same evil shit happens again and again, each time made worse by dehumanizing technology. How is conveying parts of our history through a necessary narrative lens a “detriment?” Quick, tell me everything you know about the Rwandan Genocide that you didn’t learn from _Hotel Rwanda_. Now find ten people and have them do the same. Now ask somebody who wasn’t alive during those events to do the same. Now, using those facts, tell me exactly how to prevent such a thing from ever happening again. Now go further back. What do we learn about the Crusades from all the cold, hard facts? Or the bubonic plague? What does the timeline of the Industrial Revolution teach us about compassion for the poor that we don’t learn from _A Christmas Carol_? All we have is narrative, because all history is narrative, because that’s the stuff that we can learn from. And that is not a bad thing. Pretty soon, believe it or not, the Holocaust will be the same as those other events (it already is, to a degree). The complete scope of the Holocaust will fade into the past like these things always do, not because of technology but because it was four years out of millions and if we tried to grasp the true global implications of every terrible thing that’s ever happened our heads would explode before we even got to the dinosaurs going extinct. We couch things in narrative because that’s how we can access and learn from it. We connect to things on a personal levels, and stories let us do that. The tricky part is ensuring that the proper narratives are the ones that endure, so that we learn the right things. And when considering what Holocaust narratives deserve to endure, I think that _Schindler’s List_ is a pretty good one because it depicts the fact that even in the face of immeasurable evil it is possible to be a decent human being. Just like _Night_ teaches us that it’s possible to endure such evil and horror, and _Maus_ teaches of the dangers of personal prejudice, and etc. Together, they blend into a cohesive idea not of what the Holocaust was, but of what lessons should be taken out of it, and that’s infinitely more helpful to us as a species. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2009, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/petty-rants-against-well-liked-movies/484550/117 "2009-02-10T16:44:59Z")
> [@Koxinga](#): > > I’m saying that **human beings** are responsible for evil, both back then and and in the here and now, and this artificial construct of “us vs. them”–_they_ will never do that to _us_ again–puts you down just the same path to evil that individual human beings have always tended to follow. You’re like someone who walks up to a man who’s been beaten within an inch of his life and tells him that violence is bad. Thanks for the tip, dude. Tell me something I don’t know. ---
**Author:** ![Martiju](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e8c25b/32.png) [@Martiju](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martiju)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2009, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/petty-rants-against-well-liked-movies/484550/118 "2009-02-10T16:52:02Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > I also agree with Art Spiegelman, who’s position is that we should stop making art about the Holocaust. > > Why? Because we’ve churned out so much fiction that it’s eclipsed the reality. We are losing sight of what actually happened, and turned the Holocaust into a tidy little lesson about the good that hides in the midst of great evil (the ultimate moral of just about every Holocaust film.) We’ve developed a whole mythology of the Holocaust and a stable of one-dimensional stereotypes to populate it. And then we shove it into a traditional plot line- one where everything is about the actions of individuals and not systems, where all the loose ends get tied up, and where the world is eventually put back into order. > > And I don’t believe this is something that should be mythologized. This is something that needs to stay very, very real. And I’d say that keeping works on the Holocaust in the public domain is precisely what we need to do. ‘Never forget’ is an important message - not for the reasons \*\*Alessan \*\*says, but because we all have a responsibility to make sure that nothing like that happens again. It’s also an indictment of the human condition, given that we actually do allow such things, as long as they aren’t in the US or in Europe, but that’s another matter. Also, it’s been pointed out already, but bears repeating, that SL is based on a true story. Thomas Kineally acknowledges that there was necessarily some dramatic interpretation, but the main themes are as they happened. To that end, it’s incredibly important that this is portrayed in the film in as complete a way as possible, including the ending which emphasises the imperfections of man - a hero who’s an anti-hero! How often do you see that in Hollywood? Oh, and the girl in the red dress? Kineally used that as a metaphore throughout the book, so the comment on Wiki is really only relevant in terms of how it was portrayed in film (ie. the only colour in a B&W setting). ---
**Author:** ![aldiboronti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc348/32.png) [@aldiboronti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aldiboronti)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2009, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/petty-rants-against-well-liked-movies/484550/119 "2009-02-10T17:00:43Z")
**Close Encounters of the Third Kind** I can remember being awed by this movie when it first came out. I tried to watch it again recently and found it really difficult to sit through. Juvenile drivel is the phrase that springs to mind, it’s almost embarrassing to watch it now remembering how good I thought it was all those years ago. And those aliens! They just look so damn silly now. ---
**Author:** ![Koxinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4af34b/32.png) [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2009, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/petty-rants-against-well-liked-movies/484550/120 "2009-02-10T17:03:22Z")
> [@Jester](#): > > How is conveying parts of our history through a necessary narrative lens a “detriment?” The detriment comes in the form of the choice of lenses. Narrative doesn’t _have_ to resort to simplifying, easy-to-digest archetypes. Art is perfectly capable of conveying complexity and challenging us with hard questions about our own souls. But when a true historical enormity is used as grist for _popular entertainment_ – don’t pretend Spielberg is in any other business but that – then naturally art falls into the old storytelling ruts that don’t tell us anything new at all. > [@Martiju](#): > > Also, it’s been pointed out already, but bears repeating, that SL is based on a true story. Thomas Kineally acknowledges that there was necessarily some dramatic interpretation, but the main themes are as they happened. To that end, it’s incredibly important that this is portrayed in the film in as complete a way as possible, including the ending which emphasises the imperfections of man - a hero who’s an anti-hero! How often do you see that in Hollywood? I don’t disagree, but the thing is, I think we have to acknowledge that it _isn’t_ portrayed in anything like a complete fashion, in the context of six **million** people deliberately murdered. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/petty-rants-against-well-liked-movies/484550.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/petty-rants-against-well-liked-movies/484550.md?page=7)