Riefenstahl Madness

The American Spectator ^ | 03-02-04 | Ben Stein

[veronica]

BEVERLY HILLS -- You really get a great idea of just how sickening Hollywood can be at its worst at The Oscars. The combination of decadence and immoral pretension would make Goering blush.

My favorite this year was recognizing Gregory Peck as a righteous fighter against racial injustice -- when he actually just played one in front of a camera in Hollywood, where there was no risk to him at all (although he was a great actor and a fine man). There is a lot of confusion there. But the real stunner came right afterwards when the Motion Picture Academy had a brief memorial to Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler's favorite film maker, maker of the most vicious racist propaganda for Der Führer, including Triumph of the Will, the ultimate Nazi apologia, an ardent Nazi, and an unrepentant fan of Hitler until the end.

How can this recognition of Leni Riefenstahl be squared with the Academy's supposed attachment to racial justice, à la Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird?

(1) Pure stupidity, which cannot be overestimated here at any time.

(2) A wicked desire to épater les bourgeois -- who are thoroughly hated by the $20-million-a-picture artistes here in Hollywood.

(3) A similar desire just to spit in the face of normal sentiments of moral decency.

The confusion is compounded by the fact that many, if not most, of the personalities on display at the Oscars are Jewish, at least by birth if not by practice. How could the Academy have possibly thought that they could memorialize Leni Riefenstahl in front of such a group? Again, the need to épater les hands that feed them is insatiable.

It is very much of a piece: the evening's bitter criticism of Bush, who liberated an entire nation from a mass murderer, and then an apologist for another mass murderer getting applauded by men and women dripping with diamonds and pearls. A similar perverse longing for evil touches both parts of the evening.

With enemies like this, Bush hardly needs friends -- and what a crew to represent America to the world.

[veronica]

FYI.

[marty60]

I know, I couldn't believe it. There they were applauding Hitler's whore.

[Just mythoughts]

These leftists keep shooting themselves in the foot.

The ADL needs to apologize for their lying accusations.

[hellinahandcart]

Remind me never to piss off Ben Stein. Wow!

[Seth1]

I guess the lesson is...if you are going to be a tyrant, do it tastefully.

[Bahbah]

Ben Stein is a national treasure.

[Rubber_Duckie_27]

I watched "Triumph of the Will" in a German Film course in college, as well as the documentary "The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Reifenstahl." Riefenstahl was a brilliant filmographer and propagandist, but an ardent supporter of Hitler right to the bitter end.

[Consort]

....and we keep paying rewarding them for doing it.

[Ham Hock]

Really good observations, he really epatared me (but in the good sense). :-)

[carton253]

Five will get you ten that most of those sitting in the audience didn't even know who she was... they applauded because there was a blinking light telling them to clap.

[Romulus]

How can this recognition of Leni Riefenstahl be squared with the Academy's supposed attachment to racial justice,...

Perhaps to underscore next year's snub of Mel Gibson and The Passion. Anyone who's less presentable than a propagandist for a mass murderer must be a very bad man indeed.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

what a crew to represent America to the world.

You always have to read between the lines.

If you read about human rights abuses in the American press, your first reaction of sympathy for the victims must be tempered by the realization that the victims' story is being told--which is what does not happen to the stories of victims of repression in ruthless regimes. IOW, if the story is told at all, it is probably told fulsomely if indeed it is not a complete fabrication. The fact that the story is told tells us at least as much about freedom of the press as it does about the actual abuse.

And that goes double for self-congratulatory retrospectives on the virtue of the powerful in the media.

[Sloth]

True... nobody is more sheep-like than your average Hollywood actor. They spend their entire careers saying words other people wrote for them, and trying to pretend that it's somehow meaningful, even though they don't really understand any of it...

[veronica]

Jodie Foster has been trying to get a movie about Riefenstahl off the ground for years. I doubt it will happen, but you never know with this crowd. Radical chic, Nazi-filmmaker chic, all manner of "chic."

[Bahbah]

I think that you are probably right.

[CholeraJoe]

Agreed.

[veronica]

They knew who she was. Admittedly the clip came in the middle of a lot clips of Hollywood people who "left us" last year. I thought the clapping kind of died out after a few seconds and people realized what they were seeing. But the point is that whoever put the segment together thought it was fine and dandy to recognize Riefenstahl. Everything for "art", you know.

[1rudeboy]

Riefenstahl, according to the Academy, is ok but Kazan (?) is a pariah.

[veronica]

Riefenstahl, according to the Academy, is ok but Kazan (?) is a pariah.

HA! Touche! That says it all.