Thanks again, pomocon commenters–I benefitted from a fine thread below, learning about a whole slew of films about communism. Of course, one of the questions asked was, why haven’t there been more films about communism? In particular, why have there not been more Hollywood, or-otherwise-well-backed movies about it? Why so few in comparison to those about Nazism/fascism? Now again, spy-movies don’t count, and what we’re really after is movies that show what the communist regimes and/or the societies they produced were like.
One answer is to say that, while there have been tons of films where the Nazis serve as stock-villains, and lots of films on the Holocaust, we seldom ever get ones showing us the Nazi or fascist experience outside of that.
What do folks say to that proposition? What are the films that show us the Nazi or Mussolini regimes without zeroing in, thematically or even in terms of screen-time, on the persecution and mass-murder of Jews (or other hated classes)? There’s no denying that the genocide was integral to the Nazi regime, but there’s more to understanding it than that. If we had lots of prominent films about communism, but 95% were primarily about the prison-camps, my observation would be similar.
Another answer, that one hesitates to suggest given the unhealthy way some folks will latch onto it, is that the prominence and prevalence of Jews in Hollywood explains the imbalance in film treatments of the crimes of Nazism v. those of communism.
But that last factor, albeit a real one, has to be combined with and watered-down by two others: 1) in the 1945-1989 Western democracies, while nearly all viable political factions could heartily agree to condemn the Nazi crimes (whose fullness was uncovered by Hitler’s defeat), they could not so agree about the very reality, nor the propriety of denouncing, the communist ones. So the Nazis became used as both the perfect stock villains for less-serious dramas and action-flicks, and the ideal representatives of totalitarian inhumanity for more serious efforts. Attempts to do either with communists likely would receive resistance for being “controversial.”
And that factor is joined at the hip with 2) the one convincingly supplied by this fine 2001 Reason article “Hollywood’s Missing Movies” by Kenneth Lloyd Billingsley, which commenter MPB hipped us to: the Hollywood pattern of avoiding treatments of communist crimes was set by real communist conspiracies at work in Tinsel-town, especially among the screen-writers and the script-evaluators. Projects to do works like Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon, a must-read novel that fully exposes the connection of Marxist philosophy to crimes against humanity, were killed in the womb. By Hollywood commies.
But as Billingsley seems to ask, what possibly has been Hollywood’s excuse since 1974, or 1991, by which time the bankruptcy of communism and the extent of its crimes had become undeniable, and much more easily documented? And by when whatever pressure or influence the organized communists actually had had in 30s-50s Hollywood had presumably become minimal? There are hundreds upon hundreds of dramatic true stories, from dozens of nations around the globe, from 72 years of history as opposed to 12, waiting to be cinematically told, to say nothing of the possible true-to-life dramas waiting to be written, such as the Von Donnersmarck script for The Lives of Others.
But instead, what we might call our collective cinematic historical consciousness of communism, has been left quite underdeveloped, and to a great extent this has been, bit-by-aborted-bit, deliberate. And even when this omission has been more the result of an unconscious ignorance or bias, it has been a gross injustice to the memory of the hundred-million who were killed, and of the thousands of millions whose lives were deformed and enslaved. By communists.
I am no expert on Hollywood’s overall political history nor the on the much-debated subject of the communist and anti-communist activity there from the 30s through the 60s. I welcome documented factual correction of anything I have said, or that Billingsley says in that article.
But I do know this: it is an ongoing crime, with no repentance in sight.
June 25th, 2012 | 12:12 pm
One of the main pillars of Hollywood’s politics and indeed its self-image myth is that anti-communism is Bad, and that Hollywood was the victim of this Badness in its most primal form of McCarthyism, which is surely the most awful, terrible, horrible, no-good thing to ever happen in the history of the world. Now, if communism is shown and accepted to be Bad, then McCarthy may have something to be said in his defense, and his poor, oppressed victims might be something else entirely. So why on Earth would Hollywood even think about going there?
June 25th, 2012 | 12:53 pm
I think Stalin’s responsible for systematically murdering something like ten to fifteen times as many people as Hitler. So why such few commie movies, other than the ones that portray that perversity in a good light? Two point here then:
1. The strong Jewish-Democrat/socialist/communist presence in the movie industry and its financial connections to the Democratic Party. And,
2. The Soviet Union was our ally during the war.
Tail-Gunner Joe’s inquiries upset things for a time, back in the day when the nation actually tried to defend itself against pernicious ideologies. I think Joe chased Barry’s commie father to Hawaii. Those were the good, old days.
June 25th, 2012 | 1:43 pm
Brian, that’s a more cynical view than mine. And both of us have to remember that “Hollywood” is not monolithic, although using the simplification is inevitable.
As far as I’m concerned, it’s one level of moral issue if Hollywood keeps making movies celebrating the likes of Edward R. Murrow and bashing the Iraq war. Fine, reasonable people can disagree about Iraq and about the proper response to and retrospective judgment of McCarthy’s irresponsibility. Or, even if they can’t so reasonably disagree, I fail to see how the messed-up careers of however many Hollywood leftists (or conservatives) compares to 100 million murders.
It’s another whole level of moral failure when we look back and see that THE top story of the 20th century, and at least in quantifiable terms, the worst crime against humanity ever, has been systematically avoided by Hollywood.
Of course the anti-conservative-bias and the communism-avoidance issues in Hollywood are linked, but I would be a lot more forgiving of the former if at least some effort to make amends for the latter were forthcoming.
It’s 2012, for God’s sake, and they still won’t tell it?
June 25th, 2012 | 2:02 pm
Perhaps Italian films depict life during/under fascism in a different light than the way Nazis ordinarily are presented, but this is not Hollywood, and Italy is not Germany, e.g., Amarcord (Fellini), Salo (Pasolini), Il Conformista (Bertolucci).
June 25th, 2012 | 11:21 pm
Not much of a market for that, blame capitalism:)
I am actually somewhat suprised by the size of the market for such movies. That list of movies about communism was impressive. PoMoCon readers are sophisticated when it comes to the topic(thus I suspect not representative of true demand).
On the other hand it is not really our history. Why isn’t capitalism right? That is why isn’t the american taste for spy movies preferable?
The top story of the 20th century isn’t ours. As annoying as you might think it is as cinema, the breakfast club is closer.
How would I even know, if Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon, is “a must-read novel that fully exposes the connection of Marxist philosophy to crimes against humanity.”
It really is an unverifiable claim. In addition after serious observation of the specimen, I have decided that for the most part philosophers dwell in libraries, and that the truths that they understand never reach into the popular culture as far as they imagine.
So I think the claims against Marxist philosophy are really a false lure, intended to make serious academics out of young innocent boys, condemning them to a life of serious study, with the promise that maybe someday they will be blamed by “Hollywood” as their fellow bookish creature Karl Marx was.
In point of fact, I think Marxism is really a sort of clever story about an american libertarian boy trapped by a stuffy Prussian system, which did not believe as Jefferson did about the freedom of the press. Swearing, drinking and riding mules, somehow he is trapped by Greek philosophy (damn those greeks they ruin everything), and forced into articulating and rationalizing his adolescent experiences in fancy academic talk involving Democritus and Epicurus (to continue the academic ponzi scheme of attributing our vices or virtues to long dead people who can not defend themselves adequately, a clear violation of the american rules of evidence against hersay.) So then Marx studied some more and drank some more and bullshited about Hegel. But he got pretty lonely, so he doubled down on studying. He even bothered writing back to express his overall indifference on the question of whether or not philosophy was impovrished or impovrishment was philosophy, but there is considerable irony here for those who can read it. Then he started studying with the Chartalists who actually more or less pre-dated the glory of Keynes, so in terms of proximate cause it is pretty complicated… He then made a donation of his inheritance to support Belgian workers at which point he was accused of planning revolutionary action, and had to flee (all this of course takes place in nations with un-american concepts about freedom of speech and workers rights.)
He then grew a beard and had four children, which probably makes him Amish, except he wrote for the New York Tribune, and more or less tried to avoid getting a real job while living in the London Library studying economics, living by using his mind to praise those who sacrificed the life of the mind (which he either valued or fooled himself into valueing) to physical drudgery. The natural fit for such a life was working to represent labor unions, and for the most part he used all his energy comming up with arguments for how workers were undervalued, and under-appreciated.
In fact what claim did the Russians have to the wisdom of Marx?
How much time did Lenin spend in the London Library? Didn’t Lenin simply apply the same sort of high handed censorship that Prussian society placed upon Marx amplified thousands of times over?
The true story of Marx is that you cannot learn what you do not earn, and in truth a huge amount of folks in Hollywood are quasi-authentic Marxists, except for the most part they have escaped from Marx’s bondage to the library and turned to the worship the sun, as the beach boys (and Anton) teach us all true Californians are won’t to do. The labor lawyer in Detroit is probably closer to Marx… But everyone in Hollywood is to some extent involved in fancy labor law, involving questions of commodification of culture, and the economic value of copyright, and trademark (So in a legal sense, monolithic Hollywood, can stand for monolithic 9th circuit, or monolithic valuations of Trademark and Copyright.) In other words when negotiating for pay a lot of what is Marxist is more or less an attempt to negotiate the impact of individual greatness upon the surplus value of the thing produced.
Putting a value on copyright or trademark is a lot more complicated than Marxism (it is sophisticated mathmatics), but a good chunk of the folks who do intellectual property valuation are marxist if they understood what they are doing, i.e. “Good will accounting”, “Social Surplus”.
In fact when you measure the difference between the imputs for a Frappucino, to include all the commodities used in production and all the labor costs, and you get say $1.31 and the price for a Venti is $4.59, according to Marx this $3.28 is “surplus value of exploitation” and according to the biggest puffers of Trademark this is “Trademark” value.
If you are Hollywood and you have done a product placement, the movie studio argues/negotiates with the corporation over the value of this goodwill, or the pricing power added by the commodity fetishism. To take a concrete example say NetFlix negotiating with AMC for MadMen, over the 1 million viewers added. In every case there is a question of valuation surrounding intellectual property, and the Marxist argument is always in favor in the producer or actor’s association with the production of value, complete with crocodile tears about alienation from the material work (if you want to get all Berne Convention, “Moral Rights”, Jane Radin French philosophe about it).
In point of fact, all this preocupation with the intellectual property or trademark value of say a Jefferson (presidential greatness), or in the case of Brian “McCarthyism” is absolutely ludicrous. It is sort of Marxist, or rather a sort of immitation Sartre, a la Che Guevara T-shirt (which itself is involved in a copyright dispute).
In my opinion the greatest american myth lies in trademark(Or American Exceptionalism?), in the idea of commodity fetishism, that you can buy Jordan’s and “be like Mike” $7 in China and $173 in Trademark or “surplus value of exploitation” take your pick.
That you can just read Marx and be Marxist! You cannot be these people, nor can you gain access to what they think, without putting in the work. This is part of the reason we have an educational bubble in fact.
In any case, it is clear to me that if you understood Marx you wouldn’t say rediculous things like Hollywood has systematically neglected the top story of the 20th Century. How the hell is Hollywood supposed to sell product tie ins to a movie about Lenin, without being sued under the Lanham act? (do you not understand that the economic phenomena of Marx is not only developed and actual, but that the British+Americans actually legally recognized a portion of it as steeming from a tort, i.e. defamation, false light?) That is proveable reputational damages are just as much Jane Austen(individuals, defamation) as they are Karl Marx(corporations, trademark dilution). In this case public association with something deemed bad(for the bourgeois), which impacts the ability to price labor (for marriage in the case of Austen.)
I digress, do you know how many good product tie ins are in a spy movie? (ever hear of James Bond?)
Appart from a Sartreian prank(which it most certainly was), explain to me how Lenin’s ugly mug butchering 100 million people going to sell shoes so to speak?
Now maybe some unalienated artist with a desire to remmedy this crime against Humanity’s Historical conscious might come along. But how the hell is he supposed to make this movie?
If you have the vision Carl, make it yourself, the answer is that Marx and Anderson (functionally equivalent for all I care) are more correct than you think.
June 26th, 2012 | 1:30 am
Honestly, if one has to preface a statement with “one hesitates to suggest,” one should probably listen strongly to that hesitation. To even suggest that “Jewish Hollywood” sought to emphasize the horrors of Nazism over Communism because of its Jewishness or its “leftishness,” and then to somehow posit that this is a problem that must be to addressed or understood says so much more about contemporary American conservative politics and its obsessions than it does about Jews, Nazis, Communists or Hollywood films.
Moreover, to end a post with “I’m not an expert” on pretty much everything just written, but then dare others to factually contradict the author, shifts the weight of argument to those others rather than doing the hard work of making the argument oneself. Sadly, this is another common trope among American conservatives these days; make an outrageous and unsubstantiated claim, and then challenge others to contradict it while holding them to a higher standard of proof that what one initially offered.
Lastly, as a scholar and student of both the Holocaust and the mass murders of the Soviet regime, I would argue that numbers of dead or left-right politics do not explain this difference in American films about Nazism and Communism. The solution is rather than simple: Communist camps and executions, famines and murders were sadly an all too familiar set of politically motivated crimes. Horrendous, yes; worthy of documentation and remembrance, certainly. And they have been. Anyone who has read Solzhenitsyn or the memoirs of those who survived the Cultural Revolution could hardly argue otherwise.
Yet the Nazi crimes were and remain wholly other, racially and ideologically motivated in a manner like no other in history. Among mass murders and genocides, the Holocaust and its Nazi perpetrators remain unique, singular, horrific on any scale. From an international war launched in significant part to capture and eradicate en entire people, to the level of technological sophistication, detailed record keeping and dedicated resources committed to the task, to sheer unremitting hatred and obsessive dedication to the completion of the Final Solution, these stories are overwhelmingly compelling and demanding of repeated re-telling in ways that no other set of events do.
Why there are more films about Nazis and the Holocaust is not because filmmakers’ religion or ideology made them look in one direction and away from another, but because there is nothing in human history as hubristic and audacious, as malevolently evil, and as unrelentingly horrific as these events. The material and the memory itself are the answer, not some made-up liberal, Jewish, leftist Hollywood conspiracy.
June 26th, 2012 | 8:08 am
“because there is nothing in human history as hubristic and audacious, as malevolently evil, and as unrelentingly horrific as these events.”
Hmm. History’s got some pretty “malevolently evil” tales to tell. Heck, in Ukraine in the 1930s the Soviets murdered a vast number of Ukrainians with bullets to the head at close range. It’s almost unfathomable to think how they possibly pulled it off. Cambodia in the 1970s was no picnic, either.
June 26th, 2012 | 11:22 am
Because the communists seem more “sporting” in their ire by consciously directing their wrath against generalized “ruling classes” where nazis not only were capable of stomping on helpless folk, they made that perfectly clear. It required only a little thought-twisting to think either that the Communist’s victims deserved it(some were to be honest, oppressive, just like some of the Nazi’s victims for that matter), or that they could take care of themselves. The fact that class-warfare, like race-warfare is necessarily demonizing people for circumstances out of their control is not thought about as much.
June 26th, 2012 | 12:42 pm
Douglas J. Cremer, you aren’t fair to my efforts to handle a delicate subject. You read into my post positions I have taken deliberate care to distance myself from. And you say they are “common” to conservatives.
Shame on you.
Can anyone deny that the prevalence of Jews in Hollywood likely has had some impact on the disparity I’m talking about? No. Common-sense does not allow that. To what degree? Likely impossible to quantify in any meaningful way.
I had no desire to mention this other than to preempt others from doing so, and then saying I neglect THE key cause. I do not say how much impact, I never use or imply the word “conspiracy,” and take care to emphasize the other two or three factors. The phrase “Jewish Hollywood” is yours, not mine.
So again, shame on you.
And no, I will not argue further with you about this; you have shown an inclination to judge in advance without charity.
Do you ask for clarification about my views?
You do not.
Do you at any point in your comment explore the possibility of whether my words, which you evidently took one way, might be interpreted in another way?
You do not.
Shame on you.
June 26th, 2012 | 1:38 pm
The ugly suspicion of Douglas J. Cremer forces me to spell out what should be obvious: it is wrong, factually and morally, to think that the key to whatever biases “Hollywood” has, are due the prevalence of Jews in Hollywood.
Enough on that. But you can notice that once Cremer gets beyond smearing me, and listing his creds as a Holocaust expert and his familiarity with Solzhenitsyn’s works, he does have an argument that is worth considering:
A) “Communist camps and executions, famines and murders were sadly an all too familiar set of politically motivated crimes. ”
B) “the Nazi crimes were and remain wholly other, racially and ideologically motivated in a manner like no other in history.”
Therefore,
C) The Nazi crimes are simply more compelling dramatically, and more morally abhorrent, than the communist ones, even if those did kill more people.
and,
D) this is why there have been far more Hollywood treatments of them,
and
E) no other factors, particularly the leftist slant of Hollywood that my post emphasized, need be taken into account to explain this.
Well, he’s very, very wrong about A). The communist slaughters and oppressions were truly unprecedented. He has not read his Solzhenitsyn with adequate care. Those unforgettable sections where Tsarist prison measures and statistics were compared with the communist ones, for example–Cremer seems to have forgotten about them. No responsible social scientist should say that the communist regimes were and are just a slightly different, albeit numerically more bloody, brand of the sort of political tyranny we’ve seen throughout history.
However, he might still be right about B).
The best book on the touchy subject of comparing these two sets of crimes against humanity, Alain Besancon’s A Century of Horrors: Communism, Nazism, and the Uniquenes of the Shoah frames the question this way:
“To what degree, in the context of the century’s tremendous slaughter, must it (The Shoah, i.e. the Holocaust) be considered distinct? Can one consider it as just one tomb among others within the general cemetery? And if not, why not?”
The book is short and a terrific read, so I won’t tell you how Besancon answers this, but do note that this most serious scholar of the comparisons we’re concerned with here considers it a question of real merit. (He also entertains the idea that communist regimes might have been more morally corrupting than the Nazi one.) So Cremer might be right about B), and perhaps even C) and D).
His other conclusion E), however, is just silly on the face of it. But it is in fact what he assumes.
I will be happy here to hear from folks who want to discuss these pieces of his argument, or to defend them outright. Short of a fulsome apology, however, I will not respond to anything from Cremer.
My advice to one and all is to read Besancon: he shows you how to compare the totalitarian tyrannies and crimes of the 20th-century.
June 26th, 2012 | 2:53 pm
Boy, this is a good thread.
Dr. Cremer’s hubris added a measure of sauce and spice seldom visited upon we gentle folk.
Thank you.
Carl’s rebuttal was just fine but I continue to think that my Jewish friends carry more weight in Hollywood then Carl says.
I do think Scott carried the day, however, in suggesting the pedantic Mr. Cremer re-read his Solzhenitsyn and in considering the shear number of human beings Stalin slaughtered (of course that wanker Mao beat them all,
combined).
Another point Cremer may want to consider in his ‘the Nazi slaughter of Jews-(the other)-added a certain element of …’ is that pogroms against Jews had been going on in Europe (Russia) for several hundred years, reaching denouement with either the Nazi’s or the Muslims, depending on how history turns out.
Any analysis of how this fits into the tension of existence (post Golgotha Event) and gives credence to the ‘saving tale’. Sadly the corrupt and gnostic ideologists of our era have become a force in the world. And, in their camps we have witnessed their profligate licentiousness.
June 26th, 2012 | 10:38 pm
I believe Mr.Lewis to have a point that, as third-parties, and not the stars of the drama, Hollywood might have a tough time marketing films about various communist afflictions and maladies, especially in the post-Cold War period…And after all there are some decent “spy” films and other such fare that make use of the Cold War battle pretty well, and of course some excellent films (even if the premise is disagreeable) about the blacklist and the homeland’s response to communism. Furthermore, there is a stock “Soviet” character that was built as an antagonistic foil that was well-used on tv. So America’s relation to communism is kinda-sorta covered.
But what Hollywood has to account for is why the majority of Soviet-US films go to great length to always equivocate the two superpowers. An excellent example of this is the fourth installment of the pulpy Indiana Jones series and how they treated their Soviet caricature compared to their treatment of the Nazi caricature.
Indiana Jones is a vicarious adventure series where Spielburg/Lucas attempted to capture the fantasy American man’s “Man.” And you could probably say they succeeded:
He’s intelligent, charming, clever, handsome, has lots of money, has a high prestige job, travels the world adventuring, finds cool objects; always gets the girl, gets to harm others with impunity, is wary of authority but sorta respectful of cultural religious objects and it pisses him off if anyone tries to claim possession of these things. He’s a true individual, tolerant of others, who defends the meek from totalitarians and bullies who conflict with his moral code.
And this shows in the first three movies where he has no qualms running Nazis over with tanks or sending Indian thugs to their death by cutting the bridge they were on….
…but we get to the Soviets and what? The film, after a chase scene and nuke-the-fridge moment, gives us an interrogation scene of Indy where the rotten Feds accuse this male fantasy figure of being a Commie because he isn’t toeing the government line and they won’t accept that he has “medals” for his war service because they’re…bullies trying to control people’s thoughts and actions?
His wartime buddy Mac turns out to be a triple agent vitiated by his greed, who in the tradition of most Indiana Jones antagonists considers any association as a pragmatic decision. Yet, he is not portrayed like Belloq (from Raiders) who is clearly painted as the bizarro-Indy, so it’s only natural he’d get involved with the Nazis ; nor is he like Elsa, who he shames for her weak decision to use the Nazi support to further her agenda [her whole character is an anti-Indy in that she hasn't the strength to be an individual] or Walter Donovan whose greed and quest for immortality make him a truly amoral and irredeemable villain which is just the type of man a Nazi should be. Yet, Spielberg took great pains to portray Mac as a conflicted and tragic figure beholden to his vices whose association with the Soviets was equivalent to his involvement with the US government, for both sides were filled with Macs as they fought for the same goal…which is where the Russian villainess of Cate Blanchett comes in. The character of Irina Spalko caused the present day-Russian Communist party to request the movie be banned from premiering in Russia when it was released; but her portrayal is hardly an indictment of Russian villainy when compared to Mola Ram or the various Nazis of Col. Dietrich, Col. Vogel and the very memorable Gestapo agent Arnold Ernst Toht.
What does Toht have that Irina doesn’t? A real mustache-curling malice to him. He enjoys torture; he’s slimy and gross; he’s obsessive about keeping the Third Reich’s Orders by using the occult. Irina pays lips service to some of this: she’s obsessive about the occult and using the crystal skulls to control the whole population; none of the other things really apply to her. She kidnaps people to advance her goals, but she doesn’t torture and dominate them; she is sorta noble and is to be respected as a challenger in the adventure; she is a cold and calculating stock-Russian yet she is not particularly ruthless. While, unlike the Nazi villains who did everything in the name of the Furher, Stalin (in a film set in the early 1950s’) is not even an afterthought. Which only makes sense since, as the interrogation scene between her and Indy points out, her goals and means of achieving them are no different than the American Feds from the beginning of the film. She’s just an eccentric version of our guys! Indy (and the audience vicariously living through Indy) can’t “hate” her like he hates the Nazis because the film establishes that the American Indy’s government is just the same and probably just as bad. As far as Spielberg and Lucas are concerned, Good ol’Joe Stalin is just Truman and Einsenhower with a bad mustache.
So in a pulpy action adventure homage to B-movies where the characters are fun, if offensive, two-dimensional tropes; we don’t get Indy versus child slave-owning Indians or Indy punching out Nazis, we get…Indy trying to avoid twin bureaucracies wishing to control the people.
Even Indiana Jones has to be an anti-anti-communist in Hollywood.
So is that the best Hollywood can do, even as an “outsider” to the brunt of the Soviet (or Cuban or Vietnamese or Chinese…) pains inflicted a millions of people for almost a century?
I don’t think it would be a stretch to say that those former communists in Hollywood never fell out of favor in the same way they did on the rest of the globe.
June 27th, 2012 | 9:52 am
To be fair MPB, the Worthy Opponent character is not unknown on the Nazi side in movies. Usually those are not so much Nazis as German professional soldiers or professional spies of the sort that every society would have in it’s pay and whose vocation has legitimate ends of defending the citizens of a given polity.
June 27th, 2012 | 10:43 pm
It may be as simple as a supply-side problem. Don’t assume movies are the default mode of expression, even if they became the most prominent. All countries produce all kinds of great art, but let’s stick with stereotypes. Soviet satellites had animation and theater, Russia had literature and music, China had poetry and visual art. Central Europe had movies. Those in exile and those most desperate to fictionalize their plight may just fall into their geographical default. Hence, Nazism trumped communism at the movies.
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