A Cottage Industry of Funny Führer Films
At 9:00, I met my buddy, Irving, at Starbucks.
The subtle scent of coffee beans filled the air.
“Mort, we’re two lucky ducks. Look the two comfy chairs are empty.”
Irv rushed toward the seats, quickly sat down and pitched his baseball cap on the other seat.
I ordered the coffees.
We sat, we sipped, and we schmoozed.
“Irv, last night on Netflix, I watched a 2007 German film, “Mein Führer—The Really Truest Truth about Adolf Hitler.”
“Any good?” Irv asked as he glanced at the barista whipping up a Caramel Macchiato.
“Not really,—but it had a few interesting scenes and a few funny scenes.
Ironically, after the film is over, as the credits are rolling, the director asks several 7- or 8-years-old German children, ‘Who is Adolf Hitler?’
All of them responded, ‘I don’t know.'”
“Pretty scary,” Irv replied.
“But there’s a really funny scene where Adolf, wearing dirty woolen long johns, mounts Ava Braun and tries to enter her garden.
Hitler fails.
The dialogue is hilarious.
Watching Ava’s face during this ordeal is a real roar.
I never thought I’d see a German movie where Hitler tries to ride his girlfriend and fails to consummate the act.”
In disgust, Irv jumped in, “What’s next—Hitler masturbating to camp photos?
A constipated Hitler sitting on the bowl, screaming out the names of Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin?
A Funny Führer International Film Festival.
When will these film directors realize Hitler’s not funny. The Holocaust is not funny. Six million dead Jews—not funny!”
They’re a bunch of stooges.”
I paused to let Irv stop trembling and catch his breath.
“Well, Irv, as a kid growing up in the Catskills, on my old black and white TV, I watched two 1940 comedies concerning Adolf Hitler—“The Great Dictator,” starring Charlie Chaplin and “You Nazty Spy“, starring Moe, Larry and Curly.
I laughed my head off as those films made fun of Adolf.
Those movies were my Xanax, my mental health medicine.
Combating my anxiety, combating my paranoia that another anti-Semitic boogieman hid under the frame of my bed.”
“But those old comedies didn’t cross the line.
Hitler was alive and people needed to make fun of him.
It was war-time propaganda”
“Irv, I not sure, but I think people still need to make fun of him.
As a kid, I wondered, ‘Would there ever be a cottage industry of funny Führer films?’
Well it took 60 years for my question to be answered.
But in the 21st Century, three Hitler comedies appeared on the silver screen—“Mein Führer the Truly Truest Truth about Adolf Hitler”, “Jojo Rabbit” and “Look Who’s Back.”
Three films that mock and ridicule the memory of Hitler.
Three films that make Hitler a laughingstock.
Even German audiences laugh at the Führer and not with him.
“Irv, did Hannah Arendt ever say, ‘That before something can turn banal, it must be beaten into a pulp of trivialities?'”
Well, today, Hitler is that pulp.
And that’s also pretty scary.
In an effort to be creative, script writers have decided that the man who murdered millions needs to be made into a joke as he was in 1940.
Those script writers know “All things can be used for good or evil.”
German children not knowing who Hitler is—that’s evil.
Laughing at the Führer trying to shtup, that’s not evil.
Well, for as long as script writers, directors and producers are making films about Hitler, people will never forget who he was, what he did and what he stood for.
We walked out of Starbucks, Irv waved and said, “Buddy, see you next week. I love our conversations.”