Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Jews
Rick asked a question that I think deserves its own post: What is the meaning of Meadows' "Heil Hitler" as he shoots the cop? I don't have an answer for that. I thought he might be implying that the cop is anti-Semitic and that the "Heil Hitler" is ironic, but I can't really make a case for that. I think the question deserves its own post because the statement is made in a broader context of Jewish issues in the film, and it is made amid a sort of holocaust at the hotel. Barton is Jewish, as are many of the power brokers in Hollywood. Lipnick is Jewish but doesn't like to talk about his past; he refers to himself as a mean "kike" when talking to Barton. One of the cops — the one Meadows talks to? — is named Deutsch (the other has an Italian name — both Axis countries).The cops taunt Barton for being Jewish ("Fink. Is that Jewish?") by saying of course that dump of a hotel would not be "restricted." Is the Jewish stuff just background — Hollywood verisimilitude — or does it have a deeper meaning? The movie is supposed to take place in 1941, so I don't think there would have been much awareness yet what exactly Hitler was up to with the Jews, would there?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
The movie takes place at the end of 1941. By then Churchill had made statements about mass killings. And there had been reports about deportations and massacres. But anybody who had read the papers and followed the Nazi rise over the prior decade would have been aware that the Nazis inflicted violence on the Jews; the only issue would be awareness of the scale and organization of the assault. I don’t know how well known these were in the U.S. at the time. The U.S. government took little interest, and I don’t know how much independent reporting was done. Perhaps places like Hollywood that had some wealthy Jews in positions of power in the industry might have been better informed.
Lipnick also refers to Fink’s work as “fruity” and the cops ask Fink if he had some “sick sex thing” with Meadows. When Fink says that they wrestled, the cops take that for a yes. Besides Jews, Hollywood also had gays. This could just be “Hollywood verisimilitude”, but it seems more deeply embedded in the film than that.
Maybe wealthy Jews in Hollywood prompted that kind of attitude from the working-man cops.
I like the idea that they are anti-Semitic cops and that he is being ironic.
Post a Comment