The Stasi: Hollywood’s Best Kept Little Secret
28th September 2011
We are blessed to have many poignant movies about the Nazis and the atrocities committed in concentration camps. As the years tick by and those who lived through those unimaginable experiences slip between the pages of history, I thank God that history has been preserved in books and film.
In contrast, I find the lack of movies about East Germany (or any country behind the Iron Curtain for that matter) rather telling. It is not for absence of living witnesses or data. It is merely a lack of will to even touch the subject. When the president of the United States snubs the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, maybe it is best to just not go there. Encouraging Americans to think about the mind-boggling amount of resources required to maintain the socialist utopia might cause them to question the entire concept of socialism.
September 28th, 2011 at 17:05
We fought the Nazis, and have an endless appetite for justification in that regard. That way we can feel morally superior to just about everyone–American Exceptionalism.
We didn’t fight the Stasi; nobody came home with war stories about how brave and noble they were in the battle against the Evil Post-war Germans, so it didn’t really touch the lives of most Americans. And “what doesn’t affect me is of no interest”.
September 29th, 2011 at 05:19
” And ‘what doesn’t affect me is of no interest.’”
The very definition of Hollywood provincialism. Thanks.
“That way we can feel morally superior to just about everyone”
We are better, at least until Marxism won over the media, academy, and political parties.
September 30th, 2011 at 19:38
“The very definition of Hollywood provincialism. Thanks.” *shrug* Hollywood is a capitalist society. They make the movies that people will pay to see. Nobody will pay to watch a movie about the Stasi.
It’s the Invisible Hand in action. Deal with it.
October 1st, 2011 at 05:16
If they make the movies that people will pay to see, explain why so many of the movies they make, not many people pay to see. Your knowledge of the Hollywood business model is as defective as your knowledge of capitalism. In truth, Hollywood is socialism in action: What gets done depends on who you know, not how good you are; and they make the movies that they think people ought to want to see, not what people actually want to see, much as socialist governments do the things that they think people ought to want, rather than what they actually do want; and the upper level people do their best to screw the lower level people at every turn.