The only thing that MAUS and “Inglourious
Basterds” have in common is that Hitler is present in both of them. The latter
is a 2009 movie directed by Quentin Tarantino with Brad Pitt as one of the main
characters. While Spiegelman’s graffic novel tells the story of his father
being a survivor of the holocaust, Tarantino’s movie plots around the
assassination of Hitler and the persecution of Nazis by Pitt’s American-Jewish
squad.
On the one hand, MAUS remains as truthful as
possible to the story of the author’s father. Art made it clear that he wanted
to state everything “the way it was”. On the other hand, in Quentin’s movie you
would expect to see another holocaust story, but in fact he changes the entire
set of events and creates an alternate situation in which (SPOILERS) Hitler is
killed by a bomb within a cinema.
Unlike most of the movies that have been
created about this topic, Tarantino breaks the taboo and creates a parody of
it. The parallel I draw between Spiegelman’s novel and Tarantino’s movie is
mainly that some “balance” is created among a dramatically plotted novel and a
parody movie, in this case between what the Nazis did to the Jews and what the
Jews did to the Nazis in the movie.
If the situation portrayed in the movie would
have indeed occur, would you think something of the same caliber would have
happened instead? Do you think the vendetta taken by the Germans would have
been even worse that the real situation? Or maybe the movement would have
decayed? I leave you the trailer in case you want to watch the movie.
First of all, I would never thought that somebody could relate Spiegelman's "MAUS" with Tarantino's "Inglorious Basterds". They are so different in so many ways!. But you did a great job by doing this connection between them, Paz.
ResponderEliminarSecondly, If something like that would happened (destruction of the Nacional-Socialist Party) the vendetta wouldn't be so effective because of different reasons:
1.- The army wanted to be completely independent from the party and, eventually, they would surrendered to the allied forces.
2.- There would be no ideological leaders who could maintain and support any kind of activities. Eventually, the remaining Nacional-Socialist forces would collapse because of their lack of leadership.
Obviously all these conjetures are clearly suppositions, but that's what I think that would happened if a direct strike against the NAZI leaders would have occurred.
P.S.: I'm a fan of history, specially World War II, and I consider that Inglorious Basterds is one of my favorite movies because of the reasons you mentioned before: It breaks all the taboos and makes something creative and original within the "World War II film spectre.
P.S.2: This extract from Slavoj Zizek's "The Pervert's Guide to Ideology" shows an efficient and effective way of destroying nazism. Not by violence, but with something more intelligent and simpler.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvlx9KFiISU
Although I have never watched the full movie, I agree with both of you since it is a new creative way to talk about one of the worst tragedies in History, which is really hard if you consider that millions of people suffered because of this.
ResponderEliminar