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'Spring-time For Hitler'

Michael T
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Posted 05/15/09 - 03:16 AM: Subject: 'Spring-time For Hitler'	#1
Today (15th May 2009) on the news in the UK there was a report about a stage version of Mel Brooks’ comedy ‘The Producers’ opening in Berlin, Germany. For anyone not familiar with the show’s plot…here is a brief outline: A down-on-his-luck Broadway producer, Max Biolystock, is reduced to funding his shows by romancing old ladies for cash. Enter neurotic accountant Leo Bloom, arriving at Biolystock's apartment to do his books. Upon discovering that Biolystock had extorted $2000.00 from his last Broadway flop, Bloom, simply on a whim, mentions to Biolystock that he could have made a fortune on the flop if he had only gotten more money from the old ladies. Needless to say, this revelation gets Max's mind working---get the old ladies to invest $1,000,000 on what Biolystock knows will be a sure-fire flop, then run off with the excess cash! Max convinces the gullible Leo to join him on the scheme, and off the two men go, on a crusade to produce the biggest disaster Broadway has ever seen. They come across a god-awful work written by a former Nazi, called "Springtime For Hitler," and decide to produce it. If it's a flop, Max & Leo will become rich. But if it's a hit, they will go to jail.... Due to their choice of actors the show ends up seeming to ridicule Hitler and the Nazi’s. After an initial shock at the subject matter, the audience find it to be camp and hilarious and so the show becomes a hit. The show is funny and does ridicule both Hitler and the Nazi’s. Given this, do you think it’s a good thing that a previously taboo subject is now to be aired in such a way that the Germans can laugh at their own recent history; and do you think they can do this without giving offence to the victims of those terrible events.

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Posted 05/15/09 - 03:32 AM:	#2
I don't know why a German laughing at it would be any more offensive than you laughing at it. The year is 2009. The people who will be attending this play in Germany did not operate concentration camps during the WWII era. Why would anyone feel guilty for something that a relative did many years ago?

ciceronianus
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Posted 05/15/09 - 06:31 AM:	#3
"The Producers" has been around a very long time, as a movie and a play. Some years ago, Mel Brooks did a music video featuring him as a rapping, break-dancing Hitler called "To Be or Not to Be" which was apparently quite a hit in Germany. I doubt anyone will get excited over this.
"Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts."--C.S. Peirce "There is nothing so absurd but some philosopher has said it."--Marcus Tullius Cicero "Philosophy recovers itself when it ceases to be a device for dealing with the problems of philosophers and becomes a method, cultivated by philosophers, for dealing with the problems of men."--John Dewey

RoboticHand
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Posted 06/24/09 - 02:44 AM:

I don't know why a German laughing at it would be any more offensive than you laughing at it. The year is 2009. The people who will be attending this play in Germany did not operate concentration camps during the WWII era. Why would anyone feel guilty for something that a relative did many years ago?

The Holocaust was not that long ago and it's impact can still be felt. Germany itself is deeply ashamed of this dark era in it's history. There are also still people living in Germany who were alive during the Nazi regime. While not everyone operated a concentration camp, many regular citizens, under the guise of patriotism, blindly went along with the Nazi party and it's ideas.

In fact, Nazi Germany was so recent, we even have color photos of it!

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Michael T
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Posted 06/24/09 - 10:40 AM:	#5
The reason I posted the original thread was because the opening of the show was reported on the BBC news as being seen as controversial and a big deal amongst the German people when it opened there. The mixed feelings Germans had about the show was the reason I thought it was interesting. I personally was surprised at the fuss it caused in Germany after all these years, especially as the show is such a send-up of Hitler and the Nazis

swstephe
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Posted 06/24/09 - 07:18 PM:	#6
It has been one of my favorite movies, (the original, not the recent remake), for a while. I just re-watched a few weeks ago and ... Wow! did you miss the whole point of the movie ... but that may make you part of the actual joke. The Hitler/Nazi theme was just a comic foil at the center. The was that, putting Hitler/Nazis in a positive light in a Broadway play would be box-office disaster, (more so in the 60's than today). It was a joke against Hollywood/Broadway. The financiers are horny old ladies. The producers are desperate con-men willing to seduce horny old ladies for their money. The accountants are emotional basket cases. Scriptwriters, dancers and choreographers are either insane or sadists. The viewing public is so clueless they turn a deliberate attempt at offending them as a delightful "parody". Then there is the joke-within-the-joke. "The Producers" is a real movie, with real financiers, producers, choreographers, script writers, and a public -- who is so clueless that they don't even realize that they are the ultimate butt of the joke by allowing a movie about a play about Hitler/Nazis is a delightful parody which just happens to become a classic and a success, (the best part of the joke). It also has some elements of characters breaking out of their former roles. To hear that it is now being made into a stage play tells me that someone actually gets the joke and is going to play it one more time, just to show that the public doesn't get it. You see, if "The Producers" appears on stage, then so does "Springtime for Hitler", as the play-within-a-play. The public will laugh at the ironic acceptance of the play's audience, not realizing that they are doing the same thing. The audience is their own parody. It is called "framing". I guess it will lose its punch being done now, rather than the late 1960's, when the war was still a recent memory. Hitler and the Nazis had already started to be parodied around that time, (remember the American show, "Hogan's Heroes" -- I heard they even showed it in Germany, but translated "Heil Hitler" to phrases like, "The corn in my town grows this high").
Ethics is the measuring of morality. Morality is the measuring of good. Good is the measuring of benefit. Benefit is the measure of values.

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Posted 06/25/09 - 06:34 AM:	#7
Nietzsche wrote: Not by wrath does one kill, but by laughter. Translation: Hitler's memory is still threatening and powerful for some; by laughing at it they destroy the power it has over them. swestephe wrote: The was that, putting Hitler/Nazis in a positive light in a Broadway play would be box-office disaster, I would want to see that play due to my sheer intrigue on what the thought would be that would go round casting them in a positive light. It's interesting to hear a different perspective for a change (unless it's just "Hitler was good because the Jews are bad", because that isn't original at all).

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Posted 06/26/09 - 09:46 PM:	#8
The play-within-a-play, "Springtime for Hitler", has no reference to Jews at all, or death or destruction. Is is simply a romantic-musical with a great deal of admiration. In "The Producers", they would probably have been successful in making a complete flop if they had played it seriously, but instead, the eccentric actors, (Hitler was played by a Hollywood iconic hippy), added to make it appear it was intended as a parody. Hitler was definitely seen as "good" at least for Germans, (the main song: "Springtime for Hitler ... and Germany") ... great now I got that song stuck in my head. Worse, somebody might catch me humming it to myself.
Ethics is the measuring of morality. Morality is the measuring of good. Good is the measuring of benefit. Benefit is the measure of values.

ms anthropist
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Posted 06/27/09 - 01:32 PM:	#9
Hang on a minute, does this entail that Germans laugh? Never seen such a sight. I don't know why this reminds me to a Jimmy Hendrix karaoke bar in Leipzig and this girl doing a Sinead O'Connor impressionation of "nothing compares to you", when she sang "interloooooooooooooood" bought tears to my eyes. Did any German laugh? Nope! So there is no fear of them laughing at the play, it might even act as a catalysis.

swstephe
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Posted 06/27/09 - 09:18 PM:	#10
Germans in the north are very reserved. They have a sense of humour, but restrain it in public more. Bavarians are loud and gregarious. But, laugh and the world laughs with you. I present to you a sign that the end is near:
Ethics is the measuring of morality. Morality is the measuring of good. Good is the measuring of benefit. Benefit is the measure of values.

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