Sunday, August 29, 2010
Another Gathering
I just watched Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will" on YouTube. The whole thing. There are many interesting aspects apart from the amazing cinematography. This is 1934 and none of the soldiers have guns. I did not know that the German Army was limited at that time to 100,000 soldiers. Military exercises for Hitler are horses and relatively antique armored cars.
Aesthetics aside, what is truly amazing about this film is how insidiously evil it is. But, of course, we look at this in hindsight. However, caveat civis.
The philosophy behind it, the invocation of "God" and "Germany" in the same phrase, makes me very afraid of Glenn Beck. I thought he was a clown. Many thought Hitler was a clown.
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Whenever the scale of affairs becomes super-human, there is evil. When the adjectives of the hour are super-, ultra-, mega-, there is the distinct odor of the Triumph of the Will that no longer can be measured by simple human life.
Before 2008, I often used the concept that the USA was the mightiest nation in the history of the world. But I never stopped to think how exactly I was making that measurement.
Turns out, it was $ in the trillions.
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