# UnApologeticFlagWaving



## Hitch (Apr 25, 2012)

:icon_viking::icon_viking::icon_viking:


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## Chouan (Nov 11, 2009)

Rather reminds me of the kind of stuff done for Stalin in 1940, or Mussolini in the same period, or in North Korea every other week.I'm glad you like it.


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## VictorRomeo (Sep 11, 2009)

Chouan said:


> Rather reminds me of the kind of stuff done for Stalin in 1940, or Mussolini in the same period, or in North Korea every other week.I'm glad you like it.


But much, much cooler.... I think that's great...


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## Hitch (Apr 25, 2012)

Chouan said:


> Rather reminds me of the kind of stuff done for Stalin in 1940, or Mussolini in the same period, or in North Korea every other week.I'm glad you like it.


LMAO.


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## eagle2250 (Mar 24, 2006)

^^Sorry, I'm missing the apparent humor.
Another great performance by the University of West Virginia marching band...and what a magnificent tribute to their fellow Americans! Chouan, your mind seems trapped in a very dark and depressing place. Can you ever see the positive in anything? :icon_scratch:


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## Shaver (May 2, 2012)

eagle2250 said:


> ^^Sorry, I'm missing the apparent humor.
> Another great performance by the University of West Virginia marching band...and what a magnificent tribute to their fellow Americans! Chouan, your mind seems trapped in a very dark and depressing place. Can you ever see the positive in anything? :icon_scratch:


Yeah c'mon Chouan - don't make me regret having stuck up for you in the past. :icon_smile_wink:


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## Kingstonian (Dec 23, 2007)

Chouan said:


> Rather reminds me of the kind of stuff done for Stalin in 1940, or Mussolini in the same period, or in North Korea every other week.I'm glad you like it.


It is not a patch on the black and white films that Leni Riefenstahl produced in the 1930s. Nobody comes close to her standard.


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## Hitch (Apr 25, 2012)

eagle2250 said:


> ^^Sorry, I'm missing the apparent humor.
> Another great performance by the University of West Virginia marching band...and what a magnificent tribute to their fellow Americans! Chouan, your mind seems trapped in a very dark and depressing place. Can you ever see the positive in anything? :icon_scratch:


Hmmmm , picture a grown man screaming for help in a wading pool.


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## Chouan (Nov 11, 2009)

eagle2250 said:


> ^^Sorry, I'm missing the apparent humor.
> Another great performance by the University of West Virginia marching band...and what a magnificent tribute to their fellow Americans! Chouan, your mind seems trapped in a very dark and depressing place. Can you ever see the positive in anything? :icon_scratch:


Of course I can. However, it is _*exactly*_ the kind of display that was put on by various Chinese warlords, by the Fascists and the Nazis in the 1930s, as well as by Stalin, and of course Communist China and North Korea now, indeed, by Putin's Russia. Impressive in a way, but in exactly the same way as the others.


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## Shaver (May 2, 2012)

Kingstonian said:


> It is not a patch on the black and white films that Leni Riefenstahl produced in the 1930s. Nobody comes close to her standard.


Triumph of the Will! I visited the Olympiastadion just outside Berlin just to soak up the vibe of that movie. Good Old Leni. :icon_smile:


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## Langham (Nov 7, 2012)

Shaver said:


> Triumph of the Will! I visited the Olympiastadion just outside Berlin just to soak up the vibe of that movie. Good Old Leni. :icon_smile:


I watched the film once - I found it deeply sinister and unpleasant, knowing what was really going on in the background.


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## Chouan (Nov 11, 2009)

I use the "morning scene" as the opening part of a lesson on propaganda. It is a breathtakingly good film, although grotesque at the same time. Once my Y9s have watched the "morning in the HJ camp" scene, and seen the mounted artillery and armoured cars at full speed in the arena, their view of the Nazis is overwhelmingly positive. Shows what a clever film it is.


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## eagle2250 (Mar 24, 2006)

Chouan said:


> Of course I can. However, it is _*exactly*_ the kind of display that was put on by various Chinese warlords, by the Fascists and the Nazis in the 1930s, as well as by Stalin, and of course Communist China and North Korea now, indeed, by Putin's Russia. Impressive in a way, but in exactly the same way as the others.


Again you stretch facts completely beyond the bounds of all reason...something as innocent as a college marching band forming caricatures of (in this case) a boat, a plane and (I think it was) a tank, at halftime festivities during a Saturday football game, is hardly the same as rank after rank of heavy, motorized, military gear and large formations of "Goose stepping" soldiers parading by some tin-pot dictators looking for affirmation that their genitals are bigger than anyone else's! There is a big difference between the two...I'm shocked that you cannot see that!


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## Kingstonian (Dec 23, 2007)

Shaver said:


> Triumph of the Will! I visited the Olympiastadion just outside Berlin just to soak up the vibe of that movie. Good Old Leni. :icon_smile:


She was a top film maker. Of course it is on a huge scale compared to the American gridiron event. Torchlight parade is particularly impressive.


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## Chouan (Nov 11, 2009)

eagle2250 said:


> Again you stretch facts completely beyond the bounds of all reason...something as innocent as a college marching band forming caricatures of (in this case) a boat, a plane and (I think it was) a tank, at halftime festivities during a Saturday football game, is hardly the same as rank after rank of heavy, motorized, military gear and large formations of "Goose stepping" soldiers parading by some tin-pot dictators looking for affirmation that their genitals are bigger than anyone else's! There is a big difference between the two...I'm shocked that you cannot see that!


I didn't mean the endless columns of marching soldiers, but stuff like this:





The other "tin pot dictators" did similar stuff. Although I'm not sure that either Hitler or Stalin could be accurately described as such.


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## Shaver (May 2, 2012)

Kingstonian said:


> She was a top film maker. Of course it is on a huge scale compared to the American gridiron event. Torchlight parade is particularly impressive.


She really was a top film maker Kingy, it's a shame that the associations can cloud many peoples' judgement. _Olympia_ is breathtakingly beautiful 



When I was working a trade fair in Nuremberg, a few years ago, the car park that I used each morning was the open concrete space that had been the site of the rallies - being there was an oddly moving experience.

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## Langham (Nov 7, 2012)

^^ You can't assess Riefenstahl in isolation from the regime she was propagandising - yes, she was a brilliant filmmaker, and she was employed to glamourise Hitler and the Nazi system (she did that very well) while distracting the world's attention from all that was going on in the background - Kristallnacht, concentration camps, summary executions and preparation for war. She was just an apologist for Hitler, in the end. Like a lot of Germans, after the war she claimed not to have known what had been going on, yet apparently had been quite happy to employ concentration camp inmates as unpaid extras, who after filming were sent straight back to Auschwitz to be gassed.


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## Shaver (May 2, 2012)

Bear in mind that Art was more or less illegal under the Third Reich. Only Art approved by Goebbels was permitted. The production of 'Degenerate Art' was in itself good reason to be shipped off to the camps. Hitler supposedly said 'anyone who paints the sky green and a pasture blue should be castrated.' Not much room for artistic freedom of expression, then. Artists did as they were told.

The movie _Münchhausen* _which being directly overseen by Goebbels was intended to promote the notion of a golden age German Empire, and to illustrate the Nazi's superiority to Hollywood (and especially the Wizard of Oz). Yet it is also a superb work of Art.

*NB: not a movie made by Riefenstahl, to avoid any confusion.

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## Langham (Nov 7, 2012)

^^For those reasons, among others, Riefenstahl is a somewhat controversial figure - praise her brilliance as a director, but you cannot untangle it from the fact that she was actively promoting the cause of national socialism and everything that went with it.


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## Shaver (May 2, 2012)

Langham said:


> ^^For those reasons, among others, Riefenstahl is a somewhat controversial figure - praise her brilliance as a director, but you cannot untangle it from the fact that she was actively promoting the cause of national socialism and everything that went with it.


Controversy is as controversy does, I'm afraid.


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## Chouan (Nov 11, 2009)

Munchhausen is, as you suggest, an outstandingly good film; some scenes were shot in Venice, I think, in around 1942/3, which is in itself amazing. "Der Große König" made in 1942 is also good for it's time. It's a pity that so much talent was devoted to such an appalling cause. Mind you French cinema at the time was also good, especially given the conditions that they were working in. Marcel Carne's "Les Enfants du Paradis" made between 1942-44, released in 1945.

In terms of parades etc, this one is interesting:





If you think goose stepping is of interest, try this one:





or this one, where the soldiers are women:


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