On the edge of satire
I sat at work the first time I heard of the youtube video of Hitler looking for parking space. A co-worker said something along the lines of "Check this out, dude", and I said "Sorry, I'm holocaust-sensitive, I rather not watch Hitler-themed movies".
And you know, so I thought at that time; and a few hours later, while I was at the lab, a co-worker that sits right next to me opened the same video on his computer, and I couldn't help myself but glance, at first, and then laugh, and then get captured by the humor. And it had humor; Dark humor, granted, but humor nonetheless. The captions were timed perfectly, including mentioning the few names that were intelligble in the original german version (such as Stalin), and the comic timing was spotless (such as the refference to the girl trying to park which led to a cut to a girl crying and another comforting her, saying - in the hebrew captions - "It's ok, he doesn't know it's you").
And then, a few days later, there's the inevitable reaction by holocaust survivors, that demanded that the video be removed from Youtube. And naturally the creators of the movie responded to that saying 'it was a joke, no harm intended'.
So I compose a short email directed to some friends, and in it I put the link to the article (the latter - the one including the movie creator's response), and a simple question: "What do you think?"
Who does determin where lies the border of satire? I know for a fact that I personally do not find 'Eretz Nehederet' funny; They usually handle touchy subjects like the holocaust and others with crude, tactless glee which I find distasteful. But I honestly found this video funny, and yet when I was considering who to send this mail I mentioned, I briefly considered sending it to my grandmother, who is the sole living representative of my family who has survived the holocaust, and to ask her opinion; and yet after 5 seconds of consideration I decided against it because "perhaps it's better to let buried ghosts sleep". I can easily imagine my grandmother being offended and yet I'm not sure if to classify this as legitimate reason to withdraw this video from Youtube, or, more importantly, to declare this movie as "not satire".
Laughter and humor are, to this day, mechanisms whose psychological and biological importance is little understood; Many different theories have been given rise to this question. And yet it seems that satire is one of the most powerful forms of humor, because it enables the mind to deal with a very powerful and often traumatic reality by contrasting it with absurdity and offerins some sort of sollace in laughter. And yet I wonder where does the limit lie, where can the borderline be drawn. What is the edge of satire?
And you know, so I thought at that time; and a few hours later, while I was at the lab, a co-worker that sits right next to me opened the same video on his computer, and I couldn't help myself but glance, at first, and then laugh, and then get captured by the humor. And it had humor; Dark humor, granted, but humor nonetheless. The captions were timed perfectly, including mentioning the few names that were intelligble in the original german version (such as Stalin), and the comic timing was spotless (such as the refference to the girl trying to park which led to a cut to a girl crying and another comforting her, saying - in the hebrew captions - "It's ok, he doesn't know it's you").
And then, a few days later, there's the inevitable reaction by holocaust survivors, that demanded that the video be removed from Youtube. And naturally the creators of the movie responded to that saying 'it was a joke, no harm intended'.
So I compose a short email directed to some friends, and in it I put the link to the article (the latter - the one including the movie creator's response), and a simple question: "What do you think?"
Who does determin where lies the border of satire? I know for a fact that I personally do not find 'Eretz Nehederet' funny; They usually handle touchy subjects like the holocaust and others with crude, tactless glee which I find distasteful. But I honestly found this video funny, and yet when I was considering who to send this mail I mentioned, I briefly considered sending it to my grandmother, who is the sole living representative of my family who has survived the holocaust, and to ask her opinion; and yet after 5 seconds of consideration I decided against it because "perhaps it's better to let buried ghosts sleep". I can easily imagine my grandmother being offended and yet I'm not sure if to classify this as legitimate reason to withdraw this video from Youtube, or, more importantly, to declare this movie as "not satire".
Laughter and humor are, to this day, mechanisms whose psychological and biological importance is little understood; Many different theories have been given rise to this question. And yet it seems that satire is one of the most powerful forms of humor, because it enables the mind to deal with a very powerful and often traumatic reality by contrasting it with absurdity and offerins some sort of sollace in laughter. And yet I wonder where does the limit lie, where can the borderline be drawn. What is the edge of satire?