Der Jong Un's Face

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Der Jong Un’s Face

 

In 1943 Disney released a Donald Duck cartoon, Der Fuhrer’s Face, in which Donald suffers a nightmare as an oppressed German worker in the Nazi time.   When he awakens he quacks that he is thankful to be in the U.S.A.  The film won an Academy Award but after World War II was withdrawn from circulation.  It was unneeded after the victory it helped bring about in some small way, and features cultural stereotypes that make it awkward viewing now. 

 

Der Fuhrer’s Face is propaganda, never pretended to be anything else, and needs no apology.  Every form of entertainment during World War II was part of the effort, and even when a film or other entertainment was not directly funded by the government it had to be approved by the government.  The entire economy was focused first on staying free and then on winning the war. 

 

However, long before the USA was in the war (which can be said to have begun in 1933), American filmmakers, free to make whatever movies they thought would sell, chose to show Nazis as evil:  Confessions of a Nazi Spy, The Mortal Storm, Clouds Over Europe, Sabotage, Waterloo Bridge, The Great Dictator, and others.  These films are not propaganda because they were not made under the direction of any government or under duress.

 

Although there was some Nazi attempt to subvert Hollywood before World War II, it appears to have been unsuccessful.  One cannot imagine the bosses of MGM, RKO, Warner Brothers, Republic, and Disney obeying Nazi orders in the 1930s.

 

One does not need to imagine an American film studio yield to the threats of a dictator now – because at least one studio has surrendered to a dictator.

 

Sony has self-censored a recently completed film, The Interview, because of purported / maybe / someone says threats of violence from North Korea.

 

Almost no one has seen The Interview, a comedy (probably not quite on the level of To Be or Not to Be) making fun of North Korea’s Kim Jong Un (“Kim Jong Un” is Korean for “Poisonous Little Toad”).  Reviews of the movie suggest that it probably would have been direct-to-DVD followed by direct-to-the-trash-can.  The unseen film is now famous because of a campaign of, oh, transparency (once known as gossip) and the purported revelation of office tittle-tattle on the Orwellian telescreen.

 

The film studio’s files were said to have been snooped by North Korea, but one wonders who really did do the Ms. Grundy thing, if it was done at all.  Given the fashion in not checking the facts, from Dan Rather’s editors to Lena Dunham’s editors, one wonders if anything in a book, a newspaper, a television report, or on the Orwellian telescreen can be believed.

 

Were Sony’s electronic files really compromised?  If so, by whom?  North Korea?  China? Russia?  Or was the spilling of the metaphorical beans an action by a disgruntled, ungruntled, or gruntled employee? 

 

Der Fuhrer’s Face was wartime propaganda, and, recognized as such, it needs no explanation.  Whether or not American films made after Hollywood’s surrender to Kim Jong Un are foreign propaganda will need much explanation.

 

This was not a good week for the 1^st and 4^th amendments to the Constitution.  It wasn’t very good for the humans, either.

 

This column has not yet been vetted by Harvard Law School, North Korea, or The Brothers Castro.

 

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