I don’t know anything about Fallout but I just want to say it’s very funny when fascists claim that Fallout is pro-US and anticommunist because there’s a cool robot that says death is a preferable alternative to communism.
Maybe there is a larger conversation to be had about the phenomenon of reactionaries taking media that is satirical of reactionary behavior like Fallout, Fight Club, Starship Troopers, and American Psycho at face value. Most of the discussion of this phenomenon is about how fascists are not smart enough to understand that the media is making fun of them, but isn’t it a case of “if it’s stupid and it works it isn’t stupid?” It seems like we live in an age of nihilism and contrarianism. If the media tells people that fascism is bad but doesn’t offer an alternative (liberalism doesn’t count because we live in it and it visibly sucks) it makes a lot of sense that reactionaries take advantage of the contrarian instinct to say, “what if bad things are good, actually, and you just need to stop being so soft?” which is transgressive and, in a way, more innovative than recycling liberalism.
Just imagine how you feel watching Death of Stalin when Zhukov does the thing with the jacket. You’re not supposed to think “Hey that’s General Zhukov who is awesome because he killed a bunch of Nazis! I love this guy!” you’re obviously supposed to think he’s another communist bootlicker like all the other characters in the movie. And every communist watching that movie obviously knows what perspective it’s written from. Does it make it any less effective as a vehicle for propaganda if a communist can show Death of Stalin to some friends and use it to break the ice on the topic of Stalin? Because that’s how fascists use this type of media, and it’s undoubtedly pretty effective. When smug leftists like us show up to berate their lack of media literacy it only serves to reinforce the transgressiveness and their own smugness.
A lot of media that fascists co-opt makes the fascists look cool. Even if it is laughing at them for their stupidity it still makes them look intimidating or tough or successful in some way or another. Liberty Prime in the subtext is a really dumb idea, but the video game level where it throws a nuke like a football is just a big “fuck yeah!” moment, the satire is lost when the thing that it is making fun of for being wasteful or ineffectual ends up actually succeeding. Fascism is all about aesthetics, not deeper meaning, so if it looks cool on a surface level it doesn’t matter to the fash that the subtext is saying “this really cool badass stuff these guys are doing? It’s bad actually.”
What’s some media that doesn’t fall into that trap? The Zone of Interest? Blackkklansman and True Detective?
But I would say that a good way to ensure the fascists don’t co-opt something is to have the fascists get humilated, have a scene of them losing and crying and pissing and shitting themselves, show them as the pathetic losers they are once all their bravado is stripped away, and don’t let them win in the end, even if it is a hollow victory.
Mel Brook’s The Producers is the only one I can think of off the top of my head unfortunately.
I think The Producers gets around it in two ways. One way is that it’s an absurd comedy which makes it harder to co-opt. The other is that it is meta textual about the problems of making fictional depictions of fascism.
Also, he was very specifically making fun of Nazi Germany. You could not just make the Producers but simply replace the Nazis with any other fascist movement. He specifically took Nazi imagery and made it look absurd. Like, that part in Springtime for Hitler where they dance in a swastika shape? That was a thing that Mel Brooks took directly from Nazi rallies, they actually did that.
True it is impossible to mistake who the parody is about. Which is quite important given that the general audience is predisposed to reading depictions of fascism as authoritarianism.
In Blues Brothers the nazis are a bunch of larping losers.
Andor whenever it shows Syril Karn instead of anything else about the Empire, he’s basically Space Ben Shapiro.
The Great Dictator
The Producers
Hogan’s Heroes had a rule that the nazi scheme of the episode could never succeed, I believe
Der Fuhrer’s Face?
Maybe making them ridiculous is the secret.
Exactly. I would love to see some kind of creative work that shows from a pragmatic view how incompetent and wasteful a fash society really is.
me reading the terminal about how company a made the torment nexus and used it on civilians at the us govenments behest
wow this is so pro usa this is so great
They have elementary literacy. Sure, they can technically read, but they can’t comprehend themes, metaphor, subtext, or satire.
This isn’t just a fascist thing, it’s pretty widespread. Critical analysis is something people do a few times in school for books they hated (and probably never fully read) and then avoid doing it ever again for the rest of their lives.
That might be true for some of them, but I can speak from personal experience when I say some reactionaries have enough reading skills to understand a movie like Starship Troopers isn’t meant to make their side look good, but it’s easy to cynically use to say the opposite of its intended message because on its surface it’s a movie about aesthetically beautiful people defending themselves from subhuman invaders.
There’s definitely the group you’re talking about, which Sartre pretty accurately described. They’re just amusing themselves by deliberately defacing media because it’s funny to them. “The anti-Semites have the right to play” and all that.
They’re a minority. The majority are just “wow cool future!” when they see a piece of media like Starship Troopers. They’re very susceptible to that minority of reactionaries, but I think they can just as easily be swayed away from a reactionary reading of media by the very next person that talks to them. They don’t really believe anything, they’ll just adopt the last thing they heard.
Unfortunately, reactionaries have way more time to talk about movies and video games.
Isn’t it over 1/2 read at the level of an 11yo or lower? and slightly more than 1/5 are functionally illiterate?
I think it’s difficult to portrait fascism in a way that is still believable but more ridiculous than the real thing.
Honestly, I think some of them DO understand that fascists are supposed to look bad in the films, and they love that because they see it as “this is how those Hollywood liberals see us!” A “your boos mean nothing, I’ve seen what makes you cheer” type thing.
I actually thought Zhukov was super cool cause he did that entry where he throws his jacket in slow motion.
And implying he was gonna eat the entire buffet in his own
