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.”
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.