Did Nazi That Coming
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Downfall (2004) is a German film that depicts the final days of Adolf Hitler. Allied forces have almost overrun Berlin, defeat is imminent, and the mood is somber. It is an intimate portrayal, showing that guy, who is shorthand for universal evil, as a living, breathing individual. This didn’t go down well in some quarters. German tabloid Bild even asked, “Are we allowed to show the monster as a human being?”
Here’s a scene from the film:
It’s a pivotal moment, when Hitler finally loses hope and composure. He maintains his oratorical skills, and dismay ripples through the people in the bunker, seeing their Fuhrer’s feet of clay. But in the end, it is just the weak rant of a cornered despot. Fabulous writing, and an outstanding performance by Bruno Ganz.
But then, the internet stepped in.
The first Downfall parody clip was uploaded sometime in 2006. It was a rant in Spanish about the lack of features in the new Flight Simulator game. The creator’s genius was in combining the iconography of Hitler, his impassioned rant and the fact that it was in a foreign language for most of the world. Just changing the subtitles could transform the video into a rant on anything, from the sublime to the mundane.
Here's the original parody (with English subs), courtesy of MIT’s YouTomb project.
Over the next few years, the template went viral, being adopted for universal subjects as well as super niche take downs peppered with inside jokes. There’s even a dedicated YouTube channel to preserve all the best examples.
Other clips from the film also came into circulation, now that the format was well understood. Here’s one of my favorites, contrasting Hitler’s monstrosity with a child-like innocence:
To close the loop, there is a rant video about rant videos:
How did the director of the film feel about his creation being meme fodder?
From Vulture:
“Someone sends me the links every time there’s a new one,” says the director, on the phone from Vienna. “I think I’ve seen about 145 of them! Of course, I have to put the sound down when I watch. Many times the lines are so funny, I laugh out loud, and I’m laughing about the scene that I staged myself! You couldn’t get a better compliment as a director.”
As for the idea of such a serious scene being used for laughs, Hirschbiegel thinks it actually fits with the theme of the movie. “The point of the film was to kick these terrible people off the throne that made them demons, making them real and their actions into reality,” he says.
Sadly, the production company didn’t agree, and went overboard with copyright strike down notices to the early videos (which is why the original is only on YouTomb). They eventually saw that the publicity is good for them, but only after the Streisand Effect had played out.
The meme worked best when the writing was well done- inside references, throwaway lines and callbacks – all the classic elements of good comedy writing. Like so:
My very favorite executions though, are the ones that are meant for a very specific subculture, and probably don’t make much sense to a general audience.
This one is savage, and a Jefferies executive was fired for sharing it in a company newsletter. Thankfully, he sued and won back pay, with the ruling calling the termination “hypersensitive” and “irrational”.
Another case also had a similar trajectory, this time in Australia.
Downfall is the perfect example for why I love the Internet. There is something magical about the culture that allows it to take such a dark moment in history, treat it with irreverence and repurpose it to rant about anything under the sun. All while being funny enough to leave you in tears. Isn’t that the same message as Jojo Rabbit (2019), The Death of Stalin (2017), or even The Great Dictator (1940)? These monsters deserve ridicule, not pedestals.