what shits me up the wall about movies about fascist regimes – and I’ve complained about this many times and no doubt will again – is that it’s a visual medium so they can’t help making the fascists ugly.
this leads to the bizarre situation in which the evil of fascism rests on the presentation of them as ugly, old, fat, disabled, gender non-conforming, the men effeminate, the women mannish, lame legs, twisted arms, awkward scars, bad glasses, as if you can recognise their inhumanity by their appearance, while the heroic protagonists are… manly men and feminine women who look like movie stars, obviously.
that is fascism! that’s literally how you would construct fascist propaganda if you were trying to demonise a hated enemy regime! say that they’re bad while focusing on how ugly and threatening they look, it’s literally how people make political ads today.
now I know this is Hollywood so the protagonists are obliged to be hot, but if the visuals hinge on making the bad guys physically deformed then I don’t think the movie has the message that you think it does.
perhaps Starship Troopers was the only blockbuster movie to get fascism right, and as a result everybody just complained that it was stupid and the characters were annoying.
(via dr-teatime)
