O Neill Media Center Stacks PN1997.A798 2002 The Schizophrenic Subjective Individual, 1940-1965 Week 13 Lecture 2 24 April 2008 http://www.atomicarchive.com/store/index.shtml Subjective Individualism v. STATE I. Reactionary Modernism : Essential role of cinema in Totalitarianism BOTH end up being absorption of the subjective individual into the STATE Unity = inter-national (class) Unity = national (state) Nazi Mass rallies: rely completely on technology Quasi-mystical: absorbing the individual into the community Freud: the oceanic feeling of the womb absorbs individual into the group 1
Individual absorbed into community: ask them to sacrifice self to the cause hand over all responsibility to the leaders <Sartre s Existentialism: bad faith is handing your responsibility over to someone / something else> Eisenstein, October The Heroic genius (Lenin) leads the masses Nazi oath: I swear before God to obey Adolph Hitler without reserve, Leader of the Reich and of the German people, supreme commander of the Army, and I pledge myself as a courageous soldier, to hold always to this oath, even though it may lead me to death. Ultra-modernism of Totalitarianism Material Precondition of 20 th -c. Totalitarianism = ELECTRICITY!!! Lighting /searchlights Public address systems Radio CINEMA!!!!!!! Leni Riefenstahl, Triumph des Willens [Triumph of the Will] (1934) Nazi Party Rally at NUREMBURG, medieval capital of the Holy Roman Empire O Neill Media: DD253.28 1934.T7 1996 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcfuhghfywe oceanic feeling quasi-mystical http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ct9qxesxsna Roman Imperial Eagle [note how modernist/geometrical!] 2
Giant flames/architecture: evoke ancient Roman Empire GIGANTISM [cf. Speer s Germania]: From temple steps to giant banners: individual merged into collective II. From Postwar to World War to Cold War The 1945-1989 modern world: Democracy vs. Communism Three primary geopolitical shifts after 1939-1945: 1) Elimination of post-1918 Fascism (Germany; Italy; Japan though not Spain) 2) End to old world (post-1870) of colonial empires (United Kingdom; France; Belgium; Netherlands; Germany; Italy; United States; Japan) 3) Bi-polar globe: USA v. USSR (liberalism v. communism) 3
Compare to USA 1840s-50s: slave v. free states All differences subsumed under two (extraneous) categories Post-1989: the post-modern world Modern : bipolar 1945-1989 Postmodern = multi-polar 1989 present III. THREE BROAD TOPICS: 1) Civilian bombings: How to reconcile this principle of liberalism --- the subjective individual as the source of all meaning and value --- with the gradual erasure of boundaries between combatants and non-combatants? 2) Schizophrenic liberalism : postwar intellectual/culture 3) De-colonization : you can t go home again. Donald Rumsfeld and Saddam Hussein, 1983 Osama bin Laden 4
20 th Century: percent of direct casualties that were civilians 1914-1918: World War I 05 % A. Civilian bombings: Increasing barbarism of the 20 th century? 1939-1945: World War II 50% 1965-1973: Vietnam 80% 1990s: Balkans/Persian Gulf 85-95% Working for Reconciliation: A Caritas Handbook (Vatican City: Caritas Internationalis, 1999) First fighter plane [1913] Pilot + machine gunman There is nothing else the submarine can do except sink her capture it is freely acknowledged to be an altogether barbarous method of warfare [but] the essence of war is violence, and moderation in war is imbecility. Admiral Lord Fisher, June 1913 1936-1939: Spanish Civil War Republicans [Communists] vs. Nationalists (Fascists) [Franco/Army/Church] Dress Rehearsal for WWII: Hitler / Mussolini support Franco Stalin supports Republicans 5
Picasso, Guernica [1937] Innovation: Saturation bombing Barcelona montage, 1937 26 April 1937: German saturation bombing of Guernica (Spain) 6
Wannsee Conference: January 20, 1942 The Final Solution 1937: a preview / pre-vision of the end of civilized boundaries Urban areas become military targets No civilians will ever be safe again. Trains unloading at Auschwitz Trains unloading:jews awaiting Selektion 7
Trains: Frankenstein s creature Auschwitz gas chambers: able to process 2,000 at a time Auschwitz ovens: 20,000 deaths / day in 1944 Controversy: does telling the truth about Allied bombing lessen Germany s / Hitler s guilt? Does it make you unpatriotic? A traitor to the nation? Hamburg, July 1943 8
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/bombing_of_hamburg_in_world_war_ii Royal Air Force firebombing of Dresden 1944 Vonnegut: Oh well, he wasn t going to write Beethoven s Fifth anyway. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/bombing_of_dresden_in_world_war_ii Dresden, 1944: city center after firebombing Dresden 1944 Dresden 9
Hannover Paderborn Paderborn Pforzheim Tokyo 1945 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/bombing_of_tokyo_in_world_war_ii http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/atomic_bombings_of_hiroshima_and_nagasaki 10
The politics of memory but more than that: the self-identity of memory http://www.campus-adr.org/cmher/reportresources/edition3_2/enolagay3_2a.html 11
1962 October Cuban Missile Crisis End result: promise not to invade Cuba [--> Elian!] WWIII narrowly averted Sidney Lumet (1964) 12
1967 LBJ fear of provoking China a guerilla war --- i.e., North Vietnamese located in and passing as South Vietnamese; also: civilian suicide bombers Hardware : LBJ destroys the country he s trying to save Mentality shift: savagery / futility [cf. The Great War: what s the sacrifice for???] 1967: B52s bomb near Saigon Vietnam 1972 20 th Century: percent of direct casualties that were civilians 1914-1918: World War I 05 % 1939-1945: World War II 50% 1965-1973: Vietnam 80% 1990s: Balkans/Persian Gulf 85-95% Working for Reconciliation: A Caritas Handbook (Vatican City: Caritas Internationalis, 1999) 13