28 Things Learnt From Ingluorious Basterds • 09.05.09
Long time ago, there was a big war. A war that covered most of the world. A war that affected many people. A war that also resulted in many people simply leading on their regular lives while realizing that a war may be going on in the world. And before 2009, there were other big wars too. The last big war of the world, the biggest of them all since then in many proportions, and separate from the war you had with your family or friends this week, has probably been World War II.
World War II, while focusing mainly on the expansion of Germany and German-Allies forces, also took a very strange turn when it focused, as one of its main primary objectives, in the elimination of the Jewish Population. Antisemitism had reached one of the bigger peaks among the German populations and media, and this resulted in majority of the population, and the military, supporting a big action taken on behalf of Hitler: to jail and kidnap all Jewish presence in German-occupied lands, and to eventually kill all Jewish people as part of Hitler’s “final solution.”
Today I would like to talk a bit about 28 things I learnt from the movie “Ingluorious Basterds“, by Quentin Tarantino, and how it compares to history and our senses.
WWII, Nazis, Germans, and Ingluorious Basterds
It is the very concept of the “final solution” by Hitler that prompted one of the then-freshest directors of our time, Quentin Tarantino, to come up with the idea of “Ingluorious Basterds.” You can stop reading this entire article at this exact moment and sentence, because from this point onward, there will be details about the movie mentioned which may give away the plot of the movie to you. To many people, such plot details result in a lot of crying and anger, because many people do not like to know about the details of a movie unless they find out by actually watching the movie on a TV screen. Of course, you can pretend that this article is the actual movie, and thus you can keep on reading if your imagination skills are, amazingly, glorious.
The movie focuses on how the Nazi soldiers are dealt with, and how eventually all the main Nazi officials, including Hitler, are killed in a very interesting attack. The main characters of the movie are a band of Jewish American soldiers headed by Brad Pitt who plays the role of “Aldo“, a French Jewish girl who during her yearly teenage years survives an attack on her life by the Nazis, and the highest ranking German Nazi Security Official who later turns the entire tide of the war.
Today, I would like to share with you what I learnt from the movie, as Quentin Tarantino shows a lot of things in the movie which leave a very different impression than what actually happened, or what actually should have happened, in my view.
28 things learnt from Ingluorious Basterds
Here are 28 things I came to realize, and learn, from the Ingloriously Bastardish Ingluourious Basterds. Please sing along and enjoy, as this is Hollywood entertainment.
- All Germans are evil.
- It is ok to laugh at Germans who are being tortured.
- French people, in addition to being weak, also tend to sell out the location of the hiding Jews in order to protect and save their own French lives.
- German people are incapable of pure love. The ones that show pure love to the rude and traumatized French Jewish girl are to be shot in the back. And they also shoot back. Ending the entire balance of a very uncomfortable love that should never exist between Germans and French Jews.
- Unlike what history tells us, it was Hitler that was afraid of the Jews and the Americans, and not the other way round.
- Brad Pitt looks like the real Hitler.
- Unlike what history tells us, it was the Germans, and not the Americans nor any other race, that hated the black people and called them “Negros.”
- The main Jews that fight against the Nazis are half American. Not Half Polish. Not Half German. Not Half French. Half American.
- Aldo and his men, in the movie, were torturing and scalping the Nazis in 1941. The first extermination camp was built in 1942, according to historical accounts and documents. Thus, according to Tarantino, Aldo and his men were brutally and psychotically killing the Nazis for simply being on the opposite side of the war. Today, we would call such behavior torture and barbaric. Of course, we do not know what had happened to Aldo and his men before, though Aldo’s neck could have been bruised and scarred because of fighting the strong Antisemitism in America itself in 1941 and before.
Today, 2009, 14% of the Americans have strong Antisemitism views and beliefs, so it must be hard for an American Jewish soldier like Aldo to live a happy and non-traumatized life back then in America, and also for being sent to Germany afterwards. Even the famous Major-General Ulysses S. Grant issued an Anti-Jewish order banning the Jews in 1862, to extract and kick out all Jews from the states of Tennessee, Mississippi and Kentucky, because of his belief that the Jewish people were handling and managing the entire black market in the south. Thus it was the United States in 1862, and not the Germans in 1930’s, that first started expelling and banning all the Jewish people from the communities through legal and authorized military orders. Of course, Aldo probably skipped history class and thus missed that lesson.
- Hitler died like a dying mannequin in a movie theatre while screaming like a Nazi.
- You are not a terrorist for being suicidal and for blowing up and killing people in extreme rage. It is the Germans that are being killed, including drivers, waiters and butlers, so it is all right.
- All Nazi Soldiers are robotic idiots with no heart.
- It is all right to ask black people to commit suicide with you in order to kill the Germans. The black people will agree to it within 30 seconds.
- Every Nazi Soldier, and anyone part of the Nazi Army in any form, must have the Nazi sign carved in their forehead with Aldo’s knife. Apparently, The current Pope Benedict XVI who was enlisted in the Hitler Youth, got away untouched.
- The British can drink liquids other than tea.
- The calm and the collected British does not listen to the American, and gets killed. Honorably. And in style.
- The British, with his fluent German language and movie culture skills, gets killed within 12 hours of being in Germany because of a simple counting habit. Aldo, on the other hand, survives for 4+ years in Germany without knowing any German. And no understandable Italian either.
- The head of the Nazi Security and part of the Waffen-SS and SD, Colonel Hans Landa, the so-called “Jew Hunter“, is the smartest fox of all, and smart enough to overturn the entire war. He is, however, stupid enough to put his life in Aldo’s hands near the end and get a nice Swastika carved into his head.
- All Germans die a horrible Germanic death, including the German spy that helped the British and the Half American Half Jews.
- It is ok to batter around psychotically with a bat, mutilate without conscience, and scalp humans with pure rage. As long as the humans are Germans and the batterers, mutilators and scalpers are Half American Half Jews.
- It is completely normal for the Nazi soldiers to put high ranking officers inside a French Cinema Theatre without checking the projector room, the films, and the back of the projector screen room. It is also completely normal to have no guards outside the movie theatre once the movie starts.
- Unlike what history tells us, Hitler only had 2 security guards, the same guards who stood outside his cinema box.
- It is normal for Nazi soldiers of all types and classes to not have any gun that could be used to blast open the doors in case of any fire or laughing girls.
- It is ok to clap and laugh at all of the above in a movie theatre.
- The British come into the WWII scene well after the Americans have taken care of many things in German and Germany-occupied European lands.
- The Head of the German Propaganda wishes to accomplish through biased German movie things that seem to be getting accomplished through Tarantino’s current movie.
- Bridget causes chaos to the single British hero and many German and American heroes. Helen caused chaos to Sparta and Troy.
- Coming out of the movie, the people labeling the movie as “Bullshit Propaganda” get called “Anti-Jewish Propagandists” by some people, and the people labeling the movie “Realistic, what movies should be” get called “Jewish Propagandists” by others. Bes takes notes.
So what have you learned, or learnt, from Ingluorious Basterds?
Ingluorious Basterds gets hype and a lot of attention due to several things, 4 of which are:
- It is made by Quentin Tarantino. Because of Kill Bill and Reservoir Dogs, and the recent Grindhouse: Death Proof, people expect interestingly nice, “Must watch”, kind of movies.
- This movie has been in planning according to Quentin for almost 10 years.
- Brad Pitt is in it.
- The German Nazis get tortured and scalped.
The movie achieves the purpose, whether or not it was the intention, of extreme violence, several very well dramatized nervous moments, and a cast that does indeed play its role well. The storyline is very unique and a different step than majority of the WWII-Jewish-Population movies that have come out in the last 50 years. If one wants to look at something different, and definitely biased, I would recommend this movie. It can be taken lightly and enjoyed tremendously. However, if you feel like you have a weak mind and starts believing any agenda presented in a movie, then unless you are willing to be biased into different areas and thoughts because of every propaganda-type movie, you can watch this movie while realizing that it has a strong biased message and opinion to it.
What I recommend watching
If you are looking for recommendations, I would strongly recommend watching Cross of Iron and Das Boot, to see the real emotions, lives and chaos endured by German soldiers during WWII, without any mention of the Jews, since majority of the Nazi soldiers were on the front line fighting non-Jewish and non-German forces. Those two movies are masterpieces, told solely and directly from the German point of view. Also recommended are The Pianist and Schindler’s List, with The Pianist being one of the best movies, about the Jewish suffering during WWII, in my view, and Schindler’s List focusing solely on a German Businessmen helping the Jews first for business reasons and then for personal morality reasons. In my view, these 4 movies are 4 of the greatest, realistic, I hope as unbiased as possible compared to the myriad of so many biased movies out there, and best WWII movies ever made, with Das Boot being on top, and then The Pianist.
Please let me know what you learnt and learned from Ingluorious Basterds, or this article
Please share your insights, comments, questions, or any thoughts about the above or the movie in general.
Thank you for reading. I really appreciate it. Now I must go and find out if I can eat some “Jewish” specialty dishes at a “German” restaurant owned by an “African American” living in the East Bay Area.
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