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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023

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I think the whole intention of the Bear Jew scene is to make you sick and uncomfortable. Tarantino knows that the Nazis are widely depicted as the great monsters of history and jews as their innocent victims. So he goes and creates a situation where the jews have the power and engage in needless cruelty, while the Nazi exhibits the noble virtue of courage. It's no accident that the scene includes the exchange about the Iron Cross. He could have included stuff to show the Nazi doing evil things so you felt better about him getting clubbed. But instead he showed him staring down death with bravery and resolve.

The point of this of course is not to make some grand point about shared humanity and how even the worst people have good aspects or anything like that. It's Tarantino. The point is to make you feel sick and uncomfortable because he thinks it's fun. And also to show brutal cruelty because he thinks that's fun too.

The movie is a revenge fantasy. The point of the scene is to desecrate the virtues of the outgroup and humiliate them. Which is why the latter part of the scene includes a German soldier submitting immediately after the brave soldier is beaten to death.

Yeah, when the war broke out and people started unironically reposting a deepfake of this scene with Zelensky and Putin I was deeply weirded out: how could all of them ignore the mood of the scene? It's not like it's some subtle undercurrent that you need to be a film connoisseur to notice. I guess people are too Pavlovian and can't help reacting to "punching nazis" with anything but applause.