I know this topic has probably been talked to death but I haven't had an opportunity to discuss it with people who know film.
BIRTH OF A NATION and TRIUMPH OF THE WILL, being controversial films, seem to beg the following question:
How much moral responsibility does a filmmaker shoulder when making a film?
Question everything
[deleted]
all i know is that if i were a person who saw all there money they worked for being devalued and life was very hard and someone told me he had answers i would follow him. this movie is no differnet then the ad campains that people who want to have an office in politics would use. it is only because that he was on the losing end of a war (and most likely insane, something from the history channel) are we able to even talk about this film. take a look at films like the blob, that was a movie about communists. film is one of the many way those who wish to lead try to set themselves out. and we as the populis consume it and for the most part are influanced by it, and this movie, doing its job very well, does that for the german people and for many in the US. if either major political had people who were willing to do what hitler had done and made this film we would be screwed. thank god that politics and intelligents have been seperated.
evil keith
death to hellywood. suffer for art.
Filmmakers don't care about us. Here in the states their best documentry was about how the united states has the worst murder rate in the world even though we don't. War, murder, and pretty much any bad thing under the sun is a way to make money for the industry. The strange thing is the killers are often the saints and the victims are sometimes the perputrators or their own end.
That's the glory of film these days.
[deleted]
moral resposability? heh
thats laughable... any artist has the right to do whatever the hell he/she wants it doesnt matter if what they do is immoral or not politically correct according with their time.
i better ask for moral responsability to the press, the politicians and the militar elite that are always painting illusions to the masses in order to let em follow their ideas and profit.
Dali was a nazi (he loved hitler) and many other artist too...does that demerit their work as a whole? NO! ABSOLUTELY NOT!
1) No. Artsist have no moral responsibilty. If so, we would have miised out on so much.
2) Leni Riefenstahl did nothing wrong. At the time this film was made, Hitler wasn't even in full power, he was rising. There were no talks about concentraion camps and gas chambers.
Hitler was not as powerful in 1934 as he would be later, that's true. But he was Chancellor of Germany and his views about Jews and subhumans were VERY clear to anyone who paid any attention to him at all. I don't think Leni Riefenstahl wanted to promote anti-semitism. But she sure as hell promoted a man who was one of the great anti-semites of all time.
Question everything
It was well known that he (and other nazis) was very anti-semitic, as were many people in all countrys back then to some extent. It was not clear to what length they would go. Very few people would have thought the nazis would actually murder the jews, as much as we can know today, not even themselves had such plans in 1934.
shareDali didnt, as far as my knowledge goes, support Hitler. He fled to the U.S when war broke in Europe. Dali supported Franco, which is a whole other thing.
shareDali loved Hitler. check his biography. theres even a famous painting by him where Hitler appears!
Dali was ultra right winger all his life.
Absolutely none.an artist has the responsibility of being true to his vision and nothing else.If people are offended or shocked,too bad.
shareSo if an artist, or artists, create work(s) which promote violent racism, or hatred, or a return to the values of ages past in which people were killed, violated, maimed, just because they were there or were in the way, that excuses it? I strongly disagree with that. Being an artist doesn't give that person a right to stop being a human being. And, in my opinion, all human beings have a responsibilty to push, grope, search for truth and light. Granted, that might take us into the darkest regions of our psyche. I'm not at all opposed to that. People being "shocked or offended", that's fine. No problem there. But I don't think artists (and I'm a playwright) get a "get out of responsibility free card". That's a cop-out. Certainly, a person - artists included - have a right to live their lives as they choose, create as they choose, live as they choose. Hitler had choices and he made them. Were his choices good? In the end, did they help anyone?
And if you say, "We create our own morality" I would agree. Without it we would live in anarchy. And if you think that would be good for anyone - well, the only people who would say that never lived in an anarchical society.
Question everything
most important part about art is the freedom of it. in art you are totally free to do or say what you want and you have no responsibility to anyone. plus, what makes your sense or morality right? these are just opinions. to some hitlers choices were good.
shareYeah, right. Try that defense next time you get run up before a judge... "I was producing art, your honor!".
Lame, amoral mentalities like that are part of the reason we have a George W. Bush in the White House. Get real. Just because it's "art" doesn't make it right.
Art is not exempt from the Law of Consequence (AKA "karma").
Many times, a working artist doesn't get to choose the nature of his work. As a graphic designer, I've had to do work for the NRA and some other religious & political groups that make me sick to my stomach. But sometimes, that's the gig...that's what there is. I claim no affiliation with any of those groups, and I don't think the fact that I've contributed my artwork to their cause, however unwillingly, makes me responsible for what they do. If I had a choice in the matter, I wouldn't work for them. But sometimes I haven't had that choice. I've got to pay the rent, and life ain't fair...
as far as Riefenstahl is concerned (and this is not an attempt to exonerate her), anyone who wished to work in the creative arts during the Nazi era had to be a member of the Reich Chamber of Culture. The Chamber i.e. Goebbels determined the content of whatever happened to get made, not the artist. And at any rate, the picture was shot in 1934. Nobody had any inkling of what was to come.
"Being an artist doesn't give that person a right to stop being a human being"
and how do you do that with just art? i give you that a tyrant can do that but an artist? come on!
in medieval times nobody could make other art that were not related with god that was the moral artistic standard of that time....so following the lines of your mindset does that means that any artist who could had tried to make something different, something not politically correct or.."inmoral" should carry the consequences of his acts? seriously? to the stake with him?
Every person is responsible for the expected outcome of his actions. The director knew that this film was propoganda for Adolph Hitler. He is responsible for the way that his propaganda influenced people.
It is the height of arrogance to believe that art is somehow above this responsibility.
[deleted]
I don't know if -she- knew what the Nazis were going to do. The movie gives only the slightest hint of things to come. There's militarism, but there is absolutely zero anti-semitism. Have you seen it? It's positive all the way!
Also, let's not forget that this is a documentary, which somewhat dilutes the artistic license and/or responsibility. She was documenting something that was really happening -- not making something up in order that it might happen. Indeed, if Germany had gone on in the direction the film pointed to, it would not have been such a bad thing. No doubt some people joined up because of what they saw in the movie, but that was certainly not to murder innocent people.
So the question becomes, did Leni know what was going to happen? If she did, I'd say "guilty". But I don't think she did. I think she wanted and expected what was depicted in the movie.
Whatever her intention, she paid for it by the stigma it attached to her, effectively ending her short but talented film making career. And that's everybody's loss.
art is about transgression. as imagination is.
therefore it has not anything to do with morality.
theres no guilty artists just fanatics that dont want to lose the contours of their reality with the reachings of the artist mind.
if you condemn art you too can suffer the consequences of this trial. becouse they are intimately attached to our freedom to express ideas and emotions.
if morality changes (it has always changed through history.) your condemnation will result futile but the result of your condemnation will remain, and its a loss for humanity.
examples?
art made during inquisition, greeks, romans, etc art that doesnt exist anymore becouse was destroyed in wars or ivasions etc.
the freedom of speech. contemplates the freedom of thinking and creating different worlds. even though these worlds can oppose the moral codes of our times.
u can never know what kind of consequence your art may imply with time.
for the matter you may make something so utterly innocent today, so utterly attached to the statu quo and in just a couple of years it may become a moral indecency as the laws that command our fundamental judging changes with them.
Riefenstahl worked with a regime she believed in while other half of the Europe also believed in these ideals, wether they want to accept it or not these days.
If the nazis had won, she would be considered some kind of cult director, but happened they were smashed to bits and their ideas became morally wrong for all the reasons we know.
The artist is not a prophet, maybe only a visionary and exceptionally someone who can advance into the future with his art.
[deleted]