Is Schindler's List Movie Obscene?
I'm not a fan of Schindler's List, the movie. Even though it is a great looking and exciting movie, peripherally on an important subject.
Here is my objection:
None of these objections apply to the book Schindler's List, (Schindler's Ark), by Thomas Keneally, on which the movie was based, only to the movie by Steven Spielberg.
When there are 60 million Nazis ravaging Europe and drowning it in blood, what kind of person makes a movie about 'the only good Nazi' among them?
The argument here is not that it isn't a well made movie. It is. It has adventure and exciting chases and murders and even a train rushing to Auschwitz to rescue our heroes from the gas chambers. It has all the phony melodrama of any Hollywood movie. It is the Holocaust turned into entertainment.
Nor is the argument here even that Schindler himself in actuality was no more than an opportunistic exploiter of Jewish slave labor, who has been turned into a falsely-painted saint by people who can only make money if they portray him as such, rather than presenting him as a foul Nazi.
What actually makes Schindler's List obscene is that Spielberg accidentally shows the Auschwitz-Birkenau gas chambers issuing water from the shower heads. And that is a true obscenity. That is a Holocaust denial.
No gas chambers had any water in the shower heads. None. Nothing came from the shower heads.
Spielberg, while well-meaning, has inadvertently sent the future a message that the gas chambers were showers.
And he has far too much cultural power to do something this irresponsible. Even accidentally.
In the future people will cite Schindler's List in support of their Holocaust denials.
And that is why Schindler's List is an obscenity.
I'm sure this is something which would horrify Spielberg as a man and a humanist. He is anything but a Holocaust denier.
But he should recall every single copy of Schindler's List and edit this scene out of the movie. In order that history is left in no doubt regarding what took place in those gas chambers. He should remove his name from the possibility of it appearing on the future evidential lists of Holocaust deniers
If you want to know what happened in the gas chambers at Auschwitz you can read my account of it here:
I can assure you, no-one was having a pleasant shower at Auschwitz while the only good Nazi in Europe was rushing there on an attractive steam train to save them.
That would be obscene.
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