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even a man who is pure at heart...
Nov. 5th, 2017 01:31 pmBrowsing through Curt Siodmak's memoirs again, I was reminded again of how so many things are a matter of perspective. Siodmak - scriptwriter of many a sci fi and horror movie in the 40s, started out writing (both scripts and novels) in the last years of the Weimar Republic, i.e.those very years which in the English speaking world's imagination are firmly coded as sexually liberated (or decadent, depending on who is doing the telling, but at any rate, if Brits and Americans refer to Weimar era Germany, you can bet they envision sex and drugs somewhere). Meanwhile, young Curt Siodmak, making it to the US in 1937 after wisely getting out of Germany post Goebbels' speech to the film worldi in March of 1933, and a few years in France and Britain, comes to just the opposite conclusion - he thought it - i.e. the US of A - was the country of sexual liberation, so unlike sexually repressed Germany (and he means Weimar era Germany, not the Third Reich) and even more repressed Britain. Now this might have something to do with just where Curt S. scored, but even so, I was amused.
Being a genre man through and through, he has a nice hang-up free attitude towards the fact he'll probably best known for The Wolf Man (and inventing a lot of modern day pop culture werewolf folklore, complete with doggerel), but he can be snobbish in other regards; David O. Selznick is never mentioned, for example, without the adjectives "ill-educated". And the descriptions of the first visits to post war Germany in the 50s are (deservedly) scathing, because of course he runs into denialists and "did something happen?" attitudes all around. One of these encounters includes the most effective verbal slap I've ever read administered, when he runs into Gustav Ucicky, whom he knew from ye olde UFA days, and who had then gone on to become one of the Third Reich's leading film directors. Seeing Siodmak again, he asks: "Mensch, Kurt, wo biste gewesen?" "Hey, Curt, long time no see" would be the closest English equivalent for what is the kind of informal greeting you give when you haven't seen each other in a good while but have parted on good terms - the literaral translation, however, is "where have you been?" To which Siodmak replies: "Not in your ovens", and leaves.
(A few decades later Siodmak got and accepted the Bundesverdienstkreuz; in the memoirs he said that three decades of Germany confronting its past (since said memoirs were written in the early 1990s, I'm assuming he means the time between the mid 60s and the present, which is a fair assessment) seemed supportworthy.)
I can't imagine what he'd say to the situation on both sides of the Atlantic right now. Or wait, I can. *cringes* (He died in 2000, at 98 years of age, in his sleep, which.) On that note:
Something New In the West : in which two writers from Die Zeit ponder not just German-US but general Europe-US relationships in the age of not just the Orange Menace:
Today Atlanticists have to deal with the paradox that the attack on the foundations of the liberal international world order founded by America comes from the White House. In the West Wing sits a nationalist and confessed enemy of multilateral politics, one who sympathizes with authoritarian leaders and undermines the EU by supporting Brexit.
The fact that the constants and principles of German foreign policy -- European integration, multilateralism, engagement in the name of human rights and the rule of law, rule-based globalization -- are questioned by the American government constitutes an enormous intellectual and strategic challenge. In the future, Europe now, out of necessity, has to do this by itself without the aid of the U.S., or perhaps even against the U.S. government.
And lastly, on to something to be fannish about.
Black Sails:
Fabulous essay about Black Sails by one Natasha Simonova, University of Oxford, posted by the British Society for Eighteenth Century Studies. Spoilers for all four seasons.
Being a genre man through and through, he has a nice hang-up free attitude towards the fact he'll probably best known for The Wolf Man (and inventing a lot of modern day pop culture werewolf folklore, complete with doggerel), but he can be snobbish in other regards; David O. Selznick is never mentioned, for example, without the adjectives "ill-educated". And the descriptions of the first visits to post war Germany in the 50s are (deservedly) scathing, because of course he runs into denialists and "did something happen?" attitudes all around. One of these encounters includes the most effective verbal slap I've ever read administered, when he runs into Gustav Ucicky, whom he knew from ye olde UFA days, and who had then gone on to become one of the Third Reich's leading film directors. Seeing Siodmak again, he asks: "Mensch, Kurt, wo biste gewesen?" "Hey, Curt, long time no see" would be the closest English equivalent for what is the kind of informal greeting you give when you haven't seen each other in a good while but have parted on good terms - the literaral translation, however, is "where have you been?" To which Siodmak replies: "Not in your ovens", and leaves.
(A few decades later Siodmak got and accepted the Bundesverdienstkreuz; in the memoirs he said that three decades of Germany confronting its past (since said memoirs were written in the early 1990s, I'm assuming he means the time between the mid 60s and the present, which is a fair assessment) seemed supportworthy.)
I can't imagine what he'd say to the situation on both sides of the Atlantic right now. Or wait, I can. *cringes* (He died in 2000, at 98 years of age, in his sleep, which.) On that note:
Something New In the West : in which two writers from Die Zeit ponder not just German-US but general Europe-US relationships in the age of not just the Orange Menace:
Today Atlanticists have to deal with the paradox that the attack on the foundations of the liberal international world order founded by America comes from the White House. In the West Wing sits a nationalist and confessed enemy of multilateral politics, one who sympathizes with authoritarian leaders and undermines the EU by supporting Brexit.
The fact that the constants and principles of German foreign policy -- European integration, multilateralism, engagement in the name of human rights and the rule of law, rule-based globalization -- are questioned by the American government constitutes an enormous intellectual and strategic challenge. In the future, Europe now, out of necessity, has to do this by itself without the aid of the U.S., or perhaps even against the U.S. government.
And lastly, on to something to be fannish about.
Black Sails:
Fabulous essay about Black Sails by one Natasha Simonova, University of Oxford, posted by the British Society for Eighteenth Century Studies. Spoilers for all four seasons.
