ALL THIS AND WORLD WAR II WITH JAMES LILEKS:
Been on a bit of a Hitler binge lately. A nice break from the Roman binge. For this I can thank my absolutely favorite podcast, “The Rest is History,” which matches Dominick Sandbrook and Tom Holland to discuss absolutely everything. Perfect chemistry, very British, wry, droll, laugh-out-loud as well.
Eh? Laugh out loud? And Hitler? Yes, because there are absurdities and banalities that are darkly comic. They’ll do four hours on the rise of Hitler, then four more on the consolidation of power, which seems to involve an inordinate number of conferences at German spas – old-world faded charm, elderly waiters, ticking clocks in the lobby, musty smells, and it becomes a running joke referred to in passing, giving the faithful listener a recognizable callback in the next ep. All unplanned and chatty – as I said, the chemistry is great, two like-minded people who have an impressively substantial storehouse of knowledge and a sense of the breadth and scope of history, but are still continuously curious.
When I say “Binge” I mean that I’d finished the rise-to-power series and was offered up a new documentary on one of the streamers about HITLER’S MARCH TO WAR, or something — new footage! Recently uncovered documents! The hook was a countdown to WW2, and hence they had a chronological splash screen at regular intervals. MUNICH. 362 DAYS TO WAR. These words appear as if slapped on the screen, then vibrate out with a great whoosh.
Because the thing about the run-up to WW2 is this: it needs goosing to make it compelling. Jump cuts and sound effects and ADHD Ken Brown pans.
It got me thinking about the inevitable AI upscaling and enhancing of WW2 footage, particularly of Hitler. Right now he’s mostly the grainy guy shouting in newsreels, or the very grainy guy gliding in a limo as he heils the cheering throngs in Vienna. Color footage is rare. When it’s all made 4K, what sort of impact will it have?
In his 1964 book Understanding Media, Marshall McLuhan wrote:
TV is a cool medium. It rejects hot figures and hot issues and people from the hot press media…Had TV occurred on a large scale during Hitler’s reign he would have vanished quickly. Had TV come first there would have been no Hitler at all. When Khrushchev appeared on American TV he was more acceptable than Nixon, as a clown and a lovable sort of old boy. His appearance is rendered by TV as a comic cartoon. Radio, however, is a hot medium and takes cartoon characters seriously. Mr. K. on radio would be a different proposition.
Or as Lileks concluded, “I don’t think he’ll earn many new converts. I think some might be mystified by his appeal, because his speeches are like, you know, cringe. Like dude. I don’t know, I guess you had to be there.”
And for more “I don’t know, I guess you had to be there” moments, keep reading Lileks for America veering into its own creepy fascist aesthetics as well during the 1930s, before teasing, “There’s a bigger piece here, and I think I will write it for Discourse.”
Definitely looking forward to it.