Poll of the Day > seth rogens defends humanizing hitler in the tv show preacher

(+) Yeah! (+)

http://www.cbr.com/preacher-hitler-seth-rogen/
---

well he was a human, so
---

Well, Hitler wasn't super-mecha death satan... he was, in fact, a human being.
---

An evil human being and the closest mankind has gotten to true evil lately (arguments can be made with Stalin, Mao ZeDong, Kim Jong un) but still a human being
---

Demonizing people with small hands is how we got where we are, ok?
---

ninjabay posted...

An evil human being and the closest mankind has gotten to true evil lately

Spoiler warning
-
-
-
Humans are evil.
---

He wasn't that bad, after all he did kill Hitler.

Cacciato posted...

He wasn't that bad, after all he did kill Hitler.

Yeah, but he also killed the guy who killed Hitler.
---

I love that show
---

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

ninjabay posted...

An evil human being and the closest mankind has gotten to true evil lately

Spoiler warning
-
-
-
Humans are evil.

well, i guess that's true
---

ClarkDuke posted...

Demonizing people with small hands is how we got where we are, ok?

no we demonize people who awkwardly screams at everyone on twitter like their some raging alcoholic with no life despite being the president

plus how many presidents brag that they won the election six months into their presidency and keep claiming the opposing side is just a bunch of sour losers for not getting with the program>
---

NightMareBunny posted...

ClarkDuke posted...

Demonizing people with small hands is how we got where we are, ok?

no we demonize people who awkwardly screams at everyone on twitter like their some raging alcoholic with no life despite being the president

plus how many presidents brag that they won the election six months into their presidency and keep claiming the opposing side is just a bunch of sour losers for not getting with the program>

You need to go back to school.

ClarkDuke posted...

ok?

Is that you, @ZiggiStardust?
---

I can honestly say this news does not in any way lower my opinion of Seth Rogen.
Because that'd be impossible to do

To be fair, pretty much the entire point of Preacher (the comic) - and most of Garth Ennis' work in general - is making people feel uncomfortable and pissing people off.

So if you don't find at least a few things offensive, then the show really isn't doing its job. Or there's something broken inside of you anyway.

That being said, I can honestly say that I've never given a single fuck what Seth Rogen thinks about pretty much anything, but neither do I like Preacher or pretty much anything Ennis has ever written, so I have no dogs in this fight whatsoever.

As a completely disinterested outsider, though, it is worth noting that Hitler DID have a human side. And there's plenty of literature out there that humanizes or even protagonizes people who are arguably just as bad (if not worse - stuff like Paradise Lost and Lucifer basically present the literal Devil himself as a relatively nice, likeable guy. Actually, Satan-as-Good is actually a damned common trope in a lot of fiction, now that I think about it - http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SatanIsGood ). No matter how hung up people may be on the Holocaust or WWII in general, it's pretty much inevitable that we're eventually going to start seeing more and more nuanced versions of Hitler showing up over time.



Though if people are annoyed by Hitler, I wonder how many people are going to shit themselves if/when they get around to the arc where it turns out that God is and has always been a massive asshole, who then gets murdered and replaced by the Saint of Killers. Because like 90% of the point of Preacher is shitting on the entire concept of religion.


---

PyroBlade1985 posted...

ninjabay posted...

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

ninjabay posted...

An evil human being and the closest mankind has gotten to true evil lately

Spoiler warning
-
-
-
Humans are evil.

well, i guess that's true

Shut the fuck up. Humans aren't evil. There are evil humans but humans aren't evil as a whole. If humans were evil as a whole, then why do things like wildlife sanctuaries exist?

because people that make wildlife sanctuaries still Lie, Cheat, take their anger out on others, etc.

PyroBlade1985 posted...

If humans were evil as a whole, then why do things like wildlife sanctuaries exist?

It's still more evil than just not bulldozing their original homes in the first place.
---

ParanoidObsessive posted...

And there's plenty of literature out there that humanizes or even protagonizes people who are arguably just as bad (if not worse - stuff like Paradise Lost and Lucifer basically present the literal Devil himself as a relatively nice, likeable guy. Actually, Satan-as-Good is actually a damned common trope in a lot of fiction, now that I think about it - http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SatanIsGood ). No matter how hung up people may be on the Holocaust or WWII in general, it's pretty much inevitable that we're eventually going to start seeing more and more nuanced versions of hitler showing up over time.

Though if people are annoyed by hitler, I wonder how many people are going to shit themselves if/when they get around to the arc where it turns out that God is and has always been a massive asshole, who then gets murdered and replaced by the Saint of Killers. Because like 90% of the point of Preacher is shitting on the entire concept of religion.

The difference is hitler actually existed and his crimes against humanity are real and documented.
Religious and mythological beings like Satan or God may or may not exist and even if they do, we have no idea what sort of atrocities they may have committed.
It's like saying that a Batman comic that humanizes The Joker is the same thing as a tv show humanizing hitler. The Joker has never killed, tortured, enslaved, or otherwise harmed a single real life person...that we're aware of... It's not the same.

PyroBlade1985 posted...

then why do things like wildlife sanctuaries exist?

Because most evil people like to lie to themselves and tell themselves they aren't evil.

Even Hitler didn't wake up every morning going "Man, it's so good to be evil! I wonder what atrocities I can commit today!"

And that's not even getting into ulterior motives like enlightened self-interest, reciprocal altruism, or hedonistic altruism (wherein we all do "good" things for selfish reasons, even if we don't realize it or want to accept it).


---

streamofthesky posted...

The difference is hitler actually existed and his crimes against humanity are real and documented

There are plenty of people today who would say that Satan absolutely exists, and that he's guilty of far more terrible things that anything Hitler ever did.

Hell, for most of European history, a LOT of people in Europe would have been completely fine with the Holocaust, because it's not like Hitler killed anyone IMPORTANT. It was mostly just Jews, Gypsies, gays, and foreigners. Fuck those mongrels!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_Europe

About the only thing that separates Hitler from, say, the people in York, England who rounded up about 800 Jews, locked them in a church, and then set it on fire, or the medieval villages who would force Jews into ghettos and then kill or kick them out whenever they felt like it is that Hitler just happened to be more efficient about it. And that was less about him as an individual and more about the age of technological innovation he just happened to live in (ie, the same reason why WWI and WWI were so casualty-heavy - once you start getting poison gas and machine guns, killing becomes a hell of a lot more effective). We've demonized Hitler in retrospect (especially those of us who were "on the other side" or people who were forced to do so in conquered areas), but he wasn't even the worst mass-murderer AT THE TIME HE WAS DOING IT (but Stalin was on our side, so it was okay!).

And keep in mind, Milton was writing Satan as a sympathetic character when most of the population ABSOLUTELY "knew" that Satan was real, and would have seen him as a far worse villain than anyone espousing Hitler's beliefs - Martin Luther himself probably would have agreed with most of what Hitler said but been pissed off at Milton for making Satan sympathetic.

To this day there are plenty of people out there who don't give much of a fuck about Hitler but are absolutely convinced that the Devil is real and that EVIL is a very real and powerful force in the world (and who do things like try to get Harry Potter removed from school libraries because it promotes witchcraft).


---

Uh, yeah... portraying a medieval mob of peasants torching a Jewish ghetto and murdering everyone in it and trying to make them look sympathetic or mis-understood would be offensive and disgusting as well. Just because people have an odd, sick fascination with portraying hitler on screen doesn't make other real-life atrocities less worthy of scorn.
The supposed actions of the Devil on the other hand is dealing with a figure no one has ever known and whose personality traits and actions are purely speculative. It's Not. The. Same.

PyroBlade1985 posted...

Then let me ask you people this. An old woman falls in the middle of the road. A car comes by. Nine times out of ten, what do you believe will happen? Or better yet, what would YOU do? And please be honest.

I've actually already explained that, honestly.

Hedonistic Altruism - "I will stop to help this person because years of social conditioning have influenced me to the point where the idea of being "good" makes me feel better as a person. I am not truly acting altruistically, I am acting to make myself feel good."

Reciprocal Altruism - "I will stop to help this person because I am aware that, someday, I may be in their position and need someone to stop to help me. I am not truly acting altruistically, I am fulfilling my presumed role in the social contract with the expectation that others will do the same when I need help." (This may also tie into the Bystander Effect, where multiple potential helpers all being nearby decreases the odds that any one of them individually will help, because the problem immediately becomes "someone else's problem")

Enlightened Self-Interest - "I will stop to help this person, with the expectation of immediate gratification. This may simply be the "good" feeling generated by their expected gratitude for my help, or it may be societal (if other people learn about my "good deed" and my reputation gains by it) or financial (if they actually offer a cash reward). But I am ALWAYS motivated by some degree of self-interest, even if I am not consciously aware of how I might potentially benefit from a situation."


There's also an established theory with a fair amount of research evidence behind it that implies that "empathy" as we know it is almost entirely predicated on the brain "tricking" you into seeing someone in need as if they were yourself, meaning that even when you think you are being altruistic on the cognitive level your brain is still being selfish to some degree.

Basically, the more psychology classes you take, the more and more convinced you're probably going to become that humans are terrible meat-sacks.



(And even beyond the theoretical, I know of at least one person who felt out of a cab in NYC, broke their leg, and were left laying on the side of the road. I can also tell you that the end result of that scenario was that not only did the cab driver immediately drive away, but that the first person who stopped to "help" stole the victim's wallet. The urge to "help" isn't necessarily as universal or as selfless as you'd like to believe.)


---

streamofthesky posted...

Uh, yeah... portraying a medieval mob of peasants torching a Jewish ghetto and murdering everyone in it and trying to make them look sympathetic or mis-understood would be offensive and disgusting as well. Just because people have an odd, sick fascination with portraying hitler on screen doesn't make other real-life atrocities less worthy of scorn.
The supposed actions of the Devil on the other hand is dealing with a figure no one has ever known and whose personality traits and actions are purely speculative. It's Not. The. Same.

You're sort of missing the point.

I'm suggesting that those same torch-wielding peasants would probably agree with a lot of what Hitler had to say, while simultaneously believing that Satan absolutely existed and was both malicious and active in the world, that you're an asshole or an imbecile for believing otherwise, and would be outraged about someone trying to paint him as a sympathetic character. AND YET PEOPLE THEN STILL WROTE STORIES WITH HIM AS A SYMPATHETIC CHARACTER.

Simply dismissing Satan as a fictional character doesn't really work as an argument, when there are literally millions of people who would disagree with you, and a lot of people who would think you're an idiot for believing it. And ignoring the fact that, regardless of what people think NOW, there was absolutely a VERY strong undercurrent of religious belief in the past (when people were still writing sympathetic stories about all sorts of historical "monsters").



But regardless, it's worth remembering that Hitler really isn't a singular evil who exists as an aberration in the human race without precedent or peer (and in fact, painting him in that light is incredibly dangerous and somewhat offensive, because it makes it seem like he was the beginning and ending of EVIL as a concept, and tends to go hand-in-hand with the "Well, it could never happen here!" mentality). There have absolutely been individuals who have been just as "evil" within context (and when considered to scale), and yet we as a modern culture have basically picked a single individual to codify as the sole exception to every rule. He's our literal "Incarnation of Evil" in exactly the same way medieval peasants would have seen Satan.

Keep in mind, very few people here would complain if someone wrote a story where Stalin was a sympathetic character in some ways, in spite of the fact that Stalin was probably both directly and indirectly responsible for more deaths than Hitler was, had a far more negative impact on global society for a much longer period, and terrified the shit out of most people who interacted with him. Modern history made Hitler THE ONE TRUE EVIL more out of political expediency than out of pure moral outrage (which we as a species have long since gotten very good at ignoring whenever it benefits us to do so).

And like it or not, our perception of Hitler is very much rooted in the present mindset. There will absolutely come a time when historians begin to look at him, his beliefs, and his actions through a less polarized lens, because that is exactly what happened for every other "monster" throughout human history. It's kind of inevitable.


---

PyroBlade1985 posted...

dioxxys posted...

PyroBlade1985 posted...

ninjabay posted...

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

ninjabay posted...

An evil human being and the closest mankind has gotten to true evil lately

Spoiler warning
-
-
-
Humans are evil.

well, i guess that's true

Shut the fuck up. Humans aren't evil. There are evil humans but humans aren't evil as a whole. If humans were evil as a whole, then why do things like wildlife sanctuaries exist?

because people that make wildlife sanctuaries still Lie, Cheat, take their anger out on others, etc.

If humans were TRULY evil we would let those little guys fend for themselves.

we did.

look up the Gaza zoo.
---

Good. He was human after all.

Also, already made a topic about this, and it should be common knowledge besides, but evil doesn't exist. Hitler was not evil. No one is evil. End of story.
---

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Hitler just happened to be more efficient about it.

He also did it waaaaay more recently. If the holocaust happened 1500 years ago I doubt people would be anywhere near as sensitive about it today.
---

People always get mad at me for saying Stalin was worse

Still I don't see the problem, Hitler was evil (for our moral standards) but he was still a human that believed what he was saying
---

Chaos_Echo posted...

Yeah, but he also killed the guy who killed Hitler.

omg my brain
---

Chaos_Echo posted...

Cacciato posted...

He wasn't that bad, after all he did kill Hitler.

Yeah, but he also killed the guy who killed Hitler.

He made up for it though, by killing the guy who killed the guy who killed Hitler.

So there is that.
---

wolfy42 posted...

Chaos_Echo posted...

Cacciato posted...

He wasn't that bad, after all he did kill Hitler.

Yeah, but he also killed the guy who killed Hitler.

He made up for it though, by killing the guy who killed the guy who killed Hitler.

So there is that.

Damn. Hitler really did kill a lot of people.
---

Outrage culture
---