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Comment this video if you think this is weird, like it if you think it's not, subscribe if this is the kind of content you'd see in a nightmare.

Someone has to do the dirty work. Dirty can be a plumber fixing toilets. Or a janitor cleaning them. It can be a butcher cutting a side of beef. Or a veterinarian treating the cow's infection. It can be a girst responser dealing with a overdose. Or an ER nurse treating them. It can be a fisherman. Or a police officer. Or a soldier. Or a camp guard. We, by necessity, learn to tune unpleasant things out. They can be gross to one person or banal to another. Geesh. It's part of living and dying. And when we die...the unpleasant job of a mortician exist to deal with it for us. The only thing we dislike here is that we came to equate humans with a virulent pest. But that didn't magically happen in the 1940's. It happened long ago at the dawn of time. We've always been that way. The only shocking part, really, is that someone had to do a study to realize that is how we are.

I'm not fictional because my life is too boring to be worth reading

As a reader, I feel safe because I didn't understand what he was talking about

Very fascinating video! I also think it's interesting that this kind of paradox is so similar to "self-referential" paradoxes that crop up in computer science (with the halting problem), and in math (with things like Russel's Paradox and even more interesting, in Gödel's incompleteness)... Also in art! (Like in Escher's "Drawing hands"). It's such a brilliant concept that gives us so much to contemplate/enjoy! And also... I love the Borges inclusion! An author whose insight and brilliance isn't nearly explored enough.

post-modernity is wack, invest in shitpost-modernity...

This was a great video! I'm surprised you don't have more subscribers given the quality of your videos. Also really exciting to see Borges and Cortazar mentioned! I thought of two works that connect a little to this theme: the first is Aura, by Carlos Fuentes. It's narrated in the second person, so it's written as if the reader is carrying out the actions of the entire novella. The second is Sensini by Roberto Bolaño. It's about two writers submitting to writing competitions together, so there's a dynamic of authors being each other's readers as well as each other's characters. Anyway, great stuff!

Great content

nice coverage bro, if you could instead put more graphics and editing skills, i can see you going big!

Great video! Only a slight correction, the first story by Cortazar is not “House taken over”, but “The Continuity of Parks” I think that with this idea of making the reader a character of the story, we can shift his perspective to believe what we want them to think, therefore creating a “false reality”. We also could be living in this false reality as I write this comment, living with prejudices with the world and not having the real image of it. I recommend if you haven’t read it the story “In a Grove” by Akutagawa, it does a great use of this.

Like this video if you think you're fictional. Comment if you think you're not. Subscribe if you think this channel should stay alive.

I don't think it's that evil people will "always try to seem banal and irresponsible." Hoss never does that in the film. The point is that evil people do not consider themselves evil and do not think that the horrible things they are doing are wrong. This is why the Hoss family goes about their lives relatively normally despite where they live and what they are doing. They understand it may look bad to outsiders and would understand they should try to isolate themselves from "wrongdoing" in a war crimes trial, but they think they're doing a good thing. The Nazis didn't think "we're so evil, let's do some really bad things muhaha." They believed they were righteous patriots protecting the nation from degenerate forces of evil and making Germany great again. I wish more people understood how they saw themselves. While they don't, modern movements are doomed to follow in their footsteps.

Thank you.

Have you heard the theory that some of the torture techniques Orwell described were learned by him during his time in the colonial police in Burma?

You deserve many many more views. I am glad that the algorithm glitched and sent me here.

1984 is based on the West tendencies of the time, not USSR.

Я не думаю, что 1984 должен быть примером Советского Союза. Это больше похоже на тоталитарную систему в целом.

I wonder how this is different in the current system in the PRC.

I think some may bristle against the concept of banality highlighting the manner and workings of evil because it feels somewhat dismissive of how it came to be that way. This operates under the assumption that banality means boring, simple, easily fallen into and as easily stepped out of, if only a person of sufficient moral merit would participate in the test. It would serve better to view banality through a lens of nonchalance to explain the nature of the beast. Consider when he breaks the news of his promotion and new venture to his wife. He quietly confirms the "good news" of the operation named after him, delights in his fortune, and assures that prosperity will continue. Almost casually, he remarks that despite the celebration that evening, all he could focus on was the most efficient manner of killing everyone in the building. She tells him it's late and she is tired. There is no fanfare. No shock. No awe. It is as if he describes the contents of his morning paper and she passively asks for the salt. There is no higher faculty engaging with the horrors, they simply pass over the cerebrum like a trickling stream ignores the rocks. It is not the basic pleasures in their lives nor the slow march of career progress that frames their evil as banal. It is the carelessness with which they move through anywhere and anyone they encounter, the disinterest of their impact. Complete and utter detachment in service of a selfish complacency.

Yeah I've been with your thoughts since I racistly observed Japanese bus coaches of tourists in Australia in early 80s. I eschew video and photography like an iconoclast. Once in a blue moon I will take a picture in my rural isolation of some phenomenon which is unique and evanescent. I love computer and other tech but am maxed out on tourist trail repeat pix.

This film captured the essence of 'the banality of evil'.. A great example from the film is when Hedwig casually threatened her 'maid' with her husband's wrathful spreading of her ashes... Hedwigs casual evoking of the methodology her society is neck deep in. It's so much more than people doing bad things in ignorance... Also the quote banality of evil appeared first during the Nuremberg trials...

Interesting analysis. Indeed, the aparatnik lever puller of the state machine, meets the "True Believer" as spoken to by Eric Hoffer. They are with us still......

I saw this movie four days ago and can't stop thinking about it. Your review and analysis is very thoughtful. I appreciate the comments of the other viewers of your video. There is not much I can add except to recommend to all thinking people a book written about life in Nazi Germany entitled, "They Thought They were Free," by Milton Mayer. Milton was an American journalist that interviewed a large number of German citizens who lived in prewar Germany and survived the war. His sample population reflected a cross section of German socio-economic status, many who benefited under the Nazi regime, many who were nostalgic for it, who were lifted in status by joining the Nazi party. and some who recognized what Nazism represented. Many Germans thought they were truly on the right side of history. My grandfather survived WW2 and served in the Pacific as a US Marine. Of his many observations on life and the world, I heard him repeat this many times, depending on the situation, or what was on the news, or what he read in the papers - "a human being is capable of just about anything." To me The Zone of Interest, and Schindler's List really attempt to demonstrate the evil and the good that all humans have in them.

The prisoners were fertilizing the wine with ash from the concentration camps, which in turn should camouflage the wall to the camp. In the scene at the doctor's office, there was a poster on the wall that read "Eat whole grain bread! (Esst Vollkornbrot)". In every advanced nation-state, the healthcare system has the purpose to ensure that the population is healthy enough to be productive and reproduce.

Even today, Democrats believe that their nation should come first and should rule over others. Fascism and democracy are closely related as they both share the ideology of the nation-state. The movie depicts the amorality that follows when people believe in these ideologies. They were not merely following orders because they were orders; they were following orders because these orders glorified the greatness and superiority of being "German." Regardless of whether someone actually profits from the state or remains poor his entire life, once people embrace the narrative of being a proud member of a certain nationality, they become easy to manipulate. If the state declares another state as the enemy, people will do whatever the state says to preserve "their" nation. Fascists take these ideas to their logical conclusion ("Totaler Krieg"), demanding from their subjects to sacrifice everything (their lives) for the well-being of the nation.

detective novels are dependent on cliches. so are most meta-fictions. narrative slapstick. like, "pierre menard, author of the quixote'.

Is “banality” thought to mean “innocent” or “ignorant” here? That is not the point.

I think you misunderstand the term banality. It literally just means commonplace. The term and movie are about how everyday people are capable of evil things because the director wants us to examine how eerily similar we as an audience behave to the suffering of others when we place walls between us (literal walls like the US/mexico border, and metaphorical walls like seeing exploitation of the global south through of phones, etc). Hollywood generally depicts the Nazis as evil monsters, but the term “banality of evil” reminds us that this tendency toward evil acts resides in everyone, including us. The phrase is meant to invoke introspection about our actions (or inactions) in the face of all the current global atrocities.

Nice content, man. Interested to hear more from you.

this was so interesting!!!! love seeing the care put in :)

Hey, I just found out that if you leave a like under this video, then you're definitely not fictional. A comment makes you Don-Quixote-resistant, and if you subscribe - you automatically join the squad of detectives in fancy hats.

The better title for Arendt's book should be "the subtlety of evil"

The explanation is that not everyman has to want to me a Nietzchean superman to like having power and to, in at least some cases, exercise it cruelly. Witness many clerks who indulge in this.

One German critic said it's not about "the banality of evil" but the evil in banality. At least in German, that made a lot of sense to me.

To tell the truth, we are all capable of evil by compartmentalising our thoughts and feelings. When confronted by vegans who question us whether we have compassion for farm animals, we respond by eating meat in front of them, or by saying pigs won't feel pain when boiled alive because it's too fast. We don't want to know the personalities of "our food", we mute out their last screams.

Excellent analysis. The only point I would quibble with comes at 11:24 when you say that "the criminal will always try to seem banal and conformant in order to escape justice." This seems to imply that the criminals expected the contingency of being held accountable for their evil deeds, but why would they? If Germany had won the war, they would not have been. I suggest that perhaps the motivation for acting ordinarily in the presence of extraordinary evil was to avoid self-awareness and so escape self-judgment. The wall abets this purpose by hiding the hideousness of what is happening from their sight.

Very interesting and introspective analysis. Provocative movie

I am trying to work out your accent. I think it's German.

of course evil is banal. humans, pretty much all of us, live in a state of hypnosis. we eat hot dogs without hearing the squeal of the butchering.

Thank you for the analysis. Though Arendt was the first to come in my mind when watching this, character of Hoesses seemed more nuanced than that. In general, they were emotionally incapable of true empathy and care (ref. to the scene of their baby being constantly given to the nanny, them sleeping separately, Rudolf using sex worker) and deliberately tried to use the bureaucratic system of subordination to maintain their financially safe life. I think they'd been assholes in peace times as well, they just chose to use the wartime situation to ensure their own safety and that of their resources. Historic events allowed them not only to be assholes, but to profit from that and be in physical safety in turbulent times. But also, if you read biographies of these SS men, you can see they have been either building up their military career since early 20th century OR have joined from completely simple profession and have been generally rather dumb. This makes one look at the society nowadays and think about the types that would gladly join the SS (think of some policement, security guards, but also just generally racist / sociopathic businessmen etc.), and a second Holocaust does not seem so unrealistic. But it also reminds that there will always be a minority of those that do resist and go against the stream.

Why. does no one make a film about the 15 million Ukrainians who starved to death under Stalin?

brilliant movie n well thought out critique

Your analysis of Zone of Interest is penetrating. This one is superb

The thing that often struck me was the state of deep denial so many of the characters were in about what was happening around them. Though as much as they tried to pretend to themselves, they knew exactly what was happening. Hedwig's mother comes to visit and tries to make casual reference to what's happening on the other side of the wall, musing about the possibility a Jewish woman she used to clean for possibly being on the other side of the wall and expressing disappointment that she was outbid on the purchase of her curtains. It's as if she attempts to make what's happening banal by speaking about it in the most banal way she can possibly think of. Yet as much as she tries, she cannot stomach what is happening and quietly flees in the middle of the night, leaving only a note - a note which Hedwig briefly reads and then promptly disposes of in the oven, attempting to give it no further thought.

Will the day ever cone when we move on from this? Every single year, more WW2 / Holocaust movies. There are other events, other times in history worth exploring.

An excellent commentary on the movie as it relates to the well-known comment, 'Banality of Evil'. However, there is great distraction from the spoken words because of the constant right hand arm gestures of the speaker. Please desist with this practice.

It seems to me that nobody here, including the maker of this video, is tackling the key point of the film and characters' psychology, which is dehumanisation. Hőss and his family didn’t think they were doing anything wrong, because it was "the right thing to do" in order to establish the "Neue Reich". They didn’t think of their victims as humans one moment, they were just impediment on their (the Nazionalsozialism's) road to the "bright new future of Der Űbermensch". An obstacle which must be removed, nothing more. The real tragedy of this horrific time (and the film) is exactly the thing Glazer himself stated in his Oscar speech; dehumanisation that resides in all of us and is a real danger to humanity -"How do we resist?" refers not to the evil in others, but the evil inside of us. It's not that they didn’t know, ofcourse they did, nor that they thought how to whitewash themselves - there was nothing to whitewash, because they didn’t think of their deeds as evil at all. They just thought them necessary and sought how to do them as efficiently as possibile. This is the real thoughtlessness that Arendt wrote about, the incapability or lack of willingness to ponder deeply whether the doctrines they grew to believe in were really true. And this is the essence of the phrase "banality of evil"

Also see Golo Manns critique of Arendts thoughts. Just because it’s a nice catchphrase it doesn’t make it true. As you say laziness.

see gaza