I am not sure that what you say is against hannah arent in total. Zone of interest creates a vision of how to have a happy life by avoiding the real - mauvaise foi. You say they think, make their own decisions - but that thinking is not what the same kind of thinking Arendt talks about. I am not saying Arendt got it all right. But her hypothesis should not be dismissed so easyly. And is zone of interest is a masterpiece , showing other aspects of nazi life
@@TeresaLevy Yeah I'm definitely not dismissing Arendt's hypothesis, her book is great in many ways, I'm just trying to take a more critical stance towards the idea of "thoughtlessness" of the criminal, which is a key point of discussion in all post-war judicial processes, so it's something we should all reflect a lot on.
The lawyer of Hoess at Nuremberg declared that his client was insane and suffered from paranoïa. Nothing to do with "banality". This statement which was filmed should have been taken into account before the film was made.
I agree with your analysis, and found the reference by many reviewers to H Arendt's "banality of evil" lazy and superficial. To me, the true meaning of the movie clicked when it jumped to the present day: I found myself wondering how the cleaners could look at all this and not be emotionally crushed by the weight of the tragedy that occured there. Then I realised that the movie is about our capacity to look away from evil, with the immediate implication to us: what evil are we looking away from today? The answer to this is of course manifold, and Glazier himself highlighted one of them in his Oscar aceptance speech. This movie is pretty much flawless in execution and impact, and I think it will be a key point of reference for all future political movies.
The movie is a perfect metaphor of how many people knew what was happening in these camps, but chose to ignore it. As it is now with the situation in Gaza.
This is not remotely comparable to what is going on in Gaza. Gaza is not a genocide because the Israelis are not trying to exterminate an entire population. If they wanted to they could carpet bomb the area to oblivion. As tragic as the Gaza situation is, it is a direct response to the murder of 1200 Israelis and the taking of innocent hostages. Hamas is totally responsible for the suffering of their own people. Hamas wants to commit real genocide against the Israelis as defined in their charter.
@@jamesvokral4934 Genocide is a legal term defined by expressed intention followed by actions to carry out that intention. Also, you might want to revisit Oct7 story and re-assess as a military assault and a battle that became, in the words of one Israeli officer, "a mass Hannibal event. Israel admitted to killing 100s of the Israelis that it's used to justifying its ongoing genocide. Reminder, Israel is currently on trail for genocide for the numerous genocidal expressions of intent and the indiscriminate bombing of millions of civilians, tho in the court of global public opinion, they've already been sentenced
@@jamesvokral4934I could argue that hamas strike was direct response to Israeli oppression and occupation and etc etc. The conflict got so convoluted until reaching point where you can’t point who is right or wrong, both parties has a blood in their hands. You said killing innocent is wrong, but why it is right for israel to kill the innocent just because “hamas started it first”. Called it whatever you want but confined a population within an area and starved them from any supplies by blockading every access is genocide in my dictionary
I think you might be, like many if not most people, mistaking the role of the word "banality." That single word made thousands of people furious, since they understood Arendt to be somehow excusing Eichmann's actions, which she was not doing. I think she was trying to express something ineffable about the nature of the evil, not qualifying it.
Yeah I agree that I might be talking about something Arendt didn't really mean, but part of the problem is that we can't really be sure of what Arendt meant exactly. If you open "Eichmann in Jerusalem" you'll find that the word "banality" is mentioned only three times: in the title, on the last page of the main part of the book, and in the postscript written after the first edition. So it's no wonder that many people understand the term differently. In this video I just wanted to make sure that we don't take the "thoughtlessness" part of banality at face value and rather take a critical stance towards it (even though for Arendt, indeed, it didn't serve as an excuse for punishment, about which I have a textual note in the video). Other than that, I'm not really against Arendt's book, it's great in many ways.
@@the.mimesisYes, I didn't read your explanation as an indictment of her. I wish she hadn't introduced the idea at all; she surely got in way too much trouble because of it, and it continues to confuse to this day when it really should not. I thought you were going to talk about how very different the film is from the book! I just read the book this week and haven't seen the film yet, but it seems as though they are vastly different.
I've always understood Arendt's approach as a necessary reaction to the witting or unwitting distancing that happens when perpetrators of atrocities are portrayed as monsters instead of humans with agency and means making decisions based on their (however misguided) value systems. The "ineffable about the nature of evil" IS the banality of those value systems, and the mindset in and arguments with which they are held up!
I think the phrase “refusal to think” is better than banality, which I read as boringness. Both are evil. They do not resemble the caricature of a villain. I find that when I’m talking to a particularly unhelpful civil servant and they view their job in narrow terms and unbending regulations, THAT is the banality of evil, a refusal to think, and the slippery slope toward a Kafka-esque world.
I think the word "ineffable" both obscures and excuses. Evil is not a transcendent concept, it is acute cruelty. If there is any banality, it is this simple equivalence. And there is nothing ineffable about suffering, or about the stony hearts of those who caused the suffering.
I think banality just means the regularity and nonchalance with which it is carried out. It doesn’t imply unintentionality. Just that the day to day execution of the most horrific events is often boring and mundane.
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"
I don't know if the movie was stating that they did not think they were doing any evil. I think the movie went out of it's way to show in multiple scenes that their actions were known to them, even to the very core of their bodies. (The mother leaving, the vomiting scene on the stairs)
I agree with your analysis of Zone of Interest. The characters know at some level that what they are participating in is bad, but it is a necessary evil. The goal they have is so much more important than the suffering they are causing that they can discount the importance of the suffering altogether. The Hoess couple refer to themselves and are referred to as "model settlers." Settling Lebensraum is much, much more important than the suffering of the Jews and the Poles they are robbing, murdering, and enslaving. In fact, it is their duty as settlers to ignore that suffering and to repress any empathy that might get in the way of accomplishing the goal of settlement and the Germanization of the East.
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.
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...
Yeah, too many people in these comments making it out to be that the germans in this movie "didn't think what they were doing was evil" Yet scenes like the one you mentioned are there to show us that they do indeed. No one says something like that without knowing it is "evil" in a sense.
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.
I did my PhD on Arendt, and I'm not uncritical of her. But I've examined the Information supposed to refute the banality of evil thesis and don't agree that it does. Eichmann acted in those interviews as he did elsewhere precisely because he WAS the banal, hollow man she said he was. In the end, we'll never be sure. But the banality of evil thesis is fairly accurate anyway: just look at what 'ordinary' people have done in say, Iraq and are doing in, say, Gaza. It doesn't take a psychopath. And Arendt most emphatically did not think personal responsibility did not apply: 'where all are guilty, no one is' she wrote. She regarded Eichmann, Hoss et al as guilty criminals.
It's been many years since I wrote my undergraduate thesis about Eichmann and about 2 weeks since I stopped working in the correctional system. As a senior in college I thought Arendt was right, but now I think there's more nuance to this. No matter how evil someone is, they just aren't doing evil all the time and I think that confuses people. The laundry still has to be done and almost all criminals have some kind of day job for big chunks of their lives. And I guess that there were days when even Stalin or Pol Pot just weren't in the mood to be evil. So is she talking about being in a state of denial, or does she mean that evil can be hard to see if you don't see the perpetrator at his or her worst? Also, it turns out that psychopathy isn't as unusual as people think. The people who think they can root out evil don't understand the scope of the problem (we're talking about between 10-20% of us) and aren't able to get their heads around the fact that there are plenty of psychopaths that don't engage in illegal behavior. So there is a lot going on in this question, but the biggest thing that I think Hannah Arendt got right is that, whatever evil is, it's actually fairly common.
I think you are right on....the Commandant and his family were constantly trying to filter out the sounds and over the wall sights....it seeped into them though like it seeped into those of us watching....maybe not consciously b/c they were so focused on not seeing the horrors....I think that is why he got sick at the end...don't you?
Yes…Hoss perhaps on some sub conscious level could only bury so much of the horror he promoted every day, thus translated into a visceral reaction, which was a couple incidences of retching ….?….one would hope there was a remnant of guilt within but sadly, I intuitively doubt it……one must wonder if the only thing Hoss ever remotely loved was his horse…
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.
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.
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......
Correct about the Russians too. The Afghan-Chechen War Veterans Assoc published a "Soldiers handbook" for the war in Ukraine. There are sections that address the reasoning behind the war and they are straight up delusional. It's not the state that wrote this book, but a former soldiers association and it echoes the delusions that seem to be shared by a very wide section of the populice. And soldiers have a knack for not doing what they're told if they don't want to. There's been little evidence of that in play there.
Hoss was a technocrat who did his work efficiently and seemingly dispassionately. This is exactly what Hannah Arent meant by the word banality. But otherwise good video.
The "banality of evil" suggests that evil does not always arise from diabolical motives or malicious intentions, but often from blind conformity to authority structures and the inability to reflect on one's own actions. The banality itself arises from the way we deceive ourselves into not feeling responsible but rather seeing ourselves as victims of circumstances. To me, Arendt is not referring to absolute blindness but to the attempt at self-justification by imposing responsibility on others.
I agree with your analysis but I think the character of Hedwig's mother was closer to that denial of responsibility and "Banality of Evil". She is happy to profit from the situation but is still aware that she does not want to think about it.
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.
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.
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.
I hope they will at some point. Thanks for remembering about Holodomor(s), an enormous genocide, and indeed one rarely spoken about outside of Ukraine.
They already have. It's got the superordinary title "Mr Jones" (2019). It's based on a true story and stars James Norton as the British journalist Gareth Jones who goes to Russia to interview Stalin about his "economic miracle". He had already interviewed Hitler. The crux of the matter is that he ends up in Ukraine just as the Holodomor is beginning, He witnesses the suffering and the expropriation of the grain by the Soviets. He is arrested but manages to escape with his life. It better to read Wikipedia about the film as it is a very detailed story. It is also, in my opinion, an excellent film, but is not generally known about, which is surprising and disappointing. Incidentally, as shown in the film, Jones meets with George Orwell who is inspired to write "Animal Farm".
@@lockekappa500 There may be many films about the Holodomor which I don't know about, because maybe they are "foreign language" or weren't publicised in the West. I just pointed out the one I knew about. Some one asked the question because they didn't know.
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.
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.
Hmmm, interesting, but I don't agree with you. I still go with Arendt's banality. You need to study the Holocaust a bit (perhaps a lot) more. Hoss is never directly involved in the actions of the mass killings, that's at a far too low level. I doubt he ever went to the rail siding where the trains arrived. Why would he? He's at a much higher administrative level, being the director of an absolutely massive camp involving mass killings, slave labour, working with German industrial giants, and a multitude of other tasks, at which he excels. Remember he is sent back to Auschwitz after being promoted to the role of Kommandant of the Kommandants because his replacement wasn't good enough. Have you studied the Holocaust at all? It's history. Have you studied the voluminous literature on the holocaust and how it's been viewed, used, and misused post war? I've found the great majority of people who proclaim authoriatively on the Holocaust have a very superficial knowledge of the Holocaust.
Thanks for your comment! I agree with what you're saying, but it's also not what I intended to show in the video. Sure, Höss was never directly involved in the massacres, why would he? That's just how division of labour works, and since he was a high-level official, he didn't need to have any direct involvement, he was passing the dirty work down. But does that mean that he didn't know he was part of the murderous process? Sure not, especially living next door to the camp, and that's what I'm trying to argue in this video, that Höss (especially in court) would want to seem like he didn't know what was really happening, but we shouldn't be deluded by this because it's part of his self-justification game. As for Arend't book and concept of "banality of evil" itself, I'm also not really opposing either of them because I really did enjoy the book, it's a great account of Holocaust and Eichmann's role in it. What I want to feel a bit more critical about is the idea of "thoughtlessness" of the criminal, which seems to be part of the concept of "banality". I just want to be able to differentiate real thoughtlessness (like in the case of clinical madness) and acting (like in the case of Höss, which Glazer seems to show in his film).
Sorry to have lifted this straight from Wiki, but this is interesting about his upbringing: "Höss's father brought his son up on strict religious principles and with military discipline, having decided that he would enter the priesthood. Höss grew up with an almost fanatical belief in the central role of duty in a moral life. During his early years, there was a constant emphasis on sin, guilt, and the need to do penance. Himmler similarly was a devout Catholic during his student days. It just goes to show that the human mind is a very complex and duplicitous thing. I suppose it's the Judas Escariot, or Jekyll and Hyde question, where we all have to be on guard against ourselves.
Hated the film for its gross mispresentation. Höss and his wife were in on the Nazi enterprise from the beginning--1923. He worked up the ranks because he was ambitious: he wasn't a dupe and he there was no denial--he/they simply didn't care who got raped, tortured, and killed on their quest for power and privilege. Now are there plenty of opportunists in the world willing to the same? Sure. There are criminals everywhere. But they're not by any means normal. Most people still have a heart and a conscience. Like Speer's self-serving autobiography, people buy into Höss's. They were just criminals. So were all these Nazis. This movie is simply Naziporn, like so much Mafiaporn. People are fascinated by these low-lifes: "Wow, look at that! He reads his kid a bedtime story. He must not be all bad." or "Such a fine wedding for his daughter! And all that food looks delicious." Give me a break.
Well, that's the interpretation of this movie that I'm trying to argue against because this kind of "normalness" of Höss and his family is obviously deconstructed by Glazer: behind the surface-level banality that Höss wants to build up the movie shows that the Nazis were actually nothing but criminals.
The point is not to point the redeeming qualities of bad people but that the worst evil can come from people apparently normal. Nazis weren't dog hitting people that slept in coffins and that's the scary part...These things can happen again and happen all the time. Don't let yourself be fooled by pictures of Putin or Trump acting all nice...The point is not "Oh this people can't be like nazis because they have a nice family life" but "These people, just like the nazis, are going to use their normality to hide their evil.
@@the.mimesis And what's the point of that? We already knew that. They're committing atrocities and put on the pretense that they're a normal family. All criminals put on this pretense. Are we supposed to be surprised or shocked? What does this possibly add to our understanding of the Nazis? We already knew wolves dress up in sheep's clothing. The movie is pointless.
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I am not sure that what you say is against hannah arent in total. Zone of interest creates a vision of how to have a happy life by avoiding the real - mauvaise foi. You say they think, make their own decisions - but that thinking is not what the same kind of thinking Arendt talks about. I am not saying Arendt got it all right. But her hypothesis should not be dismissed so easyly. And is zone of interest is a masterpiece , showing other aspects of nazi life
@@TeresaLevy Yeah I'm definitely not dismissing Arendt's hypothesis, her book is great in many ways, I'm just trying to take a more critical stance towards the idea of "thoughtlessness" of the criminal, which is a key point of discussion in all post-war judicial processes, so it's something we should all reflect a lot on.
:) Great take, solid presentation - Looking forward to seeing more from You!
The lawyer of Hoess at Nuremberg declared that his client was insane and suffered from paranoïa. Nothing to do with "banality". This statement which was filmed should have been taken into account before the film was made.
I agree with your analysis, and found the reference by many reviewers to H Arendt's "banality of evil" lazy and superficial. To me, the true meaning of the movie clicked when it jumped to the present day: I found myself wondering how the cleaners could look at all this and not be emotionally crushed by the weight of the tragedy that occured there. Then I realised that the movie is about our capacity to look away from evil, with the immediate implication to us: what evil are we looking away from today? The answer to this is of course manifold, and Glazier himself highlighted one of them in his Oscar aceptance speech.
This movie is pretty much flawless in execution and impact, and I think it will be a key point of reference for all future political movies.
Thanks! I like your interpretation of the present-day scene, agree absolutely!
Arendt gives a political analysis of genocide. This is exactly it.
The movie is a perfect metaphor of how many people knew what was happening in these camps, but chose to ignore it. As it is now with the situation in Gaza.
Yeah, clearly, outside of this very first comment in the thread, nobody on earth has said a single word about Gaza since October 7.
This is not remotely comparable to what is going on in Gaza. Gaza is not a genocide because the Israelis are not trying to exterminate an entire population. If they wanted to they could carpet bomb the area to oblivion. As tragic as the Gaza situation is, it is a direct response to the murder of 1200 Israelis and the taking of innocent hostages. Hamas is totally responsible for the suffering of their own people. Hamas wants to commit real genocide against the Israelis as defined in their charter.
@@jamesvokral4934 Genocide is a legal term defined by expressed intention followed by actions to carry out that intention. Also, you might want to revisit Oct7 story and re-assess as a military assault and a battle that became, in the words of one Israeli officer, "a mass Hannibal event. Israel admitted to killing 100s of the Israelis that it's used to justifying its ongoing genocide. Reminder, Israel is currently on trail for genocide for the numerous genocidal expressions of intent and the indiscriminate bombing of millions of civilians, tho in the court of global public opinion, they've already been sentenced
If only there was a way to let refugees through and resettle them on Arab territory but it seems like there is no place for them beyond Gaza.
@@jamesvokral4934I could argue that hamas strike was direct response to Israeli oppression and occupation and etc etc. The conflict got so convoluted until reaching point where you can’t point who is right or wrong, both parties has a blood in their hands. You said killing innocent is wrong, but why it is right for israel to kill the innocent just because “hamas started it first”. Called it whatever you want but confined a population within an area and starved them from any supplies by blockading every access is genocide in my dictionary
I think you might be, like many if not most people, mistaking the role of the word "banality." That single word made thousands of people furious, since they understood Arendt to be somehow excusing Eichmann's actions, which she was not doing. I think she was trying to express something ineffable about the nature of the evil, not qualifying it.
Yeah I agree that I might be talking about something Arendt didn't really mean, but part of the problem is that we can't really be sure of what Arendt meant exactly. If you open "Eichmann in Jerusalem" you'll find that the word "banality" is mentioned only three times: in the title, on the last page of the main part of the book, and in the postscript written after the first edition. So it's no wonder that many people understand the term differently. In this video I just wanted to make sure that we don't take the "thoughtlessness" part of banality at face value and rather take a critical stance towards it (even though for Arendt, indeed, it didn't serve as an excuse for punishment, about which I have a textual note in the video). Other than that, I'm not really against Arendt's book, it's great in many ways.
@@the.mimesisYes, I didn't read your explanation as an indictment of her. I wish she hadn't introduced the idea at all; she surely got in way too much trouble because of it, and it continues to confuse to this day when it really should not. I thought you were going to talk about how very different the film is from the book! I just read the book this week and haven't seen the film yet, but it seems as though they are vastly different.
I've always understood Arendt's approach as a necessary reaction to the witting or unwitting distancing that happens when perpetrators of atrocities are portrayed as monsters instead of humans with agency and means making decisions based on their (however misguided) value systems. The "ineffable about the nature of evil" IS the banality of those value systems, and the mindset in and arguments with which they are held up!
I think the phrase “refusal to think” is better than banality, which I read as boringness. Both are evil. They do not resemble the caricature of a villain. I find that when I’m talking to a particularly unhelpful civil servant and they view their job in narrow terms and unbending regulations, THAT is the banality of evil, a refusal to think, and the slippery slope toward a Kafka-esque world.
I think the word "ineffable" both obscures and excuses. Evil is not a transcendent concept, it is acute cruelty. If there is any banality, it is this simple equivalence. And there is nothing ineffable about suffering, or about the stony hearts of those who caused the suffering.
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.
Wow! I like that! Kudos!
Yes, the language itself means everything.
I think banality just means the regularity and nonchalance with which it is carried out.
It doesn’t imply unintentionality. Just that the day to day execution of the most horrific events is often boring and mundane.
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"
I don't know if the movie was stating that they did not think they were doing any evil. I think the movie went out of it's way to show in multiple scenes that their actions were known to them, even to the very core of their bodies. (The mother leaving, the vomiting scene on the stairs)
I agree with your analysis of Zone of Interest. The characters know at some level that what they are participating in is bad, but it is a necessary evil. The goal they have is so much more important than the suffering they are causing that they can discount the importance of the suffering altogether. The Hoess couple refer to themselves and are referred to as "model settlers." Settling Lebensraum is much, much more important than the suffering of the Jews and the Poles they are robbing, murdering, and enslaving. In fact, it is their duty as settlers to ignore that suffering and to repress any empathy that might get in the way of accomplishing the goal of settlement and the Germanization of the East.
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.
Thanks for your feedback and recommendation!
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...
Yeah, too many people in these comments making it out to be that the germans in this movie "didn't think what they were doing was evil" Yet scenes like the one you mentioned are there to show us that they do indeed. No one says something like that without knowing it is "evil" in a sense.
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.
I did my PhD on Arendt, and I'm not uncritical of her. But I've examined the Information supposed to refute the banality of evil thesis and don't agree that it does. Eichmann acted in those interviews as he did elsewhere precisely because he WAS the banal, hollow man she said he was. In the end, we'll never be sure. But the banality of evil thesis is fairly accurate anyway: just look at what 'ordinary' people have done in say, Iraq and are doing in, say, Gaza. It doesn't take a psychopath. And Arendt most emphatically did not think personal responsibility did not apply: 'where all are guilty, no one is' she wrote. She regarded Eichmann, Hoss et al as guilty criminals.
Exactly!! Arendt's "Eichmann in Jerusalem" is so controversial because i think many misunderstand it.
Thanks for your comment! Sure, she did condemn Eichmann and the others despite them being banal, no doubt about that.
It's been many years since I wrote my undergraduate thesis about Eichmann and about 2 weeks since I stopped working in the correctional system. As a senior in college I thought Arendt was right, but now I think there's more nuance to this. No matter how evil someone is, they just aren't doing evil all the time and I think that confuses people. The laundry still has to be done and almost all criminals have some kind of day job for big chunks of their lives. And I guess that there were days when even Stalin or Pol Pot just weren't in the mood to be evil. So is she talking about being in a state of denial, or does she mean that evil can be hard to see if you don't see the perpetrator at his or her worst? Also, it turns out that psychopathy isn't as unusual as people think. The people who think they can root out evil don't understand the scope of the problem (we're talking about between 10-20% of us) and aren't able to get their heads around the fact that there are plenty of psychopaths that don't engage in illegal behavior. So there is a lot going on in this question, but the biggest thing that I think Hannah Arendt got right is that, whatever evil is, it's actually fairly common.
I think you are right on....the Commandant and his family were constantly trying to filter out the sounds and over the wall sights....it seeped into them though like it seeped into those of us watching....maybe not consciously b/c they were so focused on not seeing the horrors....I think that is why he got sick at the end...don't you?
Yes…Hoss perhaps on some sub conscious level could only bury so much of the horror he promoted every day, thus translated into a visceral reaction, which was a couple incidences of retching ….?….one would hope there was a remnant of guilt within but sadly, I intuitively doubt it……one must wonder if the only thing Hoss ever remotely loved was his horse…
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.
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.
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......
Correct about the Russians too. The Afghan-Chechen War Veterans Assoc published a "Soldiers handbook" for the war in Ukraine. There are sections that address the reasoning behind the war and they are straight up delusional. It's not the state that wrote this book, but a former soldiers association and it echoes the delusions that seem to be shared by a very wide section of the populice.
And soldiers have a knack for not doing what they're told if they don't want to. There's been little evidence of that in play there.
Hoss was a technocrat who did his work efficiently and seemingly dispassionately. This is exactly what Hannah Arent meant by the word banality. But otherwise good video.
The "banality of evil" suggests that evil does not always arise from diabolical motives or malicious intentions, but often from blind conformity to authority structures and the inability to reflect on one's own actions. The banality itself arises from the way we deceive ourselves into not feeling responsible but rather seeing ourselves as victims of circumstances. To me, Arendt is not referring to absolute blindness but to the attempt at self-justification by imposing responsibility on others.
Sadly, I think our present world looks for leaders just like this-efficient and dispassionate.
I agree with your analysis but I think the character of Hedwig's mother was closer to that denial of responsibility and "Banality of Evil". She is happy to profit from the situation but is still aware that she does not want to think about it.
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.
Yes there’s a huge group of people that would gladly join the SS. They are called MAGA. Not very bright, easily led.
excellent analysis!
Thanks a lot!
I concur! Enjoyed this vid
Very interesting and introspective analysis. Provocative movie
Evil first, banal second
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.
see gaza
The better title for Arendt's book should be "the subtlety of evil"
brilliant movie n well thought out critique
Is “banality” thought to mean “innocent” or “ignorant” here? That is not the point.
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.
Good video.
Why. does no one make a film about the 15 million Ukrainians who starved to death under Stalin?
I hope they will at some point.
Thanks for remembering about Holodomor(s), an enormous genocide, and indeed one rarely spoken about outside of Ukraine.
They already have. It's got the superordinary title "Mr Jones" (2019). It's based on a true story and stars James Norton as the British journalist Gareth Jones who goes to Russia to interview Stalin about his "economic miracle". He had already interviewed Hitler. The crux of the matter is that he ends up in Ukraine just as the Holodomor is beginning, He witnesses the suffering and the expropriation of the grain by the Soviets. He is arrested but manages to escape with his life. It better to read Wikipedia about the film as it is a very detailed story. It is also, in my opinion, an excellent film, but is not generally known about, which is surprising and disappointing. Incidentally, as shown in the film, Jones meets with George Orwell who is inspired to write "Animal Farm".
@@SuperNevile Surely if someone was SOO involved and worried about that incident in history they'd know the film existed? Right?
@@lockekappa500 There may be many films about the Holodomor which I don't know about, because maybe they are "foreign language" or weren't publicised in the West. I just pointed out the one I knew about. Some one asked the question because they didn't know.
@@SuperNevile Sorry I was being sassy because the OP seemed so sure no such movie existed.
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.
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.
We will move on once we have made sense of it and feel confident that nothing like it will ever happen again. I don't think we've gotten there yet.
As long as there are those who believe the Holocaust did not happen, WWII films need to be shown.
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.
Thanks for your comment and the advice!
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.
Hmmm, interesting, but I don't agree with you. I still go with Arendt's banality. You need to study the Holocaust a bit (perhaps a lot) more. Hoss is never directly involved in the actions of the mass killings, that's at a far too low level. I doubt he ever went to the rail siding where the trains arrived. Why would he? He's at a much higher administrative level, being the director of an absolutely massive camp involving mass killings, slave labour, working with German industrial giants, and a multitude of other tasks, at which he excels. Remember he is sent back to Auschwitz after being promoted to the role of Kommandant of the Kommandants because his replacement wasn't good enough. Have you studied the Holocaust at all? It's history. Have you studied the voluminous literature on the holocaust and how it's been viewed, used, and misused post war? I've found the great majority of people who proclaim authoriatively on the Holocaust have a very superficial knowledge of the Holocaust.
Thanks for your comment!
I agree with what you're saying, but it's also not what I intended to show in the video. Sure, Höss was never directly involved in the massacres, why would he? That's just how division of labour works, and since he was a high-level official, he didn't need to have any direct involvement, he was passing the dirty work down. But does that mean that he didn't know he was part of the murderous process? Sure not, especially living next door to the camp, and that's what I'm trying to argue in this video, that Höss (especially in court) would want to seem like he didn't know what was really happening, but we shouldn't be deluded by this because it's part of his self-justification game.
As for Arend't book and concept of "banality of evil" itself, I'm also not really opposing either of them because I really did enjoy the book, it's a great account of Holocaust and Eichmann's role in it. What I want to feel a bit more critical about is the idea of "thoughtlessness" of the criminal, which seems to be part of the concept of "banality". I just want to be able to differentiate real thoughtlessness (like in the case of clinical madness) and acting (like in the case of Höss, which Glazer seems to show in his film).
Sorry to have lifted this straight from Wiki, but this is interesting about his upbringing: "Höss's father brought his son up on strict religious principles and with military discipline, having decided that he would enter the priesthood. Höss grew up with an almost fanatical belief in the central role of duty in a moral life. During his early years, there was a constant emphasis on sin, guilt, and the need to do penance. Himmler similarly was a devout Catholic during his student days. It just goes to show that the human mind is a very complex and duplicitous thing. I suppose it's the Judas Escariot, or Jekyll and Hyde question, where we all have to be on guard against ourselves.
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I am trying to work out your accent. I think it's German.
Wrong guess :)
It's Slavic, but I'm trying to sound RP
Hated the film for its gross mispresentation. Höss and his wife were in on the Nazi enterprise from the beginning--1923. He worked up the ranks because he was ambitious: he wasn't a dupe and he there was no denial--he/they simply didn't care who got raped, tortured, and killed on their quest for power and privilege. Now are there plenty of opportunists in the world willing to the same? Sure. There are criminals everywhere. But they're not by any means normal. Most people still have a heart and a conscience. Like Speer's self-serving autobiography, people buy into Höss's. They were just criminals. So were all these Nazis. This movie is simply Naziporn, like so much Mafiaporn. People are fascinated by these low-lifes: "Wow, look at that! He reads his kid a bedtime story. He must not be all bad." or "Such a fine wedding for his daughter! And all that food looks delicious." Give me a break.
Well, that's the interpretation of this movie that I'm trying to argue against because this kind of "normalness" of Höss and his family is obviously deconstructed by Glazer: behind the surface-level banality that Höss wants to build up the movie shows that the Nazis were actually nothing but criminals.
I really feel like you misunderstood the movie. It's not at all defending them
The point is not to point the redeeming qualities of bad people but that the worst evil can come from people apparently normal. Nazis weren't dog hitting people that slept in coffins and that's the scary part...These things can happen again and happen all the time. Don't let yourself be fooled by pictures of Putin or Trump acting all nice...The point is not "Oh this people can't be like nazis because they have a nice family life" but "These people, just like the nazis, are going to use their normality to hide their evil.
@@the.mimesis And what's the point of that? We already knew that. They're committing atrocities and put on the pretense that they're a normal family. All criminals put on this pretense. Are we supposed to be surprised or shocked? What does this possibly add to our understanding of the Nazis? We already knew wolves dress up in sheep's clothing. The movie is pointless.
@@nicholasschroeder3678 it may be obvious for you, but it seems like it's not obvious to many other people nowadays