nazi gnomes

[scandal 951]

I guess it's easy to say that when you have no vested interest in it. Perhaps if you were Jewish, your reaction would be different. Oh well.

I've seen Nazi parodies that are funny.

Hitler on Ice by Mel Brooks is funny.

The Nazis in The Producers are funny too.

So are the Nazis in Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. (Sprachen sie Deutsch? "Wiener Schnizel!")

And Hogans Heroes was chock full of very funny Nazis.

I'm hardly a prude that can't get a joke.

I just didn't find the Obama/swastika/golf course thing funny. It's disturbing people are so angry at our sitting President to vandalize a property in this manner. If you owned the golf course, would you think it was funny?

The garden gnome - that is cute. Not ha-ha funny, but not terribly offensive.

[Peikko 1,575]

OK, some clarifcation. I didn't click on Aliens link, I don't know what he was referring to. I personally was referring to the OP's post, I found that funny. Does that clear up any confusion?

[Peikko 1,575]

From the Guardian on the Gnome story:

Pint-sized, plastic and the height of kitsch they may be, but no one in Germany would usually think twice about seeing a garden gnome, given there are 25 million of them across the country.

But a battery of 1,250 of them that appeared on a square in a Bavarian town has caused an outcry, not least because their arms are in a Nazi salute.

The artist Ottmar Hörl placed the gnomes in the town of Straubing, close to Munich, in an installation called Dance With the Devil.

It follows controversy sparked by a single, golden Hitler-saluting gnome crafted by Hörl that prosecutors tried to remove from an art gallery in the summer on the grounds that Nazi symbols were prohibited in public.

They later dropped the case, recognising that the piece was satirical, and the artist has since seen a run on requests for his creations.

Hörl, 59, who has made other mass reproductions, including a group of praying dwarfs made in the image of Pope Benedict that provoked a similar row, said his gnomes were meant to highlight the rise of fascism in Germany and were a "historical social gesture".

"I want to show that there is far-right thought in the heads of all of us," he said, adding that gnomes were a particularly fitting method for conveying his message "in a lighter and unpatronising way, at the same time as being strong enough to provoke a reaction.

"As long as I manage to polarise, I'm on the right track," he added.

Hörl's 39cm plastic gnomes, which went on display today for five days, were financed by the local wing of the Social Democratic party (SPD).

Hans Lohmeier, of the SPD, said the party agreed to cover the €20,000 cost of the installation after the town's cultural committee twice refused to do so. Summing up the local reaction, he said: "There are some who say 'what do we want with this tripe?', others who say it's endangering their kids, but many others have understood what this is all about."

Link

Whether this is more about selling gnomes than art, well, I am not privvy to that.

Edited October 14, 2009 by Madame Cleo