Tópico: "Livros/filmes/etc curiosos, que não viu", OU, "possíveis futuras recomendações"

[Buckaroo Banzai]

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

The Iron Dream is a metafictional 1972 alternate history novel by Norman Spinrad. The book has a nested narrative that tells a story within a story. On the surface, the novel presents an unexceptional pulp, post-apocalypse science fiction action tale entitled Lord of the Swastika. However, this is a pro-fascism narrative written by an alternate-history Adolf Hitler, who in this timeline emigrated from Germany to the United States in 1919 after the Great War, and used his modest artistic skills to become first a pulp–science fiction illustrator and later a successful science fiction writer, telling lurid, purple-prosed adventure stories under a thin SF-veneer.

Spinrad was intent on demonstrating just how close Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces—and much science fiction and fantasy literature—can be to the racist ideology of Nazi Germany.[1] The nested narrative is followed by a faux scholarly analysis by a fictional literary critic, Homer Whipple, of New York University, which is said to have been written in 1959.

[...]

The Iron Dream won critical acclaim, including a Nebula Award nomination and a Prix Tour-Apollo Award. Ursula K. Le Guin wrote in a review that: "We are forced, insofar as we can continue to read the book seriously, to think, not about Adolf Hitler and his historic crimes—Hitler is simply the distancing medium—but to think about ourselves: our moral assumptions, our ideas of heroism, our desires to, lead or to be led, our righteous wars. What Spinrad is trying to tell us is that it is happening here."[4] Leslie Fiedler proposed that Spinrad be considered for the National Book Award in 1973, but apparently won no support from his fellow award judges.[5]

[...]

The American Nazi Party put the book on its recommended reading list, despite the satirical intent of the work.

É curioso notar um paralelo na realidade: terroristas islâmicos que gostam muito de Tolkien, se identificando com os heróis.

http://io9.gizmodo.com/5682230/islamic-jihadists-are-huge-fans-of-the-lord-of-the-rings-trilogy

[Rocky Joe]

Li a crítica da Ursula (tem link na wiki), toda a frase final é ótima:

He has done, in The Iron Dream, something as outrageous as what Borges talks about doing in "Pierre Menard" (the rewriting of Don Quixote, word for word, by a twentieth-century Frenchman): he has attempted a staggeringly bold act of forced, extreme distancing. And distancing, the pulling back from "reality" in order to see it better, is perhaps the essential gesture of SF. It is by distancing that SF achieves aesthetic joy, tragic tension, and moral cogency. It is the latter that Spinrad aims for, and achieves. We are forced, in so far as we can continue to read the book seriously, to think, not about Adolf Hitler and his historic crimes--Hitler is simply the distancing medium--but to think about ourselves: our moral assumptions, our ideas of heroism, our desires to, lead or to be led, our righteous wars. What Spinrad is trying to tell us is that it is happening here.

[Rocky Joe]

Estou há um tempo querendo ler Otaku: Japan's Database Animals do Hiroki Azuma, onde ele tenta explicar externamente os padrões de consumo de animação japonesa, influenciado por sociologia pós-moderna. Em resumo do resumo,

Otaku: Japan's Database Animals proposes the theory that instead of embracing traditional “grand narratives,” new media consumers were investing themselves in a media “database,” a collection of narrative and trope-based odds and ends without much larger meaning. Thus instead of loving stories, we love characters with specific calculated attributes, we love certain narrative gimmicks, we love the toys surrounding our shows.

Azuma’s work explores “otaku” production and consumption, and what they suggest about man’s search for meaning. He argues that today’s “otaku” no longer crave narratives and wider significance, but are instead gratified by reading for character “elements”—things like cute cat ears, maid uniforms and loose socks. The upside is that you can find the spiky-haired, ramen-slurping protagonist of your dreams with an online search engine. The downside is a “world [that] drifts about materially without giving meaning to lives” and “humanity [functioning] at the level of database.”

[Buckaroo Banzai]

Mais algo com nazismo como tema de coisas que me despertaram interesse mas ainda não vi:

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/lKR32_3Yx08" target="_blank" class="new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/lKR32_3Yx08</a>

'Welcome to Leith' chronicles the attempted takeover of a small town in North Dakota by notorious white supremacist Craig Cobb. As his behavior becomes more threatening, tensions soar, and the residents desperately look for ways to expel their unwanted neighbor. With incredible access to both longtime residents of Leith and white supremacists, the film examines a small community in the plains struggling for sovereignty against an extremist vision.