#and in a year there will be some exalted ultimate extreme edition

[ramblingoak]

Considering that there is a Ghost lava lamp I am 100% confident this movie will be released on dvd/bluray.

Probably multiple times. In multiple formats. And multiple colors.

[devinetheory-2]

Why Do Narcissists and Borderlines Lie So Much?

Many things can destroy trust and intimacy between partners when one is a high conflict person, often someone with borderline or narcissistic personality disorder. But one of the top ones is lying--especially when it is about extramarital contact. A disclaimer: not all people with BPD or knowingly NPD lie. It's just that those who do lie so thoroughly and often that they spoil it for those who do not.

Just What Is a Lie?

First, let's define what a lie is, because what constitutes a lie and the truth is a gray area. The book Lying, Cheating, and Carrying On (edited by Salman Akhtar and Henri Parens) contains several essays about lying. In the essay "Lies, Liars, and Lying: An Introductory Overview," Salman Akhtar, M.D. lists several types of lies that are conscious lies, i.e., those that Pinocchio knows are false.

Here are examples that a 17-year-old girl might tell to parents who went on an overnight trip and left her at home "alone."

1. Lies of omission: telling the truth but not the whole truth in a way designed to mislead ("While you were gone I watched a DVD"--not mentioning the five people who were also over and who drank beer).

2. Not speaking up when asked a direct question: (Silence when asked, "What did you do when we were gone?")

3. Making up facts that are not true: ("I did my homework while you were gone").

4. Embellishing the truth is a way that misleads: ("I took care of the cat"--meaning she petted it a few times but forgot to feed him on time or change the litter box).

5. Insisting that a truth known to someone is a falsehood: ("I did not have friends over!").

6. Gaslighting: an attempt to erode another's reality by denying their experience ("No, the house looks exactly like it did when you left. Is there something wrong with your vision?"). One woman in therapy once said that nearly all the quarrels in her family was about whose reality would be dubbed the "right" one.

7. Acknowledging the truth but assigning motives that were never there to make yourself look better: ("Yes, I had people here but only because I was so lonely without you that I was getting very depressed and started crying").

8. Keeping secrets for the wrong reasons: (One of the friends stole the mother's expensive earrings).

Unconscious Lies

Now let's look at unconscious lies, or untruths that the teller believes on a conscious level. Being truthful takes the ability to be honest with one's own self, because if you're not honest with yourself, you won't be honest with others. For example:

1) When a narcissist says that everyone loves and respects her when it's obvious to others it's not true, that's an unconscious lie. Les Carter explains this well in his book, Why Is It Always About You?: The Seven Deadly Sins of Narcissism. He writes (p 17):

In a sense, narcissists are out of touch with reality. They are not mentally ill, like a psychotic; they are just unwilling to acknowledge truth that doesn't match their preferences. While normal people can weigh events rationally and draw fair conclusions about themselves, narcissists do not. They lack the objectivity to live with reasonable insight because their need for self exaltation does not allow them to accept that their perceptions might not be the ultimate truth. Their idealized view of themselves blinds them as they try to make sense of life, particularly the elements in themselves that might be imperfect or that might require adjustments (and they never want to make adjustments).

2) When a borderline's intense emotions lead him to use projection or emotional reasoning ("feelings equal facts"), that's an unconscious lie. When we are gripped by a strong emotion that doesn't fit the circumstances, we interpret what is happening in a way that fits with the emotions we are feeling instead of the facts presented to us. In other words, we seek to confirm what we already feel and ignore new evidence that does not fit, maintain or justify the emotion. We all do it, but people people with BPD (who see things in black and white and have unstable, intense emotions) do it to a greater degree.

And as if that weren't enough, lingering negative feelings about other issues make one more likely to see negative intent. People with BPD tend to remember every hurt "done to them" as though it happened yesterday. Their false conclusions lead to problematic decisions and behaviors since they're always assuming the worst. They also project their own feelings onto others, so their "You hate me," means "I hate myself." These are untruths, but not really overt lies (as damaging as they may be).

It's hard to tell the difference between a conscious lie and a conscious one. A man says, "It is like we both walk into the same movie theater. I thought that we entered into see the same movie. We sit together. We enter and leave at the same time. But afterwards, I learned that what she saw was entirely different from me, even though we sat and watched the same movie. Her version is no where even close to mine."

What Clinicians Say About Lying and BPD

In the essay "Lies and Their Deception" in the same book, Lying, Cheating, and Carrying On, Clarence Watson, JD, MD pulls no punches when he says, (p. 98):

Given that a BPD hallmark is interpersonal relationships that alternate between idealization and devaluation, the person with BPD may distort facts aimed at the person with whom they desire a personal relationship.

Whether through attempts to draw persons into [intense and rocky interpersonal] relationships or viscously attack another during episodes of the extreme rage associated with perceived abandonment-the borderline personality may use lies and deceitfulness to accomplish these objectives.

Impulsivity and poor impulse control, he writes, means they may not consider the impact of their words before they speak. "In the moment, their desired objective, whatever that may be, takes such precedence over speaking the truth or behaving honestly that the potential consequences of their conduct are reduced to shadowy details."

Other reasons for lack of truth-telling

Some statements may start out as deliberate lies; over time, they become real (the old saying, "Tell a lie often enough and it becomes the truth"). Some statements may be exaggerations, such as a woman accusing her husband of "strangling her" when he touched her neck. People with BPD--especially the conventional type--may judge themselves harshly and expect others to do the same. Lying serves to deflect shame when something might make them look bad, thereby maintaining whatever self-esteem they have on a temporary basis.

This backfires on those people with BPD who then feel worse for having lied (or at least being found out).We all have things about ourselves we would prefer others not know. But we see the good and the bad and hope others do, too. With their black and white world and rejection sensitivity, people with BPD believe that anything "bad" would make others reject them.

Lies may create drama and gain attention. One woman lied that she had been raped to get her boyfriend's attention when he had not been paying enough attention to her.Lies may mask real feelings and put up an impressive façade; this is especially common with invisible BPs.Lies may help make sense of why things happen to them in their mixed-up identity.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder

Some lies maintain the facade of the False Self: the perfect, superior self the narcissist thinks she is or pretends to be. On a more conscious level, lies are central to:

* Staying in power and keeping things under control

* Keeping the flow of narcissistic supply (adulation by others, which are like ambrosia to the NP)

* Satisfying the grandiose, entitled self

* Avoiding any shame if their status is not as high in reality as they think it should be

* Minimizing the onerous possibility of having to concern himself with your needs.

A Few Examples from Partners

* "He lied consistently about his earnings even in the face of documentary evidence."

"* She told me she had cancer when she didn't."

* "He lied consistently for at least a decade regarding fidelity. He used gaslighting techniques to convince me that I was imagining 'missing' condoms from packs in our bedroom."

* "She denied verbal abuse, telling me that, 'I never called you names when anyone else was listening.'"

* "He refused to say where he was going, where he had been, or when he intended to return home--even when doing so was simply to facilitate normal family life-mealtimes, etc. His most oft-used sentence was 'That'll never be known.'"

* "He lied about his history of dyslexia, even when it would have helped our sons with the same problem."

* "She said she had a night class when she went to a hotel weekly with another man."

So how can someone consciously lie like this? NPs have no empathy. They require narcissistic supply--what's a little lie when your very survival, is at stake? And besides, they think, rules apply to other people. Under these circumstances, telling falsehoods is probably uncomplicated and effortless. Watson says, "Overall, their frank manipulation of others may be part of a 'by hook or by crook; mentality to accomplish their goals."

[toasttz]

From the Tabletop #1

In recent times, I've been trying to get more into one of my favorite hobbies: tabletop games. Primarily D&D (of course), Exalted, and Shadowrun. Actually, some friends and I have been running an Exalted game for over 2 years now (since 3rd edition dropped) and I wanted to share with the world some of our fun stories and "That Guy" moments we've had forced upon us as well. Going back to the very beginning, I was, unfortunately, "That Guy" of our initial 3rd Edition Exalts. I built a strong, competent battle-ready Solar Exalt built around the Righteous Devil martial arts which, for those who may not be familiar, is essentially flamethrower-fu. Her name was Sunset Shimmer (yes, I snuck an MLP joke into an Exalted game, and only one other player at the table was in on the gag). The biggest issue with Sunset was a general lack of direction of the character. She had a backstory but no real goal to speak of and it didn't help that meatspace conditions made my attention to her spotty at best. She was an active participant, and I had freakishly lucky rolls playing her, but she was just kind of boring. I really should remake her. It really didn't help that I was the "That Guy" of a party of "That Guys". Another in the group was Hrothgar, whose defining intimacy was Ultra-Violence. But another major intimacy was about what a nice guy this bloodthirsty faux-viking was. It made about as much sense in context as it sounds here. Not helped by not really having a backstory or a goal to speak of. Ditto for Drago, affectionately nicknamed "Ivan Drago", also lacked any characterization to speak of. He was the man of 1000 backstories, because he couldn't settle on one. Once from the 100 Kingdoms, then a peninsula, then an island, then about how much of a great pirate his grandfather was. The GM eventually demanded he put up or shut up, essentially fusing together all the ideas, mostly because we never brought it up again and never actually went to his homeland in that game, but would in later ones. Whereupon we set it on fire (more on that later). The only competent Exalt of the circle was Petral. Sol Invictus knows she tried. Essentially Samurai BatMan, complete with high levels of investigation (she never used) and murdering people (that she really should've left alive), the only really meaningful connection this circle managed was that Targon and Drago's players shipped Sunset and Petral, due to a moment where a badly-drunken Petral, while worshipping the porcelain god, was comforted by a sympathetic Sunset. I'll be honest, as I was a frequent truant at these games, I can't accurately account for the flow of the game, but it did lead to moments wherein I'd find myself saying things like "But last time we agreed to murder some nobles! Why are we 200 miles away from them now?!" or declaring that a large, squid-like creature was, in fact, an aquatic horse upon botching an intelligence check. Things at least became more consistent with our second round of characters. Unfortunately, it was consistently God-awful. We had a cult leader, Zen, who barely had any idea why an Exalt would have a cult. He also didn't know what it would take to run one, having a character with zero personality to speak (I frequently confuse him with the next character here because of this), and - quite frankly - acted extremely evil at times. He had terrible conditions for his cult, food was constantly scarce (not helped by our being in Malfaes for this entire game), and draconian laws oftentimes seen in actual real-world deathcults. Calling this character "incompetent" is kind of like calling the ocean "a bit wet". The second one, Targon... ho boy. His backstory pegged him as an arena gladiator, which is fine on its face. The problems cropped up after that, whereupon he was also a successful businessman (resources 5), owned a chain restaurant which he managed himself (despite claiming to have locations all over creation!), and demanded his demonic clients pay in artifacts of all things. Now, in Malfeas, this could work, as a single-location eccentric establishment that catered to the super-rich. But this is Targon. And he ran it like a Pondarosa Steakhouse, except less competent. He would spend 20-minute long scenes (real time), in how exactly he would cook and prepare food. This established a precedent wherein we realized this player just absolutely would not accept flaws of any kind of his character - not real flaws at any rate. Just the informed "type variety" - his words. And, yes, he always attempted to sound smarter than he actually is by speaking in a roundabout and obfuscatory manner. Next was Taiga, and Taiga was a great character. She became the team mascot, punch-monkey, and little sister all in one. There was literally no one who didn't like her, in terms of player characters, because she was cheerful and cute as a button. She won big in Hell's many arenas and even won herself a few Pokemo-- err-- I mean, pet beasties. Her main concern was patrolling the mean streets of Hell, forming her own police squad - the Justice Buddies. And last, but not least, was my new character, Master of the Eternal Golden Paradise, named from the Exalted Name Generator, in case that weren't obvious. Master was a shrewd businessman (resources 3 to start), who operated as a flashy, guild liaison with some business contacts that helped him ultimately build a theme park in Hell - Super Happy Fun Land. He sort-of adopted Taiga as a little sister, and would go on to help her undermine Zen's cult leadership status, whereupon they would form "Taiga-ism", a rather loose set of morals and ethics as Master devised ways of educating the unwashed masses to make them more productive members of the work force and economy. As I recall, the greatest among these religious prohibitions was against taxadermy - as Taiga kind of thought it was gross. To really drive his themes home, Master as decked out in heavy artifact weapon and armor - his weapon (a reskinned Great Goremaul) was an abicus named "SmithLocke & Keynes" and his armor was a heavy platemail named the "God-Dragon Plate" (or GDP). Among the bizarre things this team did included: Operation Eats & Poops, an attempt to save Zen's hopeless cult by fertilizing fields. This almost got derailed due to a severe drought, but Master had two harthstones that happened to solve the problem. (This itself became an issue later on, due to fukken Zen not signing the proper paperwork while taking up space in the Endless Desert. Master would then go on to petition Cecylene for use of the space, and did so with such an amazing bureacracy roll, that he, and I'm quoting my GM here, "Made the Endless Desert moist".) Zen then begged Taiga into assisting him in getting a magic book - not even getting into his begging for magical martial arts training he ultimately bitched out of (thereby humiliating Taiga in front of her master). This was kind of like trying to explain color to a blind person, because Zen's answer to Taiga's taking him to a book store, was to casually saunter up and begin asking for what amounts to black market wares in the middle of the day. The GM, God bless him, took pity on this faux-pas and Taiga was eventually able to get said book. Not that Zen put it to any meaningful use. Apparently, the 17 year old girl understood the black market better than the man in his 30s. The team would go on to battle many times in the arena, sans Master, who was on the sidelines betting on his comrades's success (when it was Taiga) or their failure (when it was Zen and Targon). Strangely enough, Master's bets were almost always right. At one point we even battled what was essentially a battlemech. The team managed to topple it despite even man-down at the time, and Master sealed it with a linguistics charm essentially reading "DON'T TOUCH. THIS MEANS YOU, ZEN." And the sin that I shall never be forgiven for was Master's casual investment in the entertainment/security measure known as the TaigaBot. These mechanical abominations were fully able to dance, sing, answer simple questions for guests and beat the shit out of anyone who attempted anything funny, be it stealing or attempting to couple with a TaigaBot. Endless innuendos were made, of course, and that's part of the reason I shan't be forgiven for this. Master briefly considered a ZenBot or a TargonBot, but we all know where that would've ended up. Those robots would've killed themselves somehow - likely out of shame for their source material. And the last bit, something Taiga's player really should've reconsidered, was during a battle atop a giant bird-behemoth (Master was absent from this fight), Taiga's Mouse of the Sun, a rather vicious fighter named Fluff Mousington, brandished an anti-warstrider rifle and leveled it on Zen, prompting her for an answer. Taiga relented (her player, less so) and admitted that they should save Zen, causing a battle against a gigantic eagle. In retrospect, probably should've just pulled the trigger. Remember everyone: backstory, intimacies, long-term goal. Not negotiable. So, join me next time as I discuss some D&D (and how I became a half-ork pop star) and a later Exalted campaign involving slutty pirates, a reincarnating old man knight (who happens to be a teenaged girl), and three boneheads no one likes. See you there.

[phogenson]

Leni

Reflection

Believe it or not I think I watched Triumph of the Will (1935) for the first time when I was like 13 or so, and it's significant place in cinematic history was pretty immediately apparent to me. As I recall the other thing that kind of stuck out to me had to do with the rhetorical style of most of the figures documented here. Both of those observations kind of underly a lot of what my career in philosophy has been ever since--how is something being said and what is the significance of the utterance--these are philosophical questions at the heart of my work.

So Mrs. Young said we could write about anything for our last quarter paper in AP European History. My papers previous to that had really all been research essays that were very pre-19th century in their focus. This was something that I had a growing interest in and which I felt that I could just sort of belt out.

The paper is typical of a slightly unrefined style of my high school papers. It meanders though examples and struggles to come together around a thesis. If I had to retroactively put a thesis to this, it might be the early formulation of a proposition that would underscore some of my later work in this area and an early stab at my general formalism about art. (But I didn't know anything about those things at the time.) The thesis to look for might be something like this: the formal properties of a work do nothing to distinguish the ethical standards we want to hold artworks to because, as I will show, formal properties of morally dubious works significantly overlap with the formal properties of ethically praiseworthy works and in fact are deployed in with the same intention from work to work.

So basically I was just shining a light into the morass of the way films are made. The answer I guess I was seeking was "it's complicated, I'll get back to you on it." But let's get into the weeds here and see the kind of crazy work I was doing in high school.

Quarter Paper

Leni Riefenstahl is a singularly controversial filmmaker. While discussing her propaganda films has been common since the fifties, homaging and using her work similarly time honored: watching Triumph of the Will in its original context seems similar to reading Mein Kampf in any context. While propaganda is hardly new, Riefenstahl’s work not necessarily defensible or even unorthodox, it is important to film history in general to understand that the techniques used in Triumph of the Will are significant in their ubiquity and effectiveness, not to mention their pervasiveness in contemporary films, dealing or not dealing with the Third Reich itself, partly artistic rather than purely tendentious. Propaganda requires a direct emotional assault on the viewer, effective propaganda would use a variety of tactics to achieve such an assault but propaganda on the level of subtlety of Riefenstahl’s becomes effective in many contexts beyond persuasion. Thus, regardless of the confines art tries to break from, artistic film also directs the audience’s gaze or emotion with a level of tact and exigence that is similar to the best propaganda. It is important, then, to realize that the images and juxtapositions most effectively used by Riefenstahl in the late 1930s are not tactics purely to engender support for an obviously extreme regime but are devices that are necessary to deal with themes ranging from power to friendship, hopelessness to strength, and the implications of living in the Nazis power.

The content and conditions of her films do little to help Riefenstahl’s controversial status, what is focused on is how Riefenstahl often moved aside questions and allegations about the nature of her films in favor of shameless self promotion.[1] The academic who seems to make this point most clear is Susan Sontag. Sontag’s “Fascinating Fascism” is considered the seminal work on analyzing Leni Riefenstahl’s films in context with the information presented in her later photographic essays. “Fascinating Fascism” presents a compelling case that Riefenstahl’s later works were “full of disquieting lies” and continuities with Nazi sentiments.[2] It seems that after the war, author biographies focused on the fact that she had been acclaimed but not what she had been acclaimed for. This redirection, however, seems logical considering as Sontag does that Riefenstahl was, regardless of for how long, detained by the allies after the war and de-Nazified.[3] Further the megalomania that Sontag describes would be reason enough for Riefenstahl to continue working as an artist. She would hardly be the first so motivated. It seems significant also that, though there were parallels between all her works even though Riefenstahl’s subject matter progressed from Nazis to African tribes to aquatic scenes; progressively further from subjects that might be misconstrued. Riefenstahl herself had a self absorbed drive with highly political connotations in that she used her ego to redirect the flack she should have faced for her films.

While Sontag’s opinion of Riefenstahl the woman seems, ultimately, apt, her characterization of her propagandist work is unconsidered. Sontag comes down on Triumph of the Will hard saying it is “the most successfully, purely propagandistic film ever made, whose very conception negates the possibility of the film maker’s having an aesthetic or visual conception independent of propaganda.”[4] Even if Sontag is correct in her analysis of why Triumph of the Will was made, she does not see a means of assessing it on its own merits. Writing in 1991, however, Linda Schulte-Sasse takes a stance on Riefenstahl that is less extreme and seeks to describe the artistic side of fascist art. Schulte-Sasse wants “to eschew a personalized debate on the exaltation or excoriation of an individual and search for criteria in assessing the films that allow for both historical specificity and problematic continuities.”[5] To critically understand Riefenstahl’s work, it is necessary to distinguish a continuity of Nazi or not (though it would seem that Riefenstahl never really put down the principles behind Nazi art) and significant techniques.[6] Riefenstahl’s work is obviously biased on the first account and, though not necessarily groundbreaking on the second, in cinematic history her films and techniques do have continued influence. Perhaps Sontag is writing at a time before she could see the effects that Triumph of the Will would have on more recent films, but Sontag should also have realized the potential for effective non-propagandist techniques as a critic.

Propaganda has two general forms; commanding and exemplifying. Film, with its principally narrative and dynamic ability to juxtapose images and recreate situations, is uniquely capable of making example-based propaganda. The Battleship Potempkin is a case in point as a reenactment that would demonstrate to the intended average Russian viewer what might be done in the situation of the sailors; rebel against the czarists.[7] Alternatively, the poster (right) comes to the viewer from an assumed position of authority with recommended action. While technically Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will seems to fit the example-based category its technique is totally different; while Eisenstein and others used reenactment or staged situations Riefenstahl used the documentary genera and nearly unlimited resources to create a film that was both immediate and affecting.[8] Here is where Schulte-Sasse’s argument becomes all the more important. Her definition that fascist works represent a combination of something done for aesthetic effect and real experiences is central, they “break down the boundary between the aesthetic and life and thereby lead the spectator into an aestheticized activism” thus becoming propaganda.[9]

Schulte-Sasse, unlike Sontag, believes that it is right to recognize the strengths of Riefenstahl’s films; she no doubt sees their significance in retrospect. Nevertheless Triumph of the Will plainly fits into the camp of fascist films because it “clearly does transgress the boundaries of the imaginary, merging the political and the aesthetic, and permitting the individuals attending the rally and those reliving it through the technological apparatus the experience of a collective decentering… it goes beyond this by trying to introduce the imaginary into the public sphere, by conflating the imaginary with modern reality.”[10] Riefenstahl is less making an argument and more relating conflicting images. Analytically, as a result of Schulte-Sasse’s assertion, one must recognize the importance of the techniques Riefenstahl used in her films to achieve a balanced juxtaposition of themes for propaganda rather than dismiss them because of films made so far as Sontag does.[11]

Riefenstahl’s two part documentary Olympia most effectively depicts her raw ability as a director. Olympia captures the movements of its subjects in a way that can only be described as lucid. The number and variety of angles of single actions is staggering, it is little wonder that it took nearly two years to edit Olympia because of the difficulty there would have been at the time in spooling through reels and reels of not always synchronized footage. At the 1936 Olympics, Riefenstahl would have emphasized the camera movements and positions extensively just to capture shots like the one above which makes effective use of the longest line on the frame.[12] This shot alone demonstrates Riefenstahl’s skill as a director but it is not what she is known for or really representative of her work or the influence her work has had on a variety of movies since. This scene in Olympia while transient of reality in some respects does not accurately reflect what it is that Schulte-Sasse means when she posits “the transgression of the separate realm of the aesthetic, or, more precisely, the introduction of the aesthetic into reality, requires an actual mediation of the instrumental and decentering experiences in a new mode of the political.”[13]

Alternatively Triumph of the Will, the most totally propagandistic of Riefenstahl’s films makes full use of the cinematic medium not to make an argument really for or against the Third Reich, but rather to guarantee the audience’s investment and engagement in visuals and motifs which would otherwise seem irrational. When watching so much footage of Hitler orating, a viewer might be overcome by the dramatic excess in his delivery. Thus, context becomes an important tool; the excess which Schulte-Sasse would consider aesthetic--i.e. that done for effect--is mitigated by the “real” context the excess is placed in. In terms of actual technique, Riefenstahl’s answer to the problem is simple; juxtaposition of the aesthetic with a personal reaction. The shot of Hitler above is far from humanizing.[14] Rather it is the classic depiction of the strong leader over his people; reserved, not human. Hitler’s central location perpendicular to the camera makes the viewer feel like this is a glance; good but not great seating at a concert. Yet this cannot be the dominating view of the system Hitler represents in a film glorifying the extreme. Thus another shot is needed to bridge the gap between the aesthetic of the genre and the tacit critical eye of the viewer. The subsequent shot of a soldier espousing similar rhetoric provides the necessary visuals to re-involve the audience in what is supposed to be an emotional experience; it is as though a metaphor of seating is extended, the soldier being another audience member behind the viewer and invested in the event regardless of rationality.

Riefenstahl uses spectators often to capture the belief others appear to have; peer pressuring the viewer by suggesting emotion rather than demanding or reenacting a belief. While the most memorable scenes from Triumph of the Will may be the ones that make use of the cast of thousands, the more interesting ones are those of individuals. Crowds, even when unified can be overwhelming, but one person placed to the side and somewhat obscured in shadow captures the viewers own face-in-the-crowd and creates instant empathy.[15] The technique--closeups of reactions in succession juxtaposed with some apparently greater force--is effective at producing a variety of reactions especially when it is difficult for a viewer to grasp the enormity of the situation. 

The Nazis have the sense of totality and dominance that is difficult to craft an objective response to. This difficulty is perhaps why Triumph of the Will is not a popular movie to discuss even though its theoretical approach to the difficulty of presenting Nazis is perfect. It seems a tasteless comparison to make, but the similarities between the construction of these shots from Triumph of the Will and those of Schindler’s List would emphasize the indelible mark Riefenstahl’s work has had on an effective presentation of the Nazis if nothing else. The following four shots from Steven Spielberg’s magnum opus similarly depict a response to an event the audience may not be able to empathize with (the arrival and conflagration of Nazis) with an image the audience can immediately judge (the boy’s face or the family at dinner).[16] These particular shots make the events of the movie more moving because they demand the involvement of the audience and heighten certain features and feelings by connecting the common with the extreme.

It is little surprise considering the line between the extreme and the personal that one film that draws most heavily on the style of Triumph of the Will is Star Wars. A movie like Star Wars has to walk the line between the grandiose themes of galactic strife and memorable characters that the audience likes.[17] Thus, at the end of his movie George Lucas copies almost directly from Triumph of the Will to play up the accomplishments of his characters. Not only are the images similar, as the scene from Star Wars progresses the similarities grow and Lucas uses the juxtaposition of the mass of people with the individual responses in the situation to present his characters as consistently a possible; after being overwhelmed by the scale of the initial shots, Lucas reminds the viewer of the endearing traits of the characters by returning, as Riefenstahl would, to the their closeups and idiosyncratic gestures--Han Solo winks, Luke Skywalker smiles at R2-D2--making them comparatively normal heroes despite the galaxy far, far away they come from.

Leni Riefenstahl holds a very peculiar place in cinema because of technical capabilities as compared with her prevailing politics. In her life Leni Riefenstahl generated a gregarious personality to redirect questions meant to target her background as a prominent propagandist for a superlatively destructive regime.[18] But the theoretical strengths of Riefenstahl’s work are not without their tact and artistry, though they are ultimately peculiar to a genre of filmmaking. Triumph of the Will in particular grapples with the difficulties of presenting a regime in many ways so ridiculous that the film required constant returns to personal reactions to create a synthesis of sentiments which could connect the viewer to the action. These techniques which Riefenstahl used to their highest effect in her propaganda films ultimately have left their mark on film history as effective methods of creating emotional involvement in extreme situations. Her methods have a level of ubiquity in that they appear in a variety of contexts as directors present the horrors of the holocaust or the heroics of space aliens. Riefenstahl is not a director who comes out absolved having done art for art’s sake, rather she is a director to be highly regarded in that she made such effective use of techniques which innate to the persuasive aspects of all film media.

Footnotes

 Steven Bach, "The Puzzle of Leni Riefenstahl," The Wilson Quarterly 26.4 (2002).

Susan Sontag, "Fascinating Fascism," Movies and Methods, ed. Bill Nichols, vol. 1 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975) 32.

Sontag, "Fascinating Fascism,"   36.

Sontag, "Fascinating Fascism,"   34.

Linda Schulte-Sasse, "Leni Riefenstahl's Feature Films and the Question of a Fascist Aesthetic," Cultural Critique.18 (1991): 126.

 Sontag does absolutely understand the principles of fascist aesthetics. She eloquently describes them thus: “More generally, they flow from (and justify) a preoccupation with situations of control, submissive behavior, extravagant effort, and the endurance of pain; they endorse two seemingly opposite states, egomania and servitude. The relations of domination and enslavement take the form of a characteristic pageantry: the massing of groups of people; the turning of people into things; the multiplication or replication of things; and the grouping of people/things around an all-powerful, hypnotic leader-figure or force. The fascist dramaturgy centers on the orgiastic transactions between mighty forces and their puppets, uniformly garbed and shown in ever swelling numbers. Its choreography alternates between ceaseless motion and a congealed, static, ‘virile’ posing. Fascist art glorifies surrender, it exalts mindlessness, it glamorizes death.” Sontag, "Fascinating Fascism,"   40.

The Battleship Potempkin, dir. Sergie Eisenstein, Goskino, 1925.

Sontag, "Fascinating Fascism,"   34.

Schulte-Sasse, "Leni Riefenstahl's Feature Films and the Question of a Fascist Aesthetic," 124.

Schulte-Sasse, "Leni Riefenstahl's Feature Films and the Question of a Fascist Aesthetic," 142.

 In retrospect, Sontag’s greatest misconception about Riefenstahl’s films is that “they are not really important in the history of cinema as an art form.” Though Sontag was writing in 1975, before the most prominent examples of Riefenstahl homage--Star Wars (1977) and The Lion King (1994) come to mind--as a theoretician she should have been able to recognize as Schulte-Sasse did the singular nature of Riefenstahl’s films. Sontag, "Fascinating Fascism,"   42.

 Olympia, dir. Leni Riefenstahl, Tobis, 1938.

 Schulte-Sasse, "Leni Riefenstahl's Feature Films and the Question of a Fascist Aesthetic," 142.

Triumph of the Will, dir. Leni Riefenstahl, Universum Film AG, 1935.

 The frame on this page is a most subdued version of the closeup response. While Leni Riefenstahl is far from the first director to use an extreme closeup to convey emotion, she may use this kind of shot more effectively than many other directors. Shots that may only last for an instant in Triumph of the Will are considered for their effect on a spectrum from the bombastic to this subtle response. In this shot the girl is the subject, her smile something that the viewer is supposed to reciprocate but her proximity to the swastika is likewise vital; the girl is anonymous but she can still be this close to the symbol of the party. Triumph of the Will, dir. Riefenstahl.

 Schindler's List, dir. Steven Spielberg, Universal Pictures, 1993.

Star Wars, dir. George Lucas, 20th Century Fox, 1977.

Bach, "The Puzzle of Leni Riefenstahl."

Annotated Bibliography

Bach, Steven. "The Puzzle of Leni Riefenstahl." The Wilson Quarterly 26.4 (2002): 43-46.

This brief study of Riefenstahl late in her life is much more a work consulted than cited. It provided examples of Riefenstahl’s unique aversions to questions about her early work. Ultimately a colorful study.

The Battleship Potempkin. Dir. Eisenstein, Sergie. Jacob Bliokh. 1925.

A noted propagandist film from one of cinema’s foremost theoreticians. The Battleship Potempkin provides a vital contrast in styles between those of the Nazis and the Soviets. Sontag makes similar parallels though with different directors and works.

Star Wars. Dir. Lucas, George. Gary Kurtz. 1977.

Significant in its homage use of World War II battle photography. Early in his career Lucas used a variety of fundamental cinematic tools to create a variety of feelings and memorable characters. This movie draws directly from Triumph of the Will. 

Olympia. Dir. Riefenstahl, Leni. Leni Riefenstahl. 1938.

One of Riefenstahl’s most well known films. Originally shot in 1936 at the Berlin Olympics, Olympia is a two part film that recorded the games themselves primarily though the Nazis are obviously a subject too. Olympia has had long lasting effects on sport photography with some archetypal shots still appearing in contemporary movies and sports coverage.

Triumph of the Will. Dir. ---. Leni Riefenstahl. 1935.

This is the fundamental Nazi propaganda piece. The imagery from this film is something in the collective memory of anyone who has seen footage of the Nazis or any totalitarian regime as the angles and techniques are at this point the standard in presentation of such subject matter. Triumph of the Will was once a staple of German theaters during the War; today it is banned in Germany. 

Schulte-Sasse, Linda. "Leni Riefenstahl's Feature Films and the Question of a Fascist Aesthetic." Cultural Critique.18 (1991): 123-48.

Schulte-Sasse provides a necessary relief from Sontag’s ultimately dismissive seminal work. Schulte-Sasse allows for reasonable analysis to be made about fascist films by recognizing the leaps they make between some conflicting and always extreme subject matter. 

Sontag, Susan. "Fascinating Fascism."  Movies and Methods. Ed. Bill Nichols. Vol. 1. 2 vols. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975.

In many respects the seminal work on Riefenstahl’s films. Sontag really seeks to dispel any belief that Riefenstahl has significance to film today because of the context she worked in. However Sontag was writing prior to the examples which seem most relevant in suggesting otherwise. 

Schindler's List. Dir. Spielberg, Steven. Steven Spielberg, Gerald R. Molen and Branko Lustig. 1993.

Critically acclaimed Schindler’s List is something of antithesis to Riefenstahl’s work. Nevertheless, Spielberg’s film is based on a keen knowledge of the holocaust and is effective because he presents such a variety of details and subtleties. Schindler’s List is so effective for similar reason’s to Triumph of the Will.