HEAVY LITTLE OBJECTS

#91 :: Nazi Magic Lantern Slides

Mussolini famously said, "Character is what you are in the dark." This little stack of glass magic lantern slides shows that character - of a people who believed that their cause in war was right, oblivious to the fact that they supported a regime committing atrocities beyond the darkest possible imagining. I post this object this evening in light of the ignorance unfolding in the Senate regarding prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. I'll spare you my soapbox speech, posted elsewhere. Instead, some background on these loathsome, compelling little objects - the public service message of their day, projected in theaters before the feature. They were given to me by my Jewish father-in-law, who inherited them from his dad. Dad ran a string of Los Angeles-area movie theaters, starting in 1945 with the Yost in Santa Ana, and including the venerable Vista, still in operation at the cross of Sunset and Hollywood - the kind of theaters where you could sit in the balcony for 15 cents, and get your dates admission and candy for free because your old man ran the joint. My father-in-law's dad collected movie memorabilia - lobby cards, props, wonderful items like the golden spike used in "Union Pacific." Somewhere along the way, he picked up about a dozen 3.5"x4" magic lantern slides of Nazi war propaganda. They scream in Bauhaus lettering, cajole with the fresh-scrubbed faces of Hitler Youth members, urge, implore and command with all the graphic power that Nazi artists could muster. There is a photo of stalwart soldiers in the sort of low-over-the-ear helmets that today's U.S. soldiers wear. A valiant statue of Victory, a vigilant searchlight, and message upon message of inspiration and fidelity to the Füuhrer. The one highlighted here is a Deutche Rote Kreusz (German Red Cross) message: a woodcut-style image of a soldier flinging a potato-masher grenade, above a nurse bandaging a comrade's head. Just three valiant people enacting the pantomime of a war for what they gullibly believed in - and to which their creator hoped to rally their equally gullible countrymen. If anyone out there reads German, I'd welcome a translation.