Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Gender Roles in Hitlerjunge Quex
Hitlerjunge Quex clearly used the obvious ways in trying to force the minds of the German people to believe the message that they were trying to portray,: communists=bad, Nazi party=good. The women in the communist party were the undesirable women. Constantly drinking, going against the social norm of wearing pants, not obsessed with the state of the home and the family. The utter picture of communist women made you shake your head and judge them as if they were not good enough. When common sense would tell you that first, not all women are the same, and second, this was an extremely biased, tainted, and false view. Then you see the "beautiful" German women, wearing their flowing dresses, smiling, little to no makeup, and seemingly caring about their home lives. However, to dig deeper, these women were the supportive, quiet, women who were behind the party who murdered millions of people. I am assuming the filmmakers did not expect for the people of Germany to question or even think past the images they were viewing on the screen. The men were supposed to be healthy, fit, attractive and supporting their fuhrer as their wives were home, caring for the children and obeying the traditional German model of what was accepted. This to me, is quite sad, especially for those who fell for it.
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You raise the interesting issue of women's complicity and function as accessories.
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