The Holocaust on Ice (Only in Russia)

[Norseman]

No really. A holocaust themed ice-show performance.

[youtube][/youtube]

Let's see what CNN has to say:

A Holocaust-themed ice skating routine on a Russian reality television show, involving the wife of a high-level aide to President Vladimir Putin, has sparked outrage around the world.

The act was based on the award-winning 1997 Italian film, "Life is Beautiful," which tells the story of a Jewish father who tries to hide his son from the horrors of the Holocaust through humor and games.

In the routine, set to Israeli singer Noa's "Beautiful That Way" from the film's soundtrack, former Olympic ice skater Tatiana Navka and her dance partner Andrei Burkovsky dance in the striped pajamas and yellow six-pointed stars which Jewish victims of Nazi concentration camps were forced to wear.

I know I am supposed to make some insightful comment here, but... The Holocaust on Ice? Seriously this is the sort of thing you would expect to see in the Onion or something. It is so over the top you might not be offended at first, rather you just stare and giggle in shock.

Well... uhm... Russian reality television, yeah, that explains a lot. So yeah. I got nothing.

EDIT:

And then there is this wonderful moment from Russian Dancing With the Stars, why yes that IS dance number involving a Nazi officer searching for the Jewish girl hiding behind the piano.

[youtube][/youtube]

I got nothing. I just have nothing. No.

[Lys]

Sorry but i don't see what the problem is here. What is it about an ice skating performance that makes it offensive in ways that the very silly movie that inspired it isn't? Did the Nazis decapitate people with ice skates or something?

[Norseman]

Sorry but i don't see what the problem is here. What is it about an ice skating performance that makes it offensive in ways that the very silly movie that inspired it isn't? Did the Nazis decapitate people with ice skates or something?

If you wonder why certain movies are acceptable, while this is offensive, I think I have an answer.

There are movies like "Life is Beautiful" and "Jakob the Liar" which are set in and about concentration camps or ghettos. These movies handle things in a tasteful fashion, that is though they use humour they also show the suffering of the people. Through that comedy you get a deeper connection with them, as shared suffering, even vicarious shared suffering, and gallows humor creates a bond. More than that the mixture of some humour into it reminds you that these are genuinely people, who use humour, jokes, lies, and what have you to help them through. When you laugh you are laughing with them.

This ice-skating show stripped all of that way, it is "based on" a movie, but it removes the humanizing, unifying elements, the sense of shared suffering, of gallows humour, and all that is left behind is being entertained by people dressed as concentration camp victims.

Does that answer your questions?

[Lys]

But that stuff is still there, not the humour obviously, but the human angle of the suffering and despair and all. The anguished expressions and particular dance moves the ice skaters adopt at various parts in the performance are intended to convey that. Maybe you feel they don't do a good job of it, that's a fair criticism, but i don't see depicting the Holocaust via ice skating as being as being any more inherently offensive than depicting it through another art form. Yet that is precisely what the title of this thread implies.