“Hitler Reacts” is a series of Youtube parodies based off of a dramatic scene from the 2004 film Downfall. This movie focuses on the last ten days of Hitler’s life in his underground Berlin bunker, and his, along with his close confidents’ eventual suicide. The scene in particular that has gained so much notoriety shows Hitler’s reaction after the realization that he is going to lose the war.
With his incredible acting and close resemblance to the man himself, Bruno Ganz, (who plays Hitler in the movie) does a remarkable job of making this scene both expressive and suspenseful. Because of this scene’s power, it makes for a highly effective piece of comedy media when contrasted with ridiculous subtitles. Youtube enthusiasts soon caught on to this fact and started developing spoofs. The earliest known parody was uploaded by Youtube user DReaperF4 on August 10th, 2006. This was subbed in Spanish, and showed Hitler fuming over a demo trial of Microsoft’s Flight Simulator X. Because of the popularity of this upload, the English subbed version was uploaded 20 days later. However, due to a copyright claim made by the film studio, the original video was deleted in December, 2009.
Since then, the popularity and frequency of uploads/views of this scene have skyrocketed. With subtitles in English, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, and many other languages, this has become a phenomenon throughout the world. In fact, in April 2009, a Youtube channel named HitlerRantsParodies was created for the community to come together and share their creations. This channel remains with over 560 uploads and 29 million views.
For the most part viewers have been accepting of these videos, and looking at them through a positive light. Because they do involve such a controversial figure, it is expected for there to be some outrage from certain groups of people. However, for the most part these videos portray Hitler as an unstable and overdramatic figure, which parallels with the thoughts of his real-life actions in World War 2. In fact, even the director of Downfall had only positive comments to give about the parodies, finding them humourous himself. On January 15th, 2010, the director was interviewed by New York Magazine’s entertainment blog Vulture. When asked about the emergence of the parodies online, he stated:
Someone sends me the links every time there’s a new one…
I think I’ve seen about 145 of them! Of course, I have to put the sound down when I watch. Many times the lines are so funny, I laugh out loud, and I’m laughing about the scene that I staged myself! You couldn’t get a better compliment as a director.
This video is one of many that stretches the boundaries of acceptable content to be posted online. Similar to the “Shit Girls Say” outbreak in 2011, they both could be viewed as offensive. However, Youtube enthusiasts have gone to show that with a good sense of humour, even touchy subjects can be created into entertainment for millions.
By Lauren Friesen
(presentation by Krystin Ellis-McDermid, Emma Bratman)