Susie Bright on Stalagim

September 6, 2007 12:22 PM

Susie Bright comments on the recent NYT piece about Israeli Nazi-themed porn. Andrea Dworkin wrote about this genre almost 20 years ago. There's a new film on the topic, which is what inspired the NY Times article.
posted by serazin (48 comments total)

My wife: "There's Holocaust porn? [pause]. You're spending way too much time online."
posted by craniac at 12:25 PM on September 6, 2007 [3 favorites]

There was somebody who couldn't have predicted there was Holocaust porn?
posted by DU at 12:29 PM on September 6, 2007

Said in a sulky Dave Chappelle voice:
"Boo, why you gotta be against the peace in the middle east? I mean, do you really think I'm enjoying this? That's CRAZY. And it hurts. I'm doing it for the peace. For the peace."
posted by Foci for Analysis at 12:33 PM on September 6, 2007

There's porn of it.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 12:40 PM on September 6, 2007

There were no Jewish whores

Damn you, Ian Curtis!
posted by nasreddin at 12:42 PM on September 6, 2007

$20. Same as at Auschwitz.
posted by hal9k at 12:42 PM on September 6, 2007 [6 favorites]

Proof that Rule 34 existed before the Internet.
posted by educatedslacker at 12:44 PM on September 6, 2007

Despite her contribution to the war on "begs the question," the Susie Bright article was interesting.

But isn't this what Freudians have been going on about for decades?

Nevertheless, I now have the most awesome approach to cultural awareness:

"I seek to understand your history and culture. Where can I find some porn?"
posted by eisbaer at 12:49 PM on September 6, 2007 [1 favorite]

you know who else was into Nazi-themed porn?
posted by dubold at 12:52 PM on September 6, 2007

you know who else was into Nazi-themed porn?


ummmm Elvis?
posted by Eekacat at 12:56 PM on September 6, 2007

you know who else was into Nazi-themed porn?

The British. Never before have I seen a flyer for a Nazi-fetish night. Yikes.
posted by mkb at 12:59 PM on September 6, 2007

The British. Never before have I seen a flyer for a Nazi-fetish night. Yikes.

...b-b-but they bombed our chip shops!
posted by nasreddin at 1:06 PM on September 6, 2007

The British. Never before have I seen a flyer for a Nazi-fetish night. Yikes.

Hey, we're not all like that.

Some of us do set a bad example.
posted by topynate at 1:10 PM on September 6, 2007

Uhh, might want to point out that the main link of this post has some NSFW-ish imagery on it.
posted by saladin at 1:12 PM on September 6, 2007

Well, the post is about porn saladin. I thought I'd skip the requisite NSFW tag.
posted by serazin at 1:14 PM on September 6, 2007

Uhh, might want to point out that the main link of this post has some NSFW-ish imagery on it.

It is your choice to see it or Nazi it.
posted by hal9k at 1:27 PM on September 6, 2007 [2 favorites]

It is your choice to see it or Nazi it.

Nazi puns? Fuck off*!

*No offence intended, hal9k
posted by topynate at 1:40 PM on September 6, 2007 [6 favorites]

In Japanese porn, the bombing of Hiroshima/Nagasaki and surrender to the Allies provoked a new image: the specter of masochistic male castration and the eroto-humiliation of impotence. It has no Judeo-Christian aspect; it is entirely rooted in the tradition of war, honor, male power, and its shameful submission.

LOL what rubbish.
posted by dydecker at 1:42 PM on September 6, 2007 [1 favorite]

Nazi puns? Fuck off*!

That was really terrible. Good job.
posted by loquacious at 1:45 PM on September 6, 2007

We're not all like that

Proof: Keith Moon and Vivian Stanshall dressed as Nazis. Nobody else was like either of them.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 1:47 PM on September 6, 2007

Heh, yesterday I jokingly sketched a jewish paraphilia for blond tall übermenschen to a friend.
Saying that the strangest paraphilias are taken seriously on metafilter.
And here it is.
posted by jouke at 1:56 PM on September 6, 2007

TFA: But so often, erotic expressions are surrounded by a story, a fascination — and this is where cultural memories come into play.

In Japanese porn, the bombing of Hiroshima/Nagasaki and surrender to the Allies provoked a new image: the specter of masochistic male castration and the eroto-humiliation of impotence.

This strikes me as a desperate and absurd linking, and it's amazing that the author can toss it off with little more than confidence behind her claim. It's similar to that too-facile explanation of the German novel's decline to short fiction - that the war blew away the idealism of the long novel. This is a seductive claim until you realize that short fiction was becoming more fashionable around the world, not just in Germany, and I'd wager the same holds true for Femdom/BDSM pornography and Japan.
posted by kid ichorous at 2:08 PM on September 6, 2007

Heh. I have a couple paperbacks of Nazi porn here in the office, which someone (prior to the last two folks to hold my job, because I asked them) left here in the "to be filed" bins.
posted by klangklangston at 2:47 PM on September 6, 2007

Oh, and to echo the Kid— Japanese porn seems a lot more about tying women up than eroto-humiliation of men.
posted by klangklangston at 2:48 PM on September 6, 2007

I am positing at my site tomorrow a full batchof material about this NY Times article. In fact, years ago, I met the wife of the guy whose works are said in the article to have set off the "porn" craze. He survived two years in the camps, went into LSD treatment in Holland for his concentration camp symptoms, and died a few years ago, aged 93. One claim in the article is that he fictionalized the sex stuff etc but my post will show otherwise.
I know it is considered a no no to give one's URL in a comment so I will not do so. But if anyone is interested, you can write me at Postroad[at]hotmail.com
posted by Postroad at 2:51 PM on September 6, 2007

I've heard that Hitler's home movies were pretty hot.
posted by homunculus at 2:52 PM on September 6, 2007

"Israeli Nazi-themed porn"

That's just sick, given that Israel would not exist as a Zionist state if it weren't for the WW2 Holocaust.
posted by davy at 3:06 PM on September 6, 2007

I know it is considered a no no to give one's URL in a comment so I will not do so.

As long as it is on topic and you're not making a front page post about it, there no problem with self links in comments.
posted by Tenuki at 3:18 PM on September 6, 2007

But then the NYT article taked about "perverse tales of captured American or British pilots being abused by sadistic female SS officers."

So the Allied air forces should have bombed the railroads to Auschwitz.
posted by davy at 3:18 PM on September 6, 2007

Is this is something that I shouldn't have jerked off to Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS to get?
posted by Astro Zombie at 3:23 PM on September 6, 2007 [2 favorites]

For one, this shows that it is not merely Israeli interest in the topic:
http://www.epinions.com/content_2323816580
posted by Postroad at 3:34 PM on September 6, 2007

Postroad, if it deals with the topic, self-posts are okay.
posted by graventy at 4:47 PM on September 6, 2007

Postroad, if it deals with the topic, self-posts are okay.

In the thread. *smacks forehead*
posted by graventy at 4:48 PM on September 6, 2007

How can you not see porn?
posted by fourcheesemac at 5:08 PM on September 6, 2007

he Banality of Colonel Schultz’s Private Bitch

It was Colonel Klink*, Schultz was the sergeant who was always saying "I see nussing!" Get your TV Nazis straight, lady!

*Werner Klempferer, the actor who played Klink was actually Jewish and had it written into his contract that Klink could never succeed or win or foil one of Hogan's schemes. Good for him. Still find that show vaguely offensive though. POW camps were horrible places, not laff riots.
posted by jonmc at 5:33 PM on September 6, 2007

this will be at my site tomorrow and it goes a bit beyond the p;ost here but that is because the author referred to --the Israeli writer--is central to the first part of this set of links.

Bruno BisangHere, an article, I came upon the morning after I began putting together this post. This sado-masochistic genre of "comic" books, appealing to a pornogrphic mind, seemingly derives in part from the works of K. Tzetnik (De-Nur). The claim here is that the author faked the stories about the use of "dolls"--in this instance his own sister, but if you read the material in De-Nur's book (see post) under LSD he elsewhere in the text asserts that his fiction relies upon reality (his sister).

Israel’s Unexpected Spinoff From a Holocaust Trial - New York Timesto suggest that there was no sex at the camps is patently absurd. For an indication of how women were used, go here
and hereas for the prurient interest in sexuality and the camps, note that there have been sexploitation films dealing with this subject, as can be seen here
posted by Postroad at 5:57 PM on September 6, 2007

Hi, thanks for the link, I appreciate the interest and your comments. I am actually quite knowledgeable about Japanese porn, and this phenom of a character with a "broken penis" (castration, the man's penis which doesn't "work" for some reason or is found severely lacking) is for real, and it's not related to Femdom or BDSM. Sometimes this figure is redeemed, and other times he never is, and some other male character is the one who gets laid.

This stuff doesn't sell by and large to American audiences, I can't link you to anywhere in the US to buy it that I know of. You'd have to be in a Japanese immigrant community or over in Japan.

The reason I found out about it is because decades ago a Japanese fiilm distributor asked me to look at his catalog and advise him about what might work for US distribution.

We'll have to have a screening at my house, if you can bear to sit through a few hundred screeners!
posted by susiebright at 7:48 PM on September 6, 2007 [7 favorites]

you still got the hogan's heroes reference wrong, lady. And I shelved one of your books just the other day, dammit.
posted by jonmc at 7:51 PM on September 6, 2007 [1 favorite]

jonmc - please show a little decorum to our guest!
posted by serazin at 8:58 PM on September 6, 2007

I don't know if Amazon still has the "This item is popular in..." feature, but I remember a few years ago that the number 2,3,4 & 5 most popular DVD's being shipped to Israel were all "Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS" titles.

Draw your own conclusions.
posted by Avenger at 12:28 AM on September 7, 2007

Those Nazi chicks have stroke value.
posted by zorro astor at 5:57 AM on September 7, 2007

$20. Same as at Auschwitz.

Could you please explain this comment?

It's a punchline to an old joke. In fact, the joke is so common, typically only the punchline is told.

"....and then ______ says '$20 same as in town'"
posted by electroboy at 6:46 AM on September 7, 2007

I just heard from a couple people about the Hogan's Heroes reference, wondering if I was getting my rank and names mixed up.

I was actually taking my post title from the name of the "Stalag" book in Israel that was most notorious, called: “I Was Colonel Schultz’s Private Bitch.”

You can read about it more in the NYT article, although I should explain it further in my post, because of the American TV confusion.

I wonder if the HH's TV writers got their character name ideas from these books!
posted by susiebright at 7:54 AM on September 7, 2007

Thanks Susie. However, granting that Japanese porn includes a sub-genre of castration fantasy, why must there be a causal link to WW2? This feels like overreaching for a tidy and elegant explanation. What did you base this conclusion on?

For similar reasons, I wouldn't claim that Japanese rope/knot porn, which also flourished after WW2, was somehow engendered by the war - for example, as a desire to "contain" the Japanese woman in the face of Western feminism and Western influence. These are neat hypotheses, but they are not really facts.
posted by kid ichorous at 8:13 AM on September 7, 2007

jonmc - please show a little decorum

Eponysterical.
posted by mek at 10:21 AM on September 7, 2007

what kid kichorous said. Suzie, it's not the existence of the videos which is in doubt (Japan is the second largest producer of pornography in the world - there are hundreds of genres and thousands of different themes, many of them very different from Western themes, so it does not surprise me that there are broken penis videos), it is the interpretation you are putting on them that doesn't ring true. WWII & defeat at the hands of America? Come on, that sounds like an foriegner's interpretation if ever there was one.

And why pick such a odd and specious example for your thesis? I do agree with your argument that porn expose and play on the rifts and valleys in societies, but there are much better examples from Japan. Such as cleanliness vs. dirtiness, which is a historical Japanese obsession, and it shows up in their porn again and again.
posted by dydecker at 10:36 AM on September 7, 2007

I've been making "you be the Palestinian photojournalist & I'll be the Israeli border guard" jokes in bed with my partner for a couple years now. I'm glad* to see there're special genres out there just for us.


*and by 'glad' I mean dismayed & creeped out, but unsurprised.
posted by soviet sleepover at 1:20 PM on September 7, 2007 [1 favorite]

Well, this conversation gives me lots of editorial ideas for my blog, which I'm supposed to be tied to like an iron typewriter.

Suffice to say for the moment that I have reviewed international porn and erotica extensively, for 25 years, so yes, I have tons of opinions. And it is very esoteric, it's hard to have discussions when most people have never seen the "secret porn library" of their own culture, let alone anyone elses.

I think any kind of war is one of the biggest effects on erotic expression, period.

Just now, we're seeing a tremendous effect of the Iraq war on American erotica. I wrote about this in the last BAE, I think. Masculine fears and taboos about inferiority, emasculization, cuckoldry, androgyny, go through the roof. All of this presented in the most titillating way, of course. They're not written as tragedies, they're composed to get off the author/reader. And most of it isn't even published, but it's like a drumbeat that keeps making its rhythm known.

During the beginning of AIDS, the vampire thing went through the roof. That was one of the most obvious erotic reactions. But it's usually more subtle and open to many interpretations.

The thing I like the most about Japanese porn and myth-making is that it's so divorced from Bible-thinking. What a relief, and so challenging to my Catholic-rotted mind, as you might put it.
posted by susiebright at 9:13 AM on September 8, 2007