Chances are you’ve run across the “Hitler Downfall meme,” in which the dictator’s pivotal soliloquy/rant from the 2004 drama Downfall is overlaid with fake subtitles to make it look like he’s pissed about everything from the iPad to Obama to—in a typically meta twist—the fact that someone is messing with his subtitles. …
(But) they’ve become subject to a wave of takedowns now that Downfall’s production company Constantin Films filed a copyright claim. It’s an interesting case study on fair use in the YouTube age—though it’s a unique situation, since any such counter-claim would have to be made by the individual users who created those parodies in the first place. In the meantime, they’ve mostly responded by, well, making more “Hitler rant” parodies in which he rants about the fact that he can’t make any more “Hitler rant” parodies.
Many of these parodies were brilliant if you can get past the idea of laughing at Hitler jokes.
Thanks DJ
I had actually gotten really tired of these, but THIS one was hilarious.
What’s really funny is that it’s Google, if anyone, who’s made megabucks off the backs of both Constantin and the makers of these parodies. After all, how much YouTube advertising did these parodies help Google sell? That’s what’s so sad about all this.
The work is hysterically funny as parody, and original in content if not invention – i.e. mashups. This war isn’t, and shouldn’t be between the makers and Constantin, even though that’s the way it’s made to appear. It’s really between Constantin and Google’s “Pennies From Heaven” Golden Goose. If Constantin can’t make money off of them, then neither can Google. Because in the higher echelons of Big Money, nobody really does care about Downfall Hitler.
LOVE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If you cant laugh at a impotent, manical, genocidal, megolomaniac with a major leauge abusive hostile personality disorder, then who can you laugh at? I about plotzed watching the “hitler learns of Michael Jacksons death” one.
Seriously, While we should never forget what he did, I think the perfect fate for that bastard is to be remembered as the butt of our jokes.
Tim
It was sort of funny the first time around – and then it was only annoying …
So for whatever reason someone puts a stop to it – I’m grateful.
“Many of these parodies were brilliant if you can get past the idea of laughing at Hitler jokes.”
It’s probably a lot easier an idea to get past from your side of the Atlantic.
I would think that laughing at Hitler would be easier in Europe.
Look at him now, the butt of a few dozen jokes, shown as some hysterical madman getting bent because Sara Palin was shown on the internet nude.
I mean, really, is there is greater evidence of Karma?