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Downfall
Directed by Olivier Hirschbiegel
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The release of Oliver Hirschbiegel's magnificent film Downfall-- Der Untergang, in the original German-- has caused a flurry of praise mixed with stupid, critical hand-wringing. About what? Well, the humanity of Hitler. Downfall is an exacting and excruciating look at Hitler, his generals, and close associates in the final days of the Third Reich, just before the Russian invasion of Berlin and the war's end. With his matter-of-fact tone and his eerie attention to the smallest detail-- the feet of the children of Joseph and Magda Goebbels, for instance-- Hirschbiegel has created a breathtakingly minute portrait of how even the most powerful unravel.

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Many critics have complained that Downfall "humanizes" Hitler. How does it do this? Well, by showing him as a human being. And it's true, in Bernd Eichinger's screenplay, Hitler is totally understandable-- he loves his dog and Eva Braun, is worried about his image, of a putsch among his generals, of dying, of being a failure. More then any other portrayal of the man, this Hitler is no monster, "evil genius," not even a madman-- just an awful, obsessive, human being who caused incalculable harm. God knows, the film never makes us like Hitler-- if anything he becomes increasingly repulsive as the film make him more human: his hand twitches, his paranoia, his pathetic attempts at conversation as the world falls around him, his wild vilifications of the Jews all make us recoil.

But why would anyone complain? Has Hitler become such the Gold Standard of Evil that even mentioning that he might be a completely horrible, fucked-up, and destructive human being is now seen as an "excuse" for his actions?

Reading these reviews of Downfall reminded me of the similar-- but completely opposite-- phenomenon of Matthew Shepard. Last November, ABC's "20/20" ran an hour-long segment on the "real facts" behind the 1998 Matthew Shepard murder. Before the show was even aired it garnered outraged responses from GLAAD, Lambda Legal Defense, and the Matthew Shepard Foundation (run by his parents Judy and Dennis Shepard). They all sensed that the "20/20" story would attempt to "de-gay" the murder of the 21-year-old college student, and deny the fact that it was a hate crime.

And indeed, "20/20" in the worst/best of its exposé style-- made the case that Shepard's murder was simply a robbery gone horribly wrong. But it also argued-- and this is what GLAAD and its friends were most upset with-- that Shepard was not the completely "innocent victim" that the press had painted. Facts that were "exposed" included such "shocking revelations' as Matthew Shepard was HIV-positive and apparently very upset and depressed about it; that he was also a frequent user of crystal-meth and involved with a bar and night--life scene in Laramie that was involved in meth use; that he was friends with Aaron McKinney, one of his killers, and socialized with him, and that McKinny was actively bisexual and had a history of engaging in sex with men. Hey, at least they didn't say Matthew Shepard was as bad-- or as human-- as Hitler.

So, again, what's the problem? The "20/20" show punctured the Matthew Shepard myth that had established the 21-year-old as a completely "innocent" victim. In order to be the perfect example of what's awful about homophobic violence, this fanciful-- and inhuman-- figure could not have a sex life (never mind have had a history of unsafe sex), or be a drug user (never mind a "bad" drug like crystal). Instead, he had to be a well-liked, happy member of the white-middle-class (who didn't go socializing with the low-lifes the likes of McKinny). Of course, Matthew Shepard had as messy and confusing and wonderful and horrible life as all of us. His death was horrible, but it wasn't his fault no matter what he did or didn't do that evening.

If the perfect, false, Matthew Shepard is-- or becomes-- the ideal by which we judge homophobic violence then we are all in trouble, because none of us can ever live up to that ideal. And if Hitler isn't really human, if he is a "monster," and "inhuman," or, in the words of Pope Pius XII "a satanic apparition," how are we to ever hold him to the standard that we hold all humans to? How are we to understand what it means to be human?

A Hitler who loves his dog is a more frightening figure than one who is simply demonic. And a Matthew Shepard who has an active, messy sex life, liked drugs, and liked to party with the "wrong sort" of person is a far better gay icon then the one we have been presented over the last years.

Author Profile:  Michael Bronski
	Michael Bronski is the author of Culture Clash: The Making of Gay Sensibility and The Pleasure Principle: Sex, Backlash, and the Struggle for Gay Freedom. He writes frequently on sex, books, movies, and culture, and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
	Email:	mabronski@aol.com