Sometime while I was growing older – certainly after I became an adult, Britain became a thin-skinned wuss. It must have been an alien invasion. It’s the only logical explanation to what happened to a nation that collectively lost its humour and a taste for the absurd along with tolerance of people being a bit silly. Somewhere, sometime, I can’t say exactly when, poking fun at the Nazis and dressing up in the uniforms for fancy dress parties and stag parties became verboten and “offensive” where before it had been light hearted horseplay.
The BBC asks how common it is to dress as a Nazi and helpfully provides us with a picture from ‘Allo ‘Allo of two actors in Wermacht uniform. Yes, jolly good, the Wermacht were regular army and not Nazis. They should have used a photo of Herr Flick.
The article contains the usual leftist angst about offence and how dreadful it was that someone dressed up in a replica SS uniform at a stag party and horror of horrors was in the company of a member of parliament – who has since been forced to crawl across broken glass while self flagellating apologise to the house for his heinous crime. Although, to be fair, it is a crime in France and although they were occupied and we weren’t it was over six decades ago, the occupiers were beaten and isn’t it time to let it go? Clearly the French don’t share our sense of humour or tolerance – what little we have left. For several decades after the Nazis were defeated, poking fun with the salute and wearing replica uniforms at fancy dress parties would raise no more than a smile or at most a raised eyebrow (if that). Fancy dress is just that, fancy dress. There are plenty of villains in history who are mimicked when people decide to dress up, yet Hitler and his Nazis are now off limits because someone, somewhere will take offence. Not necessarily someone who suffered at the hands of the real thing, but more likely someone doing so on their behalf.
Angels, the UK’s largest and longest-established costumiers, supplies the film, television and theatre industry. But it does not offer Nazi costumes to the party-going public because they are just “bad taste”.
Er, that’s the point, isn’t it?
“The majority of people who want them certainly do not share Hitler’s views, rather grew-up watching ‘Allo ‘Allo! and Dad’s Army and think it might be funny, but most, upon reflection, realise that dressing in such a manner is guaranteed to offend rather than amuse,” says chairman Tim Angel.
Frankly, any one who is offended, deserves to be offended on a regular basis, good and hard until they learn not to be offended over something so silly.
I know I’ve asked this rhetorical question before, but this stuff really does raise it again; when did we lose our collective spine and when did we lose our sense of humour and taste for the absurd?
Life has become deadly dull and earnest of late.
If we’re honest, most of the German WWII uniforms were pretty cool. And many of them having been produced by Hugo Boss, so they should be.
Not withstanding Tommy Atkins’ spunky performance, in the fashion stakes it has to be said that his garb was pretty unspectacular. (And check out Heinz Guderian’s, Himmler’s, or even Goering’s OTT threads against Churchill’s romper suit: no contest, I think)
Accepting all this as a truism, for the most part it should not be taken to imply that one has an urge to inflict ‘Blitzkrieg’ on anyone, nor approve of genocide.
However, the pictures of Ed Balls wearing Nazi kit do demonstrate that even with smart clothes you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.
Cool indeed. The villains have all the best dress sense 😈
Why did I get 8 copies of this blogg this morning? 😕
Fuck-up city. Blog jet kept returning errors telling me it couldn’t post. It lied.
LR,
you’re losing your touch.
“until they learn not to be offended over something so silly.”
Wrong: it’s until they learn that they have no right to demand that anyone else should give a toss about them being offended.
If they learn not to be offended that’s great, but actually that’s not what they really need to learn. It’s that the rest of us really do have a right to say “SO F***ING WHAT?” if they claim to be offended and that right definitely trumps anything they think they might bring to the party (fancy dress or otherwise).
Quite so. However, thirty years ago, no one would have been offended.
XX Wrong: it’s until they learn that they have no right to demand that anyone else should give a toss about them being offended. XX
The basic emerging pattern appears to indicate an even worse trend, and that is the scum get “offended on behalf of others”, that could not give a shit.
But in the minds of the perpetual sufferers of second hand offence, they are put on this earth to point that out and to get all rightously uppity for those “weak in offence” that “do not know any better”.
Such a shame Spike is no longer with us. He was blown up by the buggers but still managed to make half his career out of wearing a silly Hitler costume.
Take a trip to yoochoob and type “Hitler sings” for a right good giggle.
And NO Tim Angel, I don’t “think it might be funny”. I KNOW it IS bloody funny.
Indeed.
If I remember rightly there were many calls for ‘Allo Allo’ to be banned because it took the piss out the French Resistance. I think that there are many in this country who have always been intolerant it’s just that they now get more publicity.
Ironically, the French loved it…
What you fail to realise is that if someone is offended one day, they wake up the next morning with Bubonic plague. So stop it.
Surely everybody has a duty to offend these creatures.
Every fancy dress party should look like the Nuremberg rally.
I guess we could have a “dress up as Hitler day” rather like the “draw Mohamed day” on a while back.
The thing about Allo Allo was that it had a laugh at everyone, even the RAF and I don’t remember any ex-Lancaster crews getting in a hissy fit about it.
And we haven’t even touched on military re-enactment societies yet………
If you REALLY want to start a serious wind-up …
Wait until you find some moron wearing a Hammer-and-Sickle / Mao badge.
Then ask them why are they not wearing a swastike to complete the set of murderous thugs.
Stand well back when you do this – they do tend to go off pop, quite spectatcularly, the stupid little idiots.
My Che T-shirt helps stop Mrs M! convincing herself that I will be kidnapped by the NPA when we visit her place.
I would have thought that her Dad giving them food and shelter during the Marcos years would have guaranteed my safety already.