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CronoDAS comments on Science: Do It Yourself - Less Wrong
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He hits the nail on the head: "At the point when everyone who fought in [the World Wars], and everyone who remembers anyone who fought in them, has died, surely they'll become as comic as the Vikings."
After all, the purpose of moral disapproval of atrocities is simply to avoid offending anyone who could be personally connected to them†. Even when people acknowledge that there's nothing besides length of time separating ancient genocides from modern ones, there's just no way to spark the same feeling of outrage.
† Of course, longstanding cultural divides can keep offense alive even when the secondhand witnesses are gone; the Armenian genocide shows no sign of becoming funny, because the acknowledgment of it is a continuing rift between Armenians and Turks.
You mean this hasn't happened already?
As noted in the Mitchell video, there are comical pieces set in the World Wars, but one has to be careful how one writes it. Catch-22 is a black comedy, as are Blackadder Goes Forth, Life is Beautiful and most of the other comedies set in 20th century wars.
The simplest way to put it, perhaps, is to note that Mel Brooks could do the Spanish Inquisition and the French Revolution in straightforward screwball style, but had to do Hitler as a musical-within-a-movie.
Bugs Bunny did it...
That's comedy as wartime propaganda, which has its own rich history. Note that WB has basically refused to show it since the war. If you want a real exception, Hogan's Heroes might qualify.
The fascinating thing is that the actors who played the major Nazi roles were all Jews. Two of which spent time in concentration camps and had their families butchered. That impresses me.
The actor who played Colonel Klink had it written into his contract that the Nazis would never win.
:) I like it.
So did Donald Duck, and quite a few others. IIRC Hitler was generally viewed pretty comically (at least in America? I don't remember) before the Holocaust and its scale became widely known after the war.
Aw crap, Godwin's Law.
That really used to be a problem
It's been a while since I've read it, but I think all the viewpoints were in the military and about the treadmill of being trapped into flying unlimited bombing missions. There was nothing from the point of view of the people on the ground who were being bombed, was there?