565 - The Great Dictator (1940) with Kevin Allison of Risk! and The State

This week we are joined by special-guest Kevin Allison (of Risk! The Podcast and The State) to talk about a powerful and hilarious film: Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator.

So, you know when fed-up people call fascists on their practices and they respond by saying they aren’t “technically” fascists?  So then they are pressured to walk back their language a little bit and the criticism gets all muddied on a point of semantics based on strict political definitions?  Like when a leader who clearly would have been pretty cool with Nazi tactics and ideology gets all butt-hurt because his political party is technically called something else?  So, fearing a populist backlash, studio films tend to hold back on that metaphor, coming at the subject from a more oblique angle? You know who didn’t placate to these pressures and just made a movie about Nazis and how much they sucked?  Who didn’t pull a single punch and made out Hitler and his cronies to be petulant, childish, narcissistic, and still incredibly dangerous?  The Little Tramp himself: Charlie Chaplin.

If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be watching Celine Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) with special guests Briana McZant and Maddy McZant of Chapter One: Take Two.