 Recently on this series, I talked about the dangerous role that Chinese government censorship has increasingly played on entertainment media created in America. And look, it's easy to understand that censorship is bad when we're talking about restricting speech that's critical of repressive governments like China, Venezuela, or North Korea. We can even laugh, or maybe cry, at some of the more ridiculous examples of thin-skinned despots stifling their people's creativity and access to a broader world of art and ideas. But sadly, free speech is under attack in America, too. In our case, it's not so much that our government is trying to silence people, we're fortunate enough to live in a country with fairly strong legal protections for freedom of speech, but we are facing a virulent aspect of our culture that wants to cancel people for saying anything they don't like. It's way too common now to see people trying to preemptively shut down anyone they disagree with, or even anyone they just assume they disagree with. Most of the people pushing to silence one person after the next genuinely believe that their intentions are good, so they feel completely justified in shouting down speakers, deplatforming, and even doxxing their supposed enemies online. But maintaining a strong legal and cultural environment that supports free speech is not only essential to the expression of ideas and values we all think are good, it is even more importantly the foundation for debate and criticism of the ideas and values we think are bad. Fortunately, one of the best ways to start those kinds of debates is comedy. Taika Waititi's Oscar-winning film Jojo Rabbit is one of my favorite movies of the last several years, and it's an absolutely perfect example of what I mean. With that in mind, welcome to Out of Frame. Jojo Rabbit is the story of a 10-year-old boy growing up in Germany, the peak of World War II. His father is gone, his mother is usually at work, and he doesn't have many friends. Like most of us, he wants to feel like he belongs. Unfortunately, Jojo's entire life has been steeped in Nazi propaganda, and his impressionable young line bought into it all. Hitler Youth, false information about the war effort, and insane anti-Semitic rhetoric. Where's the Huns? Jojo is so convinced that everything he's been told by the government since he was born is true that he even turns Adolf Hitler into his own imaginary best friend. I thought I was your best friend. You're okay. You're my second best friend. First place to preserve for the future. The thing is, underneath the blind fanaticism, Jojo is really just a sweet kid who doesn't understand that everything he's been conditioned to believe is a lie. And anyone who might have told him the truth is either in hiding, in jail, or dead. If that all sounds like a really serious movie, well, it is. Except it's also a comedic satire, and in my opinion, one of the funniest movies of the last decade. Jojo Rabbit is an amazing mix of the most absurdist, offensive, slapstick elements of a Mel Brooks movie, combined with the innocence and sincerity of something like Roberto Bonini's Life is Beautiful. And that's precisely what makes it an excellent vehicle for criticizing Nazi ideology. Even so, it's a movie that took a long time to make. In fact, it couldn't have been made at all in a lot of countries, possibly including Germany. Filled with offensive symbolism, scenes, and dialogue that would fit most people's definition of hate speech outside of their satirical context. But laws against this kind of speech often don't, and can't make an effective distinction between comedy and serious expressions of ideology. As a result, publishers and social media companies who need to comply with those laws frequently block satirical posts and lump criticism of an idea together with support, making it harder for people to publicly discuss and debate difficult subjects. In some cases, people are being fined or arrested just for making offensive jokes, as if it were still in the 1960s. There's a level of irony to all this too. Free speech is the cornerstone of a free society, and trying to prevent the rise of authoritarian ideologies like national or international socialism by engaging in authoritarian policies of our own doesn't make any sense. But it's not just about policy, it's also about culture. As someone who has often wondered aloud if any truly great satirical movies could still be made in today's easily offended culture, Jojo Rabbit gives me a lot of hope. Cinema as an art form has a long, incredible history of using comedy to deal with tragedy and poke holes in awful ideas. From Charlie Chaplin and the Marx Brothers to Trey Parker and the Cohen Brothers, there are so many examples to draw on. We're not even talking about money. We're talking about economics. But there's perhaps no one better at using comedy as a form of intellectual debate than Mel Brooks. Brooks' movie turn show, turn movie, The Producers, is about a charlatan and his accomplice who intentionally try to create a Broadway flop so they can cash in on oversold investments they'll never pay back. The show within the movie they come up with is called Spring Time for Hitler. It's written by a delusional Nazi soldier. Hitler was better looking than churching. He was a better choice than churching. He had more hair. Directed by an idiot. I never realized that the first Reich meant Germany. I mean, it's drenched with historical goodies like that. And starring a buffoon literally named LSD. Hey, man, you're a German. And we cannot attack Germany. The main character's goal is to be so offensive that people walk out of the play and never come back. Don't be stupid. Be a smarty. Come and join the Nazi party. Instead, the audience thinks it's hilarious and it becomes an unintentional hit. How could this happen? I was so careful. I picked the wrong play. The wrong director, the wrong cast. Where did I go right? In a lot of ways, Jojo Rabbit is Spring Time for Hitler without the framing device. It takes something deadly serious like World War Two and exposes the utter ridiculousness of Hitler's ideas and of Hitler himself. People used to say a lot of nasty things about me. Oh, this guy's a lunatic. Oh, look at that psycho. He's going to get us all killed. But to do this, Jojo Rabbit has to use the same kinds of symbolism and rhetoric that the Nazis used. This is a massively underappreciated part of why free speech is so important. How can you truly understand your own worldview if you aren't actually allowed to engage with the ideas that might contradict it? Even if something someone else says is completely absurd or offensive, it is only by hearing it and wrestling with it that we can begin to seriously defend against it. And I know some of you are going to say that there are ideas that are so bad they don't need to be debated, but that's just a cop out. Especially if you care about stopping the spread of a dangerous ideology, failing to understand and confront its arguments won't persuade anyone to give it up. There are people who believe that the Holocaust wasn't real. How do we know they're not right? Because we are free to examine the evidence, listen to the stories of survivors and talk about what that history was actually like. And we can take that knowledge and evidence and defend against the denier with truth. Confronting our opposition forces us to examine what we know and form better arguments for our own beliefs. That's a good thing. We need to be able to deal with bad ideas head on. Satire can help us do that. Mel Brooks made a 70 year career out of it. His film Blazing Saddles, co-written with Richard Pryor, might be my favorite comedy of all time. It deals with the ridiculousness of racism by giving a desperate frontier town in the wild west a smart, competent black sheriff. Blazing Saddles is a perfect counterpoint to racism precisely because it shows it for what it is as it is. Only funnier. What did you expect? Welcome, sonny. Make yourself at home. Marry my daughter. You gotta remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new west. You know, morons. Jojo Rabbit does the same thing with bigotry against Jewish people. It probably features the words Heil Hitler more times than any film in history. Heil Hitler. Heil Hitler. Heil Hitler. Heil Hitler. Heil Hitler. Heil Hitler. Heil Hitler. Heil Hitler. Heil Hitler. Heil Hitler. It also depicts tons of realistic Nazi propaganda about Jewish people. But it does all of this not to promote anti-Semitism or national socialism, but instead to make an ironic point, challenging those ideas. This is obviously a huge distinction, but it's also a really subtle one. Human expression is complicated. The same words can mean entirely different things depending on our tone of voice or the surrounding context. Thank you very much. And thank you very much. Are the same on paper. But I bet you know that when I changed my tone, I meant the opposite of the literal meaning of the words. Stop and really consider how insane that is. Even a phrase we think of as irredeemable in any context, like Heil Hitler, could be a serious salute to a reprehensible historical figure, or it could be a sarcastic way to show disdain and disrespect. It could even just be a tasteless joke largely devoid of broader meaning. In Jojo Rabbit, the way that phrase is repeatedly used is even more complex, because it's used by characters who mean it as a genuine salute, but it's set inside a meta-context, provided both from the film itself and brought into the movie going experience by the audience. That makes it absurd. As viewers, we get that Jojo Rabbit is a comedy, and we get that the trajectory of the story is all about Johannes Betzler's enlightenment and realization that the ideas he's believed in his whole life were actually wrong. We also bring in our collected knowledge and our own view of Adolf Hitler as one of history's greatest monsters. So instead of getting angry when we see a little boy say Heil Hitler a dozen times in a row, we laugh. As filmmakers and writers, people like Tycho Atiti and Mel Brooks are constantly walking a tightrope, often using hateful rhetoric as a way of highlighting its own stupidity. The Inquisition. Let's begin. The Inquisition. Look out, Sam. We have our mission to convert the Jews. But they can only do that in a world where they're allowed to speak and write freely, using the words they need to use without fear of either arrest or cancellation. And it's not like there aren't any critics who think Jojo Rabbit shouldn't have been made. Plenty of people have totally different opinions on what kinds of speech are okay. And that's the thing. Defining what is or is not acceptable speech is incredibly difficult. But are you willing to put someone else in charge of what you're allowed to hear? I'm not. It's especially not something that I'd like to leave up to humorless, perpetually offended scolds, or worse, algorithms. Facebook and YouTube are notoriously terrible at picking up subtle differences in meaning in human communication. They can filter out bad words and phrases just fine. But what they can't do is judge the intent of the person using them, nor can they accurately understand the point those words are being used to convey. As a result, most of these kinds of automated systems, and the people who oversee them, have become blunt instruments responsible for silencing tons of people who are trying to have important, difficult conversations, in the name of shutting down a few bad people with terrible ideas. But we need to have important, difficult conversations. Safe spaces may be comfortable, but we only grow and learn new things about ourselves and the world around us by stepping outside of our comfort zone. Really deeply engaging with ideas isn't intellectually or emotionally safe. And you can't debate an idea if you're not allowed to talk about it. That's also what makes Tycho Atiti's acceptance speech at the Oscars so sad. At the end of the war, there's a very clear rule. If you're a Nazi, you into jail. Now, the rules have changed a bit. If you're a Nazi, feel free to have a rally down in the town square and you can invite all your mates. So something's changed and something's not right. I know that to a lot of people, this sounds reasonable. But sending people to prison for expressing ideas you don't like doesn't stop the spread of those ideas. It only prevents people from openly debating them. The Aryans are 1,000 times more civilized and advanced than any other race. Now, get your things together, kids. It's time to burn some books! Yeah! The truth is, we allow Nazis freedom of speech in part because that freedom is essential for all of us to defend against Nazi ideology. Without that right, we would neither be able to openly discuss these ideas and expose them for what they are, nor use their own language and imagery to lampoon them. As a Jewish soldier who fought in World War II, Mel Brooks understands this better than anyone. Get on the soapbox with Hitler, you're gonna lose. He's a great orator. But if you can make fun of him, if you can have people laugh at him, you win. And that's my job, to make terrible things entertaining. If Tycho Atiti lived in the world he vaguely proposed in his Oscar speech, he might not have even been able to make the movie at all without violating the law. Jojo Rabbit is a wonderful film, but in addition to internalizing its overt message of cultural tolerance, I think we should also be aware that there's a meta-lesson about free speech here too. In a world where even people who make brilliant satire about repressive regimes don't understand that calling for legal restrictions on speech is exactly the kind of thing that makes a regime repressive in the first place, we've got a difficult battle ahead. But it's not too late. We can all stand up for a strong culture of free speech and fight against state censorship at the same time. The next time you're offended by something someone else says, instead of hitting block or reporting them, consider just closing your browser tab or changing the channel. When you think someone else's ideas are horrible, try having a conversation with them to change their mind, instead of shouting at them, acting violently or trying to ruin their lives. And when some celebrity or politician says that the world would be a better place if no one were allowed to say the things they don't like, remind them that they don't get to decide what everyone else is allowed to hear. You decide for yourself. The more we stand up for the value of free speech in open debate, the stronger our society will become, and the easier it will be to prevent hateful authoritarian ideologies from taking over the world ever again. Hey everybody, thanks for watching this episode of Out of Frame. The greatest thing about free speech is how it allows everyone a chance to explore their own viewpoints and challenge each other's perspectives. The more we engage with each other, the sharper our minds and arguments get. So I'm really looking forward to mixing it up with you guys in the comments on this one. If you love this video, don't forget to give it a like, subscribe and hit that bell icon to be sure you're the first to know when a new episode comes out. And if you want to see more from Fee, we just radically updated our website at Fee.org and I think you're really going to like what you see. Lastly, be sure to follow us on all our social media at YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Thanks for watching.