> “It goes back to Hannah Arendt’s banality of evil a bit,” says director Andrew Neel. “These everyday things that are beloved to us, like food, can take on an entirely different dimension within the context of a dictatorship.”
That’s not at all what Arendt was writing about. She was writing about those who do evil things are rarely the “evil” monsters we imagine but rather bureaucrats motivated by things like promotions. Hard to remain motivated to consume an article after reading this in the opening.
> By most measures, theirs was a great gig – logic that can excuse almost anything. “Saddam’s chef got a car every year,” Neel says. “That phrase, ‘it was a great gig,’ I think, actually runs the world. Like, ‘It was just business.’”
No, they did not. Arendt’s point about evil being banal is that the perpetrator’s behavior is motivated by the banal. A chef isn’t the perp. They’re adjacent to the monsters and they might be motivated by and fixated on the banality of doing great work.at most this is juxtaposition of evil and banality.
> “It goes back to Hannah Arendt’s banality of evil a bit,” says director Andrew Neel. “These everyday things that are beloved to us, like food, can take on an entirely different dimension within the context of a dictatorship.”
Is still a misquote/misrepresentation. People can understand a subject but still say wrong things about it.
I don't see a misrepresentation there - the need to eat and the love of good food is common to most of humanity and points to the fact that even dictators are also just people. Banal humans rather than cartoon villians.
> Hard to remain motivated to consume an article after reading this in the opening.
I think it's unfortunate to be so dismissive of an article over one quote from one person that you disagree with. You can still get something out of the piece if you open your mind a bit.
I ended up going back and reading the article. It’s not bad that it’s bad writing, it’s that the opening is sloppy and turned me off from reading the article instead of pulling me in the way a good lede should.
The subject is interesting, which is why I clicked the link in the first place. I might check out the documentary. But the misunderstanding/loose invocation of Arendt is a turnoff imo
He does figure briefly in the discussion at the end and doesn't qualify for the full treatment yet as he's a dictator-in-waiting. In any case what is there to say about McDonald's? The man is as boring and tasteless as he is appaling.
Stop embarrassing yourself and go outside, please. America isn't a dystopian hellscape, and no one is becoming a dictator, no matter how much the left would love to have you believe.
In the case of book reviews (and film reviews, I guess, since that's what this is) we often change the title to that of the book/film being reviewed.
We started doing this years ago after realizing that book review titles often do pirouettes on top of the book being reviewed; it's kind of a minor art form (a very minor art form!) and it doesn't serve the reader who just wants to know what-is-this.
In the present case I wouldn't call the article title a pirouette, but the pattern of following HN's original-title rule through an extra hop (from the review to the thing being reviewed) has held up so well that we do it pretty consistently now.
It's amazing how many sub-cases like this there are. Who would have thought that reviews need to be handled differently from non-reviews, but it actually does work better.
They need to update the bot. The Washington Post is now right-wing propaganda. It stopped being part of the standard Republican enemies list when Bezos took over.
That’s not at all what Arendt was writing about. She was writing about those who do evil things are rarely the “evil” monsters we imagine but rather bureaucrats motivated by things like promotions. Hard to remain motivated to consume an article after reading this in the opening.
> By most measures, theirs was a great gig – logic that can excuse almost anything. “Saddam’s chef got a car every year,” Neel says. “That phrase, ‘it was a great gig,’ I think, actually runs the world. Like, ‘It was just business.’”
I’d say they understood the meaning.
> “It goes back to Hannah Arendt’s banality of evil a bit,” says director Andrew Neel. “These everyday things that are beloved to us, like food, can take on an entirely different dimension within the context of a dictatorship.”
Is still a misquote/misrepresentation. People can understand a subject but still say wrong things about it.
> Hard to remain motivated to consume an article after reading this in the opening.
I think it's unfortunate to be so dismissive of an article over one quote from one person that you disagree with. You can still get something out of the piece if you open your mind a bit.
The subject is interesting, which is why I clicked the link in the first place. I might check out the documentary. But the misunderstanding/loose invocation of Arendt is a turnoff imo
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2017/05/11/politics/trump-time-magazine-...
We started doing this years ago after realizing that book review titles often do pirouettes on top of the book being reviewed; it's kind of a minor art form (a very minor art form!) and it doesn't serve the reader who just wants to know what-is-this.
In the present case I wouldn't call the article title a pirouette, but the pattern of following HN's original-title rule through an extra hop (from the review to the thing being reviewed) has held up so well that we do it pretty consistently now.
It's amazing how many sub-cases like this there are. Who would have thought that reviews need to be handled differently from non-reviews, but it actually does work better.