I suppose it could have been worse

It was in Stardust Memories that director – or should I pay true homage: auteur – Woody Allen’s protagonist lived in an apartment with a mural on the wall of one of the iconic (brutally so) photos of the Viet Nam war. You know the one: some South Vietnamese general shooting the brains out of a captured Viet Cong. The image was capture at the exact moment of impact. Horrifying, chilling.

Even after nearly 40 years, I still remember a couple of my reactions: Woody Allen is no longer funny, and Woody Allen is so caught up in himself, he either thinks that it’s just dandy that his onscreen alter-ego would have this as part of his home’s decor, or he’s making some really deep statement that’s lost on me. Henceforth, I concluded, I would have to consider Woody Allen a complete and utter asshole. (In that, I was certainly right.)

Not that artists don’t have creative license to draw on whatever themes and images they want, however painful. But in this case, it just seemed like a cheap trick.

I hadn’t thought of this in years, but it came to mind when I read about the online retailer Redbubble. I’d never heard of them, but they’re apparently a sort of Australian Etsy cum CafePress, offering AWESOME PRODUCTS DESIGNED BY INDEPENDENT ARTISTS.

Redbubble recent got an earful (or a tweetful of earful) from the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum for:

…allowing products depicting scenes of the concentration camp to be sold on its website, including a $45 throw pillow and a $40 miniskirt.

The products used photographs of the electronic fence, guardhouse and train tracks at the notorious Nazi death camp in occupied Poland, where hundreds of thousands of Jews and other minorities were put to death from 1940 to 1945. The Polish memorial called the casual use of Auschwitz photos “disturbing and disrespectful” in a tweet.

“Do you really think that selling such products as pillows, miniskirts or tote bags with the images of Auschwitz — a place of enormous human tragedy where over 1.1 million people were murdered — is acceptable?” the Auschwitz Memorial wrote in a tweet.(Source: Washington Post)

Redbubble (I almost typed in Redrubble) agreed to pull the products, along with others that violated the guidelines that Redrubble was suddenly aware that they had.

They didn’t do such a hot job purging their site of offensive items. After the miniskirt, throw pillows and tote bags were removed, the Auschwitz watchdogs found:

…a T-shirt bearing a cartoon of a bearded man in a top hat that read, “Dr. Holocaust wants you to get a beard.”

What do you say when the guy wearing this shows up for a first date? Sorry, I don’t live here anymore.

Hey, artists, artisans, con artists - they all have the right to use whatever images they want. But when done in what can only be regarded as execrable taste, they should aspect to get pushback. As for banning crap like the Auschwitz miniskirt from Redbubble, I’d prefer to let the market speak and just not buy any of this tasteless merch.

And who would buy it? Young people who thinks this stuff is edgy or cool? People with no knowledge and understanding of the Holocaust? Moral imbeciles? Folks who just don’t (or can’t bring themselves) to think?

I suppose it wouldn’t be a far reach for some of the idiots who’ve been dragged for Instagramming their cutesy Auschwitz selfies – here I am pretending the railroad tracks are a balance beam, here I am making a droll face under Arbeit Macht Frei – to want to lug their groceries home in an Auschwitz-themed tote bag, or snuggle on the couch with an Birkenau pillow.

I suppose the Redbubble miniskirt and tote bag designers could have chosen worse images to exploit.  

The pictures they used were “just” the buildings, the chimneys. No Nazi guards with whips. No Dr. Mengele experiments. No  children being wrested from their parents. No heaps of skeletal bodies.

They could have chosen other horror shows: Emmett Till’s brutalized young body. An African American swinging from the tree where he’d been lynched. Jackie’s blood-spattered pink suit.

So many to pick from. The list is endless.

And all reasonable and appropriate images and topics for artists to explore. In art, cinema, fiction, poetry, and – yes – even standup comedy.

Just let them get criticized, booed off the stage.

And as images to be used for trivial commercial purposes. Let their inventory wither on the shelves. I’m guessing most of the items on Redbubble are print-on-demand. Too bad! I’d like to see them stuck with truckloads full of their tasteless gear.

As for those who buy it. Let them be accosted by their parents, their peers, complete strangers on the street, calling them out for the idiots they are.

Really, what is wrong with people????