Slickness and Skill in invoking Hitler (adult language used)

The first thing that struck me as I watched "English Downfall" and then its rebuttal, before I considered which side I agreed with, is how much better produced the former video is. And then I wondered if my aesthetic judgement of videos plays an even greater role for me in assessing ideas than it would if I were evaluating pure texts.

Would the Hitler remix be more offensive if it were less polished and clever? Can one extra deft touch like the "3rd edition or earlier" stipulation tilt the balance? This is maybe an old point that the offensiveness of humor can be smoothed out, and even be transformed into an asset, if handled skillfully.

Maybe that's why Doug Shaw's rebuttal seems to me perhaps purposefully unskillful. The very first thing I noticed in his video was his outfit. Is he wearing that outfit on purpose as an ironic commentary on the out-of-touch, unhip professor? And shooting the video in his kitchen, rather than an office or some attractive backdrop, to make it more personal? Did he specifically buy a six-pack of O'Doul's to put on top of his fridge as a joke?

His video is less than 2 minutes and yet he doesn't re-record it to iron out the awkward moments of "uh's, sloppy diction, and self-corrections. Was he trying to be conspicuously unslick in his rhetoric? Did he want to show he didn't care--he didn't give a fuck. "It fucking pisses me off," he says. He refers to the issue of dismissing digital literacy as "some rhetorical compositional thing" that he "doesn't follow." The argument in the remix is "some academic point." It's an interesting rhetorical strategy to concede that you don't understand the opposing point of view, especially when said point of view directly addresses your profession. But Shaw seems so intentional in being rhetorically sloppy in this regard, it's tempting to wonder if it could be ironically effective.

I think I resist the temptation, but it reminds me that in many ways, digital media can get be tricky to analyze... One of the comments to Shaw's rebuttal points out that the Hitler movie is a meme. To me this make "English Downfall" a little less whiny. I already get it that the makers are not seriously likening old-fashioned English profs to Hitler/Nazis. But somehow the fact that the clip was a meme accentuates the tongue-in-cheekness of their complaint.