Welcome back to Planet Internet, where we explore the inner workings of the web. Last week, we took a look at Bloggers – the aloof but loveable creatures that provide humans with hours of entertainment via typos and the shameless detailing of their sex lives. But this week, we visit a darker side of the internet – the side inhibited by the villainous and infamous Troll. Who are these Trolls? How do they survive? And more importantly, why?

If a Blogger is the scum that coats the walls of a fish tank, a Troll is the Pleco fish that devours the algae, ravenously and without remorse. The two cohabitate in the blogosphere, yet their motives and means of survival are far from uniform. While Bloggers seek to draw an audience that will bare witness to their extraordinary expository skills, Trolls instead seek to engage – and enrage – the Commenters; bombarding them with faulty arguments and baseless declarations until the defeated Commenter utters ‘Nazi’ or ‘Hitler.’

Trolls are conceived during what we’ll condescendingly call the Imperfect Storm – a blend of boredom, absentee parents, lack of friends, absence of obligations/responsibilities, the discovery of the ‘Anonymous’ or ‘Guest’ handle, and not making the soccer team over ten years ago. While some might suggest it’s time for the forming Troll to Let It Go, this Painful Soccer Memory (and the equally painful dismissal of its impact) has been repressed for over a decade and when it comes to the surface, a Troll is born. It is important to consider the Painful Soccer Memory when trying to distinguish Trolls from other bored people bereft of friends, caring parents, or possibilities.

Are you familiar with the classic tale of The Billy Goats Gruff? Then you can envision the habitat of a Troll – a dark, cavernous landscape that gives off an air of foreboding. There’s one minor difference – internet Trolls do not dwell under bridges. No, they dwell under lofted beds, which can usually be located down the hall and to the right of Mother’s Room. The Troll hovers in its cave, basking in the warm glow of an unbranded laptop (possibly built from scratch by the Troll itself, during a brief period in its life that seemed full of promise). It does not break for anything but bologna sandwiches and diet cola.

There are many species of Troll – Right Wing Nut Troll, Liberal Douche Troll, Totally Missing The Point Troll, Contradictory Troll, Faux-Intellectual Troll, One-Word Expletive Troll, Minority-Hating Troll, TL;DR Troll, Christwire Troll, Off-Topic Troll, Personal Attack Troll, Humorless Troll, and Academic Troll, to name a few. However, the most prolific of all the Trolls is the Stealth Troll – a Troll so impeccably fluid in its Trolling that, to the naked eye or the Commenting Noob, it is frequently mistaken for a human being. And it is for that reason that the Stealth Troll thrives.

You see, while Bloggers are able to survive off of positive reinforcement and an impressive bit.ly click through rate, Trolls get their sustenance from Commenters who attempt to prove the Troll wrong, reason with the Troll, chastise the Troll, or interact with the Troll in any other capacity. A Commenter responding to a Troll is like a Lost Boy clapping for Tinkerbell – if the Commenter forgoes acknowledgement, the Troll and its provocative, ill-informed statements will be forever quarantined in a single-comment thread (the Troll’s worst nightmare). But should a White Knight feed the Troll? Not only will the Troll grow in strength; its Troll brethren will appear in droves – latching on to the inflammatory comment teat so that they, too, may feed.

In a research study conducted by the CUVIP (Center for Understanding Various Internet Personas), 100% of respondents reported that they do not know a single person who trolls on the internet. Not one. No one knows anyone who trolls on the internet, and no one polled trolls on the internet, either. Every single respondent makes rational, constructive comments using both their first and last name, every single time they leave a comment on the internet.

We here on Planet Internet like to Go There – so when the CUVIP could not produce a Troll for interview, we took things into our own hands. Tina, our intern [Say hi, Tina! Say hi and say it fast because this'll never happen again!] filed a HARO request asking Trolls to come clean and, lo and behold, we found Billy… Butts? Billy Butts… heh… Billy Butts? Come on. [I know that’s the pseudonym he requested Mike, but it’s just… it’s juvenile! Can we all agree it’s juvenile that I have to pretend that this guy’s name is Billy Butts? Whatever. We’ll talk about this later.] Billy Butts, a self-proclaimed Troll, has agreed to speak with us under the condition that we obscure his identity. Hi Billy, thanks for joining us on Planet Internet. How did you get your start Trolling?

“Well, I started…heh… I started Trolling… I’m sorry, when I asked you guys to protect my identity I just meant to like, put me in a dark room or something. Are you kidding me with this voice distortion mechanism? Heh…like I sound like Darth Vader. This is so ridiculous. I mean… this is really over the top. ‘Luke – I am your father…’ Heh… good shit.”

That about wraps it up, doesn’t it? So the next time you wish slow, brutal death on a Troll, just remember that the only difference between a Troll and a My Little Pony is that someone cared about the My Little Pony enough to brush its hair. Join us next week, when we’ll learn all about the soon-to-be-extinct Fameball and what you can do to save them (or not save them. Please do not save them.) This has been Planet Internet, C U SOON.

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Lars von Trier is undoubtedly one of the best filmmakers working today. He’s also one of the most controversial, both with his films – Antichrist, the last film he showed at Cannes, caused a lot of people to walk out of the theater – and with what he says to the public. His latest film, Melancholia, is actually getting a less divided response than Antichrist did at Cannes two years ago, and is generally being well-received at the legendary film festival.

However, in a major WTF moment at a Cannes press conference, the Danish filmmaker really put his foot in his mouth. In a response to a question about his German roots and his interest in the Nazi aesthetic, he replied:

The only thing I can tell you is that I thought I was a Jew for a long time and was very happy being a Jew, then later on came [Danish and Jewish director] Susanne Bier (After the Wedding), and suddenly I wasn’t so happy about being a Jew. That was a joke. Sorry. But it turned out that I was not a Jew. If I’d been a Jew, then I would be a second-wave Jew, a kind of a new-wave Jew, but anyway, I really wanted to be a Jew and then I found out that I was really a Nazi, because my family is German. And that also gave me some pleasure. So, I, what can I say? I understand Hitler. I think he did some wrong things but I can see him sitting in his bunker.

At this point, Kirsten Dunst, one of Melancholia‘s stars, exclaimed “Oh God!” and tried to hide behind von Trier. The director continued:

I’m saying that I think I understand the man. He is not what we could call a good guy, but yeah, I understand much about him and I sympathize with him … But come on! I’m not for the Second World War. And I’m not against Jews. No, not even Susanne Bier. I am very much for them. As much as Israelis are a pain in the ass. How do I get out of this sentence? Okay, I am a Nazi. As for the art, I’m for Speer. Albert Speer [the Nazi architect] I liked. He was also one of God’s best children. He has a talent that … Okay, enough.

Sometimes, when you put your put in your mouth, it’s difficult to get it out, and it just gets worse. That’s what happened when von Trier was asked about making a blockbuster and he responded, “Yes. We Nazis like to do things on a big scale. Maybe I could do the Final Solution.”

The director later admitted to the Associated Press that he was basically kidding about the Nazi thing, explaining that “I don’t have so much to say, so I kind of have to improvise a little and just to let the feelings I have kind of come out into words…This whole Nazi thing, I don’t know where it came from, but you spend a lot of time in Germany, you sometimes want to feel a little free and just talk about this (expletive), you know?”

A full list of von Trier’s foot-in-mouth moments is available at Vulture.

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The lovely thing about hate is the way it inspires organization and unified purpose. Steven Heller presents the Nazi graphic standards manual. Or the Nazi brand guide.

Published in 1936, The Organizationsbuch der NSDAP (with subsequent annual editions), detailed all aspects of party bureaucracy, typeset tightly in German Blackletter. What interested me, however, were the over 70 full-page, full-color plates (on heavy paper) that provide examples of virtually every Nazi flag, insignia, patterns for official Nazi Party office signs, special armbands for the Reichsparteitag (Reichs Party Day), and Honor Badges. The book “over-explains the obvious” and leaves no Nazi Party organization question, regardless of how minute, unanswered. (Via)

More scans of the aesthetics of hate at Design Observatory.

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Willem Mengelberg (1905)

Mid-twentieth century European classical music was dominated by four titan-conductors:  Arturo Toscanini, Wilhelm Furtwangler, Willem Mengelberg, and Herbert von Karajan.  Toscanini, refusing to have anything to do with Fascists or Nazis, fled to the United States.  The other three stayed in Europe and found ways to deal with the tsunami of repression, deportation, and extermination unleashed by Hitler and his collaborators.

Furtwangler continued to conduct in Germany and Austria and never cleared himself of charges of collaborating with the Nazis; he never joined the Party – unlike von Karajan who joined not once, but twice, to insure his career (indeed, he was known as Hitler’s favorite conductor).  Mengelberg, born to German parents in the Netherlands, served as principal conductor of the Concertgebouw Orchestra for fifty years (1895-1945).

In the days immediately following the end of World War II the fates of these four men diverged.  Toscanini returned to Europe in triumph; von Karajan shed his Nazi skin like a snake and became an international celebrity, a glamorous star of matinee idol looks who favored fast women and faster cars; Furtwangler never recovered his reputation: he denied charges of Party membership and collaboration before a de-Nazification tribunal, but died a broken man.  Mengelberg’s case shows some similarity to Furtwangler’s:  he lost his position and after being interrogated by the Dutch Central Arts Council was forbidden to conduct the Concertgebouw for the rest of his life – exiled, he died in 1951.

The cases of Furtwangler and Mengelberg have been the subject of plays:  Ronald Harwood’sTaking Sides (1995) illuminates Furtwangler’s dilemma by focusing on his interrogation by an American army major.  Broken but not unbowed, Furtwangler flashes a well-known imperial defiance as he defends himself and the observer is left to determine the truth (though the weight of dramatic evidence seems to fall against him).

Now the case of Mengelberg provides the material for a play of its own:  Daniel Klein has revised his never-filmed screenplay, The Titan, into Mengelberg and Mahler. His collaborator on the screenplay, the Dutch filmmaker Emile Fallaux, directs the production, which received its world premiere at Shakespeare and Company in Lenox, Massachusetts on 12 June.

Robert Lohbauer

Kevin Sprague

Mengelberg and Mahleris a one-man show with Robert Lohbauer taking the role of the Dutch conductor, an assignment that keeps him on stage for ninety uninterrupted minutes.  The play opens and remains set in the year 1947, in Switzerland; the seventy-six year old Mengelberg is in disgraced exile at his mountain villa.  For collaborating with the Nazi regime in the Netherlands, the Dutch Council for Honor in the Arts had initially denied him the right to conduct his beloved ensemble ever again; but that sentence had been reduced to five years and the Mengelberg we see and hear in the play eagerly awaits expiration of the sentence, or perhaps reprieve and an immediate return to Amsterdam.

Structurally, the play is a monologue and though we never actually hear the words spoken by others (Mengelberg conveys their words occasionally), what we have is a series of phantom dialogues as Mengelberg reviews major moments in his career:  his first meeting with Gustav Mahler (in the early 1900’s), whose “decadent” music he championed; his interrogation by Arthur Seyss Inquart, the Reichskommissar during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands (1900-1945); his later interrogation by the Dutch Council; and his interaction with the Concertgebouw.

What is singularly fascinating here is the absence of a dialogue between Mengelberg and his conscience, but that is the point, I expect.  For what Mengelberg engages in here is an impassioned self-defense, an elaborate exercise in excuse-making for his reprehensible actions.    We may initially feel some sympathy for the suffering artist-in-exile, deprived of what he needs more than anything else in life, his instrument, the Concertgebouw, but as the dialogue with Mahler unfolds, we hear perhaps more than Mengelberg wants us to hear:  vicious racism and the temperamental taunts of any ageing artist directed not only at the great composer who chose a different way – and whose work was so appropriated by Mengelberg as to become his and not Mahler’s – but at the Jewish people and the Dutch who flocked to Mengelberg’s concerts.  Mengelberg sees himself in multiple roles, but the one he likes best is the Redeemer, crucified for all-consuming love (of music, he would have us believe, of himself we do believe).

In the course of his self-mythologizing, Mengelberg rehearses his orchestra and much more.  In his responses to Reichkommisar Inquart we hear him become so accommodating that he will do anything if only he can continue to make music.  No “sacrifice” is too great:  he accedes to the request that the sixteen Jewish musicians in the Concertgebouw be moved to the back of the orchestra, then to their being expelled altogether (the “purification” of the orchestra).  They were allowed to form an all-Jewish ensemble and performed at their own hall for a while, so it’s all right, isn’t it?  That the concentration camps were only a short remove from their hall, well. . .

By the time we hear of Mengelberg’s exchanges with the Dutch Council, he has sunk below our sympathy, certainly below our pity, his response nothing more than elaborate denial and a transparent tissue of evasion and rationalization. Whatever pity we might have felt for him early only, whatever belief or faith we might have invested in him has evaporated.  All that’s left is contempt and the faint whiff of sulphur said to filter through the air in the devil’s presence.

This is drama with a point – thought-provoking and intellectually-engaging – from a dramatist, director and actor too wise to interpret for us:  Like Mengelberg, we are left on our own to decide.  While it may be possible to still feel pity for Mengelberg by the end of the play, we are more likely to come away feeling that this is a deeply flawed human being who valued music too much, who made fatal compromises with evil all the while rationalizing bad choices in the name of art.

In the end, at least three of the sixteen Jewish musicians expelled from the Concertgebouw Orchestra were exterminated in the death camps among the millions of other Jewish victims of Hitler’s insane campaign; Seyss Inquart was sentenced to death at Nuremberg; but Mengelberg lived on, dying in Switzerland in 1951, just shortly before the expiration of  his sentence.

Shakespeare and Company has succeeded in staging a difficult play – the perils of producing a one-person drama are well known; here, in addition, that device of having the protagonist play the roles of several antagonists through relayed speech and description becomes just a little formulaic and tedious.  That aside, the production shines:  Lohbauer gives a demanding performance of sustained passion and flair, appropriately shaded with nuance and gesture.  Emile Fallaux’s direction is sure-handed and non-intrusive.  The main stage with its three-part division into office, podium, and sitting room is economical and evocative; the use of black and white film footage screened against the backdrop wall and the integration of gorgeous excerpts from four of Mahler’s symphonies and the Kindertotenlieder enhances the experience of Mengelberg and Mahler.

“Summer theatre” this is not:  Mengelberg and Mahler is theatre.

I just saw Inglorious Basterds and have yet to fully mull its many splendors and so I’m using the venue as a way to do said mulling. Excuse what comes, please.

This is an odd, odd film. But it is not for naught. On the contrary, it seems that for Tarantino in oddity — in images and affects that meander and linger, that cut and tease — there is a certain freedom, dignity, and justice.

The undeniable climax of the film — we’ll have to return to what a climax is — is exquisite, mad, and patently untrue. That is, in a film that takes on the timbre of the historical, IB conspicuously flaunts its inaccuracy. This is not Valkyrie (a film I’ll admit I a) have not seen; and b) want to see just to get a glimpse of Tom Cruise as a pirate Nazi with a heart — which may be stranger than anything QT can create).

In disregarding historical fact in a film that seemingly borrows much from the historical record, Tarantino makes a claim about the status of film: it is distinctly not a referential creature. It is not beholden to the presumed real; it is the real. Yes, the reel is the real and vice versa.

And yet then what of propaganda? What of Nazi film making? If we disregard film’s obligation to the presumed real, then does it not open the door to what some might call irresponsible image making? To mass coercion?

Inglorious Basterds takes this question head on — and sideways and backwards and not at all. It is a nasty, funny, bloody, beautiful film that is itself multiple films, or at least a film with multiple threads. It begins one way, moves to another, then picks up the earlier thread years later then watches the two threads collide, synergistically and indifferently, in a fuck you all, we win, woopeee of an event.

And this — this power of film to literally burn the audience, to move them, and to do so with no allegiance whatsoever to ideology, concept, or narrative — is Tarantino’s answer to propaganda. Film serves no end other than itself — and that itself is (in)glorious and may be a basterd but it is free and lovely.

Inglorious Bastereds is a fuck you to the totalitarian cinema of any sort. This film does not flow and build. It builds, jumps, forgets, remembers, jumps, rams. And yet it cops the thrilling tension of narrative. Scene after scene is ripe and peculiarly taut. Resolve is often surprising and grotesque in a Coen brothers sort of way.

And tempered with the beautiful, tender, rowdy, and heart breaking (sort of). In these moments, strewn together in odd ways, there is a power and a love that is palpable and real.