As MOCs go, this is pretty solid. Good work on the fences and the watchtower. The rest is basic but functional – I would have liked to see a little more terrain elevation. But plenty of thought provoking details.
The fact that it is so clean though (with an innocent trail of smoke curling out the chimney), does make it all the more thought provoking.

Is a LEGO MOC depicting the Holocaust good or bad? Well, is a painting of, or a song about the Holocaust good or bad. It depends. LEGO is a medium, and can be used with varying degrees of skill and with varying motivations in mind. I can’t see anything about this MOC at first glance to suggest it is trying to trivialize, mock, or celebrate what happened.

Is there something about LEGO as a medium (its association with children and being a toy) that makes its statement different than other mediums? I say that depends a lot on who is using it and why they used it. An AFOL whose main creative medium is LEGO is doing something else than an artist who uses many forms of creativity and chooses LEGO for a particular piece of artwork. Similarly, if there was a picture of a concentration camp drawn in bright crayon, wouldn’t you regard that one way if it had been drawn by an 8 year old, and another way if it had been rendered by an adult artist?

Was this rendered in brick because the creator wanted to make a statement by using LEGO, or was it rendered in brick because that’s generally how the creator depicts things visually.

Following along (but not wanting to direct the discussion in any one direction), I’m surprised to find that we’re all actually in agreement. The “debate” seems to stem not from substantive disagreement but from miscommunication (I spot at least one missing “not”, for example) and misinterpretation of nuance — though I can read no malice into either.

I’m certainly not going to lock comments, but can we agree to take a 24-hour breather and only post a new comment if we have something truly different to say?

Thanks!

My recent objections have only been with Thanel’s interpretation of my comments, a misunderstanding of which I don’t need to go into again.

I thought the purpose of the post was to open up discussions and get debate going or maybe I completely misinterpreted Andrew’s seemingly straightforward questions asking for just that – discussion. But I apologize my “stupid debate” is inconveniencing you and robbing you of happiness.

I’ll gladly move on – to a forum where intellectual reasoning isn’t frowned upon.

Yours truly,
Cap’n

No one here has demeaned LEGO as a medium. Any objection to Holocaust imagery being portrayed with children’s building blocks (which is what we’re dealing with here, let’s not delude ourselves) is not to dismiss the possible wonderful things that can be done with the medium, but do so due to the idea that such horror could be made using toys made for children to play with. Now we’ve almost unanimously come to the agreement (hard to believe such a thing is possible on the internet) that such an idea is silly, as it goes along with any other tasteful depiction of historical events. Given this agreement, and the fact that we all recognize that we’re dealing with toys (which isn’t a bad thing, I don’t know why anyone would be offended by the idea), it makes your objections look rather silly.

We don’t always need some stupid debate about something or other, why not just appreciate it for what it is and move on? I’m sure we’d all be a lot happier if you did that with us :)

Love,

Justin

I was going to pen a lengthy response to your comment (you’re welcome that it didn’t occur), but Catsy beat me to it. Not only did Catsy say what I wanted to, but did so much more eloquently. Thank you, Catsy.

What is frustrating about your responses, Thanel, is that you keep taking exception with this line of logic that seems to suggest I find the portrayal/trivialization of LEGO more important than the Holocaust itself. Are we not allowed to examine the intersections of art, LEGO, the Holocaust, and depictions of difficult subjects unless I focus on how atrocious the Holocaust is (which obviously, no one is arguing against). You seem to want to focus strictly on the Holocaust, yet this is a site about LEGO and its various modes of portrayal, and when I focus on LEGO and its capacity to depict such subjects then you seem to want to fault me for not going on and on about the Holocaust.

Need I remind you that Andrew posed the question: “Are there certain subjects that should never be depicted in LEGO? If so, what are they, and why?” My responses take exception with this question (not saying it’s a bad question, because it’s led to a great discussion) because it presupposes that LEGO is a medium outside the accepted spectrum of what constitutes art. Otherwise, we’d have to make a much larger argument about whether art in general should have restrictions imposed upon it.

And to clarify, I wasn’t “arguing” with Apocalust at all. I agree with his ideas. I just couldn’t figure out why he didn’t understand the resentment when we shared essentially the premise – that people, i.e. the general public, are too caught up in rigid categorizations of what LEGO is and can do.

Back to the main topic, let me use an example. An artist can draw a very graphic and emotional picture with a pencil and a page. The same tools that a child might use to draw simple dogs, cats etc. An adult and a kid can make very different statments with the same pencil, paint, clay, or brick. As Apacolust said, even crayons can be used despite the fact that they are almost exclusivly played with by kiddos.

As to the creators intent, does it really matter? As long as he wasn’t trying to glorify Nazi-ism in a really sick way, I think that everyone will agree that fanatical, violent, and discriminatory groups are evil. Wether he built it to honour the dead and the survivors, or to try to bring awarness to a historical event, or just as an experiment, it was his choice.

I have yet to see anybody here demean LEGO as a medium, only repeatedly come to its defense.

Actually, I need to add to this. I don’t think anyone here intended to demean Lego as a medium. But the argument that this MOC is inappropriate does demean it as a medium, by placing some subjects off-limits and asserting that this is because it’s a kid’s toy–with the unwritten, perhaps unintended implication that this is all it’s allowed to be.

Genocide > LEGO isn’s a valid artistic medium.

Why does this have to be a zero-sum equation?

The degree to which one objects to trivializing Lego as an artistic medium is not connected to the degree of horror one feels about the Holocaust. It is possible for one to increase or decrease without affecting what one feels about the other.

Some people are arguing, in effect, that because Lego is a children’s toy it is inappropriate to use it to depict disturbing or adult subjects–or perhaps, depending on the person, that it is inappropriate to use it to depict this subject.

Objecting to this argument isn’t making any kind of comparison between genocide and the trivialization of Lego. It’s pointing out that Lego is an artistic medium as well as a toy, and that reacting to works like this as if they were out of line because they use a toy as their medium is trivializing Lego as art by effectively saying that it can only be a toy, not art.

@ Cpt. Tom: I got the first point that you don’t think the LEGO medium trivialized the holocaust. You’re not alone. What I don’t get is why so many people, not just you, keep coming back to & spending most of their writing effort on is the subject of trivializing LEGO as a medium. You seem to take issue w/ my characterization of your first post as such, but I see 1/2 paragraph dedicated to the 1st point (well made) & 2 1/2 paragraphs & 2 whole additional comments dedicated to the 2nd point. And why were you arguing w/ Apocalust when he was making the same point as you, just from a different angle?

I have yet to see anybody here demean LEGO as a medium, only repeatedly come to its defense. Am confused. I understand that people are trying to argue (against whom? I have no clue) that portrayal of LEGO doesn’t trivialize, demean or dishonor the memory of the holocaust. But it’s a little disturbing that the rhetorical point where several people keep getting their records skipping is that it would be a tragedy for LEGO to be trivialized. Really?!? Now that’s messed up. Lighten up on the toys. Not so much on the holocaust.

On the horror scale: Genocide > LEGO isn’s a valid artistic medium.

This. This, here, is the heart of it.

The logical implication of the objections to using Lego–indisputably, yes, a building toy for children–to depict scenes of this gravity and horror is that not only is Lego a children’s toy, but that it is only a children’s toy.

I reject that premise. It trivializes Lego and what it is capable of in the right hands. Are we really still at the point where it’s reasonable to dispute that Lego is an artistic medium?

If we accept Lego as art, we have to accept that some people will express things with that art that are uncomfortable. The Shoah is among the most uncomfortable of subjects, and this is an uncomfortable MOC.

But it is very, very good.

Consider the Bible or the movie “Rob Roy” (played by Liam Nieson).
Both included some HORRIFIC violence, rape, killing, murder (the 2 ARE different terms for a reason)…yet neither GLORIFY the violence, etc.

Contrast them with a Quentin Tarantino film, where the violence IS GLORIFIED, shown in great detail, purposely to shock and get a certain reaction.

I am not “holier than thou” in pretending I don’t enjoy violence glorified and justified in an occasional Western film, I am simply pointing out the motivation is different, and much more suspect when the violence is glorified or justified.

It is (more or less) factually correct, yet deals with a much more potentially offensive subject matter, USUALLY with a serious consideration of the story. Obviously, this is debateable; but if the God of the universe if “fair game,” as well as the historicity of the most accurate book of antiquity (historically speaking, with numbers of manuscript copies, the Bible often being used for cross-reference of other societies for achaeological purposes, etc), the historical subject matter of the Holocaust is “fair game.”

Second, I personally have made for my facebook profile pic a rendering of Saint Nicholas’ story of raising 3 murdered children from the dead…a VERY uncomfortable story, with some (arguably) factual basis.

However, one should consider the “forum” in which such pictures are “aired” …

There’s no reason to build only happy happy things with Lego.