By Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO, Calif.—Comedy, I suppose, is based on our need for socially acceptable outlets to express ourselves, through laughter, about the things that trouble us the most.  For little kids, that means laughing about pooping and farting; for older kids and adults, it's sex; and for socially-aware adults, it's politics. When Mel Brooks is the force in or behind a production, it's often all three.

Watching the recently released 2005 version of  the movie, The Producers, on DVD, and realizing that this was a remake of a Broadway hit, which was itself the remake of Brooks' 1968 movie, one realizes how troubling Adolf Hitler and the Nazis remain today, 61 years after the German dictator's suicide in a bunker. You don't have to look very deep into your daily newspaper to see that there are plenty of Hitler wannabees in the world today, most especially in Teheran.

Just in case there is one person left who hasn't seen some film or stage version of The Producers, the idea behind it was that when a Broadway show flops, investors don't expect any returns. So if someone like the one-time successful Broadway producer Max Bialystock (1968, Zero Mostel; 2005, Nathan Lane) and his accountant partner Leo Bloom (1968, Gene Wilder; 2005, Matthew Broderick) were to intentionally produce a play destined to be a flop—something in egregiously bad taste, like Springtime for Hitler— they could sell 200 percent or more of the play to investors, who never would be any wiser—especially if those investors are little old ladies hot for Bialystock or for that matter any live, breathing man.

So Bialystock and Bloom purchased a story about Hitler from loony neo-Nazi playwright Franz Liebkind (1968, Kenneth Mars; 2005, Will Ferrell), and get director Roger De Bris (1968, Christopher Hewett; 2005, Gary Beach) to turn it into a gay pageant, and they figure they have a sure smash flop. "Playwright" Liebkind is cast in the namesake part of Springtime for Hitler but just before opening night, he literally "breaks a leg," and the only person available who knows all the Hitler lines—the cross-dressing director De Bris (a circumcised name)—  is drafted to play the role.  

Sure enough, as the musical opens with a production number offering goose-stepping and stiff-armed salutes, members of the audience start protesting and, to the delight of the larcenous producers, start leaving the show.  But then De Bris comes on stage, and his mincing Hitler seems to be such a satire (though De Bris imagines he is playing him straight) that people return to their seats, and Bialystock and Bloom suddenly are confronted with their worst nightmares: a very big hit, convictions for fraud, and imprisonment.

There's a belief  that if we can satirize someone, we can cut him down to manageable size. I imagine the person who troubles Assemblyman Juan Vargas the most is U.S. Rep. Bob Filner, who he is opposing, with a seeming lack of any success,  in the upcoming Democratic primary in San Diego.  

Taking a page Late Night With Conan O'Brien,  his commercials have two talking faces, those of Filner and former Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-San Diego), now in prison for accepting bribes.  The two politicians in the commercial are discussing how tough things have been getting on Capitol Hill. 

While appreciating the Vargas commercial as a break from more nasty versions of what we today call "political advertising"—but  which we all know is character assassination, pure and simple—most television viewers will be utterly unaffected by the satire. Filner is a known quantity, who has won the endorsements of practically every Democratic voting bloc in his congressional district.

If satire has little or no effect on a good man like Filner, it similarly had next to no impact on a genuinely evil man like Adolf Hitler. 

With his little moustache, the stiff armed salutes, and his penchant for uniforms, Hitler seemed tailor-made for satire. Charlie Chaplin, a master of comedy,  had a go at him in the 1940 classic,  The Great Dictator, in which he played the double role of  the crazed dictator of the poisoned state of Tomania, Adenoid Hynkel, and a Jewish barber who, when dressed in uniform, looked just like Hynkel. So much for "Aryan superiority."

One might argue that World War II already was in progress in Europe when The Great Dictator  hit the theatres, so it was too late for satire to have any impact on Hitler's bloody career whatsoever. According to this line of argument, perhaps if the satiric film had been made before Hitler became chancellor in 1933, it might have had an effect. Perhaps, but back then no one in Hollywood took Hitler seriously enough to satirize him.  Could it be a rule that by the time someone is worth satirizing, it's too late?

One wonders if Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's Holocaust-denying,  headline-grabbing president, is at a stage in his career when satire might actually cut him down to size, or whether he already has reached the point where satirizing him would only confirm his importance?

Changing the world by satirizing it seems a forelorn hope indeed.  But at least satire can make us feel better for a while—if it is as well done as The Producers.