Controversial Finnish animation wins a prize

[Tiriol]

Meanwhile in Finland.

Controversial Mannerheim puppet animation wins prize at Tampere Film Festival

The controversial puppet animation entitled Uralin perhonen (”Butterfly from the Urals”) by director Katariina Lillqvist has won the prize for the best Finnish animation at the international Tampere Film Festival.
The film depicts Marshal Carl Gustaf Mannerheim (1867-1951), the Chief of the Finnish Defence Forces during the World War II and the President of Finland from 1944 to 1946, as a corset-wearing homosexual who brings a Kirghiz youth from behind the Urals to serve as his valet and lover.

The animation is based on an old ballad from Tampere’s working-class district of Pispala, where people were not sympathetic towards Mannerheim, in part for his involvement on the White side in the Civil War of 1918.
The animation awakened a major storm among some Finns, for whom Mannerheim remains something of a national icon, and the director received hate mail.

The Canadian animation Madame Tutli-Putli received the 2008 Grand Prix, winning also the Best Animation prize and the audience awards.
The film depicts a fantastical journey of a woman hovering in between reality and imagination. The directors of the film were Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski.

A total of 74 films from 45 countries took part in the International Competition, while the Finnish Competition featured 39 films.

The puppet animation in question has sparked several heated discussions about both Mannerheim's legacy and how people view him today. Many have also critized the animation since it apparently uses Mannerheim's alleged homosexuality as an insult to him and mocks him for his habit of wearing a corset (a common practice during his time and done in order to keep some back-related problems in check). Many have seen the animation as nothing more than a bitter and spiteful attack by the descendant of Mannerheim's enemies on the former President.

[K. A. Pital]

Someone ridiculed a historic figure. I guess with the amount of ridicule other historic figures around the world receive doesn't differ much (the exemptions being probably Muhammad, due to the reaction of islamic nutjobs, and some "sacred" American founders - though I'm pretty sure they get their share of ridicule too). I wonder why that is a fuss. Even here, where people used to revere the past and many still do, publicly ridiculing a historic figure has become okay.

[CaptainChewbacca]

That's a pretty goddamn freaky idea for an animation. I hope I never see it.

[His Divine Shadow]

*shrug* attacks on Mannerheim are suprisingly rare given how much an icon he is. I can image some people really hate his guts for his role in stopping a red victory in the civil war (more commonly known as 'frihetskriget' or war for freedom over here in Vaasa). I honestly couldn't care less, seems more like sore losers doing the only thing they can to spite an icon representing what they loathe, well they lost a century ago nomatter how much they try to spite him. So who's really having the last laugh?

[Edi]

*shrug* attacks on Mannerheim are suprisingly rare given how much an icon he is. I can image some people really hate his guts for his role in stopping a red victory in the civil war (more commonly known as 'frihetskriget' or war for freedom over here in Vaasa). I honestly couldn't care less, seems more like sore losers doing the only thing they can to spite an icon representing what they loathe, well they lost a century ago nomatter how much they try to spite him. So who's really having the last laugh?

Shows how much you know, HDS. The Reds couldn't have fought their way out of a wet paper bag as fas achieving victory was concerned. Lack of organization, lack of training, lack of weapons, they had nothing. After their initial success, they just got their arses kicked all over the place. The reason why so many of their descendants have it in for Mannerheim is that Mannerheim did little to prevent reprisals and massacres by Whites during the civil war and also let the Reds rot in prison camps where a lot of them died after the war. To give you an idea, the Reds killed 7,500 Whites (I have no idea of the breakdown to civilian/military) while the Whites killed 14,000 Reds and most of those NOT in combat. 25,000 or 35,000 more Reds died in concentration camps after the civil war before the rest were pardoned. Doesn't matter which way you look at it, the Whites come out of it with a lot more blood on their hands and starting to piss and moan about how Mannerheim is not being sufficiently respected or that somebody points out that he is not quite the saint they have made him out to be is just hypocritical cowardice.

[Tiriol]

*shrug* attacks on Mannerheim are suprisingly rare given how much an icon he is. I can image some people really hate his guts for his role in stopping a red victory in the civil war (more commonly known as 'frihetskriget' or war for freedom over here in Vaasa). I honestly couldn't care less, seems more like sore losers doing the only thing they can to spite an icon representing what they loathe, well they lost a century ago nomatter how much they try to spite him. So who's really having the last laugh?

Shows how much you know, HDS. The Reds couldn't have fought their way out of a wet paper bag as fas achieving victory was concerned. Lack of organization, lack of training, lack of weapons, they had nothing. After their initial success, they just got their arses kicked all over the place. The reason why so many of their descendants have it in for Mannerheim is that Mannerheim did little to prevent reprisals and massacres by Whites during the civil war and also let the Reds rot in prison camps where a lot of them died after the war. To give you an idea, the Reds killed 7,500 Whites (I have no idea of the breakdown to civilian/military) while the Whites killed 14,000 Reds and most of those NOT in combat. 25,000 or 35,000 more Reds died in concentration camps after the civil war before the rest were pardoned. Doesn't matter which way you look at it, the Whites come out of it with a lot more blood on their hands and starting to piss and moan about how Mannerheim is not being sufficiently respected or that somebody points out that he is not quite the saint they have made him out to be is just hypocritical cowardice.

Generally people who call the conflict in question "war for freedom" are rather pro-White (my own grandfather talked about war for freedom), while those who speak of "class war" or similar terms are pro-Red (apparently my other grandfather used that term). I, myself, prefer civil war - it is pure semantics to say that it wasn't, because Germans and Russians were involved (we could, according to that logic, say that the Spanish civil war wasn't an actual civil war, since so many foreign power was involved, etc.).

And to expand upon Edi's point: Mannerheim as the saint-like savior is just an icon, almost an idol. But I think that Mannerheim as a flawed human being is much more interesting, realistic and actually necessary for Finns in general. Besides, what I heard during my history classes back in high school and upper elementary school it was the carnage and devastation in the civil war that prompted the shaken and regretful Mannerheim to found Mannerheim League for Child Welfare which continues its good work to this day. It also made him to keep a distance from the Lapua Movement during 1930s, so he wasn't involved in its right-wing terrorism.

[His Divine Shadow]

Shows how much you know, HDS. The Reds couldn't have fought their way out of a wet paper bag as fas achieving victory was concerned. Lack of organization, lack of training, lack of weapons, they had nothing. After their initial success, they just got their arses kicked all over the place.

I never meant to imply the two sides where equal and that only Mannerheims brilliance saved us from the red hordes or something, although I can see it looks like thats precisely what I am saying. The point I was trying to make is really simple, he was the military leader for the winning side. It's a given the loosing side will single him out.

As I said, I personally don't care about the hoopla over the mannerheim cartoons in any way or the cartoons themselves for that matter, in the end it's just sour grapes that have passed down through the generations, really the issue of wheter you like the guy or not is really just a matter of where you happened to grow up. Mannerheim still won so I think he's the one with the last laugh nomatter how many puppet movies they make.

Doesn't matter which way you look at it, the Whites come out of it with a lot more blood on their hands and starting to piss and moan about how Mannerheim is not being sufficiently respected or that somebody points out that he is not quite the saint they have made him out to be is just hypocritical cowardice.

As I said, I don't care about the puppet movie, I am actually rather suprised there hasn't been more attacks given his iconic status.

[K. A. Pital]

Mannerheim still won so I think he's the one with the last laugh nomatter how many puppet movies they make

That may not be entirely correct, you know. A person who becomes subject of a personality cult might just one day find his body taken out of the Mausoleum by a baldy, as we Russkies joke Personally I don't think that victory decides who has "the last laugh". Often the icon status will have to fade away, and media criticism of a figure becomes important in that.