TV Footle: Nazi Pop Twins

Lamb and Lynx Gaede are no ordinary American twins. Their mother, April, teaches their brother the alphabet as "A is for Aryan, B is for Blood - our ancestors fought and spilled their blood so the white nation could be free." She encourages their band, Prussian Blue, to write songs about "white pride" and dressed them up in Hitler smiley face t-shirts when they were barely into their adolescence. Some three years ago they were visited by poke-a-bigot TV documentary presenter Louis Theroux, last night UK television broadcast the results of James Quinn's follow-up visit.

It doesn't take a genius to see that the twins are tired of their racist image. They are, in their own words, "drained". Their mother, April, is anything but. A formidable, frightening woman, she claimed to have had what her critics would call more "enlightened" feelings about blacks, contrary to her Mexican-shooting, neo-Nazi father, until she was attacked by a black man and almost raped. You can see the pain and fear hidden under her standoffish exterior; at the point at which she herself was developing her own opinion and bravely beginning to disagree with her bullish, ignorant parent, this deeply unfortunate and violent event happened and she ran straight onto the path of "white pride".

In April's world, definitions are vague and unstructured. What does she believe in? White pride. What does that mean? No-one is sure, but she insists her definition of racism is different to that of her critics, and she's not a "white supremacist". Yet the only "friends" of Lynx and Lamb that Quinn was allowed to film were a neo-Nazi punk band, and a sickening penpal, David Lane, (who died in prison during the course of a life sentence for hate crimes shortly after the filming of the documentary) who stated that he was beginning to shift his view of the fourteen-year-olds from that of father-daughter to that of "fantasy sweetheart".

Misinformation seems to be the hallmark in the Gaede family. A curious DJ invites Prussian Blue, a band named after a chemical that Holocaust-deniers claim proves people were not killed, onto her show to quietly, rationally question their beliefs. She is frightened by the worrying dogma coming from beautiful girls, not tattooed skinheads easily disregarded by an image-conscious society. The girls hesitantly um and ah through their doctrine, staring at their sternly nodding mother, and offering up that "during a war, people are desperate for fuel, so they wouldn't have taken so much time to do something nasty". In other words, Hitler was fighting a war across Europe, so it would have been silly to stop and kill off Jews along the way. Because practicality was a hallmark of a man who plunged headlong into a long, wintry Russian campaign. Their ignorance of basic facts is betrayed almost instantly by referring to "six million people"; the fact that their mother focussed only on the Jewish Holocaust tells us plainly that none of them even know that the actual number of dead in the Holocaust was closer to ten million, the vast majority of which were, after all, white, Jews included.

What scared me, ultimately, was not the radical anti-Prussian Blue response, which is positive, but the way it manifested itself, which is just as scary as the fascist claptrap these reluctant, confused girls are now regretting peddling on behalf of their damaged mother. A young, white man says "they ought to have their asses kicked; someone should kill them" without a trace of irony. The anti-hate campaigning that follows them across America is hardly surprising, but it's none too cleverly handled. Directing violence at those who encourage hate in a tit-for-tat attempt at revenge is pretty bloody stupid. April Gaede clearly loves nothing more than being a martyr, claiming that every death threat and protest is a "gold medal" because she's obviously "doing something right". We need to fight hatred and intimidation with education and contempt, not with death threats and martyrdom.

With any luck, Prussian Blue will escape the destiny April has planned for them and their toddler brother, Dresden. Their grandmother claims "this Nazi shit" has "ruined her life" and although she's genuinely frightened her own husband will shoot her as proudly as he shot "six Mexicans", she has already created a plan with Lynx and Lamb for them to go and make a quiet, non-hating life together when the girls are "of age". Already, their music has switched from defences of Rudolph Hess to slightly sappy songs about boyfriends; boyfriends they won't have while their mother makes them the focus of ridicule and violence.

If the only thing we have to fear is fear itself we have to tackle it where it begins; with education, not tit-for-tat hatred and indifference.

Film Footle: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

You know how sometimes you watch a film from a series and there's something about it that feels... different? It's not the cast, and the change of director in the Harry Potter films, while noticeable, really only divided them into pre-Cuaron childishness and post-Cuaron darkness with a hint of sweaty adolescence. Anyway, it was like that throughout what turned out to be a very fair summary of what is one of the most aimless and slightly bloated of the books.

It was only when the credits flashed up that I realised what was wrong; no more Steve Kloves! His expert rendering of the dialogue, refreshingly free of much of the sickening drivel that Harry Potter could have inspired, was not present here where a thankfully restrained but nonethless noticeable vein of cloying twee crap worked its way in...

The plot of the fifth book is laboured. It's mostly a slightly bitter satire on the media and the government, turning the Ministry of Magic against Harry and his tales of Voldemort's return, and planting a vile Ministry spy at Hogwarts, replete with torturous punishment methods and kittens on plates.

One thing the film did extremely well was something the book struggled with. The latter seemed to be drowning in tidal waves of Harry shouting and stomping, with the occasional comic relief of his crush on Cho Chang. In the film he was calmer, more pleasant and much more human; Daniel Radcliffe has hugely improved, and now emotes like anything, God love him. I wish I could say the same for the wonderful-in-real-life Emma Watson, who has yet to match her performance in Prisoner of Azkaban. Rupert Grint's job is now largely to make the world of Harry seem real and current ("he's bang out of order, mate!"). But going back to Harry... Learning about the sides of his father he wasn't so familiar with, grappling with being a reluctant hero, learning to deal with yet more death and destruction; these are all things that make this a richer film and make up for the lack of straightforward plot.

It's a long film; there are bits glossed over, but if there were not we'd have all got extremely painful buttocks. The massive continuity effort that has lurched from film to film probably handed David Yates a headache, but as he's directing Half-Blood Prince as well, it's a headache he'll have to get used to. He did a masterful, atmospheric job, but hopefully will retire Michael Goldenberg and go crawling on bleeding knees back to Steve Kloves. And while he's at it, could be please stab a large pin in Michael Gambon's ego. Dumbledore is kind, wise and subtly powerful, and as such shouldn't have Gandalf-style tormented rants. The whole point of Dumbledore's power is that it's a shock coming from the mild and kindly gentleman. It almost seems like he's swapped personalities with Snape, sometimes.

I know it doesn't seem like I enjoyed it. But I did. So there.