Later:

> By most measures, theirs was a great gig – logic that can excuse almost anything. “Saddam’s chef got a car every year,” Neel says. “That phrase, ‘it was a great gig,’ I think, actually runs the world. Like, ‘It was just business.’”

I’d say they understood the meaning.

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raincole 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Perhaps they understand the meaning, but this:

> “It goes back to Hannah Arendt’s banality of evil a bit,” says director Andrew Neel. “These everyday things that are beloved to us, like food, can take on an entirely different dimension within the context of a dictatorship.”

Is still a misquote/misrepresentation. People can understand a subject but still say wrong things about it.

	▲	cycomanic 19 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		It seems your misinterpreting the quote, it does never says that > “These everyday things that are beloved to us, like food, can take on an entirely different dimension within the context of a dictatorship.” Is the definition of the banality of evil concept. I would argue though that within the concept you will interpret banal things differently. For a more blatant example, the banal act of putting an approval stamp onto a piece of paper will be interpreted quite differently in the context of a administrator in Reichsbahn in Nazi germanycompared to an administrator at the Bundesbahn now.

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ashalhashim 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

No, they did not. Arendt’s point about evil being banal is that the perpetrator’s behavior is motivated by the banal. A chef isn’t the perp. They’re adjacent to the monsters and they might be motivated by and fixated on the banality of doing great work.at most this is juxtaposition of evil and banality.

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hyperhello 4 hours ago | parent [-]

But didn’t the chef literally serve the dictator, pushing moral concerns aside by dispassionately performing their assigned tasks?

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orochimaaru 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It depends. If one is Iraqi and Saddam asks him to be his chef, they're not refusing. They're probably dead if they refuse. Chef's are also sourced from other countries without disclosing the actual client. Once they land their situation is precarious and getting out is next to impossible. One just shuts up, cooks and takes the money.

It's like everyone else serving the dictator. They money may be good, but threat to life is real and scary.

I wouldn't vilify them. It's the proverbial golden cage. They can't get out even if they want to.

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ashalhashim 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

These chefs are effectively being held hostage. One had his passport withheld. Another was executed for giving a kid a stomachache. This isn’t careerism.

	▲	hyperhello 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Point taken, but maybe it's not that different than anyone who has no choice in any military. They could just shoot you for "cowardice" too.

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mc32 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Perhaps but using that quote to describe that relationship seemed very forced and ill-fitting. They tried to make it work but came up short because it wasn't an apt application of the quote.