Way back in May, I discovered (long after the rest of the world, I thought) that the 2005 German film Downfall had become unlikely fodder for a huge number of YouTube spoofs. This weekend, Virginia Heffernan looked into the meme for the New York Times. In my post, I commented on the irony that although millions of people have now been exposed to Downfall via the various YouTube spoofs, the videos don’t work as compelling advertisements for the movie itself. Now Heffernan notes that the ubiquity of Downfall as seen out of context not only fails to promote the film, but actually damages the experience of watching it:

In fact, the lesson of the parodies seems to be that Downfall was a closeted Hitler comedy. Having seen the spoofs before seeing the movie, I find it virtually impossible now to watch the film with a straight face. Ganz, the Swiss actor, takes his performance seriously. But something in the character name “Adolf Hitler” also seems to have liberated Ganz to play flat-out melodrama. His goofy, trembling, hopeless rage — in which is wedged a vituperative aria aimed at the traitors he perceives everywhere — recalls nothing so much as Jeremy Piven’s raving meltdowns as the jerk agent Ari on the HBO comedy Entourage.

From Oscar nomination to Entourage comparisons in three years flat? That’s probably the best argument I’ve ever heard against Free Use.