The glamour of evil

Can there be a genuine aesthetic without ethics? asks Clive James in a characteristically thought-provoking NYT review of two new books on Hitler’s favourite film-maker. Or by separating “art” from reality and its consequences do we set foot on the same path as Leni I-never-knew-the-Nazis-were-doing-that Riefenstahl herself? Dana Stevens asks a similar question about the epically stupid Spartan comic-book movie 300, “a textbook example of how race-baiting fantasy and nationalist myth can serve as an incitement to total war”, but which, in our post-ideological, post-moral infotainment culture, will mostly be discussed as a technical achievement.