The Internet shines a spotlight on a lot of “seemed like a good idea at the time” schemes, but rarely have we seen something that deserved to be killed in the drawing room as much as this: a Holocaust-themed ice-dancing performance on Saturday night’s episode of the Russian celebrity competition show, Ice Age.
To make matters worse, the star, former Olympian Tatiana Navka, is the wife of Putin aide Dmitry Peskov, who is here best known for blaming this summer’s DNC leaks on a “forgotten password.” Navka and her skating partner Andrey Burkovsky, allegedly inspired by the film Life is Beautiful, don concentration-camp stripes and yellow stars (though without the label Jood or Juif).
Someone in wardrobe has even done Navka the historical-revisionist favor of giving her costume a skirt instead of pants, the better to reinforce the gender binary while you’re reenacting genocide, my dear. After a few seconds of incoherent miming — are they petting a dog? Hurling an anvil? — they commence the lifts, jumps, and other standard-issue choreography of ice-dancing. If you can get that far without cringing — we couldn’t.
The Producers or some other high satire, this ain’t. Navka has said she intended the performance to “educate children about the Holocaust,” but we’ll just take our kids to the Holocaust Museum, thanks very much.
