“The Man In the High Castle” imagines a world where the Axis powers won World War II and the US is divided and occupied between Nazi and Imperial colonial powers. Here’s the trailer:
To promote the series though, marketers took over the interiors of the New York subway – an American flag has been revamped to bear a Reichsadler eagle, and an Imperial Japanese sun has been tweaked to a red, white and blue design. So: not Nazi and not Imperial. A design. And quite a good, evocative one at that.
But that’s not good enough for the people with no joy and no imagination. Here’s one whine from the normally rational Mary Elizabeth Williams at Salon:
We get that this is fiction — and the stunt certainly has raised awareness of the show. But it’s one thing to voluntarily watch a show and it’s another to apparently be fine with making travellers — some of whom are survivors of war atrocities and some of whom are descendants of victims of them — sit on a train full of enemy insignia and call it entertainment.
Not that I really get the subway thing, but I think that reminding us what life might have been like under the Nazi States of America might be an intriguing way into the show.