Is the idiom "what price [something]?" used here in the sense of "how about [something]?" - or not?


An excerpt from the movie 49th Parallel (1941), a dialogue between heroes.


(the bulk of it by an anthropologist (A) writing about Indian tribes of Canada)




  • (A) Yes, I've discovered some rather amusing things during my researches. Blackfoot tribal customs, for instance, closely resemble those of a certain modern European tribe. I'm gonna read you something about that. Where are we? "From the earliest age, their small boys were trained in the arts of war which they considered to be the only pursuit worthy of a man. But they preferred to attack by night, rather than by day and wherever possible, to shoot the enemy in the back. Their smaller neighbors lived in constant danger from them. They also believed in first terrorizing their opponent by covering themselves in war paint and beating loudly on their tribal drums." Well, doesn't that sound familiar to you?

  • (B) Familiar? I don't quite understand.

  • (A) Well, what price Goebbels, eh? And listen to this.. When a tribal leader really desired to drive a point home, he used that most terrible of all public speaker's weapons - repetition, constant and unutterably wearisome repetition. Old man Hitler himself.



It seems that the meaning is



Well, how about Goebbels, eh?



I've read the replies to the question "What does What price X? mean" but the senses listed there seem not to comply with "how about".


Maybe I'm wrong with my reading of the sense as "How about Goebbels?"?


Maybe the meaning is "Why would you need Goebbels then such customs have already existed?", in the sense of "Goebbels's tricks are really worth nothing - because it has been done before"?


P.S.: YouTube link, time is 01:29:38



Answer



I don't think it's about the figure of speech. That is secondary, as I believe the figure is an elaboration on the formula.


Usually, "What price X?" is used to imply that something desired was bought too dear. "What price glory?" calls up the specter of all the soldiers killed to satisfy someone's quest for that quality. It asks the listener to consider the down side of laurels won in battle.


Here, though, the anthropologist appears to be making an ironic joke at the expense of the dogmatic German. The Nazi lieutenant is quite incapable of appreciating the irony, for he cannot see shades of gray, only black and white. So the anthropologist is speaking almost in an aside to the audience. The thrust of what he is saying is: "What a price you have paid (ignorance) for your brainwashing that you can't see the parallels that are obvious to any onlooker (especially to a British audience subjected to the Blitz) between a savage aboriginal tribe and National Socialism."


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