I really dislike this type of argument (not yours, the one you describe).

The idea that nobody but East Germans could write a fiction involving the Stasi is ridiculous, as is the idea that only East Germans are objective about it. And it’s not like it was a documentary any more that Doctor Strangelove (which also nailed it despite being imaginary) was. It’s fine that different people have different views, and I’d actually be very interested in an East German point of view.

But viewing History from outside is actually very valuable as well. There have been some American films on some historical events in my country, some of them good, some of them bad, but most of them interesting and instructive thanks to the foreign perspective.

How are you supposed to develop any form of empathy if you’re not allowed to put yourself in someone else’s shoes? How are you supposed to distance yourself and get a broader perspective if your point of view is the only one you accept?

Ultimately, malice is the problem, not the fact that people write about others. Some have Americans playing as foreigners. What’s the problem? There are lots of English playing Americans.

I certainly got the impression that "Das Leben der Anderen" was made by West Germans. If it had been made by East Germans I'd expect to have found in it something surprising, something exotic, something I hadn't seen before, because I never even visited East Germany. But in fact everything in the film conformed precisely to Western ideas of what East Germany was like. I didn't even hear any music I didn't recognise: every background song seemed to have been taken from a one-euro shop CD called "Das Beste aus der DDR".

On HN, it’s more of an upvote-bait.