What movie did you see today?

[Ominous Gamer]

Its an issue with almost every movie that touches on racism. Yet another problem with studios following their tried and true formulas for success. I remember seeing this when The Help came out.



Its also one of the few points that the convoluted mess known as Cloud Atlas was blunt about.

[wiggin]

Its an issue with almost every movie that touches on racism. Yet another problem with studios following their tried and true formulas for success. I remember seeing this when The Help came out.

Its also one of the few points that the convoluted mess known as Cloud Atlas was blunt about.

While I think the critique is valid for a lot of Hollywood stories, I'm not as offended by this kind of behavior when it's purely fictional - yes, it is typical Hollywood nonsense (as are many, many other tropes), and yes, it can be offensive, but it's just something that comes with the territory. But here there's an actual, real story about people who were extraordinary. To trivialize it in this manner is much more upsetting to me.

I also want to be clear here - even though there were parts of this film I didn't like, I thought it was a story that should be told and elements of it were great IMO. It wasn't an awful movie by any stretch of the imagination; it just failed in a particular manner where it should have been more thoughtful and sensitive to the difficult subject matter.


In a broader sense, our cultural encounter with historical persecution of any sort tends to be shaped around the narrative of the victim. We are encouraged to imagine ourselves in the victim's shoes and to realize that 'this, too, could happen to me'. That is not, in itself, too problematic. But the fact of the matter is that most people aren't victims, and aren't likely to ever be victims. By definition we aren't all the Other; even with arguments about intersectionality et al that makes a larger proportion of people different gradations of victim, it's still true that most of us don't really spend most of our lives as the Other.

Perhaps our culture should instead work on making us imagine ourselves as perpetrators. In most cases of vicious historical and contemporary persecution, there are depressingly few saviors. There are many more ordinary men and neighbors than there are extraordinary people of remarkable moral character. We should try to understand history in that context, not imagining ourselves as either the aggrieved victim or the rare crusader for good.

[Nessus]

In a broader sense, our cultural encounter with historical persecution of any sort tends to be shaped around the narrative of the victim. We are encouraged to imagine ourselves in the victim's shoes and to realize that 'this, too, could happen to me'. That is not, in itself, too problematic. But the fact of the matter is that most people aren't victims, and aren't likely to ever be victims. By definition we aren't all the Other; even with arguments about intersectionality et al that makes a larger proportion of people different gradations of victim, it's still true that most of us don't really spend most of our lives as the Other.

"First they came for the social democrats, and the unionists, and I didn't speak up, for I was not..."? Sure, with the Shoah you can at least say that the persecuted were identified by a singular facet, but the Stalinist persecution with the gulags was quite literally arbitrary. The entire problem with persecution (imagine having to type that out!) is that there will be victims. Does western culture as a whole diminish the persecution and murder of the Native Americans over that of the African Americans or Jews? Sure, but this does not mean that the perception of potentially being the victim is an invalid avenue. It has happened, and it could happen, and no matter how affluent a Jew you are, doesn't mean it can't come back to bite you in the ass.

Perhaps our culture should instead work on making us imagine ourselves as perpetrators. In most cases of vicious historical and contemporary persecution, there are depressingly few saviors. There are many more ordinary men and neighbors than there are extraordinary people of remarkable moral character. We should try to understand history in that context, not imagining ourselves as either the aggrieved victim or the rare crusader for good.

Alexandr has some salient points about this in the first volume of the GULAG archipelago.

[wiggin]

"First they came for the social democrats, and the unionists, and I didn't speak up, for I was not..."? Sure, with the Shoah you can at least say that the persecuted were identified by a singular facet, but the Stalinist persecution with the gulags was quite literally arbitrary. The entire problem with persecution (imagine having to type that out!) is that there will be victims. Does western culture as a whole diminish the persecution and murder of the Native Americans over that of the African Americans or Jews? Sure, but this does not mean that the perception of potentially being the victim is an invalid avenue. It has happened, and it could happen, and no matter how affluent a Jew you are, doesn't mean it can't come back to bite you in the ass.



Alexandr has some salient points about this in the first volume of the GULAG archipelago.

(Good to see you Nessus!)

Re: the victims, I see where you're coming from - obviously there's nothing keeping any one of us from becoming (or being) a victim. I don't deny this reality, but I don't think it's a particularly useful lens through which to view things. Being a victim makes us feel aggrieved and worthy of some sort of recompense; it allows us to identify with other Others who have been victims in the past. But it doesn't do squat to affect how we act and think and feel about future horrors. It's an ex post facto identification with the victims of the past ('See? They were ordinary people just like you an me! How horrific!') that ignores that fact that in the past no one stood up for them. I find it highly unlikely that such identification with historical victims (and refashioning of our own identity as actual or potential victims) will help one iota the next time humanity descends into madness.

If, however, we instead identify with the perpetrators, realizing that they were not historical singularities but rather all too accessible humans, we might actually make a difference. Let us not be merely solemn about the past and shout 'Never Again!', while we beat our breasts how our political opponents or lot in life have made us victims as well. Let us instead look at ourselves - are we ready to stand up for the disadvantaged at a time of crisis? Do we recognize the impulses in our own lives and discourse that contribute to the kind of poisonous rhetoric that can tear a society apart?

It is so easy to be a victim nowadays, to always point your fingers at someone else as your oppressor (there are any number of categories in which I fall into which are particularly sensitive to these issues, for understandable reasons that nonetheless should be carefully scrutinized). But it's really hard to point the finger at oneself. I don't really mean this as a 'check your privilege' kind of discussion, because that still focuses on the victim - defining oneself as not being a victim in various intersectional ways and recognizing how that has benefited oneself still misses the point. It's still assuming we're looking at the situation through the lens of victimhood; even those who fail to be cognizant of their relative lack of victimized identity would never dream of being a conscious perpetrator, would we?

Instead of being defined by the different ways we are or can be a victim, let us think of the ways in which we are the perpetrator, the oppressor, and in which we contribute to a society where genocidal madness might lurk. Honestly this is probably one reason why I shy away from strong political pronouncements and why - more than anything else in political discourse - I balk at questioning the motives of my political opponents. It's not naive optimism, it's a conscious effort to forge a demos that is thoughtful and respectful and doesn't demonize the Other. It's a lot harder than being self-righteous victims, but it's a lot more productive as well.

And I should really read the Gulag archipelago.

[Nessus]

There's a Finnish author, who is famous in our small land but not really outside of it, who made a big "sensation" in the 70's by writing a satirical biography of Hitler. Before that book, he had written a couple of takes on folksy life in rural Finland, the sort, nothing really out of the ordinary. But, and this was the post-war 70's of Finland, it was highly controversial, to say the least, to write a fiction book about Hitler. That he had written it so that Hitler was an even more ridiculous character than he was in reality (that Hitler could be perceived as a comical figure!) was a bit of an outrage.

In the opening statement of the book, the author (who was a child during WW2) asks, "Why in the Hell did you listen to Hitler?"

I think that's a fucking great question.

I don't really know how to put together the life experiences of Victor Kemplerer and Solzhenitzyn. Just as an example. Solzhenitsyn makes a point of underlining how near he was to becoming an oppressor rather than the oppressed, how easily that role could have befallen him instead. He laments that he could not, for obvious reasons, really question his oppressors while they were doing it. Kemplerer essentially tells a story of how society falls into ruin around him. And especially how society around him begins to treat him as a non-human entity. It is a very unabashed story from a victim's point of view.

You can tell people narratives about how they become monstrous, and you can tell narratives about what it is like to fall into monstrous hands. A movie like Django is more entertaining to watch than 12 Years a Slave. The narrative about how you, in whatever scenario, would be the oppressor, is fundamentally a power fantasy. It can be made seem terrifying, but ultimately the emotional pay-out will have to, at least partly, lie on the satisfaction of destruction on others.

That we all potentially have the agency to oppress others is evident, but the narrative about being put "in the other guy's seat" isn't so silly. We all remember the fascist that Orwell didn't shoot because he was holding up his trousers, don't we?

There's no meaning or resolution to be had from the gulags, or the Shoah. There's just a lot of people's lives ruined. I think making people remember that, yes, indeed, those were people who came and went, can offer something to the societal discourse today. As you point out, there's a lot of affluent kids these days who victimize themselves over feeling bad about frog memes, but that isn't really the same thing. Is it more instructive for them (let alone the frog meme people) to see Schindler's List or Conspiracy? Both parties need to understand how they can turn into monstrosities, but also why exactly monstrous things are so abhorrent.

The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over. But it can't. Not with out your help. But you're not helping.

[wiggin]

I loved moonrise kingdom! Then again i like all his movies.

Want to shoehorn in this before I get back to serious stuff. I actually haven't seen much of Wes Anderson, but I didn't love The Royal Tenenbaums anywhere near as much as I loved Moonrise Kingdom. What really set it apart for me was the parallel world that the kids lived in, with its own logic and rules - most of the adults just brushed past it, engrossed in their own priorities, but a few of the adults - notably Ed Norton's character, and to an extent Bruce Willis' - became fully immersed. In this manner it reminded me a little bit of To Kill A Mockingbird. Really strong stuff, and beautifully done.

You can tell people narratives about how they become monstrous, and you can tell narratives about what it is like to fall into monstrous hands. A movie like Django is more entertaining to watch than 12 Years a Slave. The narrative about how you, in whatever scenario, would be the oppressor, is fundamentally a power fantasy. It can be made seem terrifying, but ultimately the emotional pay-out will have to, at least partly, lie on the satisfaction of destruction on others.

That we all potentially have the agency to oppress others is evident, but the narrative about being put "in the other guy's seat" isn't so silly. We all remember the fascist that Orwell didn't shoot because he was holding up his trousers, don't we?

There's no meaning or resolution to be had from the gulags, or the Shoah. There's just a lot of people's lives ruined. I think making people remember that, yes, indeed, those were people who came and went, can offer something to the societal discourse today. As you point out, there's a lot of affluent kids these days who victimize themselves over feeling bad about frog memes, but that isn't really the same thing. Is it more instructive for them (let alone the frog meme people) to see Schindler's List or Conspiracy? Both parties need to understand how they can turn into monstrosities, but also why exactly monstrous things are so abhorrent.

The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over. But it can't. Not with out your help. But you're not helping.

I think perhaps we are talking at cross-purposes here, Nessus. I don't think we should avoid humanizing victims; far from it. I just think that we can tell more stories than just the stories about the victims, and that seeing ourselves as victims is not a particularly constructive way to approach these issues. (Also, remember that my big issue that started this digression is that 'white savior' storylines are added to already remarkable stories to give the audience someone to identify with who isn't a racist/etc., and they also turn the disadvantaged into victims when they are actually self-empowered individuals with great strength of character.)

I reject the argument that to see ourselves as potential oppressors - in media or otherwise - is a power fantasy. Django is hardly my idea of a good film in this genre; perhaps a better one would be the chunk I saw of a German miniseries 'Our Mothers, Our Fathers' - while at times deeply flawed and ahistorical, it also addressed the issue of perpetrators head on rather than making them all caricatures of evil Nazis (or slaveowners, or whatever). I'm not a huge fan of the 'shooting and crying' genre in that it can easily veer into justification rather than identification and humanization, but it's at least a start. (I'm not familiar enough with Conspiracy to give a cogent discussion of it, I'm afraid.)

There was a long-winded and somewhat controversial piece a while back that touched on the question of how memorials for the Holocaust should be done; he similarly had issues with the culture of victimhood. He suggests that an appropriate memorial might be the Stolperstein that are cropping up in some parts of Europe - not an overwhelming exercise in communal victimhood but a concrete, localized, personal connection to the victims. Perhaps that might indeed be an appropriate way to identify with victims, in the same way that modest monuments explaining the local history of slavery are valuable throughout the Southern US.

I have my doubts that most people who saw Schindler's List needed reminding that genocide was bad, or that the actions of a few can save thousands. But I think that their experience was at once a 'celebration' of victimhood while being oddly depersonalized - yes, we realize that those people could have been us, but the victims are always 'over there'. To me, Schindler's List was obviously deeply personal; I grew up around people who were only alive because their grandparents were on that list (or got out on a Kindertransport, or the Leica Freedom Train, or whatever) - as well as those who had not 'gotten out' but rather survived the hard way, typically losing every single relative in the process. But that is not the typical encounter; instead, one has a moment of identification (this could have been me!) followed, largely, by nothing.

Yes, let us continue to humanize victims and the Other, but let's also spend time showing how people seem so willing to go down this path, how societies descend into chaos and murder, and how deeply ordinary people are capable of extraordinary evil. Just wanting to avoid the horrors of the past is not enough - but that's all you'll get if you only spend your time teaching people how victims were mistreated and that it was Bad. Much better to focus on how it came to pass, and why - and how to strengthen our society to prevent it in the future. Putting ourselves in the shoes of victims is meaningful, but that shouldn't come at the expense of understanding that we're far more likely to be perpetrators and collaborators.

[Nessus]

I suppose I am being Hannah Arendt to your Saul Friedländer

What I would like to remind everyone, when they are faced with these senseless monstrosities, is that the victim does not have agency but they do have cogency. You know? While the tragedy is senseless, it is a tragedy because those people were there to experience it.

I disagree with the Marxist reading of the Shoah, but I found meaning in their memorial of it; even I am not a monster enough not to be moved by a statue of children's discarded (not voluntarily) footwear.

What I meant with the power fantasy aspect, fundamentally, is that you wish to always perceive yourself as one in full faculty over your life. What Alexandr repeatedly pounds over the reader's head is that we cannot control the horrors visited upon us.

It is not some Lovecraftian terror that comes from beyond, you are right there. It is a terror that comes from us, the people. What I would like everyone to remember is that we are all people, whereby the stories of victimhood serve as reminder that this has happened and can happen.

That we, today, deny health care to our fellow people, or compute death scenarios whereby hundreds of millions die in atomic fire, we are being evil and monstrous, but it makes sense as part of the parcel. The stories of people acting sensibly, accepting that this or that action I perpetrate, today, results in someone dying tomorrow, those are not instructive. Not really. We all do what we are told, don't we?

But to have the story of completely unreasonable, monstrous evil being perpetrated thrown at our faces, is that not a wake-up call?