"The Sorrow and the Pity"
Sunday February 17, 2008
Categories: Culture
As yesterday was cold and rainy here in Dallas, and I was sick, and I was thinking about France and the Holocaust re: that Sarkozy story, I decided to commit myself to something I'd intended to do for years: watch...
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About Crunchy Con
Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
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Readily sitting our children down in front of Mass Media manipulators I'd say.
Not earth shattering. Just the slow turn of the dial, inculcating kids away from their parents wisdom and Christian foundations - with mocking humor and boatloads of Sweet relativist-laced 'KoolAid' day by day by day.
"How stupid were they?"
So, what are your thoughts about Maurice Chevalier?
To answer your last question, Rod:
The death penalty.
Our descendants will look at us and laugh about all the stuff we worry about and wonder why in the world we ever cared in the first place.
"I tried to imagine how I would have behaved under those circumstances (really, it's impossible to watch this movie without wondering the same thing). I would like to believe I would have been brave, and done my moral duty, but I can't know, and neither can you."
Amen to that -- I've always been a bit annoyed when I've visited concentration camps (Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen [Berlin], Dachau), because in engaging in people-watching it seems to me that so many people have the attitude that if they had been part of that generation, they would have done the right thing. The questions often get asked, "How could people be so barbaric, so cruel, so unjust, so murderous?" and the tacit assumption is that we wouldn't have done likewise. What's unsettling about films like "The Sorrow and the Pity" (or simply some honest, sober reflection) is that they smash such ideas. You and I would have probably been Nazis, more or less enthusiastically, more or less culpable. Let's not kid ourselves, and let's remember there but for the grace of God go we.
This question of Rod's has consumed me from a young age.
I've devoured WWII history all my life and the one thing that mattered was making sure I would not be duped by a characteristic error of my age. What reasons did I have to think I wouldn't behave similarly to the adoring crowds Saturday 6th July on Hitler's triumphal return to Berlin?
Our children and grandchildren are watching us.
I think Sheilagh is correct. Indoctrination into secularism is almost total and having massive civilisational effects.
http://www.demographicwinter.com/
We live in a pornographic culture, that sacrifices of millions of our sons and daughters in the womb.
Who wants to question if we ask for trouble when we let traditions crumble, marriage weaken, culture coarsen and responsibility slide? Who wants to hear that the freedoms loved by the strong can make monsters of the weak?
Our grandchildren will know the answer. I can't see any historical judgement of us other than ignominy.
If you were to ask me where I thought there was a place to stand, I would say Christ and the heart felt desire to be made a disciple by him.
A good book about France under nazis is "Ark of Triumph" by E.M.Remarque.
And an interesting book about Neo-nazism "Heatwave in Berlin" by australian writer Dymphna Cusack. (posted the link to it in previous thread, but comments with links don't pass as always). It was the book our half-jewish teacher of english gave us at school, the one had to read it and pass to another pupil. Finished it with unbelievable speed, just in few nights. Unfortunately can't find russian edition to refresh impressions.
We pass hate crime legislation so anyone who gets "caught" really gets it handed to them yet we engage in "hate" talk every day. "Oops just kidding!"--hear any of those lately?
I to would like to believe I would be on the side of resistance. As a high school student and young college I was more that way. Then I became responsible for others--what I did reflected on my husband (I told myself) so I kept my mouth shut. What I did endangered or protected my children so I quit stirring the pot, making waves, asking questions. Twenty years later I am finally waking up, finally pushing back. It's amazing what the world looks like when one takes off the shades and takes out the earplugs.
Correction about 'Arc de Triomphe', sorry the action takes place on the eve of nazi invasion, in fact the main hero escaped to france from them, but his sufferings left impression that they were already there.Definitely worth reading.
Thanks for pointing out this documentary, Rod. I had never heard of it.
I've had similar thoughts when studying the Civil War. While everyone would now agree that slavery is an evil, I'm not so sure how obvious it was at the time. It's easy to think we would all have been abolitionists, but they were usually considered radicals, and reading their writings, a few of them do seem a little bit nuts, like they were eager to foment a slave rebellion that would kill as many people as possible.
There were people in the South who really didn't like slavery, but didn't know what to do about it. "What happens if the slaves are freed? Where will they go? How will they earn a living? How many of them will starve because they no longer belong to someone who can provide for them?" Lots of people wrestled with what to do, and there were no easy answers.
I think it's likely that most of us would have gone along with the status quo, hating slavery's evils but allowing it to continue because it was just the way things were. Needless to say, I don't condone that, but I certainly understand that things weren't so simple.
Martin:
Your comment highlights this ongoing Crunchy Con theme that people who actively do not set out to have children (i.e., use birth control successfully) are in some ways more evil than those who have and/or countenance abortions -- because they at least had the natalist instinct but then changed their minds, so they can be forgiven (cured?).
This "pre-murder" concept sounds like something out of Minority Report. If this is what it takes to preserve our freedom, it's already been destroyed.
Larry: Your comment highlights this ongoing Crunchy Con theme that people who actively do not set out to have children (i.e., use birth control successfully) are in some ways more evil than those who have and/or countenance abortions -- because they at least had the natalist instinct but then changed their minds, so they can be forgiven (cured?).
Larry, I'm sorry, but this is paranoid nonsense.
"...we would rather do good than evil, so long as it doesn't cost too much." -- Ralph Peters
He was talking about nation-states, but this applies to most individuals as well. A man might be an idealist in the abstract, but threaten what's important to him - possessions, job, family, country, whatever - and most will find such ideals quite disposable. There are, of course, the exceptions - those who will go to their graves rather than compromise their beliefs (e.g., martyrs), but they are the exception that proves the rule.
On the topic of occupied France in particular, I remember reading somewhere that there were more French collaborators than resistance fighters. John Keegan & Eliot Cohen have (separately) cited occupied France as a case study on how brutal occupation tactics (e.g., collective punishment) can effectively pacify a conquered people.
I just finished reading Tony Judt's "Postwar", a history of Europe from circa 1944 to 2003. It is fascinating- and underlines the comparatively easy time that occupied Western Europe had compared to the horrors endured by Poland, Greece, Hungary, etc. At one point he quotes an unbelievable statistic- that Germany had only to post 1200 officers in France to keep the country down.
Rod:
I can't help it if I follow your own comments to their logical conclusions.
You are the man, of course, who declared the inventor of the birth control pill as right up there with Hitler and Stalin in propagating (pun intentional) 20th century evil.
Excuse me, I should have said "your own comments and those of your combox regulars" above.
I don't want to JUST pin that one on Rod.
At one point he quotes an unbelievable statistic- that Germany had only to post 1200 officers in France to keep the country down.
Keegan (The Second World War) put the number of actual internal-security, anti-resistance forces (as opposed to German combat forces deployed - on the coasts & elsewhere - to thwart Allied invasion) at 6500. In a country of 40 million.
Hopefully, the death penalty and animal rights.
Why the death penalty, ossicle?
How about four men who rape an 11-year old girl, and kill her by stuffing her panties down her throat? (A real case.) If society wants to execute one or all of the perpetrators, to vindicate the value of that 11-year old girl, to deter similar conduct from other would-be rapists and murderes, and to express societal anger, what's wrong with that?
I wish the death penatly were used more often. If only one drunk driver who killed someone while driving intoxicated were executed, you can bet thousands of people would change their behavior, and many lives would be saved.
"I tried to imagine how I would have behaved under those circumstances (really, it's impossible to watch this movie without wondering the same thing). I would like to believe I would have been brave, and done my moral duty, but I can't know, and neither can you."
Rod, I enjoy your writing very much and don't always disagree with you (I'm more along the lines of a Jonah Goldberg I guess) but after following your writings from the Corner, buying your book (not books, when is another one coming out?!) I'm left with the impression that you jump from thing to thing...not necessarily a bad thing - you're searching. I do the same thing. One thing that separates you(and I'd like to think myself) is an awareness of history and an intellect to think through these things so if they do arise, we would do the right thing.
Two excellent books you should read for a study in these contrasts is "Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed" by Philip P. Hallie about a French town that saved Jews during WW2 and "Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland" by Christopher R. Browning.
$100,000 education was spent on me and the most recurring thing that comes back to me is these two books. Yes, yes, I use my business degree everyday but as far as lasting, transending life lessons these two books are huge to me in my understanding of life.
This "pre-murder" concept sounds like something out of Minority Report.
If by "pre-murder" you're referring to abortion, there's nothing "pre" about it. Abortion is murder.
1,000 years from now a more humanitarian populace will look upon today's (so-called) "pro-choicers" the same way we view Nazi death camp sympathizers.
1,000 years from now, Human beings will ask themselves why in the name of God their forebears (us) voluntarily chose to waste so much of their time watching television.
Your servant,
Lord Karth
fbc:
In context, I was clearly referring to birth control, not abortion.
I am certain that future generations will at the very least find it curious that the vast majority of the American public had little interest in a lengthy insurgency being carried out by its government and military, and gave scant thought to the tens of thousands of people who lost their lives as a result of a war deprived of any substantial practical justification.
the vast majority of the American public had little interest in a lengthy insurgency being carried out by its government and military
The vast majority of the American public doesn't have its sons at risk from death or maiming as a result of said insurgency. Said insurgency, for them, is merely words & pictures in the media - easily ignored simply by flipping a page or channel. In such a context, it's unsurprising that Americans have little interest.
I may disagree with him on other issues, but WRT military service, Rep. Rangel does have a point.
BTW, isn't The Sorrow and the Pity the movie Woody Allen was always dragging Diane Keaton to see in Annie Hall?
Yes, Mary, it's the film Alvy took Annie to on a date. The joke is that Woody Allen's character, Alvy Singer, is chronically unable to experience joy (the original title of the film was "Anhedonia," which is the conditin of being unable to experience joy). Having seen "The Sorrow and the Pity" makes Woody Allen's joke that much funnier. From the script:
ALVY
I don't know now. You-you wanna go to
another movie?
(Annie nods her head and shrugs
her shoulders disgustedly as Alvy,
gesturing with his band, looks at
her)
So let's go see The Sorrow and the Pity.
ANNIE
Oh, come on, we've seen it. I'm not in
the mood to see a four-hour documentary
on Nazis.
ALVY
Well, I'm sorry, I-I can't ... I-I-I've
gotta see a picture exactly from the start
to the finish, 'cause-'cause I'm anal.
ANNIE
(Laughing now)
H'h, that's a polite word for what you are.
[snip]
INT. THEATER. A CLOSE-UP OF THE SCREEN SHOWING FACES OF GERMAN SOLDIERS.
Credits appear over the faces of the soldiers.
THE SORROW AND THE PITY
CINEMA 5 LTD., 1972
MARCEL OPHULS, ANDRE HARRIS, 1969
Chronicle of a French town during the Occupation
NARRATOR'S VOICE
(Over credits and soldiers)
June fourteenth, nineteen forty, the
German army occupies Paris. All over
the country, people are desperate for
every available scrap of news.
Other excellent movies dealing with the theme of how hard it is to wake up to a situation of oppression (from the perspective of Jews who lived in Facist-occupied territory) are: "Martha and I," "The Garden of the Finzi Continis," and "The Pianist."
Additionally, in Paul Berman's book, "Terror and Liberalism," the chapter called "Wishful Thinking," deals with how the French anti-war Socialists ended up joining the facists (not immediately, but down the slippery slope a little at a time).
I think the really interesting question to ask oneself after viewing The Sorrow and the Pity is not "What would I have done?", but "Am I now a collaborator?" This question requires us to stretch our minds a bit because of course we (making certain assumptions about who "we" are) are not being occupied by a foreign aggressor. However, to ask this question of oneself is to question first, the true nature of our society and how it lives up to its stated ideals, and second, our role in society and how we live up to our personal ideals. Subversive stuff! Warning: May lead to cognitive dissonance. If condition persists, please consult a physician. :)
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