#sincerely... a horrified jewish man

[dear-ao3]

i thought we as a society were over writing nazi germany fanfiction aus but it seems we arent. disappointing!

[coolspork]

Dude, you celebrated Aaron Bushnell’s suicide. You’re clearly not connected to your Judaism in any way if you can’t even comprehend the basic idea of Pikuach Nefesh. I hope you grow and learn not to celebrate people killing themselves

Sincerely, a former (yay!) suicidal Jew who actually cares about human life

Hi. I am glad to hear you are no longer suicidal, it's not a good place to be, I know from personal experience.

On to your main point. I don't feel that I am in any way "celebrating" the death of Aaron Bushnell, at least not in any positive light surrounding the fact that he died. I think what he did was horrifying and I think that's the point. Preservation of human life is an incredibly important thing to be mindful of especially during a war, and I truly believe that was something he was fully aware of. I didn't know him personally, I guess I can never say with absolute certainty why he did it, but with all the available evidence I feel confident in saying that his goal WAS to preserve human lives. I grew up surrounded by US military culture and service members and I understand the significance of an American soldier in an American uniform doing something like that while making those statements. I understand that his life was lost and that that in and of itself is a fucking tragedy, but I think the impact he has had will save more lives in the bigger picture.

The US military and police have incredibly close ties with the IDF to the point that I *know* non-jewish, non-israeli, antisemitic people here in America who have personally worked and trained with the IDF and support them uncritically. The US military is one of our government's "greatest" assets (much sarcasm) when it comes to political power and the culture surrounding the military is extremely strong. If attitudes about what's happening in Gaza were to shift within those spheres it would bring incredible change to a movement with the interest in protecting human life.

Self immolation has been used as a form of protest before. Aaron Bushnell's is not unique, it is just the most recent and named case. A woman who self-immolated in Georgia has been in critical condition since December and I truly hope she survives. It is something that has occured on record for thousands of years. I don't hold the belief that this is a practice to be encouraged or advocated for, I think it is a very jarring wake up call, especially in the society we live in today. I think the fact that you and I are so absolutely horrified at the thought of it *is the point*. He was a white male US service member. People who were refusing to acknowledge lives lost in Gaza were forced to name him because of his privileged position AS a white male US service member. I think that what he did was an incredibly brave and selfless sacrifice and that to try and bury his actions is disrespectful to that sacrifice. No one should have to go to such extremes to get their government's attention.

The fact that this is horrifying, especially to those that put a lot of value in pikuach nefesh and similar values in other cultures is the fucking point. I cannot save that man, what happened has already happened. The only thing I, as a random person on the internet, can do is use the momentum his sacrifice created to try to save more lives in the coming months by putting pressure on the military industrial complex that he publicly refused to support.

What he did was horrifying, and that is the fucking point.

Edit: I know this is an extremely controversial topic and people have a variety of reasons to agree or disagree with his actions. I don't expect everyone to support what he did, but I at least would hope you could see why he did it

[sergeant-donny-donowitz]

Safety First (Hugo Stiglitz x Reader)

Requested by @cass-danvers

@owba-chan @war-obsessed @inglourious-imagines @tealaquinn @struggling-bee @frozenhuntress67 @kwyloz @sodapop182

Let me know if you wanna be added to the IB or OUATIH taglists! :)

A/N: (p/n)=your pronouns :)

_________________________________________ Utivich was panicking as he cried out, "DO WE TAKE IT OUT OR LEAVE IT I-" Hugo pulled Utivich away from Wicki, who had a bullet in his chest, and blood pouring out his mouth. Hugo shook his head, and muttered,  "Don't do anything." "WHAT DO YOU MEAN DON'T DO ANY-" Donny was crouching by Wicki, "He's sayin' something in German. Hugo, listen!" Hugo sat by, and listened. "It's an address," he looked up at the others, all of which were as confused as him.  Aldo immediately turned to the last nazi they'd left alive, "Where the hell is that?"

The nazi raised a shaking finger as he stuttered some directions.

Aldo nodded, "Well, very kind of you, boy." He cleared his throat as he studied his newly acquired luger, "Normally we let one of you shit faces go with a pretty little mark on his face and a story to tell, but we can't have you tellin' 'em where we went, now can we, boy?" The nazi looked at Aldo with wide, terrified eyes. " An' that don't change the fact I got a man dyin' back there..." He raised the gun, and shot the last nazi in the face, as the basterds moved Wicki carefully. ******

It was nearly two in the morning when you heard a knock...no...a knock is polite. And unheard at such an ungodly hour. This was incessant, endless, deafening sound, threatening to break down the door.

Fortunately, you were wide awake, in a quiet room, hidden to the untrained eye, studying things that would be a death sentence if found by nazis.

You quickly and quietly hid the papers away, and pushed the bookcase back into its tidy space, hiding away your secret rebellions.

You sighed, knowing perhaps you were in over your head... Perhaps this would be the night your luck ran out.

When you opened the door and immediately saw a gun pointed directly between your eyes, you raised an eyebrow. You knew nazis would draw out their cynicism.

Then, you looked at the face behind the gun.

You recognized it from the newspapers, not so long ago.

Hugo Stiglitz.

In spite of an imminent threat of a bullet being lodged in your brain, you were no longer worrying, or even wondering what was wrong. His voice was demanding as he pushed the gun against your forehead. "Sind Sie ein Arzt?" 'Are you a doctor?' You nodded, and Hugo grabbed onto your collar, pushing you inside as what could only be the basterds, began to pour into your livingroom. "Schreie um Hilfe und du stirbst." 'Scream for help and you die.' "Notiert." 'Noted,' you smiled a bit smugly, then glanced past him, spotting a bloody man in their arms. "This way," you pulled away from Hugo, completely defying him and his threats...You knew the stories, and frankly anyone with half a mind in your place would be scared of him... But you weren't. You glanced at Hugo for a brief moment as you walked by and led them down the hall. That man was one of the most gorgeous people you'd seen in your life. And...he was stunned that you didn't even blink in the face of death. Hugo looked down at his thumb. When you pulled away from his grip, something on your collar had cut him. You pushed your bookcase aside, and turned on the lights. You pushed papers and maps away from a steel table, and turned on every lamp in the room. You pulled out a kit with surgical supplies, and pulled a cloth over the table. "Here." You turned, and saw the face of the basterd that was bloody and barely breathing. Your eyes went wide, and your heart skipped a beat. It couldn't be him... You shook your head once at yourself. No, this wasn't the time to be emotional. You had to act, and act quickly. There would be enough time for this nonsense later, you hoped. "That was fast..."Donny muttered as he and Aldo lugged Wicki onto the table. Smitty looked around, "Is no one going to ask what the fuck this place-" Aldo ignored him, and looked to you, "Is he going to live?" That struck you. Your half moment of hesitation took everyone's breath, and an uneasy, eerie silence blanketed the room. You turned to look at him, studied the wound for a moment, "Schwer zu erzählen..." 'Hard to tell...' you sighed, and Hugo caught on. He asked again. His tone was not quite as aggressive as it was minutes before. It was pleading, as you lingered by the doorway, on your way to wash your hands, Aldo following with a gun to make sure that was all you did. You turned for a moment, "Ich werde alles tun, was ich kann." 'I'll do everything I can...' You disappeared down the hall, and Omar asked, "What'd the doctor say?" "(P/n) will do the best (p/n) can." You ran back in, and started to lay out everything you needed. You looked up, "I have no morphine."

Hirschberg muttered something as he lit a cigarette. Aldo raised his gun, and kept it trained on you, making sure you did as you were told. "I need you to hold him down in case he wakes up." You set down a bottle of whiskey on the edge, and turned him over slightly. No exit wound... You nodded, silently hoping that bullet wound was shallow, and that  the bullet itself was in one piece. You felt a looming presence by you, and saw Hugo Stiglitz was standing over the wounded man, holding down his shoulders, just in case...though he seemed distracted, and distant. He was looking at you, with a gaze only a soldier could have. He'd seen much, but he was not ready to see his friend like that. You took a shot, "Sicherheit zuerst," 'Safety first,' which made Hugo’s expression soften. It was the closest thing to a smile as he made in a long time. Some of the other basterds circled around, ready to hold Wicki down if he woke up in the middle of it all, and also took a shot for 'safety.' You sighed, understanding how that soldier must have felt, placing his friend's life in the hands of someone he couldn't trust. Better yet, you knew you had to save Wicki. Because you didn't have time to explain that you knew him, and you had known him for most of your life. You had to save him because you had so many things to tell him. You had to save him because you wouldn't be able to bear life knowing that you didn't.  So, you sighed, and quietly explained everything you were doing, hoping that would ease at least Hugo Stiglitz. "Es sieht so aus, als ob keine Arterie oder kein Organ berührt wurde," 'Looks like no artery or organ was touched,' you glanced at him for a moment, and Hugo nodded once. You looked back down, patting away blood with a clean cloth. You shuddered as you took your scalpel, and took a breath. For years, you had stayed up late nights, wondering what had happened to Wilhelm. Now you knew. You met Wilhelm Wicki when you moved to the city as a kid. Wicki lived in the house next door. When you were older you moved out on your own, to the place where you lived now. Wil was your best friend, and he came over almost every day, always told you about work, asked you what he was doing wrong when his girlfriends were angry at him... One day, around 1938, you had a bit of a falling out, though nothing that couldn't  be fixed. He simply didn't show up. A day or two passed before you began to wonder about him. He didn't even answer the phone. Wilhelm wasn't one to hold a grudge, this just wasn't like him. So you marched down to his house, but he was gone... along with his mother and sisters. You feared the worst... you worried they'd been taken away. It wouldn't have been unheard of. You spent years looking for a clue, a sign, even a rumor. But you never found a word. So, you decided to do your best. You were a doctor, but that didn't mean you didn't have your own convictions. You wore a safety pin hidden by your collar, as many across Europe were doing as a sign of resistance. You built this hidden room to help people hide. You used maps and stolen documents to chart escape routes for Jewish families since you couldn't help Wicki. But now, as he was on that makeshift operating table, you realized you'd been looking for him on the wrong side of world. You smiled softly for a brief moment with a soft sigh. You whispered hopefully, "Wilhelm..." Hugo glanced at you, his eyebrow raised, wondering how you knew Wicki’s name. But, a gleam from your collar diverted his attention for a moment. His eyes widened, spotting the safety pin on your collar. He looked to Aldo, "Aldo, put the gun down." Aldo looked to Hugo, "What? But-" "The doctor's not a nazi." "How do you know?!" "Trust me." The basterds all looked at Hugo. He never said much, but when he did, they listened. You glanced at Hugo, and he looked to you, then nodded. Aldo lowered his gun. He sat on a nearby chair, and realized he was sitting on a few papers. He picked them up, and only took a few moments to realize who you really were. "Y'know doc, if we was nazis, you'd be sent to a firing squad by dawn," he smiled as he raised the papers up.   You chuckled, spotting what was in his hands, "I don't think so. That's far too much mercy for a traitor like me." Hugo whispered so softly, you didn't hear, but you felt his gaze fall on you again, "Wie wir." 'Like us...'  he referred to you, and himself. He knew you were right. He was tortured by the nazis as a traitor once, and for a moment, it horrified him to even imagine you going through something like that. In that moment, each and every basterd flocked to the table to hold down Wicki, who was screaming at the top of his lungs and beginning to thrash around. You focused back on him, looked into his wide, pain-struck eyes, and sweaty, palid face. "Just one minute more," you looked around as the basterds, just before you picked up the pace. Wicki's eyes feverishly focused on yours as you shook your head sincerely, and whispered "Es tut mir leid, es tut mir so leid, Liebling, nur noch eine Minute." "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, darling, just a minute more." His breathing slowed a little as you worked quickly, and he tried his best to hold still as you whispered, "Du bist in Ordnung. Du bist in Ordnung, alles ist in Ordnung, Wil." "You're ok. You're ok, everything's ok, Wil." Hugo  glanced up, seeing how gentle you were, and his heart sank a little, dismissing the fleeting hope that some day, someone somewhere would show at least an ounce of the kindness you showed to Wicki. "There, not so bad, was it?" You pulled the last stitch shut, and smiled wearily down at your old friend, who smiled through the pain, and murmured, "You're still here..." "I'd never leave," you smiled softly, as you patted sweat away from his skin. It was then that he looked up at you, "I'm sorry that I did." You shook your head, "That was so long ago," you smiled kindly at him, as Hugo looked on, wondering what had happened. "Y/n..." Wicki tried to get up, put you shook your head, "Rest now. We'll talk in the morning." Aldo asked Hugo, "What's goin' on?" Hugo glanced at you, then Wicki, then looked to his lieutenant. "Y/n...” He paused, and sighed slightly as he said your name, “Y/n  and Wicki knew each other once..." Donny shrugged, "Guess the address thing makes sense now..." **** It was decided later that night, in a relaxed and relieved circle littered with drinks, that Wicki was going to stay with you until he recovered. The basterds would come back for him. The next morning, Hugo was trying to think of something to say. He said something you already knew to be true, "We'll come back." "I know," you smiled softly, and it melted his heart. You were both quiet for an instant more than Hugo wanted. Normally, he was comfortable in silence, but, he liked hearing your voice. Somehow, it soothed aching memories that always lingered in the back of his mind. "I'm sorry if I scared you when-" You shook your head, "Don't be." "For yelling..." "I understand," You smiled a little again, poured him a drink, and handed it to him kindly. He looked at it, then at you. You both looked at each other for a moment or two, then couldn't help but to kiss. When it was over, Hugo opened his eyes a few moments after you did and remained breathless, and you giggled quietly as he smiled to hide a red shade of embarassment, It had been a long time since he kissed anyone. Longer still since he'd felt anything close to what he felt for you. "Can I make it up to you?" Suddenly, your expression changed. Something cunning, something lurking behind the kind smiles and soft giggles emerged in the form of a smirk and a twisted wink, "Bring me a nazi or two when you come back here." **** You and Wicki caught up, telling each other any and everything. Well...the one thing you didn't tell him was the time that you kissed Hugo. Some time passed. It was nearly four in the morning. You were halfway up the stairs on your way to your bedroom. Wicki had fallen asleep hours before, and was in another bedroom. Suddenly, you heard pounding at the door, and you stopped in your tracks. You sighed. It was a toss up between nazis searching your home again, the basterds coming back for Wicki, or a housecall for a sudden burst appendix. By the time you got downstairs, Wicki was already standing by the door, with a revolver in his hand. "Way to raise suspicions." He panicked for a moment, "If they're nazis, just...well...just say we're married an-" "That would never work! They'd know from records, first of all. Second of all, I wouldn't marry you." He rolled his eyes, "I forgot how mean you were." You both heard a familiar voice behind the door, "Wir sind keine Nazis" 'We're not nazis.' You smiled, and opened the door, finding the basterds there, Hugo up front, holding two nazis whose mouths were duct taped, and wrists were tied. "But we brought you a gift." You chuckled, "Come in, boys." You quickly shut the door so no one would see. Then again, only basterds like them would be up at that hour. "Gift number one, this boy here done broke his arm fightin' that nazi over there."  Aldo nudged Utivich over to you. The poor kid was holding up his arm, and seemed green from the pain. "How long's it been this way?" You asked as you started to feel for the broken bone. Utivich grimaced, "A few hours." "Come on," you led them all back to the sliding bookcase, and brought them all to the hidden room. "Sit there." You looked up, "Well the good new is, it isn't broken." Utivich shut his eyes as he rolled his head back, and muttered through gritted teeth, "Well it fucking feels like it." You nodded with a sigh, "I know but it's...oh shit...what's the word...." You glanced not to Wicki, but to Hugo. Wicki was stunned for a moment, but...he had suspected some things. By suspected...he saw you and Hugo kiss before the basterds left. He smiled, as you looked to Hugo and said, "Ausgerenkte?" He nodded, "Y/n says it's dislocated." "You're....you're gonna..." You saw the fear in the poor kid's eyes, and you smiled kindly, "It'll only take a second, don't worry. Take a breath,"  sure enough, as much as it hurt, and as much as he groaned, you remarked, "Don't scream too much, or you'll scare the next two." Hugo smirked, and looked at you. There it was again, that glint of something plotting...something vengeful beyond the gentle eyes and smiles. Once you were done fixing up Utivich's arm, you offered to put up the basterds for a few days so they could all rest. Once the basterds settled in, most of them fell asleep immediately. This was the first time they had warm, relatively safe beds to sleep in months. Only Hugo stayed awake, waiting until he heard you come upstairs. But he didn't. He heard the bookcase slide shut, and nothing after that. He looked for you, as soon as morning came, and in that hidden room, something unspeakable had happened. Something with an unmistakable flair for the macabre, and yet, with surgical precision. It was almost surreal. But revenge was revenge, and it was beautiful in Hugo's eyes, just as you were. He looked at your work, and the unidentifiable nazis, then at you. "This place is sound proof, isn't it..." That smirk was all he needed as an answer. He smirked right back. All evidence was expertly wiped down. The results of your experiment were left somewhere the nazis in the city could find as a warning, but not traced back to you. Soon, it was the basterds' last night staying with you. Hugo noted you were quieter, and a little distant. The silence wasn't so unnerving this time, just heartbreaking. Hugo kissed you, and you kissed him. There was an air of desparation shared by both of you, knowing that nothing was ever certain in the time you lived in. He broke away from your lips for a spare moment, and whispered, 'Ich werde zurück kommen.' "I'll come back." You smiled softly, remembering the last time he promised that. "Ich weiß." 'I know.' You looked up at him. Your quiet, soft smile fading into something more as you began to wrap your legs around him. He smirked at you,  shutting the bookcase behind him, as he wrapped his arms around you, winking about the sound proof room, as he remarked "Sicherheit zuerst," 'Safety first.'

[back-and-totheleft]

A brilliant work about white nationalism and the cult of personality

This past week saw the release of Chasing the Light, the epic memoir of legendary filmmaker Oliver Stone. A word like "controversial" doesn’t even begin to describe the work of Stone, whose films have delved deep into hot button political issues and sparked intense debate for decades. Some have decried Stone as a radical conspiracy theorist who indulges in his own historical fantasies, while others consider him to be a noble patriot who ranks among the great American filmmakers of all time.

Stone had his own take on the Kennedy assassination in JFK. He skewered corporate greed with Wall Street and demystified the Vietnam War with Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July. He explored violence in the media with Natural Born Killers. He’s made films centered on the lives of Richard Nixon, George W. Bush, Edward Snowden, Alexander the Great and Jim Morrison.

Stone’s films that play with real people and events often draw the most attention, but he’s also shown an ability to create work that is ahead of its time. No film personifies this more than Talk Radio, Stone’s 1988 chamber piece that explores the complex relationship between an abrasive radio personality and his audience. In 2020, this story about participation in media, toxic masculinity, performative impertinence, mental health stigma and local news coverage is more prevalent than ever.

It’s no secret that ratings for talk and news radio programs are down across the state, with some experts suggesting that listeners are looking for escapism from news updates and political divisiveness. Talk Radio exemplifies those anxieties by showing how absorbing it is for a host to keep his listeners engaged by any means necessary.

Eric Bogosian stars as Barry Champlain, a Jewish radio host based out of Dallas who berates his callers each night with tirades of hatred and sarcasm. Champlain’s callers look to him for reliable nastiness, and throughout the course of his shows, the lines between performance and sincerity become blurred. It’s unclear if Barry talks the way he does because he needs a reaction, or if the everyday grind of listening to these callers has taken a real toll on him.

“I'm a hypocrite,” he admits at one point. “I ask for sincerity, and I lie. I denounce the system as I embrace it. I want money and power and prestige. I want ratings and success, and I don't give a damn about you, or the world. That's the truth. For that I could say I'm sorry, but I won't.”

What makes Talk Radio so significant for its time is how it deals with the cult of personality that often dominates media viewership. Champlain’s callers aren’t calling because they’re interested in his viewpoints or even his outlandish statements. They’re addicted to him. One caller calls to tell Champlain about her obsession with his show, but when pressed for details, she can’t name anything other than how she “loves everything about (him).”

Although the story is loosely based on the life of the Denver radio host Alan Berg, its relevance about the prevalence of white nationalism feels pertinent to the current moment.

Stone explores how dominating this on-air persona can be. Champlain receives a barrage of vitriolic calls every night from listeners who despise him and often sling anti-Semitic insults his way. Champlain takes each call in stride, aiming to never show a sign of vulnerability, as that would contrast with the person he is presenting himself as.

Any moment of sincerity feels like a loss from Champlain. When he shows genuine concern for a caller who claims to be nearing an overdose, Champlain quickly learns he’s been duped by a particularly vile prankster. The radio host becomes angry, not just because he’s been deceived, but because the concern he showed is at odds with the uncaring facade he has constructed for himself.

A common talking point in today’s political discourse links the rise of radicalization as a result of extremist movements that are passed along through social media channels, often preying upon easily impressionable listeners. Champlain begins to recognize this process for himself throughout the course of Talk Radio, in which he realizes that many of his viewers view his program unironically and treat his most absurd hyperboles as a form of gospel.

Champlain’s boss Dan (played by a young Alec Baldwin) tells him that it’s only a job, but throughout the course of the film the audience learns how all-consuming the work has become. A desperate Champlain calls his ex-wife Ellen (Ellen Greene) at one point asking for help with his depression, but when she calls him on air, he treats her with the same resentment that he does any other caller. Champlain’s staff are horrified at the fact that he would use his prior relationship as material for his show, but for Champlain, they have become the same thing.

The notion of Jewish anxiety looms over the film; Champlain is a Jewish man with leftist views, and he’s often at odds with his conservative viewers. Even if he’s able to lampoon his abusers with a clever one-liner, Stone notes the real danger that Champlain is in, particularly as one caller makes a bomb threat while espousing hate speech. Even if Champlain isn’t afraid to put himself out there, it’s clear that he’s facing an uphill battle every day.

Although the story is loosely based on the life of the Denver radio host Alan Berg, its relevance about the prevalence of white nationalism feels pertinent today. Champlain’s anxieties stem from the fact that his tormentors confront him on open airwaves, thus giving a voice to others who are inspired by hate speech. In a time when platforms like Twitter and Facebook are slow to ban calls to violence, Champlain’s experience feels less like an anomaly and more like a precedent.

Despite the attention he receives, Champlain is very much alone, and Stone’s notion that those with the most recognition are often the most isolated was a novel theme in the pre-internet era. Conversations about the impact of social media on mental health often note how online interactions can lead to a false sense of well-being, and Talk Radio explores the very idea of using superficial relationships as a coping method.

If many of Stone’s films feel like a rallying cry or a call to action, Talk Radio is among his more nuanced and meditative works. The film certainly has pity for Champlain, but it doesn’t condone his actions. If anything, Talk Radio aims to explore how hostile media environments create people like Champlain, and how people are seduced into granting him any power.

A cautionary tale and a useful tool in exploring the ways in which strangers interact, Talk Radio is a forgotten classic that sheds some insight into what discourse has become. As Stone’s entire filmography is reconsidered as his memoir is celebrated, Talk Radio deserves to be appreciated for the brilliant work that it is.

Talk Radio made its streaming debut on Peacock. It can be viewed for free there.

-Liam Gaughan, “Oliver Stone Has a New Film, but Let's Look Back at the Ever-Relevant Talk Radio,” Dallas Observer, Aug 2 2020 [x]

[anyroads]

The stupidest thing I ever read

was this idiot’s review of Jojo Rabbit in Esquire. I’m cutting/pasting it below because I don’t think the piece deserves to generate more hits for the site, but here’s the link if anyone wants it. Anyway, I was going to complain about it to the editors but instead I sent them my own review, of their review. I doubt anyone checks their public “complain to the editors” email account, but since kvetching the national sport in my country of myselfvania, I’m posting it here. 

Here’s the fuckery they published: 

Jojo Rabbit's Softening of Nazism Is the Last Thing We Need in a Best Picture Winner

This Oscar nominee is a lie, and a detestable one at that, especially in this day and age of rising white nationalism at home and abroad.

With What We Do in the Shadows, Thor: Ragnarok, and Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Taika Waititi established himself as an energetic, occasionally uproarious filmmaker. Disappointingly, his latest is a misstep of colossal proportions, a project so fundamentally misguided and terribly realized that it’s difficult to fathom its existence in the first place, much less that it’s being considered alongside great movies from the likes of Martin Scorsese, Bong Joon-ho, Greta Gerwig, and Quentin Tarantino. From grating beginning to cloying end, this coming-of-age saga about a young wannabe Nazi is a fiasco that mixes ahistorical ignorance, cornball humor, derivative style and laughable bathos to mind-boggling effect.

Like Life is Beautiful if Roberto Benigni’s Holocaust hit had imagined the SS as clowns, Jojo Rabbit is the story of Jojo (Roman Griffin Davis), a precocious adolescent who desperately wants to join the Hitler Youth, and who spends his days and nights conversing about evil Jews and the glory of the Third Reich with his make-believe BFF Adolf Hitler, here embodied by Waititi as a hyperactive, heil-crazy cartoon intended to come across as a loveably funny genocidal madman. Spoiler alert: he’s not, and the fact that he’s “imaginary” doesn’t help Jojo Rabbit sell this Führer—against all decent taste or basic sanity—as endearing. The same goes for Jojo himself, who earns himself the nickname “Jojo Rabbit” for failing to kill a bunny at the behest of Hitler Youth bullies—a sign that, though he spews vileness like a dutiful little hatemonger, he’s actually, deep down, a good person.

Waititi doesn’t stop sympathetically humanizing Nazis there. At every turn, Jojo Rabbit—whose title sounds like the name of some cuddly children’s plaything (say, a Nazi-esque Teddy Ruxpin)—is filled with virtuous Germans. Jojo’s mom Rosie (Scarlett Johansson) is a heroic resistance fighter; the boy’s camp director Captain Klenzendorf (Sam Rockwell) is a flamboyant closeted gay man; his best friend Yorki (Archie Yates) is an archetypal pudgy sidekick who, like Jojo, is enthusiastic about the Reich without having any sincerely nasty convictions; and Klenzendorf’s right-hand woman Fräulein Rahm (Rebel Wilson) is a buffoon who is meant to be charmingly loopy. Sure, we get a couple of scenes with a mean Gestapo agent (Stephen Merchant), but Waititi’s film portrays WWII-era Germany as a place populated almost exclusively by likable, honorable folk.

That’s enough to make Jojo Rabbit a lie, and a detestable one at that, especially in this day and age of rising white nationalism at home and abroad. Worse still is that its primary plot involves Jojo’s discovery of Jewish teen Elsa (Thomasin McKenzie) hiding in a secret cubby in his apartment. Jojo is initially horrified by this revelation, and the idea that his mom Rosie has stashed her there. However, his ensuing relationship with Elsa—full of oh-so-witty bits in which the girl pokes fun at his repugnant anti-Semitism—soon turns romantic, and teaches him that Jews aren’t money-grubbing horned devils after all. On the contrary, they’re people, just like him! He therefore sets about protecting his beloved Anne Frank proxy from capture, culminating in a heartwarming finale in which Jojo has a change of heart and rejects intolerance and, also, his make-believe Hitler, who’s ceremoniously booted out a window like a Looney Tunes character.

Jojo Rabbit bills itself as an “anti-hate satire,” which epitomizes its empty-headedness; you don’t need to exaggerate hate in order to expose it as bad, because hate is inherently bad, no satiric exaggeration required. Moreover, its main uplifting point—that prejudiced people will learn the error of their ways if they just get to know the objects of their scorn—is both debatable in the abstract, and wholly inapplicable to Nazi Germany. Nazis did know Jews—they lived next door to them, worked with them, socialized with them, frequented their shops, saw them on the streets, and welcomed them into their families. Yet that familiarity didn’t stop them from also ostracizing them, demonizing them, and turning them in for mass extermination. That’s the bedrock truth about Nazi Germany, and Jojo Rabbit’s desire to conjure an alterna-reality in which everyone in Nazi Germany was kind, funny, and noble turns out to be the same sort of “very fine people on both sides” hogwash peddled by our current commander-in-chief.

Suffice it to say, in the face of such ill-conceived nonsense, humor dies a swift and painful death. Waititi stages his action with colorful symmetrical compositions and playful soundtrack cuts (such as a German rendition of “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” to underscore the Beatlemania-like appeal of Nazism), which gives the proceedings the air of a cheap Wes Anderson knock-off. The writer/director/co-star strains hard to up the farcicality quotient in order to have the film play like a sweet modern comedy about a foolish goofball who eventually alters his unwise course. It’s a common quirky-indie mold, equal parts Rushmore and your average Will Ferrell effort, the problem being that Jojo Rabbit is grappling with titanic real world events (i.e. the Holocaust) that aren’t comfortably molded into silly feel-good pap.

Despite its nominal message about turning hate into love, Jojo Rabbit is a work that normalizes Nazis, and thus Nazism, and thus intolerance in general, by alternately saying that it either doesn’t exist, or is cute and amusing and powerless in the face of aw-shucks kiddie compassion. That makes it astoundingly wrong about WWII, about humanity, and also, of course, about today’s alt-right-infested climate upon which the film has been designed to comment. Putting it in the same company as the rest of this year’s Best Picture candidates—especially the epic The Irishman, the revealing Marriage Story, and the vivacious Little Women—is absurd; it’s wholesale cluelessness makes even a second-rate nominee like Joker seem downright incisive (about social alienation, xenophobia and fanaticism) by comparison.

And here’s my review of this asinine review: 

With his review of Jojo Rabbit in Esquire a few days ago, Nick Schager achieved what so many of us can only hope to in this brief and wearing mortal coil: to see with the eyes of a child and yet still write with the vocabulary of someone who almost passed an SAT prep course. Well, not with the innocence of a child, per say, more like the infantile, unformed, and uninformed perspective of one, but let’s not split hairs.

Schager begins by declaring that the Oscar nominee is a lie which, as a statement, succeeds in being both unclear and uncomfortably committed to intensity without substance. So that’s a good start. Although the review itself is fairly short, it took an approximate ten years off my life as I searched fruitlessly for any semblance of logic behind even just one of  Schager’s claims. It quickly became clear that the film elicited blind rage in him and he seems to have been unable to overcome his emotional irrationality, though in his defense, it doesn’t seem like he exerted himself much towards that end.

I think we can all agree that in a film that’s presented from a child’s perspective, both through the script and literally through camera angles, it’s a lot to expect a grown man, let alone a film critic, to pick up on the subtlety of this very blatant and clear storytelling technique. Schager conflates Jojo’s character’s development and the one-dimensional consistency of a first draft Disney sidekick, because it helps him prove the point that his perspective is reductive and banal. He conveniently skims over the differences between the sociopathic Hitler Youth and Jojo’s mom Rosie’s role as a resistance fighter, because if he were to try drawing actual parallels things would get very awkward very fast. After all, if we were to examine how the Hitler Youth are presented as psychotic fascists who make children kill small animals, and how Rosie is presented as an average German citizen doing what she can by being a resistance fighter, then we would quickly realize that the only commonality they really share is being various Germans. This, in turn, would mean that Schager not only missed the point entirely - gasp! - but is just projecting his own biases onto characters.

At the same time, he also doesn’t seem to have cracked a European history book since Caesar decided to have a chat with his Senators in the Curia of Pompey. Otherwise he would have known that though future Nazis did live next to Jews and frequent their shops, Jews weren’t hard for Hitler to separate out from German society as they had been repeatedly exiled from, blood libeled in, and consistently othered and excluded from all of European society for hundreds of years, even in Germany. Somehow Schager has managed to convince himself that buying goods and minimal amounts of intermarriage alongside a long history of bloodshed, rape, and demonization of Jews somehow amounts to widespread close friendships, while simultaneously actively ignoring all the data from repeated sociological studies proving that the best antidote to racism is exactly the kind of person to person empathic relationship that Jojo and Elsa develop. I mean, Schager literally spends an entire paragraph writing actual nonsense that contradicts these easily verifiable facts, so well done to him for being so unabashedly confident, I guess.

Then again, referring to a child indoctrinated in hate before having the intellectual capacity to understand its implications as “a dutiful little hatemonger” should have been a dead give away that this was less of a review and more of a cry for attention, I guess. The idea that the film’s aim is to explore how this indoctrination can be undone by empathy and love in an era when an increasing number of boys and young men are being radicalized online isn’t lost on our intrepid film critic, excepting, of course, the fact that it’s completely lost on him to the point where I almost want to ask Schager who hurt him. As his review continues, I grow less and less interested in posing this question, however, because he seems like a deeply difficult and painful person to engage with, not just as a film critic. Even Jay Sherman’s harshest jabs were at least justifiable and well-reasoned, and he was a cartoon.

While I’m not entirely sure where Schager gets off manipulating the most basic aspects of a Maori Jew’s film aimed at disempowering naziism through humor while presenting the horror of how easily young boys can be swayed by hateful rhetoric, I’m sure an apparently fragile ego and inflated sense of self-righteousness contribute to the way he holds empathy against both Waititi and Jojo’s character. After all, from what I can tell by this review, he sees no difference between having empathy for a child who has yet to understand and develop his beliefs, and a fully formed sociopath like Hitler. For him, laying bare the fallacy of the Nazi ideal of a unified aryan nation by showing that it will always be undermined by diversity - whether it’s via resistance fighters or people whose sexuality deviates from the established norm, no matter how average or high up in government a person is - is just a way to humanize Nazis. You know, the everyday German citizens he was so protective of like two sentences earlier. It certainly can’t have been Waititi trying to make a point about how there’s no escaping human diversity and to try is ridiculous and destructive.

And so, the simplest of things about this film, like the fact that Hitler is presented through the eyes of a child, is lost on a film critic who is too intelligent and sophisticated to notice such lowly and basically apparent filmmaking choices. The jury’s still out on whether or not he actually realized that Rosie’s character was hanged for her resistance efforts, but it’s likely Schafer was too busy raging about how offensive he found it to see any remotely human characters in a film about the indomitable and ultimately loving spirit of humanity, simply because it’s set in Nazi Germany. Although the rest of the world was able to pick up on the wonderfully insightful and gently crafted approach Jojo Rabbit takes towards its story, Schafer is content to blast it mercilessly without making a single reasonable point through seven entirely obtuse paragraphs. If you listen very hard, you might still hear the echoes of his rant emanating from his own cavernous posterior, though the head he crammed up there muffles the sound a bit.

[dailydj]

Psalm 15: Evocations

LORD, who may dwell in your sacred tent? Who may live on your holy mountain?

Like a giant cloth iceberg, the tabernacle juts above a sea of tan Israelite tents. Off in the distance, there, can you see it? The faint outline of Mount Sinai, out on the hazy desert horizon, where they say God’s glory burns more brightly than the sun. Just entering either of these spaces for a brief moment is a nerve-wracking, death-defying experience. No one would ever dream of trying to stay for longer than a few minutes, let alone try to live there.

Aaron, the high priest, was packing up his things and getting ready to go home for the night, when out of the corner of his eye he caught a flicker of candlelight in the Holy of Holies, the center room of the tabernacle. Cautiously, Aaron crept back into the tent, and he noticed the shadow of a man was cast upon the dividing curtain of the holy place. The man was sitting and praying, and then he began to laugh, rising to his feet and swaying to and fro, dancing with complete, pure enjoyment and freedom. "Who’s there?” shouted Aaron. A great wind blew through the tabernacle, the candlelight was extinguished, and the tent fell into silence and darkness.

The one whose walk is blameless, who does what is righteous.

He’s talking to a sick old woman, touches her, and life and health immediately spread across her entire body. He is settling an argument between feuding Pharisees and commoners, and standing up for the oppressed. He’s standing before a crowd of thousands, speaking words of such resounding truth and inspiration that the people are enraptured, unable to turn away.

Who speaks the truth from their heart.

“Truly I tell you,” declares Jesus, “Unless you give up all that you have, to follow me, you will never inherit the Kingdom of God”. The rich young ruler falls to his knees, distraught, conflicted, torn apart inside. Jesus’ look of compassion is warm and sincere, but also firm, decided, and His message is clear: what He’s asking for is hard, but undeniably true.

Whose tongue utters no slander.

Jesus pulls a coin from his pocket, and tosses it to the two old Jewish men smirking at Him from the front of the crowd. “Tell me, whose face is inscribed on that coin?” he asks.

“Caesar’s,” replies the Pharisee.

“Then give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and give unto God what is God’s,” answers Jesus.

Who does no wrong to a neighbor, who casts no slur on others.

Jesus was tired. His cousin had just died, beheaded at the hands of a foolish king. He couldn’t help feeling the tug of guilt, couldn’t help but wonder, if John hadn’t been out there stirring people up about Him, the coming Messiah...would he still be alive? There was so much suffering, so much evil and hatred and cynicism here...humanity had grown to be so broken, and it broke Jesus’ heart. He needed some time away, just to spend with His Father, to be reassured of why He was sent here. The bottom of the boat scraped land, and Jesus stepped out into the shallow water. He settled on a rock, sitting cross-legged, watching the sun drift lazily towards the horizon, and let out a huge sigh of relief. Jesus closed his eyes, and murmured, “Father, I —”

“THERE HE IS!” came a shout from the bushes behind him. Suddenly, the undergrowth was rustling with the sounds of dozens of people, eagerly wading their way through the trees and shrubs to swarm towards Jesus. A woman carrying her baby had cuts on her arms, where tree branches had scraped them, but was nearly in tears of joy and ecstasy as she ran down the beach towards Jesus. Two sons panted as they stepped out from among the trees, the older one carrying their ailing father on his back. They smiled at one another, bumped fists, then made their way down the sand with their father between their shoulders. A familiar voice cut through the noise and excitement, as one young man shoved people out of the way to sprint down the beach. “Jesus!” yelled Peter, flailing his arms wildly to get his attention. He ran up to Jesus’ rock, gasping for air. “Phew...aah, I’m so sorry man, I really tried to stop them, but they’re relentless!”

Jesus smiled. “It’s okay,” He said. “Let them come.”

Who despises a vile person.

“You snakes!” He screamed. “You filthy thieves!” He grabbed a man by the shoulders and flung him into a table of birdcages, sending a cloud of money and doves floating up into the air. “What have you people done!” He roared, “This is my Father’s house! But you…” He towered over a quivering salesman, who was still clutching a purse of money tightly to his chest, as if it would protect him from this raving lunatic. “You have made it into a den of fucking robbers!”

But honors those who fear the Lord.

Jesus smiled, watching His friends toss food into each others’ mouths across the table. Quietly, He got up, took off His shirt, and tied a towel around His waist. He tapped Peter on the shoulder, who was trying to see if he could fit a whole apple into his mouth. “Hrnghhff?” asked Peter, who turned and saw Jesus, then immediately started choking and spitting out his food. “Jesus!” he angrily whispered, “What’re you doing, where are your clothes??”

“Your sandals, please.”

“My...what? What are you doing?”

Horrified, Peter watched as Jesus took Peter’s feet in His gentle hands, and began washing off the dirt caked between Peter’s toes, stuck to his soles, under the nails. The disciples looked on in awe and wonder.

Who keeps an oath even when it hurts, and does not change their mind.

“And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Matthew never forgot those words, as long as he lived.

Who lends money to the poor without interest.

Peter said, “Silver and gold I do not have, but what I do have I give to you.” The crowd gasped as the lame man rose to his feet. Dang, that sounded good, thought Peter. I feel like I remember Jesus saying that somewhere before.

Who does not accept a bribe against the innocent.

Jesus stood on the hill outside Jerusalem, gazing at the tiny people milling about, pondering to Himself. I might be able to help them, He thought. I could write new laws, which treat all people with perfect justice. I could reorganize their economy, so that everyone has enough to eat. We could raise a military, conquer neighboring territories little by little, and invite everyone into a great new empire. I’d be ruler over them all, a beautiful, perfect Kingdom. And it wouldn’t be so hard; all I’d have to do is just…

Jesus stopped, laughed to Himself, and said, “It is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.’ Thanks for the offer, Satan, but I think I’m good.”

Whoever does these things will never be shaken.

Drip, drip, drip. Blood plinked out a slow rhythm as it slid down the bridge of His nose, into a small puddle forming at the base of the wooden cross. Stabs of pain shot up Jesus’ feet as He pushed himself up to draw a ragged, desperate breath.

Curse him, whispered a voice in His ear. He has abandoned You, He does not care for You any longer. Why should you remain faithful to Him now?

Jesus lifted Himself for another breath, shuddering as the pain tore through His body again.

He is disgusted with You. You have made Yourself hideous in His sight. Surely His favor has departed from You. Curse Him, and worship me instead, Son of God. I can end Your suffering, all You have to do is one little thing.

Jesus said nothing, simply heaving Himself up once more for another breath. This went on for several hours more, just the tempter and Jesus, breathing, hurting, dying.

[ruminativerabbi]

Monsey

Most—but not all—of the responses to the horrific incident last week in Monsey struck me both as reasonable and heartfelt. But what was lacking even in the most sincere comments I read or heard was a clear sense of where we go from here, what specific path we must or should now follow forward into the uncertain future that lies beyond Pittsburgh and Poway, beyond Jersey City and (now) Monsey. And that is the specific issue I would like to address this week in my first letter of a new decade to you all.

Yes, some of the responses were outrageous. Particularly tone-deaf, for example, was the suggestion of Avigdor Lieberman, former Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs and Defense Minister, that the only truly viable solution to the problem of anti-Semitic violence in America would be for all American Jews to move to Israel. Problem solved! Although most Israeli officials have traditionally shied away from encouraging mass aliyah by the Jews of the United States (which advice they certainly have not held back from offering to the Jews of other nations, including most recently France and the U.K.), Lieberman clearly saw no reason to hold back. (Click here for the Jerusalem Post account of his remarks.) Apparently unaware—or at least unwilling to accept—that American Jews are patriotic, deeply engaged citizens of their own country who have zero interest in solving their problems by running away to seek refuge in some other country, even one they hold as dear to their hearts as Israel, Lieberman’s comments betrayed such an abysmal understanding of the American Jewish community that I felt ashamed for my non-Jewish co-citizens to read accounts of his remarks.

His comments, however, did not sound entirely unfamiliar: In fact, I found them weirdly reminiscent of the position set forward by those people in the first half of the nineteenth century who felt that the most reasonable solution to the slavery issue that eventually did tear the country apart would have been to pack the slaves up en masse and ship them back to Africa. But the Back-to-Africa movement, predicated on the assumption that American society could never just consider black people to be “regular” citizens possessed of the same rights and privileges as white people, foundered precisely because it sought to solve a deep societal problem by shipping it overseas instead of solving it in the only way that injustice and inequity are ever successfully addressed on the national or societal level: for like-minded citizens to find the political will, the spiritual stamina, and the moral courage to morph forward into a finer, better iteration of their former national self. It was a simplistic, unreasonable solution to the slavery issue then. And it is a simplistic, entirely unreasonable solution to the problem of anti-Semitism in America today. And because the American Jewish community isn’t going anywhere at all, the resolution has to be to address the affliction and not simply to exile the afflicted.

Other responses were more reasonable, if mostly banal. Bernie Sanders, for example, pointed out that his own father came to this county as a teenager to escape anti-Semitic violence in Poland and that Monsey, by reminding him of his father’s plight, only made it clearer to him how important it is “to say no to religious bigotry.” The President called upon his fellow Americans “to fight, confront, and eradicate the evil scourge of anti-Semitism.” Mitch McConnell referenced Monsey as “another reminder that the fight against hate and bigotry, especially anti-Semitism, is far from finished,” adding that this was true not only on the global level but also “right here at home.” Isaac Herzog, the chairman of the Jewish Agency, called for “a relentless battle” to be waged against “this horrifying and painful spate of violent anti-Semitic attacks.” Israeli President Rivlin expressed his “shock and outrage,” and called for a worldwide effort “to confront this evil, which is raising its head again and is a genuine threat around the world.”  You get the general idea: bigotry is bad in any event, but violent expressions of racial or religious bigotry represent the kind of societal evil that cannot merely be dealt with by being roundly condemned but which must be addressed by some combination of law enforcement officials, government legists, and civic-minded civilians acting together forcefully and effectively.

So much for the macro level. On the ground here in the actual Jewish community, however, I sensed a far more equivocal response as people tried to negotiate the straits between Over- and Under-Concern.

When Governor Cuomo referenced the incident as “an act of domestic terrorism,” for example, it was hard to decide if he was speaking a bit exaggeratedly about an attack that seems to have been perpetrated by a mentally unstable man acting alone or if he was realistically assessing a new reality for the Jewish community, one in which the possibility of having one’s synagogue or one’s home invaded by angry anti-Semites armed with guns or machetes truly is part of a new normal that somehow crept up on us unawares.

Nor was Governor Cuomo alone in seeing a clear line from Oklahoma City to Monsey. Bryan Barnett, the president of the U.S. Council of Mayors, also unequivocally categorized Monsey as an act of domestic terrorism and called upon the nation “to recognize them—he was referring to Monsey and Jersey City—for what they are and work to prevent them from occurring in the future with the same commitment we have made to preventing international terrorism.”

But here too, I sensed uncertainty in the communal response as Jews on the ground tried to decide if a handful of violent acts undertaken by Jew-hating crazy people has really put the clock back to 1938…or if what this is really all about is the Jewish community taking its unhappy place in the mainstream of a nation so inured to gun violence that the incident of just two days ago in in White Settlement, Texas—a violent assault incident in which a gunman with no apparent motive entered a church during Sunday services, murdered two worshipers apparently at random, and was then himself shot to death by armed parishioners—was considered a front-page story for one single day and then vanished into the back pages of the paper where it will eventually be entirely forgotten other than by people directly and personally involved. Speaking honestly, it’s not that easy to say. And yet, despite it all, just waving Monsey away as another instance of senseless violence aimed arbitrarily at victims whose specific misfortune was to be in the wrong place at the wrong time—that seems entirely inconsonant with the way the facts on the ground feel to me…and, I suspect, to most within our Jewish community.

And so we enter a new decade on the horns of several dilemmas at once. The justice system will deal with the suspect in the Monsey incident, just as it will deal with the Pittsburgh shooter as it would have dealt with the Jersey City shooters if they hadn’t been killed. But how are we, the people on the ground, to respond as these incidents become more frequent, less unimaginable, more expectable, less shocking? To beef up security at our synagogues and schools is an obvious first step. To keep our doors locked and our powder dry, ditto. But the more profound question is whether we should allow these incidents to alter our self-conception…or our sense of ourselves as free citizens of a secure, democratic state, as people whose right to assemble where and when we wish is constitutionally sacrosanct, as Americans whose right to self-identify as Jews in public and to walk securely down any city street is non-negotiable? Is it weak and self-defeating to allow the sonim to affect who we are and what we do? Or is it merely prudent, even wise, to allow these incidents to guide us forward in a way rooted in realism rather than happy fantasy? I’m not speaking about whether we should or shouldn’t hire another security guard to watch over the synagogue when we’re gathered there in large numbers for some specific reason. I’m asking something else, something far more challenging to answer honestly or, even, at all: whether the noble path forward—and the clever and proper one—should involve allowing these incidents to shape who we are and how we understand ourselves (and, yes, how we do or don’t behave in public)…or whether the correct path into the future should specifically feature us refusing to accommodate the haters by altering our behavior at all…or our self-conception.

As Bari Weiss’s very admirable recent book, How to Fight Anti-Semitism, showed unequivocally, anti-Semitism is a feature of the extreme left and right in our country; neither extreme is immune. As of now, no thoughtful Jewish American can imagine that anti-Semitism is a thing of the past, a feature of older, less tolerant times. The origins of anti-Semitism run deep in Western culture—and that too is something known to all. So the real question is whether things have changed…or whether they’ve mere clarified. And that question leads to the one stated above: do we need to rethink everything because of a handful of violent incidents or should we simply refuse to submit to the crazies and insist on carrying on as we always have—as patriotic citizens well aware of our civil rights and as secure in our skin as were our parents before us? To my way of thinking, that is the real question that the Monsey assailant inadvertently lays at our feet: can knuckling under to a new normal be reasonably described as growth…or only rationally as surrender?