This is holy week, and I was scheduled to attend a worship service last night. But I didn’t. Instead, I watched a movie. I had entertainment in mind, but it did not turn out that way.
“The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.”
That is the name of the movie we found on Prime. I knew nothing about it, but now I want to tell you about it because it is so powerfully connected to so much that is going on today.
Shmuel is an eight-year-old Jewish boy incarcerated in a death camp with his father. Day after day, he makes his way to the rock pile on the far side of the camp yard, near the barbed wire fence.
Nearby, and unknown to him, a large house becomes the temporary home for a German soldier, an officer of high rank, his wife, and two children. One child, Bruno, is an eight-year-old boy who spends his time learning from a tutor, looking for adventure, and watching the puzzling things happening around him.
One day Bruno wanders off toward what he thinks is a farm only to find himself on the flip side of that barbed-wire fence staring at Shmuel, the boy in the striped pajamas. Carefully, they connect, and then they become friends, as day after day, Bruno slips away to talk with the boy in the striped pajamas.
The German parents know nothing about this regular rendezvous until it is too late. On the day they search frantically for their boy, Bruno is dressed in a borrowed pair of striped pajamas and digging under the barbed wire fence to join Shmuel in looking for the father.
What none of them could have known is that very day was the day German authorities had set aside for the gassing of all the men—and boys—in the camp.
These three narratives—the parents’ search for Bruno, the boys’ search for the father, and the soldiers’ obedience to the command of their superiors—create a crescendo of drama and horror. Which is how the movie ends.
I sat still in my chair a long time.
It was not the movie I expected to see, not the story I wanted to watch. But it is, I admit for all of us, a narrative too connected to the religious drama of the week and also to the social dynamics all around us.
The murder of innocent people—Jews, no less—by powerful and fearful authorities is precisely what lies behind the stories in all four gospels. Jesus the Jew was crucified by religious and political bosses who irrationally feared his movement of beloved community.
But more than that, the German story of demonizing Jews is so familiar to American people, because we also have a long history of dumping all of our fears and violence on certain demographic groups.
For a period in American history, that group was also Jews, especially as they sought to flee the very thing this movie dramatizes. Before that, it was Catholics fleeing famine in Ireland and long before that it was Africans, living all around us except when we were hunting them down with dogs and stringing them up on trees. Up to this very day, Blacks in America must be twice as good, twice as smart, twice as successful to overcome the pervasive attitude of condemnation that oozes through the American soul.
In more recent years, the target of American rage has been Latinos moving North in search of the American dream. Six of them found it, in Baltimore, as hard-working road crewmen; until the cargo ship lost control and careened into the bridge in the harbor. Like the boys in the movie, their narrative ended tragically.
Before, during, and around all the migrant drama, LGBTQ people in the United States have fought to live free and love free, away from the persistent fears of ignorant people. But religious and political leaders know that their people demand a demographic to demonize. We, all of us, insist on identifying some powerless group of people that can bear the brunt of our fears and the whip of our self-righteousness.
Now, we all know, the boys in the striped pajamas are transgender. They are the ones we want to corral into barbed wire camps and stamp with the numbers of the antichrist. All in the name of God and Country, of course.
All in the name of God and Country, of course, and all promising some horrific end such as came to the two boys in the striped pajamas.
This is holy week, and I was scheduled to attend a worship service last night. But I didn’t. Instead, I watched a movie. I had entertainment in mind, but it did not turn out that way.
“The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.”
That is the name of the movie we found on Prime. I knew nothing about it, but now I want to tell you about it because it is so powerfully connected to so much that is going on today.
Shmuel is an eight-year-old Jewish boy incarcerated in a death camp with his father. Day after day, he makes his way to the rock pile on the far side of the camp yard, near the barbed wire fence.
Nearby, and unknown to him, a large house becomes the temporary home for a German soldier, an officer of high rank, his wife, and two children. One child, Bruno, is an eight-year-old boy who spends his time learning from a tutor, looking for adventure, and watching the puzzling things happening around him.
One day Bruno wanders off toward what he thinks is a farm only to find himself on the flip side of that barbed-wire fence staring at Shmuel, the boy in the striped pajamas. Carefully, they connect, and then they become friends, as day after day, Bruno slips away to talk with the boy in the striped pajamas.
The German parents know nothing about this regular rendezvous until it is too late. On the day they search frantically for their boy, Bruno is dressed in a borrowed pair of striped pajamas and digging under the barbed wire fence to join Shmuel in looking for the father.
What none of them could have known is that very day was the day German authorities had set aside for the gassing of all the men—and boys—in the camp.
These three narratives—the parents’ search for Bruno, the boys’ search for the father, and the soldiers’ obedience to the command of their superiors—create a crescendo of drama and horror. Which is how the movie ends.
I sat still in my chair a long time.
It was not the movie I expected to see, not the story I wanted to watch. But it is, I admit for all of us, a narrative too connected to the religious drama of the week and also to the social dynamics all around us.
The murder of innocent people—Jews, no less—by powerful and fearful authorities is precisely what lies behind the stories in all four gospels. Jesus the Jew was crucified by religious and political bosses who irrationally feared his movement of beloved community.
But more than that, the German story of demonizing Jews is so familiar to American people, because we also have a long history of dumping all of our fears and violence on certain demographic groups.
For a period in American history, that group was also Jews, especially as they sought to flee the very thing this movie dramatizes. Before that, it was Catholics fleeing famine in Ireland and long before that it was Africans, living all around us except when we were hunting them down with dogs and stringing them up on trees. Up to this very day, Blacks in America must be twice as good, twice as smart, twice as successful to overcome the pervasive attitude of condemnation that oozes through the American soul.
In more recent years, the target of American rage has been Latinos moving North in search of the American dream. Six of them found it, in Baltimore, as hard-working road crewmen; until the cargo ship lost control and careened into the bridge in the harbor. Like the boys in the movie, their narrative ended tragically.
Before, during, and around all the migrant drama, LGBTQ people in the United States have fought to live free and love free, away from the persistent fears of ignorant people. But religious and political leaders know that their people demand a demographic to demonize. We, all of us, insist on identifying some powerless group of people that can bear the brunt of our fears and the whip of our self-righteousness.
Now, we all know, the boys in the striped pajamas are transgender. They are the ones we want to corral into barbed wire camps and stamp with the numbers of the antichrist. All in the name of God and Country, of course.
All in the name of God and Country, of course, and all promising some horrific end such as came to the two boys in the striped pajamas.
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