We are Conditioned to Only Gasp When Bad Things Happen to White People
Yesterday eve I tried to watch The Lives of Others, an acclaimed 2006 German film. The result is before you: a stream of consciousness about historical memory, the changing times, and white supremacy
Do you remember 2006? Or should I say, given our current, constant state of near-shock: do you even believe there ever was a 2006? Do you remember how sunny, full, and proper it was?
I remember 2006 quite vividly because 2006 and 2007 were arguably the best years of my life (and I say ‘arguably’ as I’m not sure the best years of my life happened yet). I was living in Haifa at the time: the city of my heart and memories, of most gorgeous views and beautiful forlorn sadness, where you can see, smell, hear, taste, and touch, the history of a once bustling Palestinian center of commerce, culture, and life.
Heartbreaking and beautiful, Haifa is beautifully heartbreaking and heartbreakingly beautiful.
It is also where my parents grew up in what can be described as dignified poverty, and where my Moroccan grandparents lived for some years when they came to Israel. Joyful extended family gatherings were held there, and they were full of life and laughter, which left precious early childhood memories.
I was studying at the English department of Haifa University at the time: it was the last year of my B.A. studies (I started doing an M.A. in 2007 but quit after a few weeks: I had to leave Haifa, it was getting too small for my appetites and aspirations).
I was fresh out of a beautiful and rewarding romantic relationship, and I was to embark on another one, and then another one. They were wonderful, each in its, and her, unique way. I was so romantic in my Haifa days.
Being a restless type, I always had to move on, always knowing what I didn’t want better than what I did (or dared to admit to myself back then).
I had a nice job at a local hi-tech company (a technical writer, Jesus), and a fantastic apartment in a nice bourgeois location that reflected my political cluelessness at the time: one of my neighbors was an old former commander of the IDF Navy.
And, last but not least, my two younger brothers were alive: Assaf didn’t have yet his major psychiatric breakdown that would shape his life till his death in August of 2021, and Gideon had 3 more years to live before the motorcycle accident that ended his life on the spot in July of 2009, on a Saturday morning.
Do you remember 2006? I look at it as if through a veil: the genocide brutally cut life in the middle; the flow of the material, or energy, of life, has been rudely disrupted, tempered with, and contemplated.
In retrospect, everything gets a different, harsher, almost merciless meaning. The grace that was now seems almost out of reach.
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Flash forward 18 years and a totally different, yet very same Alon, was looking for a film to watch to keep my mind off the genocide for a bit (I don’t like movies, but I love films). If you’re reading this newsletter you’re probably familiar with this dilemma: you feel like you need a diversion for a minute, but getting entertained fills you with guilt.
So, as a way out, I chose a serious film, and a political one at that. As soon as I recollected its existence, I was curious to know how I was going to experience watching this film again, now, in light of Germany’s shameful and disgusting conduct during the genocide.
If you don’t know this movie, it’s about the life of a Stasi officer and the sadistic (and gradually enamored) games he plays with German citizens of East Germany. The director, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, is a master of shining a loving father’s light on Germany’s historic sins; he does it not in a cheap and evasive way, but in a mature, grand, philosophical manner, which is beautifully humane.
Von Donnersmarck’s 2018 film Never Look Away is one of the best films I have ever seen: a powerful, extremely well-put-together, amazingly inspired masterpiece.
I don’t think I will be able to watch it again.
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Almost as soon as The Lives of Others started playing, I became resentful and angry. I knew why: the excessive focus and place the film gives (being great cinema) to every facial expression, every mental process, every ripening of every acknowledgment in its lead characters felt like an insult. The attention bestowed upon those fictional characters, symbolizing a problematic chapter in German history angered me so much.
Knowing that we’d never get to see the faces of even 1/10 of the people massacred in this genocide, this political realization made it so hard for me to enjoy a film despite all its artistic excellence.
This twisted economy of attention, by no means the director’s fault -made the film almost impossible to watch for me.
And I started thinking - as I get fully political in a millisecond these days - where are all the films where black and brown people are presented in the same ‘hold your breath‘ kind of sustained intensity (think Oskar Schindler)? Where and when have we ever got a chance to look at black and brown people - especially non-Americans - as full, legitimate, important beings, personally and politically?
There are a trillion movies about the Holocaust, all designed to achieve that gasp I’m referring to in the title; but what about slavery or the mass murder and destruction of the native tribes of the American continent? Why aren’t those historic horrors getting that kind of reverential treatment? Why aren’t the people who committed those heinous crimes ever presented like the devils they were?
Do you see my meaning? We only get to see white characters and white histories as important, as inferred from the cinematic resources invested in them; we only get to see white characters having moral dilemmas and deep psychologies, even as villains. But black and brown people, Muslims, other people - they are never humanized this way. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is white supremacy par excellence.
The attribution of full emotional range and deservability of a camera’s, scriptwriter’s, and director’s attention to only one group of people is a straightforward translation of white racial supremacy theories into the language of cinema. And no, it cannot be solved by silly and annoying tokenism. A supremacist culture cannot create egalitarian art.
We are only conditioned to gasp when bad things happen to white people. This cultural and cinematic truth became unbearable to me when watching a film about political oppression and censorship against the backdrop of a major historical catastrophe happening to the kind of people films are never made about (at least not in the West).
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The Lives of Others is such a perfect title for a film that symbolizes perfectly, without knowing it, much bigger civilizational conflicts that it set out to capture.
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I also knew in my heart, watching The Lives of Others, that a similar elaborate, patient, grand film would never be made in Germany about its complicity in the genocide of Palestinians (I won’t even mention Israel or the US).
In 2006, and for some years after that, I was still very naive politically, and I refused to recognize how crucial race and class were in every aspect of life, everywhere. Now I am so woke I cannot stomach anything I see as dismissive of non-white people and their humanity, or over-focused, or over-glorifying, of whiteness. The genocide ended every illusion I still had about Western culture.
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Bonus Track
A few days ago I watched a documentary about The Beach Boys. I used to like their early music some decades ago, and I thought ‘ok, what the hack’. I was so amused and horrified to see how their story, too, was pure fiction: they weren’t fun-loving, carefree beach boys. They were white super nerdy kids with an abusive father, and they remained barely communicative and unsure of their identity throughout their careers and lives.
I’ve written about this (in my Colonizer Psyche series of posts) and I’m going to write about this a lot more in the book I’m working on, but colonizer cultures have such an identity crisis it’s unbelievable. As opposed to indigenous and native people around the world, who are just the descendants of their forefathers, colonizers can’t even tell who they are in a natural, unintellectualized way. They have to always make up stories about themselves and what they represent - like The Beach Boys’ fake image.
This lack of natural confidence and reassurance must be part of the reason why white supremacy runs so deep in colonizer cultures: portraying other people as worthy and whole may mean a disaster for the colonizer, not only because of what they’ve done but because of who the hell are they? For the colonial West, this question is just too explosive and too scary. They’d rather destroy the lives of others.
Marhaba ya Alon, or should I say kulshi labes? I was a peace corps volunteer in Morocco from 1979-1982. Two years teaching English in a public high school in Taza and one year helping with a textbook project in Rabat. Stunningly beautiful countryside; kind and generous people. climate change and severe drought are destroying huge regions.
The 1619 Project: A New Original Story by Nikole Hannah-Jones has some very important perspectives on white supremacy in the USA, including the history of Native American/African American relations in the 1700’s and 1800’s.
Also very interesting is what happened to the author at UNC Chapel Hill. She is now tenured at Howard University in DC.
This book is must read on slavery and race relations in the USA for 400 years. It blew my mind and I majored in history in college.