Lawrence Rubin, psychologist and counseling professor, is co-author with psychiatrist Mike Brody of Messages: Self Help Through Popular Culture. See full bio
Who can ever forget the image of the little girl in red in Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List, that precious vital flicker of hope that was brutally and instantly extinguished by the Nazi murder machine in one of the most jarring of all Holocaust films? Or the magnificent bravery of Roberto Benigni in La Vita e Bella (Life is Beautiful), who marched in mocking goosestep to his death, so that his tiny son would never know the true horrific nature of the forces that took his father from him? And what about the the poignant relationship between Bruno, the young son of a concentration camp commandant and Shmuel, a Jewish concentration camp prisoner, that culminated in the boys locking hands as Zyklon gas rained down on them in The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas?
These are just a few of the movies of the Holocaust that have driven us weeping to our knees. And there are so many other depictions of that dark era that have moved us from pain (Shoah, The Diary of Anne Frank, Judgement at Nuremburg), to anger (The Boys from Brazil, Marathon Man) to laughter (The Producers, the Great Dictator) and to hope (Exodus, Paper Clips). We flock to movies such as these for reasons that are perhaps too numerous to mention.
Psychology has no doubt offered important wisdom for understanding the reasons for and effects of the Holocaust. At my university, I have reflected on the potentialities, both good and bad, of the human personality, group-think, obedience and identification with the aggressor in the context of my 'Loss and Healing' classes, and have taken students, both undergraduate and graduate, to the Holocaust memorial in Miami Beach, Florida.
But perhaps it was the philosopher Aristotle who was most enlightening when, in his Poetics, he described the core elements and appeal of dramatic tragedy. He specualted that people are driven to watch tragedy on stage in order to purge feelings of pity and fear that life (and its dramatic stage depiction) elicits; but also because through this purging or 'katharsis' as he called it, we derive a certain pleasure from the collective relief we experience as we depart the theater and say "I am so glad it was not me.
Holocaust movies, as painful as they can be, and perhaps as financially motivated and emotionally exploitative as they sometimes seem to be, are what popular culture is all about. They are about our ability to translate our deepest shame, horror, evil and inhumanity into these magnificent memorials and testimonials to our deepest and most profound courage, strength, resilience and humanity.
This particular posting was motivated by watching Paper Clips and The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas with my wife and eleven year old daughter, whose questions about evil and inhumanity were as profound as the messages in the movies. It also corresponds to our annual pilgrimage to the mountains of North Carolina, where in the quaint college town of Boone, Appalachian State University sponsors its annual Holocaust Remembrance events. This year will also be the first that our friend, and Holocaust survivor Morris Rosenblat is no longer with us. It is, for us, as it remains for many around the world, a time for remembrance of all of the worst and all of the best that is around and within us.
And to a degree, we have popular culture to thank for it. We have ourselves to thank for it.
Or the magnificent bravery of Roberto Benigni in La Vita e Bella (Life is Beautiful), who marched in mocking goosestep to his death, so that his tiny son would never know the true horrific nature of the forces that took his father from him? And what about the the poignant relationship between Bruno, the young son of a concentration camp commandant and Shmuel, a Jewish concentration camp prisoner, that culminated in the boys locking hands as Zyklon gas rained down on them in The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas?
