Just reflecting on the film Inglourious Basterds, which I bought on DVD last week and just viewed for the first time since I saw it in theatres. I am a little disgusted with myself, mainly because I cheered the murder of Nazi basterds a bit too voraciously. I am the son of a Roumanian Holocaust survivor, so I suppose a bit of glee is to be expected. My late mother Mina Eisenthal (maiden name, as well) suffered a lot at the hands of the Nazi-supported thugs of the Antonescu regime and, yeah, I really hate the people who made her endure that hell on Earth.
But to be watching a movie and truly HATING characters portrayed by actors on a screen... to the point where the anger flowing through my veins was so palpable I wished I had a group of Nazis at my disposal so that I could bash their heads in? Not something I was proud to be experiencing at that moment. Yes, we are human and these emotions are very human, otherwise we'd not be given the capacity to feel them. Still, what does this say for our moral characters, for our sense of Godliness, or for our capacity to realize peace on Earth... when a mere movie can trigger such anger?
I wonder if Quentin Tarantino had any life experiences that caused HIM to feel such emotions as he shot the film. I am actually in contact with his mom vis email, but I doubt she would know... she and he are not on very close terms and she hadn't even seen the film yet when last we wrote one another three weeks ago.
In any event, food for serious thought. And a warning to neo-Nazis and general Jew haters: we, too, are capable of animalistic actions, as are you. Even the more moral or peace-seeking of us can go off like lethal missiles when our animal side kicks in, when we feel we are being assaulted or are cornered like the badger I cornered in my rural Ottawa office many years ago. Long story... but the badger fought like hell and got past the much bigger me, because his will to survive made him a vicious beast. And he had not even seen Inglourious Basterds yet.
God help us all, filmmakers and normal folk alike.
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