Read my latest flash, Venison, at 52|250.

Watching a film about the destruction of a city, even if it focuses on survivors, is never going to be a comfortable experience, but John Rabe which I saw last night at the QFT was carefully crafted to make one uncomfortable with the sorts of simple labels that one might use to try to wrest some sense from horror. There are villains, though not everyone who is in a position to be a villain is one; the actions of Major Ose serve to discourage the sort of national or ethnic stereotyping that all too easily arise when people try to make sense of massacres and other mass acts of violence.

The nominal hero is, in the end, a hero—but it is difficult to be comfortable with his heroism. He begins as a paternalistic industrial colonialist. Having established a Siemens plant in Nanjing, he tells his replacement that “the Chinese are like children” who need to be told what to do but will obey. The Japanese military bombs Nanjing on the night of his leaving party, and he saves a number of Siemens’ Chinese employees and their families by having them shelter underneath a German flag. A Nazi flag. Seeing that symbol used for protection, seeing it as it would have been for the war refugees huddled beneath it as a sign for safety, is incredibly uncomfortable. It also becomes an emblem for the fact that John Rabe could not have been a hero if not for his wealth and the status conferred upon him by membership in a horrible party. He becomes the chair of the committee that runs the safe international zone in part because, as a loyal Nazi Party member, he is in a good position to negotiate with the Japanese. And just in case anyone can set aside how problematic that situation is, one of the other German characters is reveals that he is part Jewish right after Rabe has used a Nazi salute to get past patrolling Japanese soldiers.

In the end, however, the people of the zone are only saved when Rabe decides to stop holding himself above and separate from the Chinese people and joins those who have gathered, unarmed, to place their bodies between the Japanese soldiers and the safe zone gates. This is not a sudden decision: he has already begun the divestment process by anonymously turning his life savings over to the committee.

The film isn’t just about John Rabe, however, nor does it make the mistake of focusing only on the European characters. One of the more important supporting characters is Langshu, a young woman at the local girls’ college who acts with incredible bravery. She records the devastation around her on film and leaves the college at night to bring rice to her brother, even though the “safe zone” isn’t entirely safe. She dresses in Japanese army uniform in order to be able to bury her father even though, as her brother points out, she hated him; it is, she believes, her duty. And it is that act of bravery which, indirectly, leads her to find a new life, of which we get only a glimpse as John Rabe leaves Nanjing.

The true story on which the movie is based was only revealed a decade ago when his diaries, which he is seen writing in throughout the film, were discovered. This sort of story is important to tell because it shows that anyone—not just an “ordinary person” but even a Nazi businessman, even someone who’s a bit of an asshole—when made aware of an undeniable wrong (and Rabe tries to deny it at first) can use the resources they have to help at least some of the people that wrong affects. Anyone who thus chooses to act will be changed by it, even if that isn’t really the point.

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it wasn’t much of a horror film
since we all survived

the woman alone in the rundown house
which wasn’t all that old

turned out to be the monster
as we knew she had to be
or die & so we left her

it wasn’t much of a horror film
the kid who said mom wasn’t mom
was really just imagining
she’d gone with his dad
who didn’t die in Afghanistan
but moved to Reno anyway

it wasn’t much of a horror film
vampires the scientist
trying to cure death produced
sparkled anorexic
before a joyful mob

it wasn’t much of a horror film
the priest believed in god enough
to shred the first zombie
with a crucifix to stop
further infection

it wasn’t much of a horror film
we skipped past spindly trees downtown
at night with all the streetlights on

it wasn’t much of a horror film
our Ouija board was pink
and only summoned “poo”
we didn’t split up
were only me

---

As part of Blogathon 2009, I’m posting a poem every half hour for twenty four hours to raise funds for Friends International, an organization that helps street children in Southeast Asia and beyond. Please sign up to sponsor me or donate directly. Everyone who sponsors me will receive a copy of the revised poems as a chapbook if they email their snail mail address to ekswitaj[at]gmail[dot]com. Cheers!

Over the past two weeks, I’ve been showing Little Miss Sunshine to my film classes.  As part of the discussion, I divided my class into six groups and had each prepare a short presentation about one of the members of the Hoover family.  In my second class of the day today, the group assigned to discuss Sheryl, the mother, said that they thought she was a bad mother because she always brought takeout home for dinner instead of cooking.  When I asked if they understood why she did that, they readily stated that it was because she was busy working, and they also acknowledged that the family needed her income.  When I asked whether it was then fair to blame the mother and not the father, I was met by a lot of silence followed by a couple statements about how men can’t cook.

Now, the vast majority of my students are female; to the best of my knowledge, this is fairly typical of English departments in China.  All of them intend to have careers and probably would have to even if they didn’t want to given the economics of this region.  I worry about the kind of life they’re being set up for with such beliefs.  Even in places where most young college women would at least theoretically recognize the basic unfairness, there’s a gender imbalance when it comes to housework.

One of the things that continues to strike me as I teach movie classes this term is how much more sensitive my students here are than students in the US would be to the emotional impact of events on screen.  We’ve been watching Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, which is beautiful even if it’s difficult to understand the characters’ actions without the benefit of the book’s depth, and I found today that several of the girls were actually crying during the war scenes.  This was after I provided a warning– and gave them permission to close their eyes if they needed to– because I did expect it to have a strong effect on them based on their reactions to other films.  I even considered fast forwarding through these parts but decided that the importance of the characters’ actions during these scenes outweighed any potential for emotional upset.

Of course, their increased sensitivity works both ways.  Lovers finally getting together are usually accompanied by loud happy sighs.

Some of this difference may stem simply from an absence of stigmatization of showing strong feelings because of a movie rather than from an actually heightened sensitivity.  Or perhaps the absence of that stigmatization in and of itself enables an increased sensitivity as they’re not forced to struggle not to feel (and since the act of expressing an emotion creates feedback to tell the mind that it feels said emotion).  On the other hand, all this could come down to comparatively limited media exposure which reduces the personal necessity of numbing oneself to its effects.