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- philosophy - poetry - I slept too easily for my liking last night. Granted the repose of slumber is generally a good thing; But not when a person has watched a nightmare of humanity in the light of day. It was during a GEM2003 tutorial, which turned out to be a film screening. First was the Nazi propaganda Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will), by Leni Riefenstahl. A 1934 documentary that nevertheless is acclaimed as one of the most effective pieces of propaganda ever made, it is not difficult not to see how it could have moved its audience in those grainy days. The words were grand, the scope magnificent. It kindled the pride, that most sought of commodities in a broken nation, with the servicemen's affirmation of their identity. From the Ruhr, from the Saar, from the Black Forest they came. They drilled with shovels and stood before their flags. They smiled, playing with water like boys, as young men are often wont to do. On the streets, their mothers and sisters lined up in salute, acclaiming Hitler as Germany's Messiah. Hitler was too at his mesmeric best. Utterly at ease in front of thousands, his talent for speech was given, if not by god, then by the devil. His was an aura bequeathed by the times, but to tell the truth, without his uniform, he was just a man with a funny mustache whom, in different times, kids might pass by and greet with a cheery "Uncle". But the times are ours and no other, as Alain Resnais mourns so devastatingly in his thirty-one minutes of Night and Fog. Fair warning, do not show this to your younger siblings. Nuit et Bruillard is horror beyond popcorn fare. It burns through to the soul. It shows Man in his darkest depravity, fallen so far, so fast. It starts in the empty concentration camps a decade after their abandonment. Silent, a trifle lonely, but still much an idyllic scene. The autumn grass blows in the wind as the poppies did in Flanders, but where the latter retained some trappings of honour in combat, the former bows only in unspeakable shame. Many reviews call the film beautiful. Is it? Where do we find the art, in the concrete ceiling of the gas chambers cunningly disguised as shower houses, where victims wore their fingers to stumps in a futile attempt to escape? Perhaps some can appreciate abstract designs in the mountain of women's hair, later weaved into cloth and rolled into bales? There is admittedly balance and structure in the five naked, emaciated bodies lying neatly in a row, propped on a beam. The heads, however, are gone. They are piled, again with attention to detail, in a basket by the side. The faces peer out, as though pondering where the soap made of their flesh will be sent. We do not think much of roasted animals, and many among us have enjoyed a suckling pig, or perhaps just a chicken. So should we be so shaken when we see half-cremated bodies, just a hand and a head, the rest charred? Is there some rhythm in the movement of the naked, skeletal corpses, as they are unceremoniously shoved by a bulldozer into an open pit so they may finally be forever hidden from the sight of men? Arms of skin and bone jerk into a macabre last wave from beyond the pale, bodies once human plummet like poorly made marionettes to their final rest. Two men - survivors? soldiers? - haul one of the dead by his arms and feet, and send him in with his kith. There has for long been no muscular tension left in those withered limbs. He drops, bending like a rubber toy. Is it a dancer's grace? Even in the imagination it would be terrible. But to have it shown, as fact unvarnished by the skill of animators or makeup artists, is far, far worse. Can man do that to man? We do not accept it, but we have to. Faith may indeed just be believing what we know is not true. Mankind is a superb enigma, capable of the greatest good and the vilest evil. The post-screening discussion, suitably muted, revolved about the blame game and the reasons for the Holocaust. The details were recited, anti-Semitism explored. Milgram's experiment was brought up as expected, to which the Stanford prison experiment could have been added. But when the truly weighty philosophical questions come, it is all relative. Unfortunately, the average man has not truly changed. He will still bow to authority - physical, political, moral, religious. Every so often it all happens again. The Khmer Rouge harvested their skulls in Cambodia, the Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda, the Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East. Just recently people died for cartoons in a Danish newspaper. What madness, man? Once, I would have spent the night awake. As a toddler, I was terrified by the rag-men on display outside the National Museum. In primary school I was mortified for days by a horror manga borrowed during a badminton competition. But the price last night was perhaps an hour. Is that the measure of my empathy? Am I braver, or just more world-weary? Now I mull on a poem I penned some years ago, and fear that, even then, I was right. And what then is the meaning of the nature of life? Does it all boil down to the battle to survive? Read then and delight in the beauty of strife Feel the warm and dark stains tantalizingly invite The only law in iron clad of this world has always been thus The winner by might or otherwise is always right and just If it were meant to be another way the gods would have made it such Till now the legends of heroes still are written in bloodlust Empires great and small built and maintained by warcraft Between life and death reside the fates of those who will fight Silently, silently, watch the steel rise up and fall In crimson red, on the ground, and on the walls In arcane symbols of streaks and puddles The scales of glory continue to keep their score By the warm and dark stains spreading far and wide Next: Enthusiasm
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