| RATING: | 100% |
| FORMAT: | DVD |
white trash live among us
Compelling drama about institutional racism that makes clear the extreme difficulty for members of any racist society to fight the racism benefiting them. This explains the unwillingness to become part of any cultural resistance - then as now. Guilt and shame run through this lengthy drama as it explores the willful political myopia, ethical complacency and moral complicity that compares it favorably with Gentleman's Agreement. The characterization is well done and we come to understand the empathic failings of all concerned, on all sides of the argument.
The central problem of how to put all Germans on trial after a genocidal war is answered in the movie as in real life. It is only possible to try the ringleaders and the fanatics. The vast majority of fellow travelers are to be left alone simply because it is impractical to do anything else. This renders those executing justice to be as complicit in the activity they try as those they try.
As with White supremacist cultures today, those against White supremacy have the problem that they all benefit from the activity they claim to be against. The life- and reality-denying solidarity of the Whites here - even at the cost of ethical compromise - is well shown and strongly suggests that most Nazis got away scot free. As with White supremacists in all ages, the frequently-repeated claim that ordinary German citizens were unaware of what was really happening to those being persecuted (Jews here) is as laughable now as it was then; as the White denial of endemic racism is as much to blame now as it was then. The hypocrisy of so called victors' justice is also exposed when many Western countries explored the idea of sterilizing the educationally sub-normal and anti-miscegenation laws as assiduously as the Nazis.
An interesting film about the classic effects of White culture’s institutional racism: Guilt, avoidance-of-responsibility, denial, etc, that has much to say to the same effects concerning the same racism today.
It takes its own good time to reach a powerful and satisfying climax, but does not deal with political expediency well; the latter determined to push the truth away and evade the past.
It is difficult to untangle oneself from a culture that has both legalized racism and valorized it in everyday social practice. To try and step outside of the racism from which Whites benefit - while denying that that racism exists - leads to self-contradiction. To pretend that such unearned privilege does not exist - while benefiting from it - leads to hypocrisy. To fight such a system is to put oneself beyond any possible benefits - avoiding guilt &shame - but putting one’s own life at risk. The guilt-ridden White denial of such an endemic state-of-affairs is essentially what this movie is about. Considering the distressing material on show here it is hardly surprising that anyone would wish to deny the overwhelming historical evidence
Similar problems arise when trying to condemn such a culture, since those doing the condemning can also be shown to have benefited from such a White supremacist system. This is why Germany could never be truly denazified - without killing all the Germans - and why modern Western culture can never fully move on from similar problems today. As the Germans blamed the Jews for their economic problems, the victors of the Second World War blamed the Germans for Nazism, not their own pre-war complicity with it.
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