Obstructionism
Jun. 1st, 2020 11:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jkatkinaSo, holy shit, The Sound of Music is very strange to re-watch right now.
I learned that TL had never seen it, and I remembered it being a lovely movie with a generally good message, although rooted in the times particularly with some of its treatments of women and romance. I wasn't wrong -- it's still a gorgeous movie and I love the music.
But almost right from the beginning, it's a movie about fascism and resisting it, and the ways people, particularly people of privilege, cope with the creep of fascism.
You've got the Baroness and the Uncle, who lean into appeasement. We see little of the Baroness by the third act, but at least the Uncle makes a motion at the end to help the Von Trapps, though he makes it dead clear he'd never put his neck out like that for someone else. (I got a "gay best friend" vibe from him re: the Baroness, though, so I wonder if he wasn't written as a character who's so deep in fear he can't see a way to both keep himself safe and to help. It makes him more understandable, more tragic, but not more forgivable for the appeasements he suggests.)
You've got the Captain, who, for reasons of patriotism, rejects everything about the nazi encroachment on Austria. He is a person of fantastic privilege, being rich, well-respected, straight, white, and of a military background, so up until the very end he has the freedom to do so. He's presented as the most straightforwardly moral character in that regard -- at least in regards to fascism, we'll leave his child-rearing techniques on the side for now. Of course; he's the hero, we're supposed to like him.
(I find it strange we hear very little from Maria about the nazis in the movie. I wish we heard more.)
And then we've got Rolf, the young man Liesl, the eldest Von Trapp girl, was in love with.
He's a tragedy. I think, being so much closer to the events of Nazi Germany at the time, people well understood the shorthand of the indoctrinated young man, and what that ultimately lead to. This is very much a thing now in white supremacist social circles; they look for impressionable young men, disillusioned young men, appeal to their pride and their fear and their society-instilled desire to dominate. This is agonizingly well-documented, and the truth is often very much like what happens in the movie: by the end, the very human young man we saw at the beginning is gone. He's given himself to the rhetoric and every appeal to his humanity is rejected. Rolf didn't let the Von Trapps go because of his love for Liesl or because the Captain was offering him an out. He let them go because he wasn't ready to kill, and the Captain walking at him with that look on his face frightened him. It was a mistake, to him, that he rectified as soon as he had an instant. The boy who danced with Liesl was gone, willingly, into an ideology of hatred.
I find it so interesting that the only effective resistance in the movie was obstructionism. There was no shootout, or heroic speech that changed hearts and minds: instead, there were nuns walking slowly to open doors and stealing carburators, there were announcers at a festival vamping just a little longer than they needed to. There was one man of extreme privilege, singing a song he knew would rouse a nationalistic response, on a stage because he knew they'd wait till they were in private to shoot him for it.
I know it was based on a true story, and I admit to being unfamiliar with the story of the actual Von Trapp family, but watching it now -- it read like a playbook of how to use your privilege, when the wolves are already in the fold, when nothing else is left.
When you are not the one directly in the crosshairs, it is imperative that you help the person next to you who is.
When the crosshairs then turn on you, you hope to god that the next person down the line helps you in turn.
I learned that TL had never seen it, and I remembered it being a lovely movie with a generally good message, although rooted in the times particularly with some of its treatments of women and romance. I wasn't wrong -- it's still a gorgeous movie and I love the music.
But almost right from the beginning, it's a movie about fascism and resisting it, and the ways people, particularly people of privilege, cope with the creep of fascism.
You've got the Baroness and the Uncle, who lean into appeasement. We see little of the Baroness by the third act, but at least the Uncle makes a motion at the end to help the Von Trapps, though he makes it dead clear he'd never put his neck out like that for someone else. (I got a "gay best friend" vibe from him re: the Baroness, though, so I wonder if he wasn't written as a character who's so deep in fear he can't see a way to both keep himself safe and to help. It makes him more understandable, more tragic, but not more forgivable for the appeasements he suggests.)
You've got the Captain, who, for reasons of patriotism, rejects everything about the nazi encroachment on Austria. He is a person of fantastic privilege, being rich, well-respected, straight, white, and of a military background, so up until the very end he has the freedom to do so. He's presented as the most straightforwardly moral character in that regard -- at least in regards to fascism, we'll leave his child-rearing techniques on the side for now. Of course; he's the hero, we're supposed to like him.
(I find it strange we hear very little from Maria about the nazis in the movie. I wish we heard more.)
And then we've got Rolf, the young man Liesl, the eldest Von Trapp girl, was in love with.
He's a tragedy. I think, being so much closer to the events of Nazi Germany at the time, people well understood the shorthand of the indoctrinated young man, and what that ultimately lead to. This is very much a thing now in white supremacist social circles; they look for impressionable young men, disillusioned young men, appeal to their pride and their fear and their society-instilled desire to dominate. This is agonizingly well-documented, and the truth is often very much like what happens in the movie: by the end, the very human young man we saw at the beginning is gone. He's given himself to the rhetoric and every appeal to his humanity is rejected. Rolf didn't let the Von Trapps go because of his love for Liesl or because the Captain was offering him an out. He let them go because he wasn't ready to kill, and the Captain walking at him with that look on his face frightened him. It was a mistake, to him, that he rectified as soon as he had an instant. The boy who danced with Liesl was gone, willingly, into an ideology of hatred.
I find it so interesting that the only effective resistance in the movie was obstructionism. There was no shootout, or heroic speech that changed hearts and minds: instead, there were nuns walking slowly to open doors and stealing carburators, there were announcers at a festival vamping just a little longer than they needed to. There was one man of extreme privilege, singing a song he knew would rouse a nationalistic response, on a stage because he knew they'd wait till they were in private to shoot him for it.
I know it was based on a true story, and I admit to being unfamiliar with the story of the actual Von Trapp family, but watching it now -- it read like a playbook of how to use your privilege, when the wolves are already in the fold, when nothing else is left.
When you are not the one directly in the crosshairs, it is imperative that you help the person next to you who is.
When the crosshairs then turn on you, you hope to god that the next person down the line helps you in turn.
no subject
Date: 2020-06-02 05:44 pm (UTC)