A Tortured Logic

The Purple Heart
The Hill
The Crucible

A discussion of “enhanced interrogation techniques” – a euphemistic expression that essentially means torture – has taken center stage in the current political theater in the United States. It is said by some who fear another terrorist attack on the scale of September 11, 2001, that this is a useful tool that will help prevent such an event from happening again. However, I have my doubts about its effectiveness – doubts that are based on history that includes testimony before a U.S. Senate committee on May 13, 2009, by FBI interrogator Ali Soufan, who said he extracted crucial information from a captured al Qaeda operative without the use of torture. Soufan also testified that when CIA contractors began using the enhanced interrogation techniques against the terrorist, the prisoner "shut down" and refused to provide more information. I will point out similar refusals to cooperate in the movies examined in this posting.

Additionally, while I also have serious doubts about the legality of its usage, I have no doubt that it diminishes our moral standing as a nation and as human beings – and that it is an act of fear-based cowardice that makes a mockery of the line in our national anthem that declares the United States to be “the home of the brave.”

In a movie that I watched over and over again as a child, The Purple Heart (released in 1944 in black and white) tells the story of eight captured American airmen who are placed on trial – before an international group of journalists – in a Japanese civilian court. They are accused of killing civilians and targeting nonmilitary sites with their bombs. The Americans deny the charges and one of them, Lt. Wayne Greenbaum, challenges the validity of the trial, claiming that according to the Geneva Conventions civil courts cannot try military personnel in a time of war. The challenge is ignored and the court is shown film footage of destruction allegedly caused by the raid. One of the journalists, however, recognizes the film as a depiction of air raid drills made by the Japanese.

The trial, we come to learn, has another purpose – to determine exactly where the U.S. planes began their bombing run. The Japanese army general believes the bombers came from American aircraft carriers and blames the Japanese navy for not adequately protecting Japan from the U.S. ships. The Japanese admiral, however, claims that their enemy doesn’t have carriers large enough to launch the bombers.

When it becomes obvious that the airmen are not going to cooperate with their inquisitors, the Americans are then introduced to Japan’s version of enhanced interrogation techniques. Sgt. Jan Skvoznik is the first to be tortured. After a night separated from the cell where his fellow captives are kept, he is left in an extremely mentally challenged state. Others tortured include Lt. Angelo Canelli, who had his arm broken; Lt. Peter Vincent, who is returned to the cell on a stretcher; Sgt. Howard Clinton, who loses his ability to talk; and Lt. Kenneth Bayforth, whose hands are crushed.

But the trial continues and the speechless Clinton is called on to testify. Clinton writes a defiant note that Greenbaum reads to the court. The Japanese judge then offers to dismiss the charges against the airmen send them to a prisoner of war camp if they cooperate. Implicit in that offer, as I saw it, is that a failure to cooperate would lead to their deaths. Capt. Harvey Ross, the crew’s commanding officer, asks the judge if they can have some time to discuss the offer. The men then go into the judge’s chambers and decide to vote on it by placing their insignia wings in a small-mouthed vase. If even just one set of wings is broken, they will accept the offer.

When they return to the courtroom, Ross hands the judge the vase and explains that their answer is in the vase. One by one, the judge shakes the wings out of the vase – and none of them are broken. This answer leads the Japanese general to shoot himself in the courtroom. As the prisoners are lead out, they hold their heads high, proud of their refusal to talk in spite of the torture inflicted upon them and the death that awaits them.

The Hill (1965, b&w) is a movie I just discovered within the past year. It also takes place during World War II, but the torturers and the tortured are members of the same army. The story takes place in a British military prison in North Africa that is run by an extremely tough Master Sgt. Bert Wilson and his sadistic second-in-command, Staff Sgt. Charlie Harris. Although the camp commandant and medical officer technically outrank Wilson, they are both weak-kneed officers who allow the master sergeant full control of the camp’s operations.

The primary form of punishment for prisoners who misbehave – meaning doing anything that offends the apparently fragile sensibilities of the prison staff – is a run, in full military gear, over the hill. The hill is a prisoner-made elevation in the middle of the compound composed of sand and stone. As near as I could estimate, the hill is at least 30 feet high with an angle that looked to be at least forty-five degrees.

As the movie begins, five new prisoners – Joe Roberts, a former warrant officer who struck a superior officer; Jacko King, a Jamaican who stole booze from the officer’s mess; George Stevens, who went AWOL when his wife died; Jock McGrath, who is tall and muscular; and Monty Bartlett, who is short, fat and whiny – are indoctrinated into the ways in which the camp is run. While they are all given physicals to verify that they are fit for punishment – physicals that are nothing more than a quick strip in front of the medical officer – Harris lets Roberts know that he can expect special attention. Then, the five new prisoners are made to go over the hill six times and then taken to the cell they will all share.

Aside from the excursions on the hill, other means of discipline include having the prisoners “walk” in quick step (double time in American parlance) everywhere they go, even to mess and then back to their cells while carrying their meals; having their bunks constantly overturned by the staff sergeants; and having the light in the cells turned off and on repeatedly during the night.

As the movie progresses, Harris notices that Stevens is the weakest of the lot and continually makes him run up and down the hill. The exhaustion gets to Stevens and keeps him from sleeping. One night, Bartlett takes advantage of Stevens by barking orders to his off-his-rocker cellmate. While the rest of the cellmates laugh at Stevens’ manic obedience to Bartlett’s teasing, Stevens drops dead. The cellmates, led by Roberts, blame Stevens’ condition and death on Harris’s treatment. Initially, the only person to back Roberts is King, who has also been receiving “special treatment” because of his race. Eventually all the prisoners in the cellblock join in a vocal protest of Stevens’ death.

After Wilson quells the uprising, Harris challenges Roberts to a man-to-man fight to settle their grievances. But Harris brings two other guards with him and when Roberts is returned to his cell, he has a broken foot. Staff Sgt. Williams, who has been warning Wilson during the entire movie about Harris’ behavior, takes Roberts to the medical officer. In the presence of both Wilson and Harris, the medical officer decides to place Roberts on the unfit for duty list. Harris threatens the medical officer by saying that it was the MO who said Stevens was fit for punishment. But the MO stands his ground, and after Wilson leaves the cell exasperated and aware that his fiefdom is about to crumble, Harris goes to beat up the injured Roberts. But King, who protests his treatment and the racist insults that have been hurled at him by quitting the British army and then stripping down to his underpants, and McGrath step between Harris and Roberts and begin to beat the staff sergeant while Roberts pleads for them to stop.

The Crucible (1996, color) was one of the plays I truly enjoyed studying when I was in high school. Written by Arthur Miller during the 1950s as an allegory for Sen. Joe McCarthy’s “witch hunt” that was carried on by the House Un-American Activities Committee, it is a story about the witch trials that took place at the end of the 1600s in the Puritan town of Salem, Mass.

The trouble begins when a group of girls are caught dancing in the woods with a black slave girl named Tituba. One of the girls found reveling in the “unholy” activity in Betty Parris, the daughter of the Puritan pastor, Reverend Parris, who had witnessed the “profane” behavior. The leader of the girls is Rev. Parris’ niece and ward, Abigail. When the girls return home, Betty, who is well aware of the community’s superstitions, pretends to fall into a trance and acts as though she is possessed. As news of the event spreads, the town sends for Reverend Hale, who is an “expert” on witchcraft. Tituba, who is blamed for the “blasphemous” behavior, eventually admits to being in league with the devil.

Meanwhile, Abigail decides to take advantage of the situation. A farmer named John Proctor, who has been having an affair with Abigail and is upset by the hornets’ nest the girls have stirred up, tries to get her to convince the girls to stop their lying. But Abigail, who would like to get rid of Proctor’s wife, decides to let it be known that Elizabeth Proctor is a witch. Additionally, it strikes certain members of the town that declaring their neighbors to also be in league with the devil it could improve their economic circumstances.

Now, things begin to get completely out of hand. Proctor convinces Mary, one of the girls involved in the original incident, to tell the court that the other girls are pretending. But when confronted by the court, the other girls go into their demonic-possession act and claim that Mary is bewitching them. The court also begins questioning the other alleged witches and their families, urging them to confess their sins. When the innocent neighbors deny the charges, torture ensues. In what is my favorite part of the story, Giles Corey is brought before the court to provide evidence that his wife is a witch. When he refuses, he is placed on his back in a prone position while heavy stones are put on his chest. As the court demands that he bear witness against his wife, Giles replies, “More weight.”

John Proctor is also charged as being a witch. The court convinces Elizabeth to get him to confess, and he agrees to in order to save his life. But then the court demands that he implicate the other alleged witches. This he cannot do and in the end, all the suspected witches are hung.

It is interesting to note that in all these films that those who were tortured failed to provide their torturers the answers and satisfaction that were expected. The tortured preferred to die rather than give in. This should tell us something about the effectiveness of these techniques.

Also in the first two films – stories that dealt with torture during times of conflict – torturers ended up dead themselves. In The Purple Heart, the Japanese general, disgraced by his inability to break the American airmen, commits suicide. In The Hill, the tortured prisoners took out their anger about their treatment on their torturer, presumably beating him to death. This should tell us something about how well torture “protects” those who use it.

But three more points need to be made about this debate – points that I will explain with historical facts. First a legal one. In 1901, according to an ABC News report on November 19, 2009, an American Army major was sentenced to ten years of hard labor after being tried for waterboarding an insurgent during the Spanish American War. Additionally, in 1983 a Texas sheriff and three deputies were convicted and sent to prison for four years for waterboarding a prisoner. These incidents show that the United States has considered waterboarding to be an illegal interrogation technique and a prosecutable offense for more than a hundred years.

Now, the moral point. Many of our fellow Americans who support the torture techniques such as waterboarding profess to be Christians. Yet, as television commentator Keith Olbermann pointed out recently, they ignore the fact that the primary symbol of Christianity is the Crucifix, which depicts the son of God being tortured to death. And why was he crucified? Because he wouldn’t give in to the demands of those who wanted him to denounce his faith. When we use waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques we are not serving God, we are insulting God. And remember, the tortured Christ wound up being the founder of the largest religion on our planet. Should we risk elevating those who would do us harm to the level of the Christ. I would hope not.

Finally, the political point. Another American officer, this one an army general, was court-martialed for allowing waterboarding by those under his command during the Spanish American War, according to a Politico article by amateur historian Daniel A. Rezneck, who is a former president of the District of Columbia’s bar association. Although the general was cleared of the allegations, Republican President Theodore Roosevelt ordered the general dismissed from the army. Said Roosevelt at the time: “Great as the provocation has been in dealing with foes who habitually resort to treachery, murder and torture against our men, nothing can justify or will be held to justify the use of torture or inhuman conduct of any kind on the part of the American Army.” Rezneck goes on to say that according to Roosevelt biographer Edmund Morris, the president’s “decision ‘won universal praise’ from Democrats, who congratulated him for acknowledging cruelty in the Philippine campaign, and from Republicans, who said that he had ‘upheld the national honor.’ ”

The Power of the (Written) Press

Deadline USA
All the President’s Men
The Soloist

As you may know from my previous postings, I’ve spent most of my working life as a print journalist – reporting, copy editing and designing pages for newspapers and magazines. Although I have loved reading newspapers since I was a kid, I wound up in journalism kind of by accident: I thought I wanted to be a politician but discovered that journalism was a better fit. In my estimation, a feeling that goes back to my childhood, journalism is among the noblest of professions – ranking up there with the practice of medicine, classroom education, firefighters and police officers. I should add a caveat to that last statement: If doctors, educators, firefighters, police officers, journalists or any other public servants place more importance on accumulating wealth and/or power than on selflessly serving their communities, then they are tarnishing both their professions and their personal integrity.

The three movies to be discussed in this posting – Deadline USA (released in 1952 in black and white), All the President’s Men (1976, color) and The Soloist (2009, color) – provide excellent examples of why I hold print journalism in such high regard.

In a personally uncomfortable similarity to both the loss of my previous job as an editor at The Miami Herald and the demise of newspapers across the country over the past decade, Deadline USA is the story of The Day and its crusade to expose a vicious criminal enterprise in the closing days of the newspaper’s existence. The Day is run by managing editor Ed Hutcheson and owned by Margaret Garrison, who doesn’t want to sell the paper, and her two daughters, who are the majority shareholders and want the money being offered by the owner of The Day’s rival, Lawrence White, who plans on shutting down the well-respected newspaper. But Ed’s fight to keep The Day alive is just one of his battles.

The movie begins with leader of the criminal enterprise, Tomas Rienzi, testifying before a state Senate committee, and the discovery of a dead woman floating in the river wearing nothing but a fur coat. While Ed focuses on the Rienzi hearings, sending a reporter to look into the crime tsar’s business, he refuses to run a picture of the dead woman because he considers it the kind of prurient sensationalism that is used by profit-hungry tabloids like the one owned by White. After the reporter is roughed up by Rienzi’s goons, Ed kicks the investigation into high gear. He learns that the woman found in the water was Rienzi’s mistress and that she had a brother who is a boxer managed by Rienzi’s organization. Ed sends one of his sports reporters to find the boxer and bring him into the office. After obtaining Ed’s promise to protect him from Rienzi, the boxer tells the managing editor about a large sum of money Rienzi had given his sister, who spent part of it before hiding the rest. Then while Ed is at court trying to fight the sale of the newspaper, two police officers go to The Day to arrest the boxer. But the police officers are really Rienzi’s men and the boxer dies as he tries to escape while leaving the newspaper building.

But although Ed can’t stop the sale of the newspaper, all is not lost as far as the crusade against Rienzi is concerned. The mother of the dead woman and the boxer, who expressed great respect for the integrity of The Day, goes to the newspaper with her daughter’s diary and the rest of Rienzi’s ill-gotten money. Ignoring a death threat from Rienzi, Ed uses the final edition of The Day to run a front page exposé on Rienzi’s operations.

I have a slightly personal connection with the movie All the President’s Men, which tells the story of how Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein brought down the presidency of Richard Nixon with their investigative reporting during the Watergate affair. Although I was working at now-defunct The Washington Star during the scandal, I was working at The Washington Post when the movie’s cast and crew visited its newsroom to research the environment in which Woodward and Bernstein worked.

The Watergate scandal began in 1972, when a group political operatives, known as plumbers and working for Republican President Nixon’s reelection committee, was caught after they broke into the offices of the Democratic National Committee. Those offices were located near the Potomac River in the residential and commercial complex – in Washington, D.C.’s, tony neighborhood of Foggy Bottom – called The Watergate. The work of Woodward and Bernstein, with the help of an unidentified source known as Deep Throat, not only uncovered the reasons for the break-in but also the plot orchestrated from the White House – with the knowledge of the president – to cover up the plumbers’ connection with Nixon’s reelection committee.

Despite the scandal, Nixon won reelection. But as Woodward and Bernstein continued their investigation and the scope of the malfeasance became public, calls for Nixon’s impeachment increased on Capitol Hill. But rather than becoming the first president to be removed from office, Nixon decided to resign. While many of his administration’s officials were prosecuted and jailed for their roles in the scandal, Nixon avoided that fate when he was pardoned by President Gerald Ford – who was Nixon’s successor and had been his vice president.

The Soloist is also based on a true story – one that I first learned about from television’s 60 Minutes news magazine program. That report piqued the interest of me and my wife and we anxiously awaited the release of the movie. The film is about an Hispanic Los Angeles Times columnist named Steve Lopez who gets caught up in the fascinating story of a black, homeless, mentally disturbed, exceptionally talented, Beethoven-loving musician named Nathaniel Anthony Ayers, Jr. – who, when they first met, was playing beautiful music on a two-string violin.

Mr. Ayers’ talent first became apparent when he was a child – information Mr. Lopez got when he contacted the musician’s sister, who was living in another state. With encouragement from his cello teacher and after hours upon hours on practice, Nathaniel was accepted to Julliard, the country’s premier high school academy for talented performing artists. The film showed that as a child, the young Nathaniel possessed a kind of obsession that was negatively affecting his life. This possession burst to the foreground while he was at Julliard, where voices in his head scared him, filled him with self-doubt and ended his studies. Over time, he drifted to Los Angeles and began living on the street because he felt uncomfortable living under a roof.

The plight of Mr. Ayers touched Mr. Lopez so much that after his first column on the homeless musician, he continued to inform his readers with updates on Mr. Ayers’ life. One of his readers, an octogenarian cellist who no longer played because she suffered from arthritis, donated her cello to Mr. Ayers. But Mr. Lopez wouldn’t allow Mr. Ayers to keep the expensive cello with him on the street. It took a bit of doing, but Mr. Lopez managed to get Mr. Ayers go to a community center that focused on the homeless to play the instrument. The reason for this demand was that the community center could ensure the safety of the instrument.

Mr. Lopez then arranged to take Mr. Ayers to a rehearsal of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra after the Beethoven fan had refused to attend a concert that will be attended by other people. While watching Mr. Ayers listen to the rehearsal, Mr. Lopez was able to witness the depth of the homeless man’s love for music. Mr. Lopez – who would later express envy for the depth of the mentally disturbed man’s ability to love – then arranged for one of the orchestra’s cellist to give Mr. Ayers lessons. But there was another caveat: The lessons had to take place in an apartment in which Mr. Ayers could sleep. The community center provided the apartment and Mr. Ayers began taking the lessons in his new home. Then the music teacher set up a recital for Mr. Ayers. However, the voices in his head sabotaged the event and Mr. Ayers attacked, but didn’t harm, his music teacher while on stage before the audience.

The next item on Mr. Lopez’s agenda was to cure Mr. Ayers of his mental instability, but he was rebuffed by the manager of the community center. Nonetheless, Mr. Lopez pressed on and tried to get Mr. Ayers to commit himself to a psychiatric hospital to get some help. This backfired when Mr. Ayers began beating on Mr. Lopez and threatened his life. Disillusioned by the incident, Mr. Lopez went to talk with his ex-wife. She essentially told Mr. Lopez the same thing the community center manager did – that instead of trying to cure Mr. Ayers, he should just accept the musician as he was.

Apparently taking the advice to heart, Mr. Lopez arranged for Mr. Ayers sister to come to Los Angeles for a visit. After the siblings met, a contrite Mr. Ayers went to Mr. Lopez to apologize for his violent behavior. Mr. Lopez responded by telling Mr. Ayers that sometimes friends have disagreements. The two men shook hands and then, with Mr. Ayers’ sister and Mr. Lopez’s ex-wife, they attend a Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra concert – with Mr. Ayers enjoying, loving, the music while surrounded by a concert hall full of strangers.

The importance of newspapers’ reports on crime and political corruption are among their more worthy attributes – as shown by Deadline USA and All the President’s Men. However, I believe that the most worthy attribute of newspapers, and other forms of journalism, is their ability to help people connect on an emotional level with other people – as shown by The Soloist. Mr. Lopez’s columns moved an elderly white woman to reach out to a homeless black man with a gift whose value was greater than monetary. They also moved Los Angeles politicians to make a huge financial commitment to the community center that was helping care for the city’s homeless population – which is said to be around 90,000 individuals. Additionally, the interaction between the columnist and his subject benefited both of them. Mr. Ayers discovered that he could control the impact his voices had on him. My Lopez learned that love – be it for someone or something – can indeed be a thing of joy and wonder. And, both Mr. Lopez and Mr. Ayers learned that true friends – and by extension, true lovers – do not, should not and need not always try to impose conditions on their love.

God, I hope that newspapers never die.

What’s Mine Is Yours

Mr. Deeds Comes to Town
A Christmas Carol
It Could Happen to You

These days, you hear a lot of negative talk about an economic system called socialism and anger about the idea of a redistribution of wealth. To my ears, such complaints contain a double irony. First, the majority of people who are making these complaints are likely to benefit from them. Second, most of these people consider themselves Christians – a religion whose founder taught that we are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers and it is our duty to take care of those less fortunate than ourselves. These teachings are at the core of the three movies I will discuss in this posting.

I begin with the Great Depression-era film Mr. Deeds Comes to Town (released in 1936 in black and white), the story of Mandrake Falls, Vermont, resident Longfellow Deeds who comes into a $20 million fortune when his uncle, Martin Semple, dies and makes the tuba playing, greeting-card poet his sole beneficiary. The uncle’s lawyer, John Cedar, takes the nephew to New York City, where Longfellow becomes embroiled in a lot of high-society shenanigans and meets an award-winning reporter named Babe Bennett.

Unfortunately for Longfellow, these two characters do not have his best interests at heart. Cedar has been embezzling money from the Semple estate and plans to trick Longfellow into letting him handle the money from the inheritance. Meanwhile, Babe pretends to be a poor woman who wants to be his friend so that she can gather information for a series of newspaper articles. As can be expected, Longfellow is willing to trust Cedar, up to a point, and falls in love with Babe. And adding to the plot, Mr. and Mrs. Semple, Longfellow’s cousin and his wife, show up with the intention of contesting the will.

But the stories of Longfellow’s misadventures reach a farmer friend of his from Vermont. The farmer comes to New York to chastise Longfellow for allowing the foolishness to get the better of him. The farmer then convinces Longfellow that there are better ways to use his money than on frivolity. So Longfellow comes up with the idea to take $18 million of his inheritance and use it to buy farms and give them to needy families. When Cedar finds out, he begins legal proceedings to have Longfellow committed to a mental institution. The reason? Anyone willing to give away $18 million must be crazy.

At the trial, Cedar’s main witnesses are two sisters who live together in Mandrake Falls and testify that they consider Longfellow “pixilated.” Babe, who by now has revealed her charade, is also called on to attest to Longfellow’s eccentricities – and although her testimony is damaging, she confesses on the stand that she is in love with him.

This admission stirs Longfellow, who has remained completely silent during the proceedings, to finally defend himself. He does this by pointing out the idiosyncrasies of many of the people in the courtroom – including Cedar, Mr. Semple and the judge – and then questioning the sisters from Mandrake Falls. Longfellow asks the sisters if they still think that he is pixilated, to which they reply, “Yes.” He then asks them who else in Mandrake Falls is pixilated. They answer, “Why everyone, of course, except us.” Longfellow then explains why he wants to make the generous gesture that Cedar and the Semples oppose. He uses a metaphor involving a man in a row boat who sees another man in a row boat and a man who is drowning in the water. He asks the judge who deserves his help more, the drowning man or the man in the row boat who is too lazy to use his oars. After due deliberation, the judge tells Longfellow that he is the sanest man who has ever been in his courtroom.

In the film adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (1938, b&w), miserly businessman Ebenezer Scrooge – a man who has nothing but disdain for his soon-to-be-married nephew; his underpaid employee and his family, which includes a young crippled son; and mankind in general, which he proves by saying that the poor should be relegated to jails and poor houses and don’t deserve any monetary assistance from him – learns to change his stingy ways with the help of a ghost and three spirits who visit him on Christmas Eve.

After being guided by the spirits on visits to his past, the present and the future, Scrooge rediscovers the merry feelings of Christmas that he enjoyed while he was young and before he became jaded by the disappointments he had experienced. He is especially moved by the forewarned death of his employee’s son. Then on Christmas morning, a cheerful Scrooge promises to donate a large sum of money to help the poor and amasses an armful of presents that he gives to the nephew and his fiancée and his employee’s family. He also gives his employee a raise and promises to help with the lame child's medical expenses.

This story has been cinematically produced many times with both human and cartoon characterizations. I’ve watched this particular version every Christmas season since I was a child. Back then in New York, this version and a 1951 version of the story were played back-to-back all night long on Christmas Eve – and I would be glued to the television set the entire night, not worried that Santa might find me awake. The other movie that I watch every Christmas season is It’s a Wonderful Life, which I could have included in this posting. However, I’m saving that for another time because I consider the next film It’s a Wonderful Life’s cinematic progeny.

It Could Happen to You (1994, color) is the story of an exceptionally kind-hearted, married, New York City policeman named Charley Lang who tips a waitress $2 million dollars. Perhaps I should explain how this happened.

Charlie’s wife Muriel, who works in a beauty salon and is obsessed with acquiring as much money as she can, had a dream that she took as a sign that she would win the lottery. Muriel sent Charlie to purchase the lottery ticket, which he did while on duty. Charlie and his partner, Bo Williams, then stopped in a diner to get lunch. Their waitress, Yvonne Biasi – who is separated from her no-good husband and earlier that day had been officially declared bankrupt – served them coffee and then went to fill their order. But they were interrupted by a call on their police radio and had to leave before they got served. When Charlie went to pay the bill for his coffee, he discovered that he didn’t have enough money for a tip, so he promised Yvonne that he would return the next day to either share his lottery winnings or give Yvonne double the tip. Of course, Charlie never expected to win the lottery and Yvonne never expected to see him again.

That night, Muriel and Charlie find out that they have, indeed, hit the jackpot. Naturally, Muriel is upset when she learns that her husband had promised to share their winnings with a waitress. But Charlie eventually manages to calm Muriel down by telling her that she will become known as “the woman with the heart of gold” and her fame will earn her commercial endorsements that will increase her newfound wealth. The next day, Charlie returns to the diner to and gives the good news to Yvonne.

After receiving their money, Muriel goes on a spending spree, buying furs, jewelry and knocking out walls to expand the size of their apartment. Yvonne, on the other hand, goes to the grocery store and treats herself with a jar of Macadamia nuts. She also buys the diner where she worked and sets up a table that is reserved for free meals for homeless people.

You might think that Charlie would retire from the police force after his windfall – but not this guy. He believes that being a cop is the noblest profession there is. But he gets slightly wounded while preventing a robbery and, unfortunately from his point of view, is given time off. Then, he and Muriel attend a party cruise for lottery winners. Muriel, now in her element, leaves Charlie and goes off to mingle with the others partygoers – and meets a man who seemed to me to be way too interested in the flashy beautician. Charlie, who is obviously uncomfortable at the event, goes up on deck to be alone. While there, he sees Yvonne arrive in a taxi and goes to meet her on the dock. But by the time they head to the gangplank, the party is pulling away from the pier and Charlie and Yvonne have missed the boat.

Charlie and Yvonne then go out to dinner, do a little dancing and – since Charlie has so much time off because of his recovery – agree to get together again just to hang out. Their hanging out involves things like buying bags of tokens to pay for subway rides for working people and renting out a professional baseball park so they can give groups of kids the opportunity to actually play the game in the kind of place where many of their sports idols would play.

But Muriel is unhappy with the way Charlie is spending their money and jealous of his relationship with Yvonne. So, she kicks him out. Meanwhile, Yvonne’s husband has returned and wants some of her windfall. Yvonne packs a bag and walks out. And as fate (the plot, actually) would have it, Charlie and Yvonne – unaware of what is going on in each other’s personal life – check into the Plaza Hotel at just about the same time. And of course, the love that has been simmering beneath the surface fully blossoms. The next day, Yvonne returns to her apartment and finds her husband has gone, and Charlie goes to stay with Bo and his family.

Then, Muriel sues for divorce and not only wants Charlie’s share of the lottery winnings, which he gladly is willing to fork over, but also the money that was given to Yvonne. Calling it unfair, Charlie decides to fight the demand and they all end up in court. During the proceedings, Yvonne is made to look like a gold digger and Charlie a philanderer who is having an affair with another man’s wife. When Muriel wins the case, Yvonne runs out of the courthouse in tears before Charlie can catch up with her.

Charlie eventually finds Yvonne at the diner, which is no longer hers, on a rainy night. She tells Charlie to leave her alone because she feels responsible for ruining his life. But Charlie refuses to go and gets her to admit that she does love him.

Now we come to the part that ties this movie to It’s a Wonderful Life. This film has been narrated by a person named Angel, who is actually more than just the narrator. Angel, disguised as a homeless person seeking a meal, shows up at the diner while Charlie and Yvonne are licking their wounds inflicted by the trial. After setting up their visitor with a plate of food, Charlie and Yvonne go back to consoling each other while Angel, who is actually a newspaper reporter, stealthily takes pictures of two people dealing with their grief. The next day, the paper runs a romantic story about the tribulations that has left these two wonderfully generous people emotionally scarred and financially bankrupt. And, Angel suggests that his readers do something to help alleviate their misery.

When Charlie and Yvonne go to clean out the diner, they find a stack of mail just inside the door. Inside the mail, Angel’s readers, touched by their story, are sending them money – five dollars here, a ten-dollar check there. The mail keeps coming and it takes several days to open and read all of it – and count up the $600,000 that the letters contained.

In the end, Charlie and Yvonne get married and presumably live happily ever after. As for Muriel, she loses all the money after she marries the sleazebag from the party cruise, who then empties their bank account disappears. Muriel ends up going to live at her mother’s apartment in the Bronx.

Granted, these stories are fairytales. But they do teach us valuable lessons – the most important being that generosity is its own reward. Sharing their fortunes brought satisfaction and joy to Longfellow Deeds, Ebenezer Scrooge and Charlie and Yvonne – who said while paying for people’s subway rides that she was having the best day of her life.

But if you need concrete proof that generosity can improve the fabric of your life, just ask the students in Florida’s Broward County public school system. These kids collectively raised $93,450.14 – enough money to build eleven schools for children living in Kenya. The words of these Florida schoolchildren eloquently echo the message of these movies.

Thirteen-year-old seventh-grader Santiago Vazquez, III, told The Miami Herald: “We have a lot, and I guess you could say they have nothing.”

Said 18-year-old FaraAnn Gonzalez: The children in Kenya are “saying how much they appreciate us. We appreciate them so much more. I’ll be able to tell my kids and my grandkids about that.”

These are things this country would do well in considering when the subject of redistributing wealth arises.

The Irony and the Bigotry

Gentleman’s Agreement
Crossfire
The Merchant of Venice

Bigotry is full of irony. For instance, the first American to die in the Revolutionary War was a black man named Crispus Atticks – but blacks were held as slaves for more than 80 years after that war, suffered through a peculiar brand of apartheid for another 100 years and only recently were recognized as being able to politically lead a nation that they have led in so many other fields (culture, agriculture, medicine and science, to name a few) since its inception. Another case in point involves Adolph Hitler, the man who is considered by many to be the worst anti-Semite who ever lived – despite the fact that his family tree contained Jewish people.

The movies that will be examined in this posting (Gentleman’s Agreement, released in 1947 in black and white; Crossfire, 1947, b&w; and The Merchant of Venice, 2004, color) offer many excellent examples the cruelty, the stupidity, the smugness, the evil and the irony that anti-Semitism spawns. I should note that I intentionally ignored films about World War II because I wanted to highlight anti-Semitism in this country – but I included the Shakespearean take on the subject because . . . well . . . I love Shakespeare.

Perhaps the greatest irony about Gentleman’s Agreement is that with all the Jewish movie moguls of the early and mid 20th Century, it was a Gentile – Darryl F. Zanuck – who made the film. Some of the reason’s behind the reluctance of Jewish film makers to engage in the project are discussed in the movie.

The film is about a Gentile magazine reporter named Philip Schuyler Green who is given the assignment by a Gentile publisher named John Minify to write a series about anti-Semitism. Phil, a widower who lives with his mother and son, initially is not enthused by the assignment. He changes his mind, however, after discussing the subject over the breakfast table with his family and answering his son Tommy’s questions. While searching for the proper angle from which to attack the subject, it suddenly dawns on him that he should pass himself off as a Jew and report on how he is treated.

Phil tells Minify about the strategy and they agree not to tell anyone that Phil’s claim of being Jewish is false. The only people who are to know besides the publisher and the reporter are Phil’s family and Kathy Lacy, the publisher’s divorced niece who originally suggested the assignment and who becomes romantically involved with Phil – so much so that they become engaged. But, ironically, when Kathy learns about Phil’s strategy, the romance begins to run into trouble. Part of the trouble revolves around a house Kathy owns in an area of Connecticut that discourages Jewish families from living there – but more about this later.

It should be noted that Phil’s mother wholeheartedly supports the idea and Tommy agrees to go along with the plan without hesitation – allowing his friends, schoolmates and teachers to think that he is Jewish.

There is another important character in this tale – Dave Goldman, a Jewish army officer who has been Phil’s best friend since they were kids. Dave has been offered a job in Connecticut but is having a problem finding a place to live. He gives Phil advice on what to expect during his charade. He also gives advice to Kathy about what a husband expects from a wife – advice that my wife said was the best explanation of what a wife should be that she has ever heard.

Then there is Phil’s secretary, Ethel Wales, who has changed her name and is passing for a Gentile. She explains that when she applied for work using her Jewish name, her applications were always rejected – even at the magazine for which she now works. Phil then informs Minify of what happened to her and the publisher immediately calls in his hiring manager and tells him that all future help-wanted ads were to include a line that says an applicant’s religion will not be a consideration for a job. When Miss Wales finds out, she warns Phil that the new advertisement is liable to attract the kind of Jews who wouldn’t be suitable for working at the magazine. Phil replies that her thinking is a form of anti-Semitism and that he doesn’t expect to hear anything like that from her again.

Another important character is Anne Dettrey, a Gentile reporter at the paper who falls in love with Phil even though he is, so she thinks, Jewish. She invites Phil to a party and introduces him to Professor Lieberman, a famous scientist of the Jewish persuasion. She also becomes good friends with Dave and the three of them – Phil, Anne and Dave – start hanging out together.

During his deception, Phil learns first-hand what it is like to be denied admittance to an exclusive hotel; how it feels when the superintendent of the building where he lives tries to discourage him from putting his “Jewish” surname on his mailbox; and, most disheartening, the bigotry his son faces from his schoolmates. When Tommy comes home crying one day about his mistreatment, Kathy tries to console him by telling the child that he should try to understand that the deception is a “horrible lie.” Phil is incensed – probably because by her choice of words, she has implied that Jews are “horrible” people. Thus, the engagement is broken.

When Dave finds out what happened to Tommy, he tells Phil that his assignment is complete because he has now experienced the worst things about anti-Semitism – seeing what it does to Jewish children and feeling the helplessness of their parents.

When Dave turns in the series of articles, his secretary is stunned to learn that a Gentile would willing accept anti-Semitic mistreatment. But everyone involved with Phil and the magazine, especially his mother and Anne, are proud of what he has done and produced.

Then there is Kathy. She meets with Dave and tells him a story about a dinner she attended where a man got up a told a joke that denigrated Jewish people, adding that she and many other attendees didn’t laugh at the joke and felt anger towards the joke teller. Dave responded by telling Kathy that by just sitting there and doing nothing, she was telling this guy that it was alright to be bigoted. Dave said she should have stood up and called him on it, and that confronting people about their bigotry was the only way to really fight against it. Then, Dave gave the speech that my wife loved.

When Dave reports back to Phil about his meeting with Kathy, Dave tells his friend that Kathy has agreed to let Dave and his family rent the previously mentioned Connecticut house – and that she will live in the area to help Dave’s family deal with their Gentile neighbors. I’ll leave it to you to figure out whether Phil and Kathy get back together.

My discussion about Crossfire will be very brief. This film was released several months earlier than the previously discussed movie. But unlike Gentleman’s Agreement, this film looks at the more violent side of anti-Semitism.

The irony – maybe hypocrisy is a better word – of Crossfire is that a soldier who has just returned from World War II, where he fought against Hitler’s Germany and its attempt to annihilate Jews, kills a man simply because that man is Jewish. The soldier expresses disdain for Jews throughout the film and is proud of the murder he has committed. But in the end, the murderer gets what he deserves.

This tightly written film offers an extremely accurate depiction of many of the U.S. military men who returned to the United States after The Second World War. After fighting against the malevolence of Hitler’s Final Solution – which was the extermination of all Jews and all other “inferior” races – these soldiers, sailors and marines continued to consider themselves superior to Jews, blacks, Catholics and others – and often showed no compunction for inflicting bodily, sometimes lethal, harm.

Which brings me to The Merchant of Venice, a story that takes place during the 16th century. The part of the tale that speaks to my current subject revolves around a Jewish money lender named Shylock, who carries deep-seeded resentment about the way Jews are treated, and a merchant named Antonio, who loathes the usury practices he attributes to Shylock. But Antonio, who has taken business away from Shylock by providing loans without interest, becomes beholding to Jew when he agrees to support his friend Bassanio’s desire to wed “the fair” Portia.

However, Portia has many suitors and her father’s blessing is needed before a match can be made. So Portia’s father requires that the suitors raise a certain amount of money and then answer a riddle, which is irrelevant to this discussion. Bassanio asks Antonio help him raise the money and Antonio finds he has to turn to Shylock for a loan. But instead of asking his normal interest rate, Shylock – seeing a way to get revenge on the man he considers an enemy – demands a pound of Antonio’s flesh if the loan cannot be repaid.

As can be expected, Bassanio’s attempt to raise money to give to Antonio, which in turn, will pay off the debt to Shylock, falls flat. And on top of that, Shylock’s daughter, Jessica, elopes with Bassanio’s friend, Lorenzo. Now, with a sense of betrayal added to his resentment, Shylock demands repayment of the loan. Being unable to meet the loan’s conditions, Shylock demands his pound of flesh. Naturally, the case winds up in court.

When it is pointed out that he is being harsh in his demands, Shylock defends himself by essentially saying that he is only acting in the same harsh manner that Christians have treated him. Then Shylock case gets upended by a law of which he was not aware. That law states that it is illegal for a noncitizen, which Jews are considered, to seek physical harm against a citizen of Venice, and the punishment is the harm that is being sought – in this case, a pound of Shylock’s flesh. But Antonio, Bassanio and Portia – apparently coming to understand Shylock’s anger during the course of the trial – plead with the magistrate not to condemn Shylock to the penalty prescribed by law.

The ironies in this story are Shylock’s willingness to act like a Christian in order to exact his revenge, and then having his sentence commuted with the help of the Christians on whom he was trying to exact that revenge.

So, the three films show us that the main ironies of anti-Semitism and all other forms of prejudice: When you think that you and those like you are superior to those from a different community – be that community religious, racial, geographic, or whatever – you tend to prove by you own actions that you are not. In fact, you often prove that you are worse than those “other” people. And this can apply to the victims, as well: When you seek revenge against those who are persecuting you, more likely than not, you will act as badly, or worse, than the persecutors.

One final thought: Gregory Peck, who portrayed Phil Green in Gentleman’s Agreement, is at the top of my favorite-actor list because of his roles as a defender of American ideals. In this movie, he gives a speech that connects anti-Semitism with anti-Americanism. And he reinforced that belief by playing Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, where he defends a black man against a false charge of raping a white woman in the Jim Crow-era American South. Mr. Peck obviously believed that being an American meant being tolerant of others regardless of their religion, race, or ethnicity – a belief that we all should hold.

Teachers' Threats

Blackboard Jungle
To Sir, With Love
Dangerous Minds

Let me begin by saying that their children’s education was the most important thing in my parents’ life. Although there are so many things that could be taken away from black children in America, an educated mind was not one of them, they said. Having an education could lift us above much of the desperation and desolation with which so many of us – black, white, whatever – have to endure. How it broadens our range of choices and capabilities, thereby expanding our horizons and future possibilities. And they were right – and I thank them every day for insisting that we learn how to learn.

As you probably know from reading my previous postings, I grew up in a white neighborhood in The Bronx, New York City. In elementary school, I was the only black kid in my classes. My first black classmates were in Junior High School, and many of them traveled by subway and then bus from Harlem to attend school in the upper-middle-class neighborhood of Riverdale. And while none of my black schoolmates showed any signs of malignant hostility, I knew that they came from neighborhoods where violence and thievery went with the territory. I knew this because these were the neighborhoods where my father worked as a podiatrist and where my parents owned a dry cleaning store – which, incidentally, was in the same block on West 116th Street where I spent the first 17 months of my life. So, I was always aware that there were children that didn’t have the “educational advantage” that I did. And that is why I have always been attracted to films about educating – excuse the political correctness – “at-risk” kids.

The three films I will talk about in this posting – The Blackboard Jungle (released in 1955 in black and white), To Sir, With Love (1967, color) and Dangerous Minds (1995, color) – all have a lot in common. The stories are about people who are all novice teachers whose first assignments involve unruly students. They also use unorthodox teaching methods to connect with their students. And, they also decide they aren’t cut out for classroom work, but then decide to keep teaching after being encouraged to do so by their students. In The Blackboard Jungle and Dangerous Minds, the teachers – Richard Dadier and Louanne Johnson, respectively – have military backgrounds and plan on making teaching their profession. Mark Thackeray of To Sir, With Love is an out-of-work engineer who takes the job while he looks for work in his previous field.

Although Mr. Dadier is assured by his principal that his all-male school in New York City doesn’t have any disciplinary problems, he finds out differently as soon as he walks into the classroom. Among his trials and tribulations are being tagged with the moniker “Daddy-O” by gang leader Artie West; being turned down when he asks an apparently bright black student, Gregory Miller, to help him get the other students to behave in class; coming to the defense of a teacher who is almost raped by severely beating the assailant; getting severely beaten himself by Artie and his gang while on his way home; and being charged as a bigot after he tries to explain to his class that words like “spic, mick and nigger” are not appropriate language whether in the classroom or in the outside world.

Mr. Dadier also has problems at home. His wife gets it into her head that her pregnancy is making her unattractive to her husband and is worried that she will have another miscarriage. Then on top of that, she begins receiving anonymous letters accusing her husband of being unfaithful.

But Mr. Dadier manages to persevere and begins connecting with his students by taking over the production of the school’s Christmas pageant and using cartoons as an educational tool. But he faces one more threat. After being caught cheating on a test, Artie pulls a knife and calls on the rest of his gang to attack Mr. Dadier. But only one of the gang members responds and after a skirmish in which the teacher is helped by Gregory, Mr. Dadier takes the two rebels to the principal’s office.

In another rare reference to the actors involved in the films that are examined, I just wanted to note that Sidney Poitier, who portrays Gregory Miller in the previous movie, also portrays Mr. Thackeray in To Sir, With Love – the story of a black teacher with a mostly white class in London.

After a very shaky start and then managing to gain a superficial semblance of order with his classroom hooligans, Mr. Thackeray loses his temper when he finds that what I assume is a used feminine napkin in the classroom’s heater. He decides that the regular school curriculum is a waste of time and begins teaching them about life, beginning with his demand that the students address each other in a respectful manner – and calling him either Mr. Thackeray or “Sir.” The class is allowed to discuss anything they want, including sex. He arranges for the girls to get lessons in the application of makeup and in taking care of their hair. He takes his students to a museum. He gives them cooking lessons. And he tries to get them to understand that they need to try and understand viewpoints other than their own. This object lesson is magnified by an incident in the boys’ gym.

The gym instructor obviously has a thing about punishing one of the heavier kids in the class who is known as Fats. The gym instructor forces Fats to take his turn jumping over the vault despite the warnings by the students that the vault is too high. When Fats tries to comply, the vault breaks and Fats gets hurt as he lands on top of the instructor. The other boys are furious and one of them, a boy named Potter, threatens the instructor with one of the vault’s broken legs. Another student rushes off to fetch Mr. Thackeray, who arrives just in time to prevent Potter from cracking the instructor’s head open with the weapon. Back in the classroom, Mr. Thackeray tells the would-be attacker that he should apologize to the gym instructor. Potter wants to know why the instructor isn’t asked to apologize to Fats. Mr. Thackeray explains that he is not responsible for the actions of the gym instructor. Denham, who is the leader of classroom delinquents, tells Potter to apologize or Mr. Thackeray won’t provide a good reference when he graduates and starts looking for a job. To which Mr. Thackeray replies that Potter should not apologize because he is afraid of the consequences of his hoodlum-like behavior but rather because admitting his is wrong is the proper thing for a man to do.

Later, when Mr. Thackeray becomes the gym instructor, Denham challenges him to a boxing match. Although he tries to refuse, he feels he must comply. Denham then proceeds to pummel Mr. Thackeray, who merely defends himself without throwing a punch – that is until Denham’s onslaught finally goes too far and Sir hits him with a hard right to the stomach that stops Denham cold, taking the wind out of him. Afterwards, Denham waits for Sir and asks how many times his teacher hit him. He then asks why Sir didn’t continue to pound him after he had the advantage. Mr. Thackeray replies by offering to help Denham get hired as the school’s boxing instructor after he graduates.

Sir also has to deal with a crush on him by one of his students, a white girl named Pamela Dare, who hates her mother because of her parents’ divorce and because her mother has brought her boyfriends home for intimate relations. Then there’s his black male student named Seales, who hates his father and says he mistreated his white mother. When Sir asks him how his mother was mistreated, Seales replies, “He married her, didn’t he?”

Race is brought up twice more in the movie. As Sir is talking with his students on the steps of the school before classes begin, some kids playing hockey almost hit Pamela with the can they are using. But Sir reaches out and catches the can, which cuts his hand. One of the students jokes that Sir has red blood just like everyone else. Sir just gives a smile and walks into the building. Although most of the students laughed at the “joke,” Pamela scolds Denham, who throughout the film refers to Sir as “Old Chimneysweep,” but not to his face. Then she lays into Seales for not saying anything in defense of Sir. Although Seales doesn’t offer a good excuse, he does admit that he wishes he could be like Sir. And for his part, although he keeps using the term “Old Chimneysweep,” it is obvious that Denham comes to not only respect Sir but also develops real affection for his teacher.

The other incident involves the death of Seales’ mother. The class is taking up a collection to pay for a wreath and Sir asks to be included. He then learns that none of the girls are willing to take the wreath to the family. “You don’t know what people would say if one of us went into a black home,” Pamela informs him. And Denham says none of the boys would take it either. This was before the boxing incident. On the day of the funeral, which is after the boxing incident, Sir is walking to the Seales home and turns the corner to find his entire class there waiting for him.

I also found it interesting that both his student’s parents and his colleagues at the school show Mr. Thackeray a kind of deference that mirrors his students, which borders on worship. Also interesting is that when Sir finally gets an acceptance letter for an engineering job and plans on leaving the school, he allows his mind to be changed by a couple of toughs – one male, one female – who express their distain for the man who will be their teacher next semester.

And one last thought specific to this movie. Mr. Thackeray is one of the worst dancing black men I’ve ever seen. But despite that, the film had been my favorite movie about education until I saw Dangerous Minds, which is based on a true story.

Louanne Johnson accepts a position at a California school before she learns that her class is filled with a raucous group of unruly teenagers – something for which she was unprepared. After being called “White Bread” by the students and taunted by Emilio, the apparent class leader, she walks out of the classroom on her first day and confronts Hal Griffith, her longtime friend who also teaches at the school and helped her get the job, about not being warned about her students. Griffith advises her to figure out a way to get the kids attention. Her idea, use the karate training she learned in the Marine Corps to engage the kids by telling them she will give them lessons in the martial art. However, the school’s principal, a black man who insists that people knock on his door before entering his office, quashes the martial arts instruction, pointing out safety and legal ramifications. But the tactic has worked and the class becomes manageable.

Ms. Johnson’s next tactics further disarm her students: She tells them they all will start out with an “A” and will keep it as long as they put an honest effort into their work; she gives candy bars to students who provide the right answer to her academic questions; and she promises to take the kids to an amusement park using funds from the school board. When class ends, one of her male students warns her that she better be for real and a female student suggests that if she wins over Emilio, the rest of the class with follow suit. The class eventually goes to the amusement park, but it is Ms. Johnson who foots the bill.

But for me, the best part of the story is her use of poetry (I like to think of myself as a poet). She begins with Bob Dylan and shows the students how to translate what Dylan is actually saying with his song that begins, “Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man play a song for me.” (If you don’t know, watch the movie.) The kids see that they can relate to the poem and their learning takes off. She then challenges the students to find a poem by Dylan Thomas that says the same thing as a poem by Bob Dylan – and she will take the winners of the contest to dinner at a very expensive restaurant. This assignment shocks the school librarians, who are stunned to see these particular students studying in their facility.

Ms. Johnson’s progress with her class also has a non-academic side. She stops a fight between Emilio and two other boys who she unintentionally disses. She gets the boys to agree that they won’t fight, but they break their promise and wind up getting suspended. When she asks why they broke their word, one of the boys explains how she dissed him, which made it necessary for him to fight. But the boy also acknowledges that he knows Ms. Johnson was trying to help. Then, the teacher visits the homes of the two suspended boys and tells their parents that they were not to blame for their suspensions and – to the surprise of their parents – that the boys are wonderful students doing great work. The next day, Emilio tells Ms. Johnson that he heard that she had visited the homes of his two classmates. When she confirms the news, he says, “Cool.” Now, everyone is onboard.

But Ms. Johnson does experience some setbacks. Two of her students, one of which had won the dinner but didn’t show up, are taken out of school by their mother, who doesn’t want her boys taught by some do-gooder white woman. And Callie, another student who won the dinner but had to work that night, tells Ms. Johnson that she will be attending another school because she is going to have a baby. Although Ms. Johnson tells her that she can stay at her school if she wants, Callie refuses to change her mind. Additionally, the other student who won the contest shows up at the restaurant in a new leather jacket. During dinner he explains that he will miss a few weeks of school while he works to pay for the jacket, which he got from a street thug who probably stole it, and that his life depended on coming up with the money. Ms. Johnson offers to pay for the jacket but the boy doesn’t want to take the money. They eventually agree that the $200 will be a loan that the boy will pay back after he graduates.

The biggest setback, however, involves Emilio, who is threatened by a thug who does not go to the school. The thug says he is going to kill Emilio for taking his girl away while he was in prison. The girl, who also is in Ms. Johnson’s class, tells the teacher about it and begs her to do something to help. Ms. Johnson agrees to allow Emilio stay at her place over night, where he will be safe and where she convinces him to take his problem to the principal. The next morning, Emilio has left by the time Ms. Johnson wakes up. She rushes frantically to the school and the principal’s office to inquire if he has seen Emilio. The principal says he has, but refused to talk to him because Emilio hadn’t knocked on the door before entering the office. A half an hour later and three blocks from the school, Emilio is found dead. This proves to be too much for Ms. Johnson to bear and she decides that she will leave the school after the semester ends. Her class is very disheartened by the news and tries to talk her out of it – to no avail.

The next day, which is the last day of classes, Callie returns to add her voice to those of her former classmates in trying to convince Ms. Johnson to return next school year. Finally, they bribe her with a candy bar and tell her that she is the light that Dylan Thomas talks about in his poetry – the light that guides their way through life. It proves to be a convincing argument.

Recently, President Obama told our children that by dropping out of school they were doing a disservice to their country, their families and themselves. He also said he was committed to seeing that American kids got the best education in the world. These goals only will be achieved by parents who support their children’s academic endeavors and by teachers like the ones presented here. Teachers who find a way to show kids that getting an education can lead to a better life for all of us – and learning how to learn can be easy, fun and personally satisfying.

Who Was That Masked Man?

The Mark of Zorro
The Scarlet Pimpernel
Spiderman

Americans have enjoyed a love affair with heroes in disguises since colonialists dressed up like Native Americans to attend the original Boston Tea Party. So its no wonder that masked heroes have be portrayed in the cinema since its beginning – and especially the past several years. The films discussed here were chosen because they are excellent representatives of a genre is exciting, romantic and appeals to our collective definition of morality.

I begin with The Mark of Zorro (released in 1920 in black and white). Zorro is one of the most cinematically portrayed figures in history. The only ones that I can think of that may rival Zorro are the British spy James Bond and the Chinese detective Charlie Chan. I should also add that my favorite Zorro portrayers are Antonio Banderas in the 2002 version and its sequels, and George Hamilton in Zorro, The Gay Blade – which is an absolute pleasure to watch because of its witty and uproariously hilarious dialogue. But I am using the silent movie in this discussion to help make my point about the endurance of this popular character.

The plot of this movie is simple. Don Diego Vega, the son of an aristocratic family, returns from Spain, where he attended school, to Los Angeles at a time when California was still part of Mexico. The governor of the area is a tyrant named Alvarado, who can’t seem to control his need to tax the peasants under his authority. Don Diego, who became an accomplished swordsman in Spain, decides he needs to do something to end the tyranny. So, he dons a mask and black cape, names his alter ego Zorro, and proceeds to disrupt Alvarado’s power-crazed plans. No one knows Zorro’s identity except his servant Bernardo. And to further confuse the authorities – and protect his family – Don Diego takes on an effeminate persona. The one problem with Don Diego’s plan is that he falls in love with the daughter of another aristocratic family, Lolita. However by film’s end – and after lots of swashbuckling – Zorro forces Alvarado to give up his office and reveals his true identity to his happily surprised beloved.

The Scarlet Pimpernel (1935, b&w) uses a similar element as the previous film. Although set in France and England during the French Revolution, the hero also uses an effeminate persona in his daily role as Englishman Sir Percy Blakeney. However, unlike Zorro, The Scarlet Pimpernel doesn’t wear a mask but rather uses wigs, makeup, phony noses and other theatrical trappings to save French noblepersons from the Guillotine. Additionally, is interesting to note that there was a previous version of the story filmed during the silent era.

This movie’s plot is much more complicated than the Mask of Zorro storyline. The Scarlet Pimpernel has a network of assistants in both France and England, but his true identity is kept secret from most of the world – including his wife, French-born Lady Marguerite Blakeney, nee St. Just, and the Prince of Wales, who seeks Sir Percy’s advice on clothing despite calling the faux fop “spineless, brainless and useless.” And one thing I particularly like about this story is that Sir Percy augments his fake identity by composing a poem about the Scarlet Pimpernel:

"They seek him here. They seek him there.
Those Frenchies seek him everywhere.
Is he in heaven? Is he in hell?
That damned elusive Pimpernel."

But back to the main plot: Sir Percy and Lady Marguerite are unhappy with each other even though they do love each other. The problem arose when Sir Percy found out that Lady Marguerite played a role in the death of a French nobleman, not realizing that his wife was tricked into it. But apparently, that is what sparked Sir Percy to don the Pimpernel persona. He felt guilty that his wife had a hand in that treachery. And for her part, Lady Marguerite was annoyed at the foppish behavior of her husband – which he hadn’t displayed at the beginning of the marriage.

Then the man who betrayed Lady Marguerite’s trust – Monsieur Chauvelin, a French spy working in England – shows up at the Blakeney estate seeking her help in identifying the Scarlet Pimpernel. Although Lady Marguerite initially refuses, Chauvelin has proof that her brother, who unbeknownst to her is a member of her husband’s secret network, is a traitor to France. The spy threatens to have the brother killed unless Lady Marguerite does as she is told. Chauvelin eventually suspects that Sir Percy is the Pimpernel and returns to France to set a trap for him.

Before leaving on his next rescue mission, Sir Percy and Lady Marguerite discuss their rocky relationship and the wife, still in the dark about her husband, admits she has again helped Chauelin to save her brother. She also explains how she was tricked by Chauvelin the first time. Then after Sir Percy has left, Lady Marguerite discovers her husband’s secret. She and the English side of the Pimpernel network sail to France to warn her husband, but Chauvelin already knows where the Pimpernel plans to rendezvous with the ship that will take him back to England. Lady Marguerite arrives first, Chauvelin shows up and captures her and Sir Percy apparently walks into the trap. But, although Sir Percy wasn’t expecting his wife’s presence, it turns out that Chauvelin is the one who walks into the trap – and the happy couple returns to England.

I decided to add a comic book character to this discussion because of the popularity the genre has enjoyed since the mid 20th Century. And I chose Spiderman (2002, color) because he was my personal favorite. Also, I’m a big Marvel Comics fan because, in my opinion, its characters deal with the kind of everyday problems we all have and they are more introspective than the characters in D.C. Comics.

Peter Parker is a science whiz kid who lives with his Aunt May and Uncle Ben in New York City. His biggest concerns are keeping his grades up, trying to find a way to attract the interest of Mary Jane Parker, making time to hang out with Harry Osborn, his best friend, and working as photographer on his school’s newspaper. During a field trip to a science lab, he is bitten by a radioactive spider and develops arachnid-like powers that include “spider sense” – the ability to perceive danger just before it strikes. Although he decides to create a Spiderman outfit to hide his identity, he initially treats his newfound powers rather frivolously.

Coincidentally, Uncle Ben, who along with Aunt May does not know about Peter’s super powers, lectures his nephew about people’s obligation to society, telling him that “with great powers come great responsibility.” Then one day, Uncle Ben is killed by hoodlums who Peter had previously encountered and ignored. That’s when Peter decides that Spiderman would become a crime fighter. And because his uncle is no longer living, Parker decides to take a job that actually make money. So, he becomes a photographer for the Daily Bugle, a newspaper owned by J. Jonah Jamison – who uses his forum to denounce all super heroes, especially Spiderman. Jamison hires Peter because the photographer always manages to get exclusive photos of Spiderman. Gotta love the irony.

Peter also has great respect for Harry’s father, Norman Osborn, who is a noted scientist. But one of Osborn’s experiments goes haywire, giving him super powers as well – and driving the scientist insane. Osborn then develops an alter ego known as the Green Goblin and proceeds to wreak havoc throughout the city. Spiderman, who is aware of the Green Goblin’s identity, battles the crazed scientist and ultimately defeats, as in kills, him – something Peter hoped to be able to avoid.

Like the previously discussed main characters Spiderman recognized that a wrong was being committed an he took it upon himself to do something about it. I know that this may sound like these guys are vigilantes, the kind of people I warned about in previous writings. But there is one big difference: Zorro, The Scarlet Pimpernel and Spiderman were not acting out of revenge, but rather out of a sense duty and responsibility for their fellow human beings.

Of course, many of history’s masked men have been bad guys who have robbed banks, trains, stage coaches and individuals. And some of these bad guys have hid behind masks and hoods to perpetrate unspeakable evil against people that were wrongly deemed dangerous or just because the bad guys were attracted to cruelty. But the masked and disguised good guys of the cinema have earned our undying affection and filled us with hope that when we are in need of help, there is always the possibility that some real unknown hero will come to our aid.

Not So Cold – and Not So Satisfying

13 Women
13 West Street
Nevada Smith

There’s an old saying that revenge is a dish that is best served cold. While I will concede that there is a possibility the aforementioned entrée can be served cold, I seriously doubt it. People seeking revenge are generally angry – and if their anger doesn’t create hatred, then it was born of hatred. Anger and hatred are, to my mind, heated emotions.

I suppose one could argue that revenge can also contain the rather frosty elements of meanness and cruelty. But I would counter that people who are mean and cruel possess a self-hatred that is hidden by an aura of coolness. It’s something like throwing ice on a sizzling frying pan: It may start out frozen, but it ends up as hot steam. In the films discussed here, anger, hatred – and frustration – lead to revenge tinged with cruelty and meanness.

In 13 Women (released in 1932 in black and white), Ursula Georgie is a woman born of mixed parentage, white and Asian, who craves acceptance in the “white world.” She manages to save enough money to go to a California college but is shunned and mistreated by members of a sorority after they learn of her background. She leaves the school without graduating and passes herself off as an astrologist who reads tarot cards and tells horoscopes. Some 20 years later, she actively seeks the revenge she has wanted since she left college – killing off the sorority sisters and members of their families one by one with the help of a man who is in love with her. However, when her attempt to kill the son of the leader of the hated clique is foiled, she throws herself off the back of a moving train, presumably killing herself.

The film 13 West Street (1962, b&w) is about a scientist named Walt Sherill who, while driving home through a seemingly deserted area in Los Angeles, runs out of gas and then is mugged by five hoodlums – some of whom are rather well off. He becomes frustrated with the police investigation of the incident and decides to mete out his own brand of justice on the young men who attacked him. Walt, who hires a private detective to help his crusade, eventually loses his job and incurs the wrath of innocent people who had nothing to do with his mugging. He is also chastised by the police for interfering with their investigation.

The scientist’s search frightens one of the guilty gang members so much that he commits suicide. Now, it’s the gang leader’s turn to seek revenge, which he does by terrorizing Walt’s family. Then, Walt traps the gang leader in his own home and is on the verge of killing him. But for some reason, Walt cools down and decides to turn the gang leader over to the police.

Nevada Smith (1966, color) focuses on another person of mixed parentage. Set in the western United States in the 1890s, Max Sand seeks revenge for the murder of his white father and Native American mother by three drifters. Ironically, Max is urged on in his endeavor by a white woman who is a family friend and whose husband tries to convince him that the quest won’t be worth it.

The three men who Max is seeking split up. It takes a while but Max catches up to the first one and kills him in a knife fight that leaves him gravely wounded. After being nursed back to health by an Indian woman, he learns that another on of his prey is in a Louisiana prison. Max then allows himself to get caught during a holdup, is sent to the prison and befriends the man his has been hunting – even saving his life. After several months, Max and his prey escape from the prison with the help of another Indian woman who has fallen in love with him. But as they make their way through the swamp, the woman gets bitten by the snake. As she is dying, Max reveals his identity to the other man before killing him.

After the escape, Max continues his search for the final killer, named Tom Fitch, and manages to join his gang of outlaws. Fitch, knowing what has happened to his previous two partners, is suspicious of Max and eventually they start shooting at each other. By a river, Max wounds Fitch in each leg but can’t bring himself to kill the helpless man – despite the fact that Fitch pleads with Max to finish the job.

It is interesting to note that in none of these films did the person seeking revenge complete their self-imposed assignments to the satisfaction they sought when they began their quests. Although her own death provided Ursula Georgie with an excuse, Walt Sherill and Max Sand apparently couldn’t bring themselves to ride that train to the end of the line either.

I believe that Walt and Max came to realize that revenge was a very unsatisfying – and unjustifiably cruel – endeavor. It turned them into the people they despised, and it didn’t change what had happened to them or their families. In other words, it was a waste of time.