Superficially these two characters certainly fulfill the roles in the blog prompt; Max is the beleaguered homosexual in Dachau and John Halder is the professor elevated to SS rank. But if you look a little closer, I am in agreement that they play both rolls.
Max is, as stated in the lecture, a playboy. He lives with Rudy, but he seduces and brings home a big blonde specimen of an SS officer. He deals cocaine at the club and is just the suavest Mother around. Max is good at making deals, which is how he survives so long in the camps. He is a survivor which means that at his core he is willing to do just about anything to live; even watch and take part in the brutal beating of his lover. Many people, I'm tempted to say MOST people, would be unable to desecrate the corpse of a thirteen year old girl. But Max does it because he knows, right from the start, that he is a survivor and will do anything it takes to live as long as he can. Of course that all goes downhill by the end of the movie as he discovers that every man has his breaking point. But if you look closely at Max, he embraces his victimization because in the world of the camps, obedience is what will keep you alive. He deals with his victimization because it suits his purpose to be obedient to the guards.
John Halder is a very passive and definitely befuddled character in C.P. Taylor's "Good." Having unwittingly aided the Nazi death machine in their desire for a "blemish"-free Germany, he can only sit back and watch as he is promoted several times in rank to one of the higher SS offices. He is, in essence, a victim, just as Gluckstein is; things happen to him, not of his own volition and power. But he, in his ignorance and complete moral unawareness, has very few qualms about his aiding the Nazi's. About his spiffy Nazi uniform he says, "It is a terrible thing, but a wonderful thing, to get into a uniform," acknowledging the terrible things that happen when the individual joins the ranks of the group at large.
By the ends of both of these stories, their roles are affirmed, however. Max throws himself upon the electric fence because with his acceptance of his love of Horst and thus his homosexuality, he realizes that he cannot go on surviving in his frozen, inhuman state of mind. Once he looks beyond his own safety and realizes that the Nazi's cruelty has beaten him, he embraces his victimization and gives himself up to death. As Halder recounts his trip to Auschwitz, to the accompaniment of prisoners playing a Schubert march, he realizes the reality of what he has been working for. In the film version of the play, Viggo Mortensen, in his Nazi uniform walks wildly around the camp, to the prisoners, personifying the Nazi elite, as he realizes that his simple little work of fiction about euthenasia has spiralled and probably infuenced the ovens of burning Jews that he is surrounded with and which he has been working towards when he embraced the mindless state of victimizer.
Ellie, How does Max's relationship with Horst change him? You say in the last paragraph that, because he loves Horst, he kills himself, but how has the relationship changed him before that. I realize that it is not until Horst's death that Max admits openly (by putting on Horst's shirt with the pink triangle) that he is a homosexual, but how do we see him changing during the film.
ReplyDeleteDo a bit more with your discussion of John Halder.
Max, who formerly put himself and his own safety before everything and everyone else else, begins to think of Horst before himself. He risks his safety when he bribes a guard to allow Horst to work in the rock quarry and also performs oral sex on a SS officer to get medicine for Horst. They are each others best hope in the camp.
ReplyDeleteJohn Halder, on the opposite side of the spectrum, refused to endanger himself for Maurice's sake. He is simply too morally stunted and ignorant to understand his culpability.