Ramon: District 9 and Genocide as a Whole

The 2009 film directed by Neill Blomkamp, District 9, is a futuristic representation of genocide in a more humorous way than the other films we have seen in the course. I am not saying that the extermination of the aliens from Johannesburg is a funny situation, but Blomkamp purposefully placed the issues of genocide in this situation in order to remove a bit of human emotional attachment to the persecuted aliens. When a being that no human can associate to on a physical dimension is persecuted, there is a sense of ease when it comes to examining a situation. However, this leads into the point of why the simple root of genocide is persecution of the non-conformist in a society.

Now, genocide usually is not rooted in pure physical differences in peoples. The genocide of a certain race is the due to primarily the demands of an oppressive race and/or the disapproval of the cultural practices of the suppressed race. We see this in Powwow Highway. In this film and in District 9, the suppressed race is placed in reservations. The reservations are areas in the country/city that separates them from the “normal” members of the society. In the article Denial, Shadow, and Recovery, Jana Rivers- Norton says in reference to capitalist Americans as a whole, “they materialize through various forms of acting out (racism, scapegoating, national chauvinism).” In both films, the oppressive race wants to eliminate the lower race because of economic means to gain land. The case of Powwow Highway is to build a refinery, and in District 9 is to further develop the slums to benefit the city.

Secondly, District 9 and the Rwandan holocaust relate together because much of the Rwandan holocaust was based off of the face that Tutsis looked a lot different from Hutus. Paul’s wife in Hotel Rwanda is much taller than him, is much lighter skinned than him, and has a much thinner nose than he does. They do look drastically different from one another. I was reading the book Left to Tell by Immaculee Ilibagiza. She points out her own experiences of how at an early age she was taught the physical distinctions from Hutu and Tutsi. Also, she learns that no matter how similar she thinks she looks to the majority Hutu class, she is drastically different from the other students. In an interview article by Carl Wilkens, Jerri Sheperd speaks heavily of the “other” in relation to the Rwandan genocide. The aliens in District 9 were constantly viewed as “the other.” In allegory to the apartheid in South Africa and the civil rights movement in the United States, the aliens were very much treated like the “other.” The film shows a montage of shots showing different signs that separate the aliens from the humans. This is much like the signs placed in buses and on water fountains during the civil rights movement. These signs were the result of the immediate physical differences seen by the natives.

Ramon- Rwanda

Allow me to begin with stating the role of the West in this conflict. The West began this conflict early in the 20^th Century when Belgium invaded Rwanda for territory and resources. Rwanda gained their freedom back over time, but Belgium still remained within the people of Rwanda. When Belgians colonized Rwanda, Belgians moved to Rwanda and spawned a Creole type of mix of Belgian and Native Rwandans. Thus, a new sub category culture of Africans was created. The Tutsis were taller and light skinned than the Hutus due to Belgian blood. At least, so I’ve learned. However, the question still remains of why the West did not step in well enough to stop the genocide in Rwanda. My answer: The West simply did not care about Africa. Of course the West knew about Africa’s valuable resources. However, the West was already surviving without accessing these resources to begin with.

We now turn to Paul Russesabinga of Hotel Rwanda. Paul is a wealthy Hutu who is the manager of a hotel in genocide-torn Rwanda. Paul’s main worry was not the success of his exquisite hotel. He was most concerned about the protection of his Tutsi wife. Paul’s story in a way mirrors that of Schindler. Schindler’s main motive in saving the Jews was to make money, but that motive turned to a desire to help those being persecuted. Paul’s motive was to protect his family. However, word soon was spread that he was protecting Tutsis at his hotel. All of a sudden, his family became quite large.

There are two characters in Murambi: Book of Bones I would like to discuss; Dr. Joseph Karekezi and Faustin Gasana. Both of these characters are antagonistic in the novel. When we look at the mind of the Hutu murderers, we should look at their aims and motives. Many of the higher-up Hutus, such as Dr. Karekezi and Gasana have distinct political motives in this genocide. Lets be clear, the breakout of the immediate conflict was an assassination of the Hutu President. Gasana, like many other Hutus, believed that the Tutsis were to blame for the Prime Minister’s plane crash. I have my own theories that the Prime Minister was merely a scapegoat for the Hutus to have a reason to eliminate the Tutsis from Rwanda. Dr. Karekezi attempted to play both sides of the fence during this conflict. He wanted to stand up for the rights of the Tutsis, but he also supported the Hutus with supplies and other necessities to follow through with the extermination of the “cockroaches.”

Ramon: Week 5, Powwow Highway and "Saint Marie"

The characters, Buddy Red Bow, Filbert Bono, and Marie all deal with cultural subordination in vastly different ways. However, the constant within these three character’s paths of subordination is the destruction of their Native American culture.

We will start with Filbert Bono of PowWow Highway. Filbert is an interesting character in this situation because he is somewhat naïve to what is truly going on around him. He is of middle age from what I could gather in the film, but he has a child-like mind. Filbert has the goal of becoming a great Native American warrior. In Filbert’s mind, all he has ever known is the Native American culture. The ironic thing about Filbert’s character is that he tries so hard to become a warrior, but he still is sucked in by Americana. Two large examples of this is his “pony” and his eating styles. His “pony” is a beat up car and the only things that Filbert eats, according to Buddy Red Bow, are hamburgers and fries. When one thinks about Americana, the automobile industry and the fast food industry are the two distinguishing factors of Americana. It I ironic that this Native American warrior journey is laid side by side with two of Americana’s major elements.

We now move to Buddy Red Bow. Red Bow’s situation is also quite ironic. He is so gung-ho about preserving the reservation from the mining scheme and keeping Americana away from the Reservation. He goes so far as to park violence towards the white-man. However, when he and Filbert attend the Powwow, Red Bow states his hate of the Powwow. Granted, Red Bow does partake in ceremonial dancing at the Powwow, but in my examination of this scene, Red Bow joins in the dancing to make Filbert happy.

Lastly, Marie’s character in “Saint Marie” is partnered with another large element in Americana, the Christian religion. This nation was founded on religious principles, but the native inhabitants of the “New World” were pushed back and lowered to third class citizens. This short story made me think about my time in Belize. In Belize, young Mayan women are taken under the wings of multiple religious orders, such as the Palatine Sisters. This is not a knock on the Palatines at all and I am not saying that the Palatines are taking the Mayans away from the Mayan culture. In this story, Marie simply deals with the treatment she undergoes from Sr. Leopolda. I am in full support of the Mayan youth being taken in by the sisters. However, are the Mayans (and Native Americans) being “forced” to do these things and tricked into thinking that doing dishes is for God? I do not know and will not know

Ramon- Week 4 Szpilman

First, this is not my first time seeing Roman Polanski’s The Pianist. It is a very well done film. However, does the film really need to be two and a half hours long? Granted, I know that Polanski knows just a little more about filmmaking than I do, but there were a few time in the film where I felt that there was no progression. One example is when he is hiding in the Warsaw ghetto and is locked in a room. Yes, it was good to see the physical struggle of lack of nutrition that Szpilman was going through. However, that was already evident in the starvation others were suffering. Namely, his brother.

In terms of the first and third person viewpoints, there is a sense of bias attached to many first person narratives. In Szpilman’s autobiography and supported by Polanski’s film, a first person bias was not evident. Rather, Szpilman portrayed a feeling of truth and reality to the reader. Dr. McCay indicated in her notes sheet how in the film, the audience was not truly brought into the situation. The example she stated and a defining event in my own reading of the autobiography was the ignorance or the lack of generosity rich Jews showed to children. In the film, Szpilman’s borderline interrogated a little boy as to what he was doing with the money he made from selling snacks in the ghetto. This two-minute encounter in a film that is one hundred and fifty minutes takes away from the first-person narrative. Meaning, this sort of injustice within the ghetto was much more evident in the autobiography.

Lastly, I had an issue/observation regarding the names of individuals in the film. Polanski of course did this on purpose. We are only given the first names of characters in the film as opposed to the autobiography. Also, the only time in the film when we are given a last name is when Wilm asks Szpilman his name. At the conclusion of the film, the audience is reintroduced to Wilm as a prisoner of war. He wants to send his remarks to Szpilman, but can not remember his name. When the messenger asks for Wilm’s name, the Russians hush him. Thus, the complete message was not sent to Szpilman. However, the memory of Wilm still lives on thanks to Szpilman’s autobiography.

Although a first person narrative can in many times be biased, a third person film is much more biased. When telling a story over again, key moments and the personal thoughts (such as the rich jews’ ignorance of the suffering) are not so much manifested in film so that the audience listens to the director’s message.

Ramon: Week 3- Wallenberg and Schindler

For the first time, we are able to see what life was like for the Jews during the Holocaust. I use ‘life’ specifically because we do see the ‘life’ of the Jews manifested in Good Evening. Mr. Wallenberg and in Schindler’s List.

First, I’ll focus on the individuals these films are based off of. Both Raoul Wallenberg and Oscar Schindler were in a sense ‘normal’ people. They were, in a sense, allies of the Nazi regime, and were not persecuted by the Nazis. They were witness to the illegitimate persecution of the Jews, and decided to act upon it.

Bryce Courtenay write a spectacular novel entitled “The Power of One.” I will not add a spoiler to this blog for those who wish to read into this book, but it is the story of one boy, Peekay, who is persecuted. By his will power and his connections, he is able to overpower a wrecking force in his community. Peekay does not solve the problem; rather he takes it into his hands to do his best to rid a problem of bullying and persecution in his community.

This translates quite well to this actions Wallenberg and Schindler take. They did not end the persecution of the Jews. In the overall picture, they only were able to save a small population of Jews. However, there was a greater deed done by these two men. I have spoken before about what the power of a legacy. The most lasting impact Wallenberg and Schindler made is that they were able to save the legacy of tens of thousands of Jews. If those two men did not see the window of opportunity and the illegitimacy of the persecution, the legacies of those people would be lost. To make this a twofold approach to how many Jews were saved, the most important legacies manifested in the offspring of humans. If it was not for these two individuals, those approximately 100,000 saved by Wallenberg and the 1,200 saved by Schindler, easily grew to double or even triple the number with their offspring.

Finally, in the beginning of this post I mentioned the ‘life’ of the Jews. An integral part of the Wallenberg and Schindler plans was the support and attitude of the Jews in their company. More specifically, it was touching to see the normal religious practices still taking place during their hiding. The Sabbath was observed to the best possible, and prayer still occurred no matter where or what condition they were in. The Gospel of Matthew 18:20, “"For where two or three have gathered together in My name, I am there in their midst."

Ramon- Week 2; Victims of Victims

The question of victim and victimizer is a tough problem to judge. When analyzing a play, novel, or film, one can believe to sympathize with one character for being victimized, but then the tables could turn when the victimized turns victimizer. First, in Cecil P. Taylor’s 1981 play Good, the reader is supposed to sympathize with Halder in the beginning. He is merely an educated person who happens to be a part of Nazi Germany. He becomes involuntarily in a way brainwashed by the Nazi rule. The vicious victimization circle begins with Prof. Halder’s way of thought from a cool and collected instructor to one who sees the Nazi ‘Final Solution’ as perfectly legitimate. Thus, his victimization involuntarily turned Halder into a victimizer of countless innocent people.

Moving onto an easier way to see victimization, the 1997 film based off the 1979 play by Martin Sherman, Bent, is the story of victimization of homosexuals in Nazi Germany. First, the main character, Max, plays both role of victim and victimizer. In the most basic terms, he is a victim of the Nazis because he is a homosexual and a prisoner for that fact. He is also a victimizer as he is brainwashed by the Nazi way. When he is given his identification patch, he was supposed to get a pink downward facing triangle to show his homosexuality. However, he struck a deal with the SS so that he could have a gold star, symbolizing that he was a Jew. He is brainwashed so much that he denies his homosexuality and condemns homosexuality altogether. Thus, he becomes a victimizer to his homosexual work friend, Horst.

Back track a bit in the film, there is another situation in this film I would like to examine. After Max, is taken into captivity onto the train, Nazi SS Officers bust their way onto Max’s train car. The SS choose Max’s ‘lover’ of sorts, Rudy, because he is wearing glasses; a sign of weakness in the Nazi view. They him into the next car and beat him half to death. The SS brings back the half-beaten man, and asks Max a series of questions on if he knows the man. He tells Max to hit his ‘lover’ with a club. For a brief second, the camera shows the commanding SS officer sitting down alone and rubbing his eyes in sadness, he also has glasses himself. That shows an example of how the organization is the victimizer in many cases and how the system victimizes the individuals within that system.

In conclusion, it is not a valid solution to try to eliminate a certain victimizer. Rather, it makes more sense to seek out the organization from which that victimizer comes from.

Ramon- Week 1; Night, Soviet Story, Conspiracy

Holocaust survivor and former Chairman of the Holocaust and Human Rights Education Center in Washington, D.C., Henry Friedman, once said, "We are all different; because of that, each of us has something different and special to offer and each and every one of us can make a difference by not being indifferent." Henry Friedman walks earth as a free man, but as a boy in the holocaust, he still feels as if his individuality was stripped away from him permanently. As we view Night, Soviet Story, and Conspiracy, we can see three different ways politically fueled genocide completely erased the individuality of millions across Europe.

Beginning with Elie Wiesel’s Night, the most prominent way individuality was taken away from the Jews, as described in the book, was the uniformity of appearance between each member of the concentration camps. Nazis found no need to search within for tools possessed by the individuals, such as knowledge. Once separated in this manner, some prisoners are sent to work camps and some sent to death camps, such as Elie and his father sent to Auschwitz. Other instances along the journey involved the shaving of heads, stripping of clothes, and group showers. All of these create uniformity in the Nazi vision. Nazis went so far as to give a number to each prisoner. Elie Wiesel was given the number A-7713.

Moving to Conspiracy, we break away from the brutality the journey Wiesel went through and how his individualism was taken from him, and we move to how even German officials were also not seen as individuals. At the beginning of the docu-dramaticised Wannsee Conference, the members of the conference were asked by Reinhard Heydrich to introduce themselves to the other groups represented in the conference. Contrary to how we introduce ourselves, the majority of the members mumbled over their own name, put major emphasis on the division of Nazi Germany they belonged to, and pledged eternal allegiance to the fuehrer. It seemed as though even the highest ranking officials, besides Hitler’s closest officials, were purely seen as pawns moved by Hitler so that he would be able to follow through with the “Final Solution.”

Finally, in Soviet Story, we see how a person’s legacy defines his or her individuality. The difference between the Nazi extermination of the Jews and the Soviet extermination of the Ukrainians, was that the Nazi extermination was intricately planned and documented. All prisoners of the Nazis were tagged documented number and registered. When files turn up, we are at least able to somewhat gain a bit of knowledge of what concentration camp a relative belonged to or where the relative was picked up from on the train cars. In Soviet Story, the memory of millions of Ukrainians was erased clean. It is by the legacy our ancestors leave behind that defines them as an individual. The Ukraine lost 7,000,000 legacies in one year.

Individualism is defined in three different ways by these three films; appearance, personal agendas, and legacy.

Ramon- Introduction

Hey everyone, my name is Jeffrey Ramon. I am a senior Religious Studies major at Loyola. At Loyola I am involved in two major activities. I am the head basketball manager for our men's basketball team, and I am the Executive Chair of the Ignacio Volunteers. The Ignacio Volunteers is am immersion program organization facilitated by the Jesuit Center. We run immersion programs to Belize and Jamaica during the summer and winter of the school year. Interested? Talk to me :) Not interested? Talk to me so I can tell you more about these amazing programs. Outside of Loyola, I am a Sr. 4th Degree Black Belt in TaeKwonDo.

Why am I enrolled in this course? First, I declared my English minor rather late in my college career, so it's crunch time as far as course credits are concerned. However, my interest in World War II and the Holocaust has been quite high since reading Lois Lowry's "Number the Stars" in middle school.

That's everything about me. I look forward to the course!