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.

Trujillo - Even within the victimized, there are victimizers.

A traveling exhibit by the U.S Holocaust memorial exhibit

We are members of the human race. A race that is known throughout history as one that destroys their own in petty wars and jealous rages. A race where men victimize each other.

The film Bent shows the story of a particular man, Max, who begins his story being a victimizer. He sleeps with men and women left and right, playing with the emotions of especially his young dancer friend and roommate Rudy, who he seems to have some sort of a relationship with. Very quickly, as the film progresses, we see the horrible turn of events, where Max and Rudy are persecuted for being gay.

I believe that the point in which Max truly became a victim in the film is when he was forced to deny his friendship with Rudy and when he was forced to beat him. Here, the most basic animalistic tendency showed... the want and need of survival. Here, compassion was taken away and replaced with mind altering fear.

It was interesting to see the humanity of the victimizers (mainly the SS guards) in this film. It was interesting to see that while they still tortured these men and women, they were human too. They needed water to cool down and could fail a few times trying to light a cigarette. They played like children in the snow and drank and had fun. They did all these things with the victims in the concentration and work camps suffering and dying in front of them. They had already lost sight of the humanity of the people in front of them.

Unfortunately, you see Max revert to his ways as the victimizer as he forces Horst to join his work, a job that clearly drove Horst mad much sooner than it did Max, a job that Horst obviously never wanted to have. A job that forces Horst to fall in love with a man that can't love back. Even within the victimized, there are vicimizers.

Good, a play about a man who decided to join the Nazi party to advance his career, portrays the main character as the victimizer. What other title would joining the Nazi party give you, his advancements on euthanasia helping the party annihilate millions of lives? But my, aren't we quick to judge. Couldn't one argue that Halder, the protagonist, was a victim of a movement? Not really given much of an option?