Movies possess the power to sway us and change us. It can touch us at a very personal level and can resonate through our own life experiences. Cinema has and always will be a dominant part of our education, with or without our realisation. I had the privilege of seeing a marvellous example of such a movie when I saw Gentleman’s Agreement (1947). This Gregory Peck-Elia Kazan Oscar winner takes a stand on anti-Semitism at a time when the US was reeking of sectarianism (it still is and so is the whole world). The theme of the movie is consistent with the present issues concerning religion, race and basic intolerance.
A widower, Peck’s character, who happens to be a columnist at a magazine, moves to New York with his mother and young son. He is assigned to write a piece on Anti-Semitism. After struggling for a while to find the right approach to the article, he decides to pose as a Jew for eight weeks. The eight weeks that would open his eyes to the filth of separatism. A simple change of his surname from Green to Greenberg and calling himself a Jew opened up a whole pit of snakes, hissing and encircling his family. His candidacy for several jobs was rejected, his son was bullied and he was turned away from a “restricted” resort. His Jewish friend also had difficulty finding an apartment in NYC because of his religion. The movie ends with the message of forgiveness but tactfully avoids providing much hope, and rightly so. Because we’d hope that the world would have moved away from such uncivilised and uneducated practices by now, but looking at this small world of ours it seems that nothing has changed.
I am not even getting into sexism, transphobia, homophobia and the general rejection of anything other than heterosexual white males. I am just sticking to religious discrimination and racism. And it is a crying shame that we haven’t even progressed a bit. With bigoted and racist leaders all over the world, there seems to be a general acceptance for hate driven separatism. When one Muslim kills people we attack their whole community but do we do the same when a lone white Christian gunslinger shoots innocent kids at a school or at a church? No we don’t and rightly so because it is not the responsibility of an entire community when one person goes rogue. It is an act of terror irrespective of a person’s faith and has nothing to do with faith despite them trying to convince us otherwise. The fact remains that all of us belong to the same species. We are all very different from one another. In this planet of 7.5 billion people everyone is vastly different from the other. But the variability in humans is the same in every country and every community and every ethnicity. Nothing is particular to a certain religion or a certain race or nationality. There are imbeciles and kind people all around us. In that way, humans as a single race is very much alike. The divisions are entirely man made. Everybody is unique in their own right and when they do something wrong they should bear the entire responsibility and blame of it and not the people who happen to be of the same religion or race. When someone is blatantly breaking the traffic rules or committing a crime let’s make it a practice to restrict the blame onto the person committing it and not anything else, because factually the other approach doesn’t make any sense.
Before we start generalising any religion we should look at the facts (which none of us do before vilifying an entire community).
And it’s not just about one country or one constitution; it’s about human rights. When you blame one community for the crimes of a few then you’re not doing a good job in providing a happy home for the innocents in that community. Think a second about living under constant fear that one person will shoot bullets in some part of the world and then you have to answer for it and apologise for that.
Unfortunately, anti-Semitism still exists along with all sorts of intolerance that have existed for way too long than they should have. Even love can be made illegal in some countries if it happened to be of sexuality other than heterosexuality.
I was really moved by the movie and would ask everybody to see it. It is a masterful work of art and speaks of themes and concepts that are still relevant and I hope that it won’t be relevant in the future. Slightly slow paced in the beginning, it quickly picks up pace as soon as the protagonist decides the approach to his article. The movie also speaks largely about people who are not anti-Semites but aren’t bothered to protest. They silently accept loathsome jokes and discrimination but then go on to call themselves tolerant. Yes, we might not be intolerant but staying silent through a crime makes us equally responsible in the perpetuation of such atrocities. It is beautifully depicted in the movie; thereby, dealing with all forms of such discrimination.
And yeah, sit with a box of tissues; you might need it by the end.
Thanks for Reading
Further Readings
Run Like A Girl
Stranger Problem
What Does Feminism Mean?
Aggressive Nationalism
Look Up! there’s a world outside.
Boys Don’t Cry
Freedom to LOVE
The Image of ME
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