In our last class, we discussed the differences between sympathy and empathy, when Professor Parham brought up the example of mock slave auctions. Whites would make themselves slaves and act as though they were being auctioned. This type of performance elicited sympathy from whites; “through emotion, the power structure can learn to do the right thing.”
The example brought up in class made me think about the film The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, a Holocaust film centered on the friendship of a German boy, whose family is part of the Nazi regime, and a Jewish boy in a nearby concentration camp. The two boys have an instant bond despite the grave situation surrounding them, as they are young and naive. This was also an interesting film because you got to see it from the “villain’s” perspective and you saw that Nazis were normal people with families, but at the same time, went out killing other families; needless to say, I still felt contempt toward the German boy’s father and the Nazi regime, which brings me to my next point.
Towards the end of the film, the German boy’s father decides to have his family move to a safer country, but as they are about to leave, the little boy is nowhere to be found. They have no idea that he’s off helping the Jewish boy find his father on the other side of the fence. The boy puts on striped pajamas and the two being their quest. The German family searches frantically for their son, when they realize that he’s in the concentration camp. They attempt to get to him before the group of Jews goes into the gas chamber, but to no avail.
As I watched the end of the movie, I kept thinking to myself, “they better not let this German boy live, or else imma be tigghhht,: a.k.a. very upset.” I felt evil for wanting the cute little boy to die, but I realized that it wasn’t that I wanted the little boy to die, but that I wanted something to happen that would elicit the very thing we discussed in class, sympathy and empathy. That thing just so happened to be the death (violent act) of one’s own. And as Professor Parham stated in class, “it has to be a child.” The two little boys in the film created a powerful form of affect.
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