Sunday, July 7, 2019

The time that class went to see Schindler's List



They had to change the end of the Israeli version of Schindler's List because Israelis kept laughing at it. Seinfeld made a joke out of how reverent people were about a Steven Spielberg movie.

I remember this incident. Black kids in Oakland went on a field trip. They were going to see a movie. No one told them what it was and they didn't know until the movie came on the screen, but it turned out to be Schindler's List.

The movie got off to a slow start. There was a surprising amount of sex. Then the violence started. They were shocked when the Nazis murdered a woman but one laughed because the actress oversold it and flopped around more than necessary.

I knew a couple of guys who laughed at Robert Shaw dying a far worse death in Jaws and no one accused them of anything.

I just listened to a story about this incident on This American Life.

So, anyway, these poor kids were kicked out of the theater. As they walked out, one reverent white audience member was so deeply moved by Spielberg's opus on Nazism and the evil of racism that he told them to "go back to Africa."
 
There was a press conference later and the kids apologized, but people were still mad at them for not apologizing for---I don't know---being Nazis?

Polanski's The Pianist started with the city being bombed. You knew what it was about from the start because the protagonist was Jewish---not a Nazi like in Spielberg's movie.

What does it tell you about Schindler's List that anyone who didn't already know the plot spent almost a full hour wondering what the hell it was about? Princess Margaret walked out of it because she thought it would be about a nice German man (the British royal family is German).

It seems ridiculous, audiences reverently watching as Nazis talk about opening a factory.

Be careful of moral outrage, especially if the outrage is against kids, especially if they're frequent targets of racism anyway. Especially if the demand is reverence for Steven Spielberg.

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