I have seen the face of evil. I saw it last night
on BS 2, the Japanese cable station that shows the occasional
English-language movie. The scene was more chilling than a tag-team
of Freddy Krueger, Jason, and the changing cast of black-caped,
ghost-masked slashers of the Scream trilogy dropped in the middle of
a ladies’ cutlery party.
It popped up in the middle of the 1972 Bob Fosse
classic, Cabaret. That’s the flick that features the Liza
Minnelli/Joel Grey gem “Money makes the world go ‘round,” proving
the Liza’s acorn didn’t fall far from drag queen favorite Judy
Garland’s tree.
The story’s set in early 1930s Weimar Germany on
the eve of the Nazi power grab. The favored entertainment at the
time was the burlesque cabarets featuring just enough skin and
scathing political satire—all played for laughs before the world ran
out of laughter—to put a Korean cockroach-sized bug up the Fuhrer’s
ass. The Brownshirts, who had about as much sense of humor as a
crash-test dummy, made the cabarets verboten after Hitler became
dictator.
Midway through the film, Liza’s bisexual
menage-et-trois beaus find themselves making a love connection over
cocktails at a country gasthaus (that’s Deutsch for boon-shik chip).
Sally Bowles’ (Liza) roomate-lover, played by Michael York, and the
irresistibly seductive Baron Maximilian von Heune, played by Helmut
Griem, have their mutual ogling interrupted by the mellifluous voice
of an Aryan pubescent. The camera pans over for a head shot of a
beautiful, blonde-haired teenager, his face simultaneously cheribic
and chiseled, his blue eyes sparkling, and his mouth shinning the
unnaturally brilliant red of a Maybeline lip-gloss
commercial. He’s warbling what passes for a
Third Reich anthem:
The babe in his cradle is glossing
his eyes The blossom embraces the
bee But soon there's a whisper,
“Arise, Arise” Tomorrow belongs to
me
O’ Fatherland Fatherland show us the
sign Your children have waited to
see The morning will come when the
world is mine Tomorrow belongs to
me
As the tension in the song builds to its
obvious crescendo, the camera plays hopscotch, periodically
transfixing on the haggard, nameless faces of the doe-eyed
masses—aka ‘lumpen proletariat’ Germany—but returning at the start
of each stanza in increasingly wider shots to the singing boy.
Gradually we see the neckerchief, neatly pressed shirt, and
lederhosen that were the hallmark of a Hitler Youth. The crowd
lemming-like, rises, first one-by-one and then in small groups, to
join in the anesthetizing hymn. They are transformed, redeemed,
poisoned, and finally, condemned. They’re ready to be lead to the
unspeakable inhumanity of world wars, death camps, and a thousand
petty treacheries of conspiratorial complacency. All lead by Hell’s
own angel from the Choir Invidious.
As I watched the spectacle play out I
physically shook. It was one of those death shudders like the
victims in that Vincent Price 3-D screamfest, The Tingler. It
reminded me how often evil comes dressed up as an angel, offering a
soothing collective psychic balm to anyone willing to accept the
evangelism of apathy. I thought about how important it is to never
forget how easily the listless creep of hatred, ignorance, and
indifference can give birth to an epic tragedy.
The 15 of August—Korea’s Independence
Day—marks the 55th anniversary of the end of World War II. Now no
one is going to confuse the face of Kim Jong-il for a seraphim or
cherubim, but his glad-handed, wisecracking demeanor at the recent
summit with South Korean President Kim Dae-jung was about as
expected as an August snow in Pusan. The ‘Dear Leader’ isn’t exactly
the Prince of Darkness, but I doubt if there’s any need just yet for
him to cut that shelf he’s always been meaning to build to hold all
the humanitarian awards he’ll be receiving.
I’m not one to rain on the parade passing by
on the peninsula, but I can’t help thinking the man believed to have
green-lighted the 1983 Rangoon bombing that killed several
high-ranking ROK government officials and nearly snatched
then-president, Chun Doo-hwan; the same man behind the 1987 bombing
of KAL flight 858 that killed 115; a man also connected to numerous
incidents of terrorism, espionage, and assassination, hasn’t
suddenly ‘got religion’. I hope he’s more sheep than sheep’s
clothing, but perhaps it’s a bit too early to let him baby-sit the
children or take out your daughter.
The two Koreas’ joint commemoration of the
anniversary of independence certainly is cause for celebration, the
reuniting of 200 families being the capstone event of the day’s
festivities. But when the fat ladies—or fresh-faced boys—start
singing, I hope it doesn’t signal an end this time so much as a new
beginning.
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