The face of evil, Arendt discovered, wasn’t a demon lurking in the cellar but the factory supervisor in the nice house across the street. Those carrying out the orders that led to the extermination of millions of Jews along with other marginalized groups became part of the bureaucracy of genocide. This startling and still controversial insight — that the Holocaust was executed not by sadists but by conformist clerks and self-interested middle managers — inspired the famous subtitle of Arendt’s book: “A Report on the Banality of Evil.”
5 comments:
wow. This is what we need. This is why art is important. I didn't realize I had been waiting for a production like this until I started reading this article. How interesting does this play sound. It is one thing for theater to contemplate events of our past or worlds that are extended from our reality, but to take the circumstances of our world today and provide a play that makes an informed hypothesis of our future is certainly art that is relevant. I think the idea behind the play itself and the book written by Gitta Sereny are amazing mindsets to start with when making a piece like this. I think that this play can be very moving and eye opening for all because it starts with this ideal that everyone is good but people become messed up when they are fed propaganda from their leaders and given the power to do something about it.
First off, I want to say how much I enjoyed that the article addressed some of the faults of the play. Though the author seemed to overwhelmingly like the play, I believe the article more because the author chose to highlight some of the flaws. I think it's really interesting that that play focuses on how a common man and how he’s not a bad person. Often we focus on the people in power and therefore, we can neglect the most important people, the general public. I also think the idea of questioning what a wall is important. Though the article says that the plot in not hyper realistic because it's unlikely that the two characters would share secrets, I think the idea of these two people sitting down in an unconventional setting in extremely interesting. I believe that if people with differing ideology sat down and discussed their beliefs, there would be more empathy and understanding in this world. I hope viewers of this play leave with a greater understanding of the world around them and that the play opens their eyes to others opinions.
Everyone likes to believe that, had they lived in Nazi Germany, they wouldn’t have been a Nazi. In fact, I’m willing to bet that most people, whether they believe they really would’ve been or not, like to think they would’ve tried to resist Hitler, perhaps even being one of the heroes that helped hide people and smuggle them to safety. But, historically/statistically speaking, most people, had they lived in Nazi Germany would have more or less cooperated with the Nazi regime. We can know this because that is what most people in that situation did. People who were complicit in the Holocaust to various degrees were not evil or sadistic, their behavior was a horrific result of human nature combined with their situation. This, of course, in no way excuses what they did.
There are a number of reasons why people like to believe that they would not have been a Nazi. Most obviously, people don’t like to think they are capable of that because people want to see themselves as good people. Second, demonizing average Germans during WWII creates a sense of safety. Making them “different” by imagining them as inherently evil allows us to tell ourselves “that couldn’t happen here” and that history won’t repeat itself because we wouldn’t go along with it and our neighbors wouldn’t. And basically no one wants to wake up living in WWII Germany, and so we want to believe that those people weren’t like us and therefore these terrible things won’t happen.
The way I see it, this desire to imagine ourselves as inherently different than Nazis is dangerous. Because in their shoes we would be them. We cannot let ourselves forget what we are capable of. We cannot become so certain of our sense of ethics that we don’t keep checking to make sure we are really following it. We need to remember that human nature can allow for terrible things, and if we don’t remain vigilant we could allow those things to happen.
Because of this, I think “Building the Wall” and plays like it are very important. To remind people of what could happen. To remind people of what we as individuals could fail to prevent, or even contribute to. We have to remember that we are not safe. That we are not inherently different than people who have caused terrible things throughout history. Staying aware of both who we want to be and who we do not want to become (and remembering we could), might be our best tool to fight our tendency as humans to be obedient and complacent and fight for what is right even when it is hard or dangerous.
Plays like "Building the Wall" are more important now than they ever have been. We are now a point in history where a very dangerous administration has taken power that has intentions to target minority groups. It's even scarier that they could do this in a manner that is technically legal. We have not even reached the end of the first one hundred days of this administration and so far we have seen the president remove protections for transgendered students and try to prevent people of certain nationalities from even entering the country at all. It is so easy to be complacent and just let this all happen by staying out of it, but that is not an option anymore. Throughout the next four years those of us with privilege must help to lift up others who don't, and continue to hold these dangerous people accountable. Whether that is through playwrighting, protesting, or calling your reps staying involved is crucial.
I’m sure that for many, the Hitler-Trump analogies feel outdated and/or overdramatic, but I would argue that this comparison is nothing but eerily perfect and scarily true to what is happening right now. As many other commentors have said, while we all like to think that we would have been a resistor in Nazi Germany, the fact of the matter is that statistically, most of us would have been complacent if not aiding in Hitler’s anti-semetic agenda. This idea of evil people doing evil things is simply untrue, and becomes vastly clear when considering that the man whose job it was to literally send people to the gas chambers to die only had to shuffle around some papers. Now, in the digital age, we live in a world where scrolling past articles about hate crimes and people being detained and kept from their families across oceans is so normal that it’s very easy to fall into a pattern of complacency, even past the idea of hopelessness, just numbness. The idea that Building The Wall takes place in the dystopian future of 2019 is crazy but also far too believable. I’m so glad that art that is tackling these huge issues is being written and produced so readily, because we need to be able to process what is happening quickly enough to do something about it.
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