World War Stories, Too
The World War II was without a doubt the most dramatic event of the 20th Century. It showed humanity as flawed, miserable and in lack of more elemental words: evil; again. Carl Sagan once said that humans are capable of greatness. During those years we were not. But in the end, some justice was served thanks to endurance, courage and sacrifice of great men.
There’s plenty of dramatic elements and characters in this war that we could analyze, yet I’ll stick with the most basic ones: the arch of the jewish people and the antagonist. Both of these elements are pretty much everywhere in our culture not because of religious propaganda or American indoctrination, they represent the ultimate example of storytelling artifacts and are archetypes for modern narrative.
Millions died during WWII, and entire countries were slaughtered almost to a pulp. In China the massacre was of unthinkable proportions, a country in the middle of an invasion and a civil war. Yet the cinematography of WWII is mostly occupied by the Holocaust. Why?
It is true that one can tell what one knows best, and having such a strong influence in Hollywood certainly has helped the Jewish community to tell their story in the big screen. But make no mistake, what’s appealing about their story in contrast of the other cultures and nations that suffered the full impact of the sledgehammer of the WWII is their story arch.
The Jewish people when placed in context were honest men and women positioned in respectable places of society. They were families that never thought the desolation of war was going to sweep away their lives. But it did, and they had to endure through only to find a brand new beginning. They lost everything, some even their lives, some even more. Their stories represent courage, sacrifice, pain and most importantly: loss. The contrast is there. Prosper families ended up separated, decimated and starved only to start from scratch with whatever they could pick up from their past lives.
Each death in the WWII was a tragedy, a dent in our pride as Humanity, yet the story of the Jewish people encapsulates a downfall, a dramatic turn in the war for the worst at its lowest and for the best at its very end. From the Holocaust we can pick up that contrast and use it to draw the stories we tell in movies like The Pianist or Schindler’s List. Sometimes it’s not worth it to search for a story within a tragedy and all you have to truly search for is justice.
And that justice leads us to our antagonist. Hitler is probably the most hated human being of all modern times. He’s been catalogued as the impersonation of evil. Just mentioning his name even became a philosophical fallacy.
Hitler was a dictator, a warlord, a conqueror, a genocide, an assassin; a villain.
This is a man that would be hard to write into any modern story without losing credibility. Yet he existed, manipulated his people, invaded and prevailed over sovereign nations, massacred millions and starved even more just for the preservation of his racist dream. Later he witnessed his empire crumble to pieces under the iron fist of his sworn enemies. And in the end he killed himself in a hole.
I don’t have an Academy Award for screenwriting, but that’s the type of thing villains do.
Calling someone a nazi in a story saves us lots of exposition and backstory. And if we use Hitler, well, we don’t even have to show his face and still our hero’s actions would be justified, just like Indiana Jones’ are in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
So, those are the highlights of WWII when it comes to storytelling. Dark times, bad guys. Other wars have more gray areas, or at least the winners of this one had led us to believe.
History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.
-Winston Churchill
Originally published at www.invisiblebridg.es.
