MARCHING ALONGSIDE US -- THE MOVIE

[Pamela Troy]

(I originally posted this a couple years ago, to a now defunct liberal website. I think it bears repeating.)

There’s a phrase I’ve been hearing a lot lately from some moderates and conservatives when subjects like the 2000 election, the PATRIOT Act, Jose Padilla, or the latest Supreme Court atrocity are brought up. It goes something like this: “I understand your concern/I hear what you are saying/It’s good that people like you are around to remind us of the importance of Civil Rights. I, too, am troubled/disturbed/uneasy about some of the actions of the current administration. But really, you are making way too much of this/veering towards hysteria/crying “wolf.” When the day comes that I feel our rights are in serious danger, I assure you,” (and here are the words that keep getting repeated, almost verbatim) “I’ll be marching right there alongside you.”

What’s striking is the apparent sincerity with which they reject any grave concern about matters like an unelected president or the provisions of the PATRIOT Act. These tend to be individuals who are intelligent and knowledgeable enough to recognize terms like “McCarthyism,” or “The Niemoller Statement.” How then, can they observe modern parallels to the policies that inspired these expressions without being galvanized into action?

A clue may lie in the vaguely cinematic ring to the statement, “I’ll be marching…” As a member of a generation that grew up awash in a sea of media images, I envision this promised epiphany as the climax to a movie. First there’s a shot of the rest of us marching down the street, bruised, limping, our now-tattered banner fluttering in the breeze over our heads. Next, we see the hero of the movie, (played by the young Henry Fonda or Matt Damon or some other icon of common decency) sitting in his living room armchair and raising his head at the sound of our faint drumbeat. Music swells as he rises, his jaw hardening, the newspaper he was reading falling to the floor, his eyes growing steely with resolve. The film closes with a shot of us realizing, suddenly, that there is one other now marching alongside, perhaps even reaching over to take the banner from our weary hands. The soundtrack reaches an inspiring crescendo as our exhausted faces lighten with relief and a few of us nod grimly, our own courage rising. All will be well. HE’S marching right here alongside us!

Only a hypercritical old meanie could watch such a fantastic closing shot and ask why the hero waited so long. Heroism in the movies, after all, does not generally involve asking questions that would require an audience to furrow its brow. Too talky. Not enough action.

Most Americans under the age of 60 have learned about how political repression works through film and video, a medium that relies heavily on a short-hand of images, musical notes, and camera angles. In post-war films set in Nazi Germany, there’s almost always that moment when the camera zooms in on the swastika, either worn as a lapel pin or fluttering from a flag over a charming European street. Or there’s the way the world “Jew” curls poisonously out of some statuesque blonde’s mouth as she draws on her gloves before leaving for a performance of TRISTAN UND ISOLDE. Or, if it takes place during the Weimar Republic, there’s the scene when the dark-haired man with his back to the camera at the upper-class soiree (“Ernst, let me introduce you to a fellow who has some of those truly original ideas you say you’re looking for…”) turns to reveal that familiar face with the forelock and the toothbrush moustache.

“Pa-dum-BUM!” goes the soundtrack, and the viewer wonders how Ernst could possibly have missed that ominous drum roll.

In films about the McCarthy era, the warning signs are microphones on a table, dark fedoras, long overcoats, bulky TV cameras, tight close ups, and sweaty politicians who wave lists. There’s often that revelatory conversation with some representative of the Red Scare mentality, the camera zeroing in on the hero’s face as the too-plausible, slightly oily words wash over him. “Ya gotta be careful these days about who you have those casual little drinks, pal. I mean, you don’t want people to think you’re out of step, do you?” (Here, one of the hero’s eyebrows twitch, and we know he’s come to the decision not to name names…)

And then there’s casting. In a recent CBS miniseries about the rise of Hitler, for instance, heroic newspaperman Fritz Gerlich was played by Matthew Modine, in spite of the fact that in 1930s Germany Fritz Gerlich was played by a perfectly ordinary looking man named Fritz Gerlich. Judging from the single picture I’ve seen of Mr. Gerlich, he’d be cast in most movies, not as a clear-sighted journalist but as the shopkeeper who nervously assures the hero that “Herr Hitler may have extreme methods, but he’ll get rid of those dirty reds!” Perhaps if Gerlich had been more impressive looking, more people would have listened to him, but he wasn’t and they didn’t. Unfortunately, heroes in the off-screen world are more likely to look like Eli Wallach than Matthew Modine.

So it’s little wonder that some Americans, adrift in a reality where there is no ominous soundtrack, no helpful close-ups, no costuming and few good-looking leads to point the way, see nothing to be worried about in the current political climate.

One of the creepier aspects of living in the post-9/11 United States is the realization that many of the folks who sat with us in movie theaters disapproving of those evil Nazis or those lousy blacklisters were not disapproving of the same things we were. They were pursing their lips and shaking their heads, not at the fact that those men on the screen were hauling people off to “protective custody” in the wake of the Reichstag Fire, but at the fact that they were wearing brown shirts and swastikas while they were doing it. They were clucking their tongues, not because that guy in a 1950s suit was saying that Americans should root out subversion in their universities, but because his face was up-lit in an unflattering manner and a makeup girl had schpritzed some moisture onto his upper lip. They were listening to the Niemoller Statement, or watching it scroll slowly up at the end of a film, and filing it away, not as an illustration of the kind of public indifference that makes tyranny possible, but as a precise laundry list of danger signals. (“Okay, I got it. They’ll come for the Communists first, then the Jews, then the trade unionists, then the Catholics…”) It was not meant, they assume, to apply to a government that comes for foreign residents first, then Arab Americans, then leftists …

It’s an interesting exercise to ask people who say, “When the time comes, I’ll be marching right there alongside you,” what, exactly, would have to happen to get them to “march”. When I’ve gotten an answer, it’s generally something along the lines of “when they bust my neighbor’s door down and take him away in a truck.” They don’t seem quite able to grasp the fact that in the real world, waiting until a repressive government is confident and powerful enough to behave so blatantly is waiting too long.

What they’re listening for is the ominous music on their own internal soundtrack. And sadly, for many of these folks, it doesn’t start playing until the sound of the jackboots starts marching unmistakably towards where they themselves are standing.