Names of blessing, and names to be forgotten

Talking with a rabbi earlier this week, I learned that the Hebrew language has (perhaps not surprisingly) both the most beautiful blessing in the world and the darkest curse.

We were talking about Jewish history and mythology, and the rabbi said "So Hitler, yimach sh’mo, believed that the Jewish legend of the golem was real and tore apart Prague trying to find it..."

After he'd told the story, I asked him to backtrack and repeat what he'd said.

ימח שמו (sounds like yimakh shemo): "May his name be erased".

That was both chilling, and perfect. The rabbi expounded further (as rabbis apparently are wont to do) that in Jewish culture, to be remembered is to continue to exist; every year, there is a ceremony of writing or reciting the names of the blessed dead in a book. If someone's name is erased, the memory of them will die; and if they are no longer remembered, they never existed.

What made it more chilling and perfect was the tone in which he'd said the words. It managed to simultaneously be the tone of someone casually, reflexively saying the thing that always gets said, like we say "How are you?" without actually waiting to hear a reply; and AT THE SAME TIME the tone of an Old Testament prophet who had invoked the Power, rent a hole in the fabric of reality by speaking the words, and made it so.

That's how the Jewish people feel about Hitler. He doesn't deserve to be remembered; he doesn't even deserve to be spoken of with loathing. He deserves to be as if he never existed, his name and memory erased from this world and the next.

And that's exactly right. Why should we make the serial killers, the mass murderers, the monsters, famous in news accounts and history books? That's what they wanted, and what they committed their crimes FOR - power and fame (infamy is still fame, after all). Let them be staked through the heart, their bodies burned, their ashes buried in the local dump with all the other waste, and then let them and their influence end.

Let the news articles and history books remove their names and pictures, and name instead the victims and the heroes, tell the stories of those who were hurt by the monsters and those who finally destroyed the monsters; and let the monsters themselves be referred to only by the words He is erased. Let no one even care enough about them to spend the time and energy it takes to hate them or remember their names. Let them no longer have power even to anger anyone; let them be treated with the contempt with which we treat a mosquito that has been swatted.

Let them no longer have been.

May their names be erased.


Then I asked the rabbi whether there is a corollary blessing when a righteous person passes away. There is: זיכרונו לברכה (sounds like zikhrono livrakha) - "May his name be for a blessing."

How cool is that? How beautiful to be remembered forever as a blessing, your very name a benediction, your life continuing in the lives of others who have become better people just by hearing about you. How wonderful for your name to be invoked when people pray for their friends to have their burdens eased, or for themselves to be better people. How wonderful to be remembered  like Gandhi, or Mother Teresa, or Oskar Schindler - people whose very existence was a rebuke to those who deserve the epithet yimakh shemo; people who will never die because their deeds are now woven into the fabric of the world, into how human beings define what human beings ought to be.

May you, and I, and all of us who try our best but continually fall short of our own standards, someday become the people we want to see in the mirror, the people we wanted to be when we were kids and imagined ourselves as grownups, the people we want to be for our own children.


May your name be for a blessing.


© John M. Munzer

Racism and nationalism in Disney movies

Today I saw bits and pieces of Disney's Aladdin. The music was as much fun as I remembered from when I saw it in the early 90s, and Robin Williams was as Robin Williams-y. But what I hadn't noticed back in my teens was how not-so-subtly RACIST the thing was.

In the world of Disney's Aladdin, Good Guy = looks and sounds American. Bad Guy = looks and sounds Arabic (or in Jafar's case, looks Arabic and sounds sorta British.) Iago sounds like he's from Brooklyn, but he's not human and he's comic relief, so that one doesn't count.

Seriously. Look at Aladdin and Jasmine. They drew a couple of all-American white kids, colored them very slightly brown, and voiced them with a couple of all-American white kids. As for the Sultan, you could put him in a Santa Claus suit and he would fit right into any Christmas special - he's a jolly fat white guy with a tan so slight as to be barely noticeable.

Then look at the merchant guy at the beginning trying to foist worthless junk on us tourists. Look at all the guards who enjoy pushing people around, who are such caricatures that they might as well be in a 1930's Popeye cartoon, brandishing scimitars and threatening to cut off thieves' hands and - oh, look, they're brandishing scimitars and threatening to cut off thieves' hands. Look at all the background characters in the story who are supposed to be foils to Aladdin, and especially look at Jafar. They're several shades browner, they have beards and turbans, they have accents. The further along the continuum they lean towards evil, the more "foreign" they're drawn and voiced.

And I don't think it was an accident, or even just the unthinking kind of discrimination that all human beings have built in - the unspoken assumption that "folks like us" are better than "folks who aren't like us." This movie was, after all, released a year after the first Gulf War. I think they were playing deliberately to the public's not-fans-of-Middle-Eastern-people-right-now mood. That greedy, slimy little merchant with the ridiculous accent in the first scene - he was pulled straight out of our country's resentment about the fact that we'd had to start paying more than a dollar a gallon for gas. (Ahhhhhhh - remember when $1.25 a gallon was expensive?)


I haven't watched other Disney movies for many years, but I'd bet that "Foreign/non-white = bad guy" is a thing in a lot of their other movies too. Thinking back to the ones I remember:

Pocahontas - this one was actually ABOUT racism and how that's wrong and stuff - but again, Pocahontas herself looks like a white model with a tan, has no accent, and her costume is basically a leather version of the same basic dress any American girl has half-a-dozen of in her closet. The more aggressive and warlike her tribesmen get, the more "Indian" their costume and voices get, till you can't see the people for all the feathers and warpaint.

Jungle Book: More subtle here. Mowgli, Bagheera and Baloo are American. Shere Khan and the vultures are British. So, the bad guys aren't very foreign, but foreign enough to let you know which characters will eat you given half a chance.

Robin Hood: Everyone's supposed to be British and they're all animals; but Marion, Little John, and Friar Tuck all sound American, and Robin's English accent isn't very pronounced, while Prince John is being British just as hard as he can. Foreigner equals eviler, even if they're all from the same  country.

Ariel, Triton, the prince Ariel's trying to hook up with - good guys, sound American, very white (Ariel's a redhead, as melanin-free as you can get without having albinism). Chef who tries to cook Sebastian - bad guy, sounds French, foreign-looking mustache. Sebastian - sounds Jamaican, but he's comic relief and therefore allowed to have an accent without being a bad guy. Ursula - sounds American, but look at her coloring. NO other character in this movie has even slightly dark skin. Her non-human parts are black, and her human parts are dark, almost purple.
But what the hell, no one's looking at anything but Ariel's little shells anyway. So Ursula's coloring probably isn't doing much to reinforce any stereotypes here.

Simba, Nala, Mufasa, Timon, Pumba - good guys, sound American. Scar - bad guy, sounds British. Rafiki - sounds vaguely African, but he's a monkey and therefore falls under the "comic relief" exception.

Mulan - Everyone's supposed to be Asian here, right? But my (admittedly very vague) recollection is that only the bad guys sounded like it. Mulan's dragon was allowed to be a black man without being a bad guy under the "comic relief" exception.

Beauty and the Beast - we're in Western Europe here so everyone who isn't a main character is French or British. Belle, her father, and the Beast are all American. In this one, Gaston sounds American too. But even here, the main villain and his sidekick Le Fou have the French-iest sounding names. More foreign still equals more evil.

Quasimodo, Esmerelda, Phoebus - all American. Phoebus is blond with blue eyes, and Esmerelda's a gypsy but still has very Caucasian features with a slight tan. The evil priest dude, on the other hand, looks and dresses like Jafar, and sounds British. The story's set in France, but what the hell, bad guys are British - because we're still pissed off about the Brits taxing our tea centuries ago, I guess.


Then there's the older Disney films, where it's not even remotely subtle:

Lady and the Tramp - Siamese cats are bad. American dogs are good. The Tramp mimicking the accents of the immigrants who feed him, that's meant to be funny. Ungrateful son of a bitch.

Peter Pan - dear GOD, the racism in the portrayal of the "Injuns". Also, Hook is darker-skinned than Pan, as are many of the pirates. Tinker Bell, on the other hand, looks like Marilyn Monroe; and Pan, Wendy, John and Michael are as white as white can be.

Snow White - It's right there in the damn title. White equals good, whiter equals better, Snow White is fairest of them all. The darker-featured Queen is, of course, evil.

Of course, those are from before the civil rights movement so they really can't be held to the same standard as the movies made after the 60s. But the ones done in the 90s? The animators and producers should have known better.

But they also knew what sells, and what sells is telling the audience (mostly white Americans) that the good guys are "folks like us" and the bad guys are "not folks like us".


I haven't seen the Frog Prince, so I don't know whether Disney's made yet another princess that looks like someone painted a Barbie doll brown and sounds like a bland, accent-free Caucasian, or if they actually made her look and sound African-American - actually made a protagonist that isn't drawn and voiced as a blonde white person with optional spray-on tan. Might be worth watching someday, to find out if Disney's finally ditched this "White makes right" device. It's long overdue to be ditched.

Explaining Holy Week to a toddler

I hadn't really thought ahead about how I would explain to my three-year-old what Holy Week means. Despite being a Christian all my life and going to Christian schools from 5th grade through college, I can't really claim to understand it myself (hence the term "holy mystery").

I've also had an awful lot of doubt and anger towards God over the past few years... a long story which can be summed up in roughly these words: "If you're there and you're good, why the FUCK did you make the world as it is? Why do good and innocent people suffer? Why does everyone die? Whatever plan you had in mind for making us into better creatures, why not just make us good to begin with? You have all the time and all the power there is, and THIS is the best world you could come up with? And if this whole Jesus thing is true: Who the hell asked you to come suffer and die? We want you to STOP suffering and death, not join us in experiencing them! Drowning people don't need you to jump into the water and start drowning with them, they need you to get them the fuck OUT of the water! Or better still, don't fucking throw them into the water to begin with! How can omniscience be such a dumb-ass? How can ultimate Good be such a bastard?"

So, basically, my prayers often sound like half the Psalms. Or the book of Job, or Ecclesiastes, or several of the prophets, or Christ's haunting cry "My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?" I figure if the people who were closest to God can say those things to God right there in the Bible without being smitten by lightning - if even God says that to God, on the cross - that must mean that God's a big boy and He can take it. Or, if He's not okay with us complaining about His creating a world where we suffer and we don't understand why, then He deserves all the verbal abuse I can throw at Him. So either way, I'll go on praying like that when I need to.

I still believe, mind you. Not sure exactly WHAT I believe these days, but I still believe, and I still pray, and go to church, and do my poor best to follow Christ... and that still seems to meet a need which nothing else can.

Now, as the parent of a toddler, I know that they need to know what to expect in advance, and therefore I told her a couple days ago "We'll be going to church a lot this week." She asked "Why?", of course, so I told her, "Well, this week we celebrate Easter. We celebrate because Jesus did something very special." Naturally she asked "What?", so I jumped into the part of the story I hadn't actually thought about how to explain to her. I said "He died and came back to life! No one had ever done that before!" She said "I'm not EVER gonna die!" I then made another jump without thinking first about where things might go from there and said "Well, everyone does eventually. But Jesus came back to tell us that it's gonna be okay."

She seemed to take it in and then moved on to talking about her day, asking for music, and other normal stuff.

Then tonight, at the Maundy Thursday mass, she was asking a lot about what was going on. My wife told her we were remembering that Jesus had a meal with His friends, and He was sad because He knew He was going to be hurt and lonely. My toddler then asked "Is He gonna DIE?" My wife was blind-sided a bit by that, but soldiered on and said "Yes, but He came back alive afterwards". The kid then asked why all the candles were being taken off the altar, and my wife explained it this way: "Well, we use that table to remember the table where Jesus ate with His friends. All the bread and cups and candles are being taken away to show that Jesus went away for a while". The little one was a bit upset, saying "I don't WANT the candles to be taken away!", but seemed to handle it pretty well.

During the ride home, there were more questions:

 "Why did Jesus die?" [parents try to explain that he said things some strong people did not like]
"What did he say?" [parents stammer about being nice to people and giving our things to help them even if we don't like them or we think they're gross.]
"I won't be nice to people I don't like. I won't do what Jesus said."
[parents empathize, ruefully... then talk about how she already has done some of the things Jesus said, like taking care of small people who can't protect themselves, and being kind to people even when she was angry at them - and Jesus was right, things work better when we do that]
"Where did Jesus go?"
"What does come alive mean?"
"I don't like sad parts, can we have Easter now instead?"
and finally:
"...I don't want to die."

Damn.

Now she's hit the part that NO one knows how to answer.

I deflected by saying, "Well, you're not going to for a very long time." When she's older she can be angry about living in a world where death happens; for now, she's three and she needs reassurance that she's safe and okay. She seemed to take that.

When we got home and got her into her bath, she thoughtfully said, "Sometimes, sad things happen". Not a sad tone, just in the tone of someone processing and accepting a reality.

And then, I finally knew what to say, both for her and for me:

"Y'know, Jesus talked about how sad things happen, but sad and scary things can be turned into good things. Like in your book about the caterpillar becoming a butterfly - remember the caterpillar was scared and sad about going into the cocoon, but then came out more alive than ever? And how happy she was to be a butterfly? That's kind of like what Jesus was talking about."

And then she visibly cheered up, and went on to tell stories about her Thomas the Train toys.


We already know all about bad news - we see it around us every day. We see abused children grow up to abuse children. We see bad people hurt and destroy good people. We see monsters turn people, vampire-fashion, into monsters like themselves. We see people get old, and sick, and weak, and their brains deteriorate, their SELVES deteriorate. We see them die. We know our turn is coming, and we know there's not a damn thing we can do to stop it. And part of parenting is to try and somehow prepare kids to become adults who can cope with that, without despair.

We know about the bad news. We need some Good News.

And that's the power of the Gospel. That's why I'm still a Christian, despite my vast misgivings. That's why I still think Christianity has something worthwhile to say to humanity. It's because we all know damn well that sad, and scary, and just fucking WRONG things happen, to everyone; and we need to believe that those things can, in some way too deep for us to understand, be harnessed and transformed for good. We need to believe that there's something more to the story after "Life sucks then you die" - that suffering and death can be redemptive, that there is a reason for them, and that whatever the reason is, it was so important that God chose to endure them too.

We don't know why. Maybe the reason is that nothing and no one can grow up without suffering. Look at the maturity level of spoiled rich kids who grow up getting everything they want and are miserable, vs. the maturity level of kids who grow up having to deal with hard things and make it work. Maybe we all suffer and die because that's what will force us all to grow up. Maybe God Himself had to grow up, and Calvary was His coming of age. But despite our finite brains' inability to grasp the answers to the infinite questions (or even, perhaps, grasp the real questions), the Gospel gives us a place to begin, a hint that there IS Good News to follow the bad, and that the bad not only isn't as powerful as the good but is even compelled to bring about good despite itself.

If it be so, then so be it.

© John M. Munzer

Ramshackle

(I wrote this back in August, but lost track of the file and just came across it again tonight)

Ramshackle

Some background: I’ve had various back and hip injuries over the past two years, which sometimes render me unable to do anything at all for a few days until the meds kick in, often interfere with basic functioning, and always have me extremely cautious about whatever I do, because I can’t afford to be out of commission. I have a two-year-old who needs her daddy to be able to pick her up. I’ve been doing PT, chiropractic, anti-inflammatories, massage, all the stuff you’re supposed to do. There’s progress, then there’s setbacks, it’s a pain in the ass (literally), it never seems to end, and the less said about the whole mess the better.

But the point is, my two-year-old is old enough (and smart enough) to notice when Daddy is using a cane or crutches and to be inquisitive about why.  So she understands that sometimes Daddy’s hip hurts and he needs an ice pack and medicine to feel better, and that sometimes Daddy can’t pick her up but Daddy still wants to spend time with her and hug her, and that Daddy has to be careful with his hurt hip.

She has, for the past couple weeks, been demanding the same bedtime story every night (The Caboose that Got Loose by Bill Peet), and it includes among many other things a line about the “ramshackle barn” the caboose would pass every day.  After the first 800 readings or so, I figured the kid had most of the story memorized and I’d make her help tell the story, so I often stop and have her supply the next word (pointing to the picture if there is one)… as in: “Ramshackle…” “BARN!”

Today, we went to visit a farm (which she enjoyed, but that’s another story), and on the way there and back she started pointing out barns and saying “That’s a ramshackle barn!” Most of the barns were, indeed, pretty ramshackle, but some were new. Just to see if she’d get the difference, I asked her if she knew what “ramshackle” means. (Naturally, she said she did, and she didn’t). I told her that “ramshackle” means the barn is old and rusty and broken down, so some of the barns were ramshackle and some were new.

Later on that day, she saw a house that looked sort of barn-shaped and said “That’s a ramshackle barn! Sometimes, people have new barns, and then they become old ramshackle barns, and then the people fix them so they will be un… um… unshackled!”

Again: My TWO-year-old is at that level of linguistic sophistication. It’s a grammatical error, of course, but only because English is the bastard offspring of a dozen different languages and therefore has no actual consistent rules of grammar. This leap was perfectly sensible, and would have totally been right in any language that made sense.

Later on, as we were brushing teeth and beginning the evening routine, she asked me, “Daddy, are YOU ramshackle? Are you old and broken?”

I shit you not.

As I laughed my ass off, I told her “Sometimes, hon… sometimes. But Daddy’s doing exercises to help fix that.”

By the way, I was only guessing at the definition of “ramshackle” myself, since I’d only ever seen it in her book and maybe once before in a similar context. I looked it up in the dictionary just now, and apparently it means “Loose and rickety; likely to fall to pieces; shaky (A ramshackle old building)” So in fact, the kid’s absolutely right – Daddy is indeed ramshackle.

 

© John M. Munzer

Haice-ku: Haiku about ice cream

The ice-cream cometh.

Cold vapors from box promise

Relief from the heat.

I scream, you scream, we

All scream for ice cream. You know

The words. Sing along!

Ben & Jerry's: NICE.

But it’s hot, so any ice

Cream will quite suffice.

I’m dying of heat!

Someone fetch some ice cream, quick!

Ah, cool, sweet relief!

Tinkling bells – grating,

But effective way to get

Your kid’s attention.

A D D kid gives

FULL ATTENTION to the sound

Of that ice-cream truck.

The ice-man cometh.

Hear the bells that tinkle to

Herald his coming.

How I learned that Chick-Fil-A exists

Company CEO: We’re opening a whole bunch of restaurants this year, and we need to bring in the customers. I want our name to be as famous as the big boys. Everyone knows KFC, but there’s still people who haven’t even HEARD of my restaurant. I want the biggest publicity stunt ever.

Marketing exec: Well sir, people seem to respond well to commercials that involve sex, music, or computer-animated talking animals. How about singing, dancing chickens in bikinis?

Company CEO: How much would that cost?

Marketing exec: With all the programmers involved, plus getting the rights to use a popular song, plus paying the networks to run it nationwide…  Sir, a conservative estimate would be several million.

Company CEO: Oof. Just when I need the money to invest in those new branches. Any other ideas?

Marketing exec: I know - Let’s get involved in a divisive political issue, donate a couple million to one side of the cause, and tell people that they are supporting their party line by eating at your restaurant. People who approve of your stance will flock to you; people who disapprove will complain about you, and their Facebook friends who approve will flock to you and pass the word. The whole goddamn country will be talking about you for weeks. I bet you’ll even get people willing to stand in line for hours to eat your chicken, if you make a big “Support the Cause Event” day.

Company CEO: Sounds good, but Americans have the attention span of a goldfish, especially for politics. Hell, most of them have already forgotten we’re still at war. I want something even bigger.

Marketing exec: Well, people get passionate about sex, religion, and politics. What if there was an issue that involved ALL THREE?

Company CEO: Oh. HELL. Yes. The gay marriage debate.  You can’t even BUY publicity like that would generate. Every religious person in the country, AND everyone who resents religion, AND every gay person, AND every homophobe, AND everyone with any kind of political affiliation at all … EVERYONE will get worked up over this.

Marketing exec: Exactly. Do you have a preference about which side to support, sir?

Company CEO:  Meh, toss a coin. No, wait… Gimme demographics. Which side buys the most fast food?

Marketing exec: Well, sir, liberals tend to be more into eating local, eating organic, even vegetarian. Conservatives… well, have you ever seen a picture of Rush Limbaugh?

Company CEO: Right then. We’re now Team No Gay Marriage. You really think people are stupid enough to fall for this?

Marketing exec: Sir, people listen to Justin Beiber.

Company CEO: I told you never to speak the Evil One’s name in my presence. Still, point taken. Best $2 million I’ll ever spend. Hey, make sure you also write a couple articles about how outraged everyone should be about our stance and put ‘em up in some liberal blogs, to get the ball rolling.

Marketing exec: Exactly what I was thinking myself, sir.

Company CEO: Excellent. Meeting adjourned. Let’s sell some chicken, people!

On the Sarlacc, and the limits of suspension of disbelief

It’s amazing, the stuff in a story that makes perfect sense to a seven-year-old, but makes an adult stop and think “Hang on… even in make-believe world… that couldn’t work”.

The Sarlacc from Star Wars is a great example. When I was seven and seeing Return of the Jedi in the theater, I heard that the Sarlacc’s victims get slowly, painfully digested over a thousand years and thought “Right. Don’t want any good guys to fall into the hole, then. That would suck. Hooray, badguys fell into the hole! Serves you right, Boba Fett. Don’t f*** with Harrison Ford, is the lesson there.”

But… even granted this is a universe that allows for light sabers, hyperspace travel, and the Force… really a thousand years? The lifespan of a human who ISN’T being digested is 70 years, 100 tops. And that human would only live six weeks max without food of his own, 3 days without drinking water, ten minutes tops without oxygen… none of which are likely to be available inside a giant carnivore’s belly, in the middle of a desert that makes Death Valley look like a rain forest. Assuming he didn’t die instantly by getting impaled on the several rows of giant needle-sharp teeth as he fell in.

More important, how would anyone KNOW that the Sarlacc digests its prey for a thousand years? Who fell into the hole, interviewed some other victims (“Dude, 999 years so far? REALLY? How have you kept count? Where did you even GET an oxygen mask? And you’ve been eating WHAT?”), then somehow got out to tell people “Yeah, seriously man, you DON’T wanna fall into the hole… and if you ever piss off Jabba, beg him to feed you to the Rancor instead”?

Most of all, even granting all that other stuff: What’s in it for the Sarlacc? In order to keep a human alive for even a day, even if that human was not expending calories by struggling to escape or writhing in agony or moving at all, it would have to somehow pump at least a thousand calories into that human. Over the course of a thousand years, that’s… 365 days times 1000 calories times 1000 years… 365 MILLION calories expended to digest a meal that only contains about 150 pounds of meat. Assuming that a pound of human contains about as many calories as a pound of fatty beef, each pound of human meat gives the Sarlacc about 1000 calories – meaning that an average human contains about 150,000 calories.

So Hannibal Lecter can get his nutritional needs met by eating people, sure. But when the Sarlacc eats someone, it expends 365 million calories to get 150,000 calories. Every meal the Sarlacc eats causes it to lose 2400 times more energy than it gains. At that rate, the Sarlacc would starve to death long before the victim did.

 In conclusion: I WAY overthought this.

Nevertheless, it doesn’t work, even in pretend-world where the laws of physics are more or less optional.

Dragons, I can buy into – it’s magic. Rings that make you invisible, no problem. Weapons that could destroy the world – hell, even in the real world we’ve had that since my grandparents were kids. Lasers that can cut through anything at a range of 3 feet then for some reason stop short and don’t continue traveling at 186,000 miles/second, and can be blocked by other laser swords, all controlled by a handle the size of a flashlight… sure, it’s all make-believe anyway. But if the Sarlacc eats you, my money says it’s not a whole lot different than if a giant shark or whale swallowed you alive – even if you somehow can manage without oxygen, you’ve got a few days, tops. And this is coming from a guy who’s still willing to believe that could have ACTUALLY happened to Jonah.

© John M. Munzer