We don’t need much theatrical horror while so much real horror is going on. Another two car bombs in Mogadishu today seems about par for the course. The murderers target some folks who are really miserable and just make things worse – truck and car bombs rarely miss.
With Halloween on the horizon we are often asked to nominate our scariest movie scene of all time. My entry is famous, but not a traditional horror movie; it’s the beer garden scene from Bob Fosse’s 1972 musical drama “Cabaret”; a reflection on real monsters inside of real people.
The setting is 1931 Germany where some of the characters stop for refreshment as the Nazis – whom they have casually dismissed as nuisances, bumbling thugs, or controllable pawns – are gaining followers and power.
A young man starts a song titled “Tomorrow Belongs to Me”; as he sings the ambiguous lyrics we slowly see his swastika-adorned Hitler youth uniform and then the transformation and determination on the faces and in the demeanor of the other patrons who join in, led by the young and swept up by the movement. The words take on a new meaning – the terror is not in what we observe or hear, but in what we know is coming.
For all of recorded history, from Armenia to Auschwitz, Beirut, Cambodia, Nanking, Rwanda, Siberia, the Ukraine and so many other places, the monsters within humans have appeared and all too often under the guise of some movement for the better, religious, racial or political purification.
If it’s something in the DNA it has yet to be discovered. My theory is that no one has a special marker because to some degree we all have a monster within us; it is part of human nature.
Individuals can do terrible things, but most dangerous by far are groups systematically radicalized one little step at a time – the anonymity of group-think, reinforced by the power of acceptance and fed by confirmation bias. The young are especially vulnerable to the pressures brought to bear on their undeveloped personalities.
Will future generations have the moral courage to deal with the monsters that are within us all or will they surrender their judgement and values just to be part of, and accepted by, the group? Only time will tell.
One thing for sure, your children’s susceptibility to manipulation is well known to those monster-makers already stalking the earth. Enjoy your Halloween, but don’t forget to keep the real monsters from your door all the days of the year.