In early 1940, German propaganda films about their brutal invasion of Poland were still freely making the rounds of the cinemas of Neutral America.
Poet W.H. Auden, an Englishman Overseas at a time his home was at war, had ventured in one New York movie theatre to see the blond beast close up and personal.
But what really struck him was not the film itself but how the audience - mostly German-Americans - spontaneously began shouting out "Kill the Poles, Kill the Poles !!".
What might have been truly remarkable though would have been to hear ordinary Americans (fore-bearers from any country of origin) spontaneously shout out "Save the Poles, Save the Poles !!".
This was because forty years into the new Century, Victorian notions of charity, sympathy, empathy, chivalry and gallantry were pretty well gone, save only for employing vicariously at fictional films in the cinema.
In 1940 America, cheering the fictional underdog was alright ; fighting overseas to save real life underdogs was decidedly not.
Walter Mitty, I think it is only fair to say, was an avid Isolationist in his public politics, a brave Interventionist only in his wildest daydreams....
Showing posts with label w h auden. Show all posts
Showing posts with label w h auden. Show all posts
Monday, July 20, 2015
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Why My Urgency ?
- Michael Marshall
- Nova Scotia
- Histories of WWII all start with the presumption that it was a war raged between humans and human ideologies, with Nature’s climate and geography as side issues easily surmounted.My blog, on the contrary will only accept that it was conflict between humans and their ideology that STARTED the war but that it was the barriers thrown up by Mother Nature (geography & climate) that turned it into a war that lasted between 6 to 15 years and expanded to thoroughly involve all the world’s oceans and continents. High Modernity may have started the war convinced that Nature had been conquered and was about to be soon replaced by human Synthetic Autarky and that only human Tiger tanks and human Typhoon planes were to be feared. But by the end, more and more people had lost their naive faith in Scientism and were beginning to accept that humanity was thoroughly entangled with both the Nature of plants, animals & microbes as well as the Nature of so called “lesser” humanity. By 1965, the world was definitely entering the Age of Entanglement. Billions still believed - at least in part -with the promises of High Modernity but intellectually & emotionally, it was no longer dominant...