Lars’s transformation from a soldier serving the Danish army to an active member of the Neo-Nazi group can be seen a significant shift of his self-identity that is triggered by the inner-world alienation. Such alienation is a derivative of the anger that is associated with social pressure and isolation. Before joining the Neo-Nazi group, Lars is undertaking overwhelming pressures along with sadness, anger, and hopelessness that come from the isolation imposed by both the society and his family. His future career is ruined by the anonymous accusations from other soldiers who intentionally fabricate against him in order to force him out of the army. Lars’s depression gets worse when he comes back home and confronting his parents. To a certain …show more content…
Lars initially describes the group as “a bunch of losers trying to recruit even bigger losers” and criticizes the paradox between their ideologies “pacifists” and “fascists”. I argue that his sudden decision in joining the group is driven by his desire to pursue a sense of belonging, which is the main force that attracts people into hateful groups. In the film, many group members (e.g. Lars, Jimmy, Patrick) come from a family where parenting roles are absent or lack sufficient concerns. In addition, as we can observe from the film, most of the participants of the Neo-Nazi group are young males. I believe those commonalities within group members are not simple coincidences. Male teenagers are more likely to get obsessed with relying on violence to release their repressed dissatisfaction and enhance their presence to further achieve self-satisfaction. This process is some sort of “dream-realizing” allows the marginalized people immerse in an illusion of overpowering others. Although Lars is clearly much more intelligent and sophisticated than his peers, he is still at a life stage when his emotion is highly unstable and has a strong eager to seek and to reach …show more content…
In the film, Lars’ gayness is used as a trigger for him to discover the discrimination towards the homosexual within the group. The scene I found most compelling is when Lars is telling the story of Ernst Rohm, who is the Hitler’s right-hand man and achieved a high popularity among the public. Due to the fear of being threatened by Rohm’s power, Hitler got him executed and blamed Rohm as a queer to turn the mainstream’s opinions against him. This story is used as a metaphor to point out that a person’s identity as queer is utilized as an excuse by other groups (e.g. Neo-Nazi group) to blindly deny that person’s talent and accomplishments. As I mentioned before, the Neo-Nazi group members share an obsession with overpowering other people. By telling Rohm’s story, Lars reveals the fact that the way hateful groups use violence to oppress marginalized people, such as conducting the queer-bashing expeditions to torture the homosexual group is a way they use to weaken the power of the otherness and to gain a sense of superiority to satisfy their selfish needs. Lars eventually finds out the hypocritical of the so-call “brotherhood” Neo-Nazi group and gets deeply disappointed by them being the fanatics on grabbing power even at the cost of sacrificing
An individual’s mental well being can greatly affect their character and the way they perceive things. In the novels The Kite Runner and A Separate Peace, the protagonists are boys who are infested by internal conflicts such as insecurities and emotions. In Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, a boy lets his dad negatively affect his character, causing him to treat those around him in a cynical manner. Likewise, a boy from John Knowles’ A Separate Peace bases his character on whom he wishes to be, letting his unhealthy mental state consume him. Hence, explored through both novels, is how a person’s internal conflicts can lead to their downfall, whether as a result of their struggle with identity or their feelings towards others.
A society, a place, an attitude, an expectation---all of these contribute to a character’s response to threatening forces. Tim’s insecurity ignites in the Cold War, where the world tatters into two extreme ideologies, and “certain blood [is] shed for uncertain reasons”. Tim remains “politically naïve” until one day a draft notice flies into his pocket. He is conscripted to “fight a war he [hates]”---the Vietnam War. Confusion, rage, exasperation freeze his mind: Why me? I am not a hero! I am too good! I hate wars! But all of them melt into a “silent howl” inside his head. Tim’s summer job in a meatpacking plant allows him to envision himself as a soldier. “Standing for eight hours a day under a lukewarm blood shower”, holding a massive water gun, he “[removes] blood clots from the necks of the dead pigs”. The carcasses and the gore evoke the disturbing images of brutal and merciless battles in his mind. His body shivers and sweats run down in his face, as if he is torturing the political enemies, and their blood is splattering everywhere for absurd reasons. When he goes home, Tim is irritated by the obnoxious smell that “...
As described in the film “Tough Guise 2”, the U.S. is both obsessed with and is a victim of its own culture. On one hand, movies and video games that glamorize violence and books that argue that violence. Additionally, many other films and books highlight that violence is a core aspect of male masculinity and argues that men are losing it through the empowerment of women and the loss of employment. At the same time, the United States has suffered through countless gun-related deaths and the mainstreaming of media such as Bum Fights, where actual homeless people are assaulted on camera. But due to the politicization of the issue of violence and the news media to properly explain the issue to the U.S., many people are taught that violence stems from the youth, which is only part of the broader picture. Instead of identifying and preventing the largest source of violence in the country, young white males, the focus is instead shifted toward the potential of violence of young men of color in poor urban
... homosexual being felt in the world around the 1970’s and 1980’s. The time period in which this play was written was one of great dissonance to the LGBT movement. For Harvey Fierstein to be so bold and public with his own lifestyle was truly admirable and brave. Fierstein shows us that ignorance can destroy a life because of what is unknown.
In the years from 1929 to 1933 economic hardship, a faltering political regime and generational tensions left many young people with no place to turn. The Nazis used this situation to their advantage, pointing out to the youths the way the Weimar republic government were failing to care for them. It appeared to young people that the Nazis were a party tailor made for the youth. Indeed, the Nazis realised the importance of youth, whom they considered indispensable in their quest for power. This is why many young, disenchanted, lower class youths put their stocks in the Nazi party and in particular, the Hitler youth. Ho...
Karl Stern is an artistic, lanky, beat up, Jewish fourteen year-old boy whose only refuge is drawing cartoons for his younger sister and himself. All that changes in an instant when he meets the boxer, Max Schmeling in his father’s art gallery. In exchange for a painting, Karl will receive lessons from the world renowned fighter and national German hero. Suddenly he has a purpose: train to become a boxing legend. As the years go by and he gets stronger, both physically and emotionally, so does the hatred for the Jews in Germany. This new generation of anti-Semitism starts when Karl gets expelled from school and grows until his family is forced to live in Mr. Stern’s gallery. Though the Stern’s have never set foot into a synagogue and do not consider themselves “Jewish”, they are still subjects to this kind of anti-Semitism. They try to make the best of it, but Karl can see how much it affects his family. His mother is getting moodier by the day, his sister, Hildy, hates herself because of her dark hair and “Jewish” nose and his father is printing illegal documents for some secret buyers. On Kristallnacht the gallery is broken into and the family is torn apart. Karl must now comfort his sister and search for his injured father and his mother. With the help of some of exceptional people, he manages to get over these many obstacles and make his way to America.
In recent years our society has experienced many tragedies in which teens have committed heinous crimes for no apparent reason. What inspired these attacks by teens on innocent victims? We live in a violent world and young people are exposed to this violence whether it's by television, music or the Internet. Video games have come under increased scrutiny as to whether or not the simulated violence in video games numbs children and teens to the consequences of real-life violence.
favor a society with one language, religion and way of life. They are often antigovernment,
The Nazis believed that male homosexuals were weak, epicene men who could not fight for the German nation. Homosexuals couldn’t produce children; therefore, they were unable to increase the German birthrate. Since they could not produce they were a racial danger because they could not contribute to the Aryan race. The Nazis believed women were not only inferior to men but also dependent on them by nature. Since they believe that these women were dependent on men they considered lesbians to be less threatening than male homosexuals. The Nazis did not target lesbians because they believed lesbians could still carry out a German woman's primary role: to be a mother of as many "Aryan" babies as possible. The Nazis did not classify lesbians as homosexual prisoners, and only male homosexual prisoners had to wear the pink triangle.
The original title of the book, Storm of Steel was “Im Stahlgewittern”, which means in the middle of steel storm. Ernst Jünger's Storm of Steel is written in a form of a diary that describes his life as a soldier of the First World War from January 1, 1915 to August 1918. In this book, Jünger described the horrors of war without any falsity and rarely wrote political reasons for the war or criticism of war. Jünger’s focus was on detailedly describing the daily life of the battlefield and expressing the ability of the soldiers to cope with the crisis and the saga of survival struggle. However, I discovered in this book that he had strong nationalism, believed in male-heroism, and had somewhat psychopathic mindset. In this paper, I analyzed Ernst
Today’s society thrives on violence. Young children made pretend guns and shot at siblings, teenagers enjoyed video games which praised the player for kills, and adults flocked to see the latest horror movie, few people asked what effect this has on people and society. Some psychologists have started researching this effect. A study by Dr. Ferguson;...
The Forgotten Soldier is not a book concerning the tactics and strategy of the German Wehrmacht during the Second World War. Nor does it analyze Nazi ideology and philosophy. Instead, it describes the life of a typical teenage German soldier on the Eastern Front. And through this examined life, the reader receives a first hand account of the atrocious nature of war. Sajer's book portrays the reality of combat in relation to the human physical, psychological, and physiological condition.
If a man possesses the masculinity that society claims he should have, he may still experience many emotional issues within himself. After a man has been taught that domination is the key, they may develop a sense of aggression. Aggression may also follow the fact they men hold all of their feelings into to protect themselves from the schemas. Men have been seen to use violence in their past to solve their issues. In the documentary, one of the prisoners in the group session spoke about how he was in jail because all of his emotions that had been bottled up become uncontrollable in one instance. If a boy or a man does not contain the masculinity expected, he may become bullied and out-casted. The continuation of discrimination toward a boy may cause suicidal thoughts. On top of being bullied for not being a powerful man, he may still be trying to hold in his emotions to prove that he
Director Mark Herman presents a narrative film that attests to the brutal, thought-provoking Nazi regime, in war-torn Europe. It is obvious that with Herman’s relatively clean representation of this era, he felt it was most important to resonate with the audience in a profound and philosophical manner rather than in a ruthlessness infuriating way. Despite scenes that are more graphic than others, the films objective was not to recap on the awful brutality that took place in camps such as the one in the movie. The audience’s focus was meant to be on the experience and life of a fun-loving German boy named Bruno. Surrounding this eight-year-old boy was conspicuous Nazi influences. Bruno is just an example of a young child among many others oblivious of buildings draped in flags, and Jewis...
The film follows the complicated character of Marcello, a homosexual man with a traumatic homosexual experience in his childhood, which results in him becoming ashamed of his sexuality and begins to fear being shunned by society for it. Marcello deals with this shame by shutting down any homosexual desire he may have and becomes his idealized figure of normal; which at this time was a loyal and disciplined Fascist. Marcello learns how to conform perfectly by becoming a Fascist spy, but two significant people in Marcello’s life disrupt his path to becoming