怖かったもの

Yutaにとってスパイクリーの映画blackkklansmanで印象に残った人物はKKKメンバーの妻でした。どんな人物かは彼女を演じたAshlie Atkinsonが端的に語ってくれています。

I play Connie Kendrickson who is the wife of wife of a member of the organization which is the Ku Klux Klan, Felix Kendrickson. I am a virulent individual who feels like she's not getting enough opportunities with the Klan and hankers to do something drastic and violent.

ちょうどこの人物をメインに取り上げている記事がありましたので抜粋しています。インタビューではvirulent individualと言っていますが、メンバーにとっては朗らかで気がきく女性なんです。そんな怖さをSmiling and non-threatening as she looks in her apron, Connie is just as dangerous as they are.と表現していました。

How Spike Lee’s ‘BlacKkKlansman’ examines white women and racism

The movie connects the past with the present

Monica Castillo August 10

Perhaps one of the many issues that won’t get nearly enough attention is embodied by the character of Connie Kendrickson (Ashlie Atkinson), the all-American housewife who wants a bigger part in the Klan’s plan.

Connie is introduced to the story when her husband, Felix (Jasper Pääkkönen), hosts a Klan gathering in their suburban home. They have a pro-America sign out front, she greets Flip-posing-as-Ron at the front door with a smile and brings him into the living room where the white supremacists are discussing their next move.

To prove she’s more useful to the Klan than just someone to bring them food, she offers a magazine clipping of a local black student activist, Patrice (Laura Harrier) and suggests to the men that they should shut her up for good. It’s an uncomfortably awkward moment, not only because this is when the movie’s version of the Klan establishes its gender hierarchy but also because she wants so desperately to be in on this boys’ club of violence. It’s not enough to orbit their hatred, she wants to participate in it. Smiling and non-threatening as she looks in her apron, Connie is just as dangerous as they are.

この記事の作者は彼女をトランプ支持者に重ね合わせて見ると同時に、The moment reveals how their deeply rooted hatred actually brought them together and strengthened their relationship, that they’ve found a mutual identity through fear and discrimination.と人種差別が深く浸透していること、人種差別こそが彼らを結びつけたのだとしています。

Connie’s character is part of the story for a reason. She’s a stand-in for the 53 percent of white women who voted for Trump, who either saw nothing wrong with his racist speeches or agreed with those views. Worries about economic insecurity never enter the conversation in the movie, but the characters’ insecurities about being white and in the minority do.

In what would normally be a tender scene between characters, Connie and Felix are snuggling in bed. Instead of normal pillow talk, they are reveling in their plans for violence against black people. The moment reveals how their deeply rooted hatred actually brought them together and strengthened their relationship, that they’ve found a mutual identity through fear and discrimination. “Thank you for giving me a purpose,” Connie purrs to her husband.

In another scene where Connie is running away from the black Ron Stallworth, she uses her tears and screams at other white cops for help. Chillingly, they oblige. Protecting white femininity is a recurring concern among the white supremacists. During a screening of “The Birth of a Nation,” the white supremacist men and women jeer at the black man committing assault and cheer when the Ku Klux Klan seeks revenge.

時代も場所も違うのですが『ヒトラーの娘たち――ホロコーストに加担したドイツ女性-』という本のトピックに通底するものがあります。洋書の方は500円と安かったことこともあり読んで見ました。

Hitler's Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields

Hitler’s Furies is the untold story of the Holocaust. 

History has it that the role of women in Nazi Germany was to be the perfect Hausfrau and a loyal cheerleader for the Führer. However, Lower’s research reveals an altogether more sinister truth. 

Lower shows us the ordinary women who became perpetrators of genocide. Drawing on decades of research, she uncovers a truth that has been in the shadows – that women too were brutal killers and that, in ignoring women’s culpability, we have ignored the reality of the Holocaust.

‘Shocking’ Sunday Times‘ Compelling’ Washington Post ‘Pioneering’ Literary Review

A National Book Award Finalist

ヒトラーの娘たち――ホロコーストに加担したドイツ女性

（アマゾンの紹介文）

ナチズムが生んだ一般のドイツ女性たちは

`血塗られた地'(ブラッドランド)で何を目撃し、何を行ったのか。

レイシズム、国家主義のさいはてに待つ、知られざる歴史の闇に迫る。

ナチス・ドイツ占領下の東欧に赴いた一般女性たちは、ホロコーストに直面したとき何を目撃し、何を為したのか。冷戦後に明らかになった膨大な資料や丹念な聞き取り調査から、個々の一般ドイツ女性をヒトラーが台頭していったドイツ社会史のなかで捉え直し、歴史の闇に新たな光を当てる。

想像せよ、自分が立っている場所はすでに「灰色」ではないか。

自戒せよ、大きな流れの中で自分を押しとどめるだけの確たる信念はあるか。(「監訳者解題」より)

ティモシー・スナイダー(『ブラッドランド』『ブラックアース』)

`本書は、女性学とホロコースト研究の双方における重要な転機として読まれ、記憶されるだろう'

全米図書賞ノンフィクション部門最終候補選出作(2013年)

女性たちが自発的に殺人を犯すこともあったという描写はショッキングでありますが、それよりも怖かったのがナチス的な価値観に染まっていく教育の部分と、第二次世界大戦後には何も知らなかったとシラを切り普通の生活に戻って行くところでした。戦後罪を問われることが少なかったことはニューヨークタイムズのレビュアーも怒っていました。

Nazism’s Feminine Side, Brutal and Murderous

‘Hitler’s Furies,’ by Wendy Lower, Examines German Women

Books of The Times

By DWIGHT GARNER OCT. 8, 2013

The last chapters of “Hitler’s Furies” are infuriating and sickening for different reasons. Ms. Lower explores these women’s experiences after the war. Most simply slipped back into civilian life. Few of these hundreds of thousands of German women were prosecuted, and even fewer were punished.

“What happened to them?” Ms. Lower asks. “The short answer is that most got away with murder.”

日本の場合も怖いのは、昨今あのような言説が許容されるような雰囲気になりつつあるということに思えます。背後にはそれをよしとし、自発的に加担している多くの男性と女性がいるということですから。。。