Paragraph 175

Probably history was after all, meant to be a study of human consciousness in guilt. Of course, there is always a need to realize something valuable out of the past, that a study about the past is after all a human being’s reverse-troubleshooting guide. Probably that’s the reason why there are beautiful pictures of stoic, stiff-lipped people in our high school history text-books. We like to think of ourselves as the descendants of glorious generations, men and women valiant in their own right, contributing their bit to the proud bloodlines we carry today. We read on these people, associate ourselves with the affairs of their lives, judge them for their actions, name calendar days after them, hate them, worship them, write books on them, film biopics on their lives, name our babies after them… The reason we can’t forget these people could be because they’ve either given to or taken from this world in proportions far greater than what you or me have.
Between the years 1933 and 1945 one man changed our world because he believed in something that seemed stupid at first. As time rolled into horrorfest mode, it turned into mankind’s worst-ever mistake. Something that psychologically stopped time and spun it backwards. We remember that man either because he took away from this world a chunk of our moral fiber, the scars forever etched in our minds, or probably because he gave this world freedom from the ideologies of mankind’s vilest prodigy when he hanged himself.
Today, history attests the importance of this period of madness with facts and figures that might seem absurdly horrible for our generation. We’ve all probably read enough to forget about a past like this. Biopics and documentaries have already dry-choked our tear glands at the horrifying experiences recounted by jewish survivors. Pictures of gas chambers and mass-graves have already made us numb. And just when we thought that we kneww too much to burden our consciences, comes a movie about this small group of men who disappeared off the face of the earth because of something that disturbs, intrigues and thwarts us till this day: Love, and all the stigma it carries. And for something so simple and subtle as love to take place between two people, there lies an even more absurd reasoning as to why the two people shouldn’t be of the same sex. That’s the Nazi regime’s code of stigma, also known as Paragraph 175. And no, your fat, dog-eared history text book does not consider the lives of one hundred thousand men who lived during that time, loving others…. worth mentioning. These men died unnoticed and in secret captivity, so secret that even those labor camps within which they died are today not preserved for posterity. Few of those numerous men survived. Fewer live today. And fewer still are willing to come out of their dark closets of tears and share their experiences, unscripted and undistilled to a camera crew detwrmined to make known to us such a vital, forgotten part of man’s history.
It’s pretty obvious what the contents of Paragraph 175 of the German Criminal Code contained, judging by the number of innocent lives it consumed, it would be more appropriate if you’d watch the movie and learn rather than have me explain it to you in a website review. What’s most unsettling is interestingly, not Paragraph 175 itself, considering the circumstances under which it took form. Rather, it’s the fact that a law that was so fatal took a hundred and twenty three years from the time it was adopted in 1871, to be finally revoked in 1994. Even after the fall of the nazi government in 1945, it still took close to fifty whole years and six amendments to finally strike it down.
Nazis killed plenty of men, women and children. You certainly wouldn’t expect the most powerful and conservative army in the world to go soft against gay men and women and suddenly endorse mutual love. Not at a time when your first-duty towards the people you love was replaced by the pride of the country and certainly not at a time when race was more important than gender. So in short, nazis did what nazis do best: kill. But, even after we thought the horrible era of an insane ideology was over and done with, heads of government still remained conservative and chose to ignore the ills of their pasts, dragging their feet through the marshes of sludge-bureaucracy.
Rob Epstein conveys all of these truths with anger and emotion, throughout while interviewing these survivors. Some, among them is a half-Jewish gay resistance fighter who posed as a Hitler Youth member to rescue his lover from a Gestapo transfer camp in an ultimately futile effort; Annette Eick, the Jewish lesbian who escaped to England with the help of a woman she loved; there’s a young man who was freed from a sentence at Dachau only to be interned again at Buchenwald, the German Christian photographer who was arrested and imprisoned for homosexuality, then joined the army on his release because he “wanted to be with men” and Pierre Seel, the French Alsatian teenager, who watched as his lover was eaten alive by dogs in the camps.
Perhaps the problem was that there were just not enough men alive today who were willing to talk about their experiences. From the outset, the pool of interviewees was certainly going to be limited, but also limited is the actual archival footage of life in the concentration camps. Instead the directors have chosen to pepper the film with well-preserved family photographs, and lively footage of gay and lesbian culture blossoming during the days of the Weimar Republic after WW1. When the inadequacy of photographic technology left us these photos of brotherly love, it’s even more bittersweetly touching. Each weather-beaten photo has a iridescent moment behind it. The everlasting intimacy and beauty in these photos already suggested love is universal.
The statistics are staggering: Between 1933 and 1945, some 100,000 men were arrested for homosexuality, roughly half of them were sentenced to prison, and from 10,000 to 15,000 were sent to concentration camps. The camps were used for re-education, slave labor, castration and sadistic medical experiments. It’s believed only about 4,000 survived their ordeal. It is interesting to note that the penal code didn’t cover lesbians. The Nazis considered lesbians to be “curable.” Women were regarded, as vessels of motherhood – increasing the German population was top priority – therefore, they were exempt from mass arrest. Most lesbians went into exile or quietly married gay men. One woman, who tells her story in the film, was given exit papers and was lucky enough to escape to England.
There are only about 10 homosexuals left from this tragedy, and they interviewed eight for this special film. It was incredible and moving and, if you are not touched by their stories, then you are cast in stone.

By Fazil (at PassionforCinema.com)
To view the original article, click here
 
Wiki Paragraph 175

Far From Heaven

A man and his wife enter the office of a man who could possibly save the man from a life threatening illness. THe process includes many visits with a psychiatrist and possibly some electro-shock therapy. No, this person does not have schizophrenia or multiple personality disorder. This man is a homosexual.

Yes, it is true, this man is considered "sick" but that is just one of the many skewed attitudes of the 1950's that director Todd Haynes brings to light in Far From Heaven. Julianne Moore plays Cathy Whitaker, the wife of Frank Whitaker, Dennis Quaid, who are the proud parents of two children. The live the life that people envied. A nice home, money, success, and happiness. All of that comes crashing down when Cathy discovers her husband is not who he really is.

Cathy goes to Frank's work to drop off some dinner only to discover that her husband is in the arms of another man. Frank says that he is "sick" and wants treatment. Cathy, the "super wife" is behind him 100 percent, as if he really had an illness to beat. Frnak is ashamed and doesn't want support, just some privacy while he goes through session after session of therapy to try and make him "normal".

To add to this difficulty, the family gardener passes away and his son Raymond, Dennis Haysbert, takes over. Cathy comes to confide in Raymond and find peace of mind in his attitude and his overall good nature. The neighborhood looks down on their friendship and casts a shadow on the household. Raymond, a black man, is much like Cathy, seeing not color, but people. Even in New Haven, Connecticut, the feeling of white superiority still runs through the veins of its inhabitants.

The movie from start to finish is wonderful. It is a roller-coaster of emotions. Moore, Quaid, and Haysbert give fantastic performances. Even Patricia Clarkson, who plays Cathy one true friend in the neighborhood gives a delightful performance.

It's not just the acting that gives this movie it's lift off of the ground. Haynes direction and the art direction of the film create a pallet of colors and emotions that set the mood for each seen. The film opens in autumn. The leaves are shades of red, yellow, and orange, a true autumnal foliage like you would see on a Vermont postcard. The clothing is a perfect time capsule of the 50's. Haynes also uses a lot of colored lights to directly influence the mood of a scene. The green neon light of the gay bar Frank enters gives a strange feel like an alien world. The blue light that comes in through the windows in his office at night and in their home after a party means something dramatic is taking place.

Elmer Bernstein has racked up 14 nominations for his music, including a win for Throughly Modern Millie. His score for this film is the current that pushes the story along. Like so many great composers, he doesn't create music but a character. Everything is different with the right score to back up a great story.A story and a script that Haynes wrote so beautifully. He captured the lingo that kids used in the 50's and gave us a look at how kind people can be and how despicable some are.

The issues that Haynes tackles in the film are still around today, just not taken so seriously. It is hard to think that only 50 years ago, homosexuals were looked at as sick people and the African-American community was still not welcome. To this day there are still hints of this feeling around the country, but most is left to be talked about in the privacy of our own homes.

Whether or not you are straight or gay, black or white, democrat or republican, we all are people. Haynes shows that even if two people are in harmony, it is the outside influences that can rip them apart. Hatred and tolerance cannot coexist.

Milk

How fortuitous a thing is timing. Released only a few weeks after the passage of Proposition 8 - a ballot measure that took away the rights of same-sex couples to marry in California - Gus Van Sant's Oscar-nominated film "Milk" turns back the clock to another, similar struggle in American civil rights history and to the iconic figure who helped to wage it.

Harvey Milk was, of course, the San Francisco supervisor and gay-rights pioneer who, along with Mayor George Moscone, was gunned down in city hall in November 1978. The perpetrator, Dan White, a disgruntled fellow board member who had recently resigned his seat, was found guilty of manslaughter (using the now infamous "Twinkie Defense" to get the lower charge), sent to prison for a mere five years, then released in 1984, only to take his own life two years later.

Dustin Lance Black's Oscar-winning screenplay traces Milk's meteoric rise from an obscure, still largely closeted Republican businessman in the early 1970s to the de facto leader of the gay-rights movement that began to take shape during that decade. He became the first openly gay man in the state to be elected to public office and, in 1978, he was instrumental in helping to defeat Proposition 6, which, if passed, would have made it illegal for homosexuals (and even straight supporters of homosexuals!) to teach in California public schools (was this really only thirty years ago?). Throughout all this, Milk managed to develop a large, highly charged grass roots organization, the purpose of which was not merely to combat bigotry wherever it reared its ugly head but to win over the hearts and minds of the people in their community and the nation as a whole.

There has been some criticism leveled against the movie that it is too reverential in its treatment of Milk, that it paints him too much as a saint and not enough as an ordinary human being with the requisite number of weaknesses and flaws to make him truly viable as a character. Even if one were to accept that charge (which I do not), it still doesn't take into account the very special quality that Sean Penn himself brings to the role. With obviously heightened mannerisms that he is careful never to allow to slide over into caricature or camp, Penn makes Milk both charismatically larger-than-life and recognizably human at one and the same time. Whether he's in front of a crowd rallying the troops with his megaphone or enjoying a tender moment with his longtime boyfriend, Scott Smith, Penn allows us see the many facets of this obviously complex man.

In a movie chock full of outstanding supporting performances, James Franco as Smith, Josh Brolin as Dan White, and Emile Hirsch as Cleve Jones, a rootless young man inspired by Milk to become a lifelong activist, are the obvious standouts.

As a director, Van Sant keeps things moving at an almost whirlwind pace, beautifully balancing the "big" scenes of rallies and marches with the more intimate moments depicting Milk's relationships with those around him. At times Van Sant brings an almost documentary-style immediacy to the film, seamlessly blending actual footage from that era (much of it of Anita Bryant and her anti-gay crusade) with convincingly staged re-enactments of events at that time. Obviously wanting to end on a positive note, the movie mentions but does not dramatize the "White Night Riots" which took place in the city following the assassinations, instead focusing on the enormous candlelight march that wended its way through the shocked and devastated city. Thus, the ending, like the movie itself, is a necessary and deeply moving reminder of how the courage of one individual to stand up for what he knows is right can inspire others to follow in his footsteps - and change the world in the process.

By opening with file footage of men being arrested at a gay bar then carted off in paddy wagons to be booked as "sex offenders," "Milk" makes the viewer realize how very far society has come in the time since the events depicted in this story - and, with the recent passage of Proposition 8, how very far it still has to go.

The Times of Harvey Milk (1984 Documentary)

Harvey Milk was too good to be true, too unaffected as a debater, too approving of silliness, too capable of laughing at himself, too serious about equality, too angry about inequality, to endure on this plain of existence as a leader. Time has thanked his bravery in running for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and becoming California's first openly gay public official. Why was that so brave? Because that conquest may well have been at his own peril.

Rob Epstein's Oscar-winning documentary illustrates the life and death of not only Milk but odd one out Mayor George Moscone, who both were killed by Dan White, one of Milk's fellow supervisors. It also depicts the political and social atmosphere in San Francisco, which throughout the 1960s and '70s began to be a magnet for emergent quantities of gays owing to its customarily accommodating viewpoint. Milk was one of them, and in old photographs we see him in his beatnik days before he ultimately shaved and opened a camera store in the Castro District. It was from Castro that Milk ran for office and was beaten three times before at long last winning in the same election that placed the first man of Chinese extraction, the first black woman, and the first declared feminist on the board. Milk was a virtuoso self- promoter, and this Harvey Fierstein-narrated opus embraces first-rate TV news footage showing him campaigning on such matters as people not picking up their dogs' poop, and stepping, with accurate measure, into a tactically located pile of such at the culmination of the interview.

There is a whole heap of great footage of Milk, Moscone, and White, who disliked gay people. It is interspersed with later interviews with many of Milk's loyal comrades, including a seasoned leftist who confesses that he was bigoted against gays until he met Milk and began to appreciate the political concerns implicated. There is immeasurably touching, volume- speaking footage of the two demonstrations motivated by the deaths of Milk and Moscone: a noiseless, candle-lit procession of 45,000 people on the night of their deaths, and an outraged night of rioting when White got what a compassionate sentence.

This is an enthralling piece, as the light it casts on a decade in the life of a great American city and on the lives of Milk and Moscone, who made it a better, and unquestionably more appealing, location to live.