Chrisonomicon

Tuesday, December 24, 2002

Simultaneously lauded and shunned by director Steven Spielburg, Max presents us with a question that's been avoided for nearly half a century: How did Hitler become Hitler? And yet there are still people who would ignore this inquiry, preferring to allow "evil" to remain this unspeakable, blindly accepted phenomenon:

"Why the need or desire to make this monster human?" Foxman told the Times . "The judgment of history is that he was evil, that he was responsible for millions of deaths. Why trivialize that judgment of history by focusing on his childhood and adolescence? Have we run out of subjects to focus on?"

While not the root of the world's problems, this sort of avoidance illustrates a disturbing tendency, a knee-jerk reaction that is perpetuated through PC and religion, a defaulting of blame or natural process to an ineffable entity that is used as a scapegoat for too much: "Hitler was evil," "Terrorists are evil," "Homosexuality is evil."

By using evil as an excuse to avoid questions that should be asked, we eschew our devoir as cognizant creatures -- we deny reality -- ignoring the fact that our actions and reactions are simply human -- human responses to a human world.

Max opens on December 27 in New York and Los Angeles.