Just to follow up on my earlier comment about the film, In the Valley of Elah (and warning: I’m going to spoil the ending). In this movie, Tommy Lee Jones’ son, who has just returned from a tour of duty in Iraq, goes missing and is eventually found murdered (brutally: the kid is stabbed, dismembered, and then burned…almost a conscious emulation of a medieval torture session). The Jones character investigates and finds out some unsavory things about both his son and his fellow soldiers. For one thing, he finds out where his son got the nickname “Doc”: this fine young soldier developed the propensity to torture wounded Iraqis by probing their wounds and saying, “Does this hurt?” And ultimately Jones finds out that it was his son’s brothers-in-arms who have killed him…for no good reason: they have simply become so desensitized that his murder—even of their buddy—makes little to no impression.
In the middle of the film, Jones tells the story of the biblical David to a little boy (the son of the lead civilian detective on the case, played by Charlize Theron). It’s a great story to tell a scared, fatherless little boy: the young David masters his fear, faces up to the giant, evil Goliath in the valley of Elah, and slays him with his sling (see 1 Samuel 17). But the subtext to this biblical allusion is clear (Paul Haggis, the writer and director, puts it front and center in the title of the film): think about what happens to David after this noble victory. David of course becomes a violent soldier-king; he kills tens of thousands, betrays Uriah and steals his wife (Bathsheba), is overthrown, returns and kills more people, pridefully counts his people and is punished (actually, the people are punished), and dies with blood on his hands and anger in his heart. So there it is: we can send our well intentioned young men and women out to fight “evil,” but in fighting it, what is done to them?
On a somewhat different note, our attention is drawn this week to the question of “dialogue” with evil, in conjunction with the Dialogue In/As Action conference this weekend (see http://www.networkforpeace.com/). So the question is simply: Is dialogue with evil possible? Or is it part of the nature of “evil” not to be susceptible to dialogue? Or if we’re in reasonable dialogue or negotiation with someone, perhaps they are not in fact “evil”? And what kind of dialogue should we (can we) be talking about here: our figurative, intellectual dialogue with “evil” phenomena? Or actual negotiation with perpetrators?
Examples to consider: Schindler negotiating with Amon Goeth, the commandment of Plazsow labor camp; interviewing Eichmann; Romeo Dallaire’s decision to negotiate with the Interahamwe during the Rwandan genocide; Osama bin Laden’s demands/points of negotiation in his letter to the American people. Etc.
