Jojo Rabbit

October 25, 2019

By NZB3

Jojo Rabbit (2019) tackles an essentially relevant theme of our time in history. It explores the dilemma children have in picking which of two radical and duelling factions to bond with. The titular 10 year old, Johannes “Jojo,” needs to figure out who or what to hitch his personality to. We don’t expect our babies and infants to have political opinions but in polarising times (like now, and like WW2) the cut-off for picking sides gets younger and younger.

Our Changing Times

Last time NZB3 checked the vital stats of our society they revealed that Victimhood Culture had peaked and was on the ropes, Slave Culture was in ascendency, and Honour Culture in its early Spring. Desperate and dying, short on cash, VC resorts to more and more Ecofascist Measures. As of this week, these now include forcing the unfunded mandate upon the agricultural industry to regulate its own emissions by 2025 or be forced to do so.

“Cabinet has also agreed that in 2022 the independent Climate Change Commission will check in on the progress made and if commitments aren’t being met, the Government can bring the sector into the ETS at processor level before 2025.”- Newshub

Hence, the VC Government is simultaneously being bossy while also backing down in recognition of their waning influence and access to actual plans and solutions. VC knows their cultural climate is changing and it’s time to recycle what they can and, quite soon, bug out for the communes.

Slave Culture, meanwhile, has, just like that, re-minted the ‘Climate Crisis’ into an ‘Extinction Rebellion.’ Has it ever been more clear than this that Global Warming/Climate Change has always been a political projection of the r-selected population’s fear of losing the culture war? As predicted, their Vegan Storm (and others) has escalated through not being challenged. Especially in the UK eruption, the Extinction Rebellion became militant and disruptive…

“Extinction Rebellion previously said the disruption was “necessary to highlight the emergency”.- Extinction Rebellion protesters dragged from Tube train roof; BBC

Honour Culture stepped up to challenge these Slave Culture people at large, physically confronting them and man-handling them out of the way. Victimhood Culture was useless but, once again, and after the fact, issued bossy regulations in the form of a London-wide ban on the SC’s activity. SC is learning two things from this experience but may need to learn it once or twice more yet. Firstly, that VC is not going to protect them anymore. Secondly, that HC will push them out of the way and that SC is no match for this. HC got a taste of power and next time an SC gets in the way will push even harder. SC got a bloody nose and will think twice about such disruptive protesting in future.

Another couple of iterations of this and Honour Culture will become the mainstream. The London example will re-play in New Zealand too and our culture will shift, political leadership following along with it (to Collins and Nash, I expect.) The private HC gangs (eg Mongrel Mob) are expanding and giving university lectures. The public sector HC gangs (eg NZ Police) are tooling up with more offensive capability. The “…armed response teams (ARTs) showed top brass were finally “jolted” into action after frontline officers warned for years of increasingly aggressive armed criminals,” reports Stuff in Police to trial new armed unit after terror attack.

So, the Theory of Moral Cultures (TMC) is performing very well. Currently we’re still in Slave Culture, it’s still an era for skepticism and the Honkler Meme and one in which the Joker movie is a smash hit. Times are changing quickly and it’s hard to know, especially for a kid, which Culture to sign up for. Our times are a bit like living in Nazi Germany in the final days which is why Taika Waititi picked that for his Jojo Rabbit setting.

Angels and Devils

JoJo’s mother, played by Scarlett Johansson, has a huge conundrum. She loves her country, Germany, during a time of mass psychosis. Like JoJo’s absent father, she fights for peace and sanity where the Group Think fanaticism makes doing so a fatal liability. She walks the line as best she can in raising JoJo to be a good man yet must ensure he is subjected to enough brainwashing and Hitler Youth culture to survive in Nazi Germany while it lasts. She has already lost his older sister during the war. To bond honestly with JoJo and be truthful about her convictions would be unsafe so she walks the line and hopes to live long enough to restore the damage to JoJo’s personality.

Did she live long enough? No. Hanged as a traitor; JoJo’s on his own from now on. Yet unlike his peer group he has time to think. Perhaps because of his latent good heart his mother has nurtured, JoJo is singled out to kill a rabbit in cold blood. He fails the test and is ostracised, leading to his being wounded. In recovery and isolation from the indoctrination, JoJo has time to think and reflect. He finds his pathway to negotiating between an angel on one shoulder and a demon on the other, just like an old time Donald Duck cartoon.

In one ear, JoJo has an imaginary Adolf Hitler. He is a cowardly, bossy, vain role model that helps JoJo conform and stay alive inside the Third Reich. In the other, he has an imaginary Jew played by Thomasin McKenzie who says, “I definitely felt I was representing Judaism in this film.” McKenzie’s character is imaginary because JoJo cannot admit to anyone, even his mother, that the Jew hiding in the wall is a real person. She’s a ghost, a spirit, like Hitler. The two spirits JoJo has conceived of play for dominance and JoJo’s soul hangs in the balance.

Another useful device is JoJo’s book about Jews and the letters he reads to his personal Anne Frank. He is able to pretend not to like the Jew and that he is interacting only for research purposes so he can write an expose on the Jewish beast. He is able to address her pretending to be reading mail sent by her imaginary boyfriend. JoJo’s mind has created a way for him to contemplate the forbidden.

Because of all of this, JoJo does not kamakazi into a glorious death alongside his instructors and peers. The tightening circle of Soviet, US, and British forces renders Nazi Culture obsolete and many die in the process. Much like JoJo’s mother, Sam Rockwell’s character saves the boy’s life too by keeping him secret. Ultimately, JoJo’s Nazi Captain, Rockwell, bravely gives his own life so JoJo would not be killed by a Soviet summary execution squad. The mother and father figures have spared JoJo’s life but it was all left up to him to face his existential crisis.

“Don’t let it bring you down It’s only castles burning
Find someone who’s turning And you will come around”- Neil Young

The angel on his shoulder became embraced and real. The demon was kicked in the balls and flew out JoJo’s bedroom window, “Fuck off Hitler!” Unlike the surviving shell-shocked Nazis whose sky had fallen and guru had died, JoJo entered the post-war period with his head on right. JoJo, by the end of the film, has become a leader that reconstructionist Germans could hitch their wagons to in fulfilment of his mother’s fondest hopes. The project of standing upright and finding their own individuality that Hitler had replaced for so many by his Nazi interlude was on again. Perhaps JoJo would grow up to be a Ludwig Erhard for the spirit?

Jojo Rabbit is an anti-hate satire, a struggle for peace over hate. Unlike the book it is based on, Caged Skies, Waititi allows JoJo to step up the Maslow’s Hierarchy instead of imprison himself and his captive at the ground floor. Once again, Waititi is breaking the New Zealand tradition (the book’s author a Kiwi too) of making bleak, bitter, hurt, traumatised art. Taika’s movies have beauty and hope, a sense of life rather than a central premise of death and decay.

Unlike Boy, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, and Thor: Ragnarok, this film was not action-driven. The supporting actors (Rockwell, Stephen Merchant, Rebel Wilson) had entertaining little set pieces that were fairly muted in the background to the main plot. We had already seen every one of these scenes in the trailer, if we had wanted to. I don’t think this film will rate well right now because of this lack of instant gratification. While enjoyable to watch now, it seems to me that Waititi is mostly playing a long game by creating a classic film that will last forever. Especially in the decade ahead, JoJo Rabbit is going to make more sense and be more relevant.

Where there is room for improvement is that our little Johannes (aka John Connor) who is our hope for our future, our next generation, finds a better solution. The Terminator Saga, so far, has done nothing more than shoot and blast and hate as a solution. JoJo Rabbit kicked the problem out the window. Someone needs to come up with a way to integrate our dark side instead of (pointlessly) trying to smash it every time.

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Image ref. (From L-R): Thomasin McKenzie, Roman Griffin Davis and Taika Waititi in the film JOJO RABBIT. Photo by Kimberley French. © 2019 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation All Rights Reserved

 

 

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