Branded

As you may know, I'm a bit of a movie freak. I watched a lot of movies and TV series of all genre (preferably thriller, :D). This time, I want to write about a particular scene of a famous 2002 movie called The Pianist. In short, it's about the life of a Jewish Pianist (portrayed by Adrien Brody) in the middle of German invasion. You may have heard in your history class before about holocaust or Nazi. There are actually several great films about the holocaust, one of which is The Pianist, the other is Schindler's List, and another movie that you may have seen not too long ago is Inglorious Bastards.

To me, the holocaust is a horrible tragedy and people need to see the real conditions during that time so that nobody would want to do such thing ever again. The way the Germans treated Jewish people really got me mad. Some of their acts are really violent, inhuman, or pure evil. If you watch one of these movies and feel nothing, perhaps you should see a therapist to check if you have psychopathic tendencies.

Okay, back to what I was about to write. The movie portrayed the life of Jewish people in Poland. During that time, German government published an article in the newspaper about branding the Jewish people so that they are known among the crowd. They were ordered to wear a white linen on their right sleeves with a Star of David symbol sewn to it.

Because of this brand, Jewish people were easily discriminated. They weren't allowed to eat in restaurants, use public transports, even walk on the sidewalk. In the end, the Germans built a closed housing complex and put all Jewish people inside so that the city became Jewish-free. This complex was what caused the rebellion later on.

This maybe is a movie-plot, a story written by someone and then put nicely in big screen. But this is really what happened. Years ago when the Germans think that they are part of superior race and that everyone else are beneath them. Sadly, in this era there are still some people who think they are above everybody. Aryan Brotherhood is an example although they are no longer focus in racism but more in the criminality to obtain more money.

They say we should learn from history, and we did. We can't tell people to sewn a white linen with distinctive symbol like what the Germans did. But we learn to brand people in more subtle way. We meet new people almost everyday. We see, and we brand them by the way they look, the way they walk, the way they smell, the way they talk. These days, our brands are not as simple as a distinctive symbol. We brand with words inside our head. Handsome. Beautiful. Smart. Elitist. Egotist. Religious. Liar. Et cetera, et cetera.

Are we better than the Germans during holocaust? Most definitely! We don't brand people to be killed later on, we brand them following our specific criteria. Then, we decide whether or not we want to know them, to be friends with them, to help them when in need. What I'm saying is that we can't stop branding people, and we'll definitely be branded by those people around us. I just hope that the brands we're giving to people will not come and bite us in the ass later.