Abuse or hurt or exploit or humiliate or harm

Lulu Garcia-Navarro of NPR spoke to Oliver Hermanus, the director of the movie Moffie. It is set in South Africa of 1981 during Apartheid. The movie sounds brutal, so I won’t be seeing it. The term “moffie” is a derogatory work implying the target is gay. Since being gay was illegal it was dangerous to be called that. It was also aimed at straight men to imply they weren’t man enough. At the time military service in South Africa was mandatory for two years, starting at age 16. What military service turns out to be then is indoctrinating boys into the ways of supremacy they are expected to uphold. Hermanus was asked about the practices used on the men. He replied:

So we really were quite ferocious about our research, and so many of the scenes that we show in the film of how they get stripped of their individuality and their sort of identity is very much what would happen. And it's a sort of standard kind of military thing to do. And so it would be about humiliation. It would be about beating out any kind of political attitudes, any kind of intellectualism, obviously sort of sexuality if that was the issue. But you were not allowed to be a free-thinking person. The other thing, I guess, to remember about the legalities of this conscription was that you were property of the state for these two years. If you were killed under their watch or died, there was no recourse for your family to pursue the government in any way.

His response to the brutality of the film:

I was very determined to position the audience in the headspace of the racist white South Africa. If you were a young white person or white boy or white teenager, white man, your interaction with Black people was the kinds of interactions that we show in this film, where Black people were there for you to abuse or hurt or exploit or humiliate or harm. So it's an uncomfortable position to put an audience in, particularly in this time in history, but I think it was necessary, as a person who has experienced racism many different times in my life, to demonstrate that to a white audience that would see this film. This is what racism looks like.

On top of all that a couple of the characters are indeed gay. I’m sure it doesn’t go well. One large aspect of supremacy is that it makes sure it is perpetuated. Mandating white boys spend two years under such brutal conditions, teaching them that Black people are there to be abused is an effective way to perpetuate the supremacy. When I saw the film Kanarie on my list of films to watch I saw it as companion and antidote to Moffie, so that’s what I watched last night. I finished it this morning because my cousin called and we had an enjoyable chat of about an hour. Johan, obviously gay from the opening scene, gets the letter saying it is time for his compulsory military service in the South African Defense Force. The way to avoid the worst of it is to try out for the Canaries – the choir of soldiers who serve as public relations, the “soft” side of the military. But it is still the military. They may not do weapons training, but they are subjected to the whims and humiliations of drill instructors and inspections where there had better be nothing out of place. Even though Moffie is about boys age 16, the soldiers in Kanarie didn’t look that young, more like 18. The actors were probably older than that. After several weeks on base they tour, giving concerts and essentially spreading propaganda about how wonderful the military was. After a concert a woman talks to some of them. She asks: Have they been to the black townships? Do they really support the war? Are they there to spread the message of the military or of God? That question is hard. They have been calling their superiors “Reverend.” When they give a concert on the border they see, for the first time, what the brutality of war is really about. Johan has a relationship, but then has a hard time dealing with the whole situation. The story takes place in 1985. Some of the attitudes towards gay people and of gay people towards themselves seem a bit dated (thankfully), at least from our understanding in 2021 America. I recommend this one. I see Rotten Tomatoes gives it a rating of 100% fresh.