Acts 2 & 3
Today in my overheated classroom
a fight broke out
between two girls.
We were reading Romeo & Juliet—
the balcony scene,
which doesn’t actually take place
on a balcony: if you’re just reading
the play, not watching it, the only stage
direction given is Romeo sees light
coming from an upper window
and, moments later,
Juliet appears at the window.
But then again these two girls
hadn’t been reading, or watching, or
doing much of anything.
One sat slumped over, her hair
covering her face like overgrown
vines on an orchard wall.
The other had her phone wedged
inside her copy of the play, her fingers
not-so-surreptiously swiping across the “page”
as though Romeo’s monologue was written in braille.
There was a clang—a knocked-over metal water bottle, according to the report,
by all accounts an accident—
and then, for reasons neither the report
nor their table partners nor the girls
themselves were able or willing
to explain, these two checked-out girls
checked in: they blared expletives
and hurled objects—
whatever they could find: their copies
of the play, somebody else’s water bottle.
By now I was standing between them,
boxing out the girl behind me as she flung
school supplies and schoolyard taunts,
shielding her from the other girl,
who by now had clambered onto the table.
There she stood, long hair tumbling,
raging like Niagara,
yet another water bottle
having found its way into her hand.
It didn’t take long for the torrent
of her anger to dislodge the bottle,
send it hurtling downward with a thud against my arm, which wasn’t the intended
target, of course: the surprise or guilt of
my collateral damage causing her to pause
just long enough for other adults to hustle
in and shuffle her away.
I drove home thinking about balconies
that don’t exist and tables
turned into parapets,
about water and water bottles
used neither to cool nor quench
but wound and welt.
I thought about airy words
and metallic bangs.
I thought about teenagers 400 years ago
and teenagers now.
I thought about adults 400 years ago
and adults now.
I thought about how to shield
someone from harm without shielding
them from consequences.
I thought about fights—
the ways they break out
and the ways we break them up.
By the time I got home
one of the girls had emailed me.
I’m sorry, she said.
Things got out of hand.
You’re 100%, instantly forgiven, I told her.
But you can make it up to me anyway
by giving Romeo & Juliet a second chance.
I don’t get it, she wrote back.
You blocked the water bottle.
I saw you. I saw you
move your arm.
Why did you do that?
Because I’ve read Romeo & Juliet,
I replied.
Propaganda Unit
It’s a brief moment,
and for all I know it’s staged,
though I don’t believe so:
A soccer player ends up
in the crowd—ends up
on the lap of what looks to me
to be a teenage girl.
She promptly sends him back
to the field with a smile on her face
and a pat on his rear.
Well, a whiff of a pat.
It’s possible she didn’t intend
the playful gesture but
merely to wipe the sweat
or wrinkle (or embarrassment?)
from her skirt.
The more I watch the clip—
four times, in total, once
for each of my high school classes—
the more I doubt what I’m seeing.
The film is from 1944.
It’s grainy and jumpy
and black and white.
Another girl,
I see now,
is the one
who’s doing the grinning.
The butt-swat might be no more
than a shoo-away,
if it’s anything at all—
a no-look extension of the arm,
her eyes fastened to her lap.
Still, whatever happened,
I describe it each time
to my students as heartbreaking
because I know for sure,
amidst all the uncertainty,
that it’s that.
By now, we’ve gone over
the raw details of this raw footage.
A Nazi propaganda film.
An attempt to turn a labor camp
into a “spa town” for its inhabitants.
Most of them, those coerced in front
of and behind the camera,
will soon be killed.
We’ve read the English translation
of the German voiceover.
We’ve underlined words like
“common good” and “richly equipped
central library” and “enthusiastic fans.”
And here they are, these fans,
and they are indeed enthusiastic.
The game takes place
in the so-called courtyard.
The camera focuses on faces,
young and old,
some of them, somehow, smiling.
My students wonder about that.
“How’d they get them to smile?”
one of them wants to know.
“I’m not sure,” I tell them.
“You know everything I know.”
But I also point out this girl—
or these girls—
smiling or not smiling—
swatting or not swatting—
and I tell them it’s heartbreaking.
I don’t know German.
I don’t know anything about the peppy
symphony playing in the background.
I don’t know which smiles, if any,
are real amongst all the ones
that are plastered on at gunpoint.
But I can’t help it.
That smile, I tell them, I believe it,
whichever girl is wearing it.
That swat—I believe in it, too.
Even if it didn’t happen here,
it still must have happened here,
somewhere.
I don’t tell them that last part.
This isn’t a time for paradoxes, perhaps.
But there has never been a time,
I don’t think,
no matter what heinous shit
adults have inflicted on them,
when teenagers haven’t felt and thought
and acted defiantly and irrepressibly
like teenagers.
I don’t know this.
But I think it.
I hope it.
My heart breaks for it.
We are studying propaganda
We must learn each lesson.
We must learn to spot emotional appeals.
We must learn to locate logical fallacies.
We must learn to—
or remember to—
or continue to—
let our heart break
when human beings act like human beings
and when they don’t.
Propaganda Video Link: Theresienstadt: A Documentary Film, 1944 | Experiencing History: Holocaust Sources in Context
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MEJ 