The Ottery
“If an otter can’t have fun doing something, it just simply won’t do it.”

B for Bonhoeffer

April 3rd, 2006

Inspiration has struck me. If I ever need to pick up some extra cash, I could ghost-write one of those cheesy “Christian guides” to a movie. You know, the ones that take the veneer of a few Bible verses and apply them to a film to show how some character is really a Christ figure. I could write one showing the similarities between V for Vendetta and Dietrich Bonhoeffer!

V plans to assassinate Sutler, Bonhoeffer plans to assassinate Hitler. Both act out of principle. Both oppose censorship and genocide and bad stuff like that. Both make huge sacrifices for a cause. Both love beautiful younger women. Admittedly, only one of them prances around with a cape and sword, but that’s a small detail. You have to make some Hollywood-izations to jazz up the story of a middle-aged German pastor. But, really, V equals Bonhoeffer equals Jesus!

Okay, seriously, I have all respect for those who see Christ in contemporary media, because that’s what I do, too. It’s just that I get frustrated with surface-level comparisons that turn everything into an allegory, rather than an embodied, incarnational truth inherent to the story itself. And there really are Christians (the ones who aren’t protesting V for Vendetta as “leftist propaganda”) currently claiming that V is a Christ figure, just as they hailed the Wachowski brothers’ earlier effort, The Matrix, for imparting Christian (Neoplatonic is more like it, I’d say) teaching about the falseness of the material world. Now I know that V is an insane idealist, and such characters can often be Christ figures, but, really, sometimes a crazy person is just a crazy person.

I’ve been reading Flannery O’Connor’s letters recently, and I’m reminded of an anecdote she relates in one of them:

“Week before last I went to Wesleyan and read ‘A Good Man Is Hard to Find.’ After it I went to one of the classes where I was asked questions. There were a couple of young teachers there and one of them, an earnest type, started asking the questions. ‘Miss O’Connor,’ he said, ‘why was the Misfit’s hat black?’ I said most countrymen in Georgia wore black hats. He looked pretty disappointed. Then he said, ‘Miss O’Connor, the Misfit represents Christ, does he not?’ ‘He does not,’ I said. He looked crushed. ‘Well, Miss O’Connor,’ he said, ‘what is the significance of the Misfit’s hat?’ I said it was to cover his head, and after that he left me alone. Anyway, that’s what’s happening to the teaching of literature.”

(O’Connor’s letters are hilarious and deep and fantastic. Expect to see future posts about them.)

Now I see nothing wrong with an individual saying “The Matrix reminds me of the Apostle Paul’s letters” or “The Misfit (or V) reminds me of Christ” (though I would still question the reading ability of the person making the Misfit-Christ parallel), but there’s a difference between that and declaring unequivocally that the Misfit represents Christ.

But I digress. Back to Bonhoeffer. The reason I thought of the parallel was that bit I said in my previous “V” post about using corrupt means to tackle corruption. Terrorists do that, but so too did Bonhoeffer. He was a committed pacifist, and yet was persuaded to participate in a plot to blow up Hitler. Now, the plot failed (the bomb went off, but it missed Hitler), and Bonhoeffer was arrested and eventually executed, but that doesn’t let him off the hook. I’ve never seen a satisfactory explanation of why he chose to override his pacifism to take part in the assassination attempt.

That’s not to say that I condemn him. Like many almost-pacifists, I add that “almost” because of World War II. And possibly Rwanda. Utilitarian ethics would tell us that it’s better to kill one to save the many, at least in cases of genocide.

But I still want to know why Bonhoeffer made his decision. It seems like the answer would be more interesting and complicated than utilitarianism alone. Maybe someday someone will make a Bonhoeffer movie that addresses his moral dilemma. And I suppose it would be more natural to explore the issue through the character of a pastor and theologian, rather than an alliterative lunatic like V. But, alas, there would be no capes and no buildings going boom to the strains of the “1812 Overture.”

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