Drama series The Jewish Council gives the wrong message – Joop

The EO series ‘The Jewish Council’ has been much discussed, almost unanimously positive. Very good game. “The best series of recent years…” But the dramatic form that the EO has chosen is exactly the wrong one. The dilemmas of the father versus the daughter: that is entertaining but gives just the wrong message.

Violence, intimidation, and an apparent chance of escape: that was the psychological setup of the Nazis. A system, applied with dedication, and very effective. The EO series ‘The Jewish Council’ shows those who were caught up in that psychological game. But the perpetrators and the psychological plan are in the background. They have no leading role and only a single character, and appeal less to the imagination. The violence is hardly visible, so the series mainly shows the struggling supporting characters: the powerless father and the powerless daughter. And that is harmful. The average viewer walks away from the TV with judgments about the moral choices of the characters. But those choices are a side show.

To depict a sick situation, a maker must tell several stories at the same time: on the one hand the story of the people, on the other hand the structure. This is not new. The problem of story telling and structure has been solved many times over. For example, in the Opera that makes the unbearable palpable. The ancients had their choir. Berthold Brecht put the structure on stage as a character.

But not so the EO. Can you talk about moral? choices in sick conditions? When conditions move toward the inhumane, do you still need to talk about “moral choices”? The Council’s actions remain wrong. That’s a business judgment. And that needs to be told. But the moral judgment that is almost forced on the viewer is out of place. And the better the acting, the more it hinders.

Professor Thea Hilhorst explained in an opinion piece in the Volkskrant how morals are lost in five steps of desperation during food distribution in a war zone. And Siberian prisoners who do not rebel should not be the subject of our moral criticism. A moral judgment afterwards about choices in inhumane situations is inhumane and puts us on the wrong track.

Suppose it wasn’t about WWII but about a simple father who beats his wife and terrorizes his daughter into keeping quiet. A dramaturge hears about this and puts a daughter and a mother on stage, who have a conflict about how to respond. Great drama. But is it also a great message?

Marc Ferro described in ‘Cinema et Histoire’ (1977) how the story can differ from the effect of a film. What matters is what the viewer walks away from the screen with. Because that is the impression, the frame that remains. In ‘The Jewish Council’ this will be about the people and their moral dilemmas. The entire design is aimed at this, including trailers and trailers: “Will things work out between father and daughter…?”

The Jewish Council was a cog in the whole, a cleverly devised psychological strategy. In other words: the Nazis would have found someone else if David Cohen had said no.

The identification holds the attention so that the viewer continues to watch? Indeed, but it misdirects attention. Because the psychological trap, the actual scenario, thus becomes a supporting role. It is not David Cohen’s misjudgment of the murderers’ intentions that is at issue, but the murderers’ correct psychological assessment of the victims’ behavior.

Bullshit afterwards? And whining about the shape? This is why it matters: anyone who is 50 or 15 now has often not read much about WWII. Or nothing. Those viewers cannot imagine the violence and psychopathic aspect. And that group is now the majority. So for them the structure has to be put center stage, the intimidation, the lies, the hatred.

What apparently escaped the attention of the makers is that everyone who had survived, including the resistance fighters, blamed themselves for the moral dilemmas. They all felt that they had done too little. That judgment was too harsh: they demanded the impossible from themselves.

The EO has chosen a dramatic form in which the twisted people of the past must be twisted again.