Jojo Rabbit A 2019 Film: Review

 The name of the movie 'Jojo Rabbit' has been taken from one of the scenes set in a Deutsches Jungvolk, the junior section of the Hitler Youth, where a 10-year old boy named Johannes Betzler is being repeatedly called 'Jo Jo Ra-bit'  and mocked for failing to kill a rabbit. The killing of the rabbit was a process for the child to prove his worthiness. 

The story revolves around the conflict between the inner and the outside world of the 10-year old, wherein the inner soul is innocent, affectionate towards all the living beings – irrespective of their caste or race, wants to play, make friends and follow butterflies on streets. On the contrary the boy is surrounded by people and circumstances that remind him of his responsibility, the duty and loyalty he has towards his country, that consequently kills his childhood.

Jojo Rabbit is a 2019 comedy drama film which was written and directed by Taika Waititi based on Christine Leunen's 2008 book Caging Skies. The film has received both criticism and several accolades wherein the crew has received 14 awards and has been nominated for various other prestigious awards.

The film opens in an attic where Jojo prepares himself both mentally and physically for the weekend training in the Jungvolk. He with the hundreds of other boys and girls of his age is being trained to hate and kill people of other races, to stab daggers, throw grenades, dig trenches, fire guns, blow stuff up, burn books and is conditioned to think that Aryans are a thousand times more civilized or “relatively European” than any other race in the world and consequently the others deserve to be killed. Kids are also being conditioned to think that to be merciful towards others is to be cowardly and scared. 

The film has countered some antisemitic myths and prejudices prevalent in that society, through its characters, as in one of the scenes where Jojo and his best friend Yorkie discuss the question 'how do we recognize a Jew since they are also humans like us?' to which Jojo replies that they have horns and smell like brussels sprouts. Probably these are some of those myths that ignited antisemitism in that time. 

Jewish people might have smelled like the brussels sprouts because of their living conditions but 'Jews do have horns on their heads' shows the mythical propaganda and misinformation propagated by the state, and the blind and unquestionable belief of the ordinary citizens. In his essay 'Antisemitism in Britain' George Orwell has shared and justified some antisemitic prejudices. In one of them he said:

Then again, Jews are to be found in exactly those trades which are bound to incur unpopularity with the civilian public in war-time. Jews are mostly concerned with selling food, clothes, furniture and tobacco – exactly the commodities of which there is a chronic shortage, with consequent overcharging, black-marketing and favoritism.

He concluded in his essay:

If one judged merely from these war-time phenomena, it would be easy to imagine that antisemitism is a quasi-rational thing, founded on mistaken premises.

The purpose of making movies like Jojo Rabbit (2019), A boy in a Striped Pyjama (2008) and The Schindler's List (1993) is to highlight the plight of Jews during Holocaust and antisemitism faced by the Jewish community which will undoubtedly haunt the generations of Jews. But the fact is that it's been so long since Jews had been persecuted. In the first half of the third decade of the 21st century, Jews themselves are a source of persecution of one whole community. They have been ethnically cleansing the Palestinians by illegally encroaching their villages, demolishing their houses, annexing their lands and building illegal settlements on it. They have been planning to make draconian laws in order to silence the resistance voices as in the case of recent Israeli Facebook Bill which is made to target the journalists and activists who shed light on Israel's violence against Palestinians. The Bill allows the Jewish regime to remove posts and news articles too. 

Which is why today these movies should be watched in a broader sense rather than just limiting it to the Jewish plight. In a sense, to measure the fears of persecuted minority at the hands of authoritative majority anywhere in the world; in a sense to understand and highlight the systematic conditioning of ordinary people through mass media or in the modern world through social media in order to dehumanize, marginalize and demonize the persecuted minority. Last but not the least, these should also be watched to learn the red flags of a totalitarian regime.