Prisoner of Paradise

A week or so ago, I watched on Netflix a documentary called Rise of the Double Eagle about Hitler's political emergence prior to January 1933.  Netflix (which except for sports is about all the justifies a TV set anymore) will present you with a list if selections similar to your recent viewings, and I periodically scan these lists to see what the software might have gathered.   Tonight I scanned the list generated by my viewing of the above documentary and was stopped by the haunting image of a man named Kurt Gerron.  The film is called Prisoner of Paradise.  

Kurt Gerron was a German actor and film director in Wiemar Germany.  He was quite famous in his day, but he was also Jewish.  After Hitler's ascent to power, he quickly lost the ability to work.  He left Germany and bounced around Europe, until he finally settled in Holland.  He was there in the Spring of 1940 when Hitler invaded.  Eventually he was transported to Theresienstadt.  Because he was a capable film director, he was forced by the Germans to make a propaganda film conveying a Potemkim image of life in Theresienstadt.  The film was never completed.  

I will not burden you with details, but only recommend Prisoner of Paradise for your consideration.  It haunts you with the happy images of people who will within a matter of weeks be sent to Auschwitz.  Almost everyone seen in the picture will eventually die at that place.  But there was one particular moment that remains with me.  Soon after he left Germany, Kurt Gerron helped a struggling penniless actor named Peter Lorre raise money to go to Hollywood.  When Gerron was in Holland, Lorre - by now established and worried about events in Europe - sought to return the favor and found work for Gerron in the United States.  Gerron agreed to come but wanted the Movie company to pay for First Class Travel.  The Movie company refused.  Gerron therefore declined the position, and stayed in Holland.  It is sobering to think that upon such a decision could hang the difference between life and death.

In October 1944, Kurt Gerron was loaded on the last train from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz.  He was killed on 28 October 1944.  Aged 47 years, six months.

Why Do Men Hate Women's Basketball?

We are rapidly approaching the annual NCAA Basketball Tournament.  Which means that once again ESPN will begin its annual quest to make Women's Basketball somehow culturally relevant.  It will prominently feature stories about the Women's Tournament.  It will broadcast the selection of teams for the Women's Tournament.  It might even televise some games from the Women's tournament - on ESPN2 of course.   Well, a few of them might be broadcast on ESPN in prime time.  ESPN does this every year, and every year it fails.  No one watches.  And yet it continues - year after year after dreary year.

Look I get it.  Basketball is the only major money-making sport in the US that women also play.  If a non-traditional Women's sport (i.e. not figure skating) is ever going to make the big time in terms of money and popularity, it will be Basketball.  But it just isn't going to happen.  And so once again, we will get the same dreary post-Women's Tournament analyses that ask the same dreary question.  Why won't men watch women's basketball?  Why do they in fact seem to hate it? 

Enlightened opinion will wrinkle its fevered brow and ponder this question.  "Basketball is basketball!  It's a different game but an exciting game.  It's pure.  The women exhibit fundamentally more sound skills!"   It will puzzle and puzzle until its puzzler is sore, and then ... once again conclude (year after year after dreary year) that men just have "gender issues."  It will conclude that men need to have their consciousness raised - that if only they are forced to watch it, they will learn to like it.  Cue ESPN to gather its lance and tilt once again at windmills.

You see, that is the source of the problem, and the answer to the question.  Women's basketball isn't a sport.  It's a cause.  Every display of women's basketball on the home page of ESPN is an accusation - a declaration that men are morally deficient for refusing to watch women play basketball.  Every broadcast is a declaration of the Evangel that men and women are inter-changeable parts.  It proceeds from the assumption that a basketball fan should not notice the gender of the players - that noticing the gender of the players is a moral fault and the source of the problem.  Men, who otherwise wouldn't care    one way or the other, feel that accusation and reject it.  In response they learn to despise the source of the accusation.  They wish evil upon it.  They take delight in its poor ratings, and mercilessly mock its failures.

Women's basketball can only become popular when it ceases to be a cause.  Men will not be harangued into watching women play a slower, smaller, less exciting version of the game.  Quit forcing the issue.  Let it earn its place in the sporting world instead of giving it a place it cannot achieve by its own efforts.  But, comes the response, "Men won't watch it. If they aren't trained to watch it, then it will never be able to achieve it's place."  Perhaps not.  But I don't want to be 'trained.'