Reading Richard Schickel's justly famous 1968 critical biography of Walt Disney, The Disney Version, I tensed up instinctively when he got to the point in history when the studio produced Dumbo. I knew, based on the biographer's narrative approach so far, that he would have to include a description of the film's plot and its artistic achievements. And I knew in turn, therefore, that he would have to reckon somehow with one of the most heart-wrenching scenes in cinematic history: the one in which the baby elephant protagonist is separated from his mother by prison bars. Still today, without having seen the film in years, if not decades, the mere memory of this scene makes me want to sob in anguish.
Schickel does not shy away from his difficult task, and he points out that I was far from unique in my reaction. The family separation scene in Dumbo, he observes, plays on one of the deepest fears of small children. Thus, he recounts, when viewing the film with an audience that includes children and their parents, one can always feel an intense emotional reaction in the room when they get to this sequence. It is up there with the episode of the children transforming into donkeys in Pinocchio as one of the most potently disturbing and upsetting images in all of cinema: a scene that has left its raw impression on generations of adults who saw it for the first time as kids.
It is a degree of emotional power that speaks well to the studio's artistry of that era—but which, for all that, I find it hard to personally forgive. I'm still shattered by it! Particularly by that image of Dumbo's mother cradling her son in her trunk through the iron bars that separate them.
Thinking back to this mournful scene in today's era, one cannot help but recall the anguish one felt as a child—the momentary terror at the thought of being separated from one's adult caregivers—and then, one equally cannot fail to make the connection to recent history. We realize that our government in recent time deliberately inflicted this same pain—except, in real life, not in a movie; and for weeks, months, and years, rather than a fleeting instance—on thousands of children and their parents, during the Trump administration's family separation policy. One recalls too that many of these families have still not been reunited, or cannot be reunited, all this time later; or that even for many of those who were reunited, so many years of separation had passed beforehand that the children could no longer recognize their parents, or they had forgotten the language their family used to speak.
And as soon as one makes the connection between one's own childhood terrors, and the actions of one's government, one cannot help but be filled with inexpressible shame. It doesn't matter if one protested against these same policies at the time they were occurring. My day job in 2018, for instance, when "zero tolerance" was rolled out, was as an immigration advocate at a human rights organization. It could therefore hardly be said that I did not speak out or register my opposition to the policy before it was too late. But even while clutching to this knowledge, I find it does not lessen the shame. Partly, this is because—even if one "opposed" the policy—one still feels that one did not fully internalize its wrongfulness at the time. Perhaps, just like when thinking back to the scene in Dumbo, the full magnitude of the wrongness is too painful to look at for more than a fleeting instant or two.
But even beyond this, I hold there is a different reason why the shame feels somehow irremediable. It is because, when one glimpses even for a moment—and even if only in thought—the reality of another person's unjust suffering, one feels simultaneously that one has committed a great wrong, if one has meanwhile allowed oneself to live and thrive and be happy in a world that could contain such injustices. One finds oneself thinking back to 2018, when family separation was still being actively implemented at the border, and one thinks: how was it that I was able to smile, to travel, to laugh, that summer? How was it that the same universe could contain both children being torn from their parents' arms and me going about my ordinary existence as if nothing had changed, or nothing irrecoverable been lost? How is it that the universe did not break apart at the seams, in the face of such an outrageous contradiction?
Of course, some cosmological schemes seem to reconcile themselves without much difficulty to the idea that blessedness for some and suffering for others can subsist next to each other for an eternity. The heaven of orthodox Christianity—the same one that most evangelical Christians still at least officially believe in—is purported to be filled with saints enjoying eternal beatitude, apparently undisturbed in their perfect joy by the screams of the tormented sinners in hell.
Yet, for anyone who is not so cruel or unreflective as to become outright brutish, or whose natural feelings have not been blunted by indoctrination in a callous creed, such a fate for the universe would appear to be a contradiction in terms. As Albert Camus, discussing Dostoevsky's Ivan Karamazov, writes in his The Rebel, "There is no possible salvation for the man who feels real compassion," unless that salvation be universal. "Ivan"—writes Camus—"is the incarnation of the refusal to be the only one saved. He throws in his lot with the damned and, for their sake, rejects eternity. If he had faith, he could, in fact, be saved, but others would be damned and suffering would continue." Ivan cannot accept this outcome, for the reasons stated above. And so he embraces, in Camus's telling, the theological position of "Everyone or No One." (Bower translation throughout.)
A character in William Gaddis's A Frolic of His Own, speaking in a role in the play-within-the-novel, around which much of the book's plot revolves, also articulates the essence of the "Everyone or No One" position, in words that are believed to have been inspired by Camus's philosophical essay (according to the Gaddis annotations project): "if life could be good at all then it had to be good for all men." In other words, for any of us to be truly blessed, it would be necessary for all of us to be blessed.
This, I hold, is the true reason for the shame we feel in the face of any complete and irremediable injustice. We feel that it defeats the goodness of the universe as a whole—that it precludes life being good for us as well—so long as it is allowed to continue. And so, if we allow our life to be blessed or enjoyable, at the same time that there is unmitigated suffering and injustice elsewhere, then we can only be partaking in a sort of evil joy. It is only such cruel pleasure that one can imagine with any plausibility to be enjoyed by the saved in heaven, so long as they are believed to exist in a universe where others are damned. In order for life to be good for anyone anywhere—truly good—it would have to be good for everyone everywhere. And as soon as we recognize the validity of "Everyone or No One," then we realize why the suffering our government imposed through family separation is so intolerable to contemplate.
Of course, even if it could be shown that all are saved in the end—even if every family had eventually been reunited (which they were not)—one still cannot see how this would make up for the unjust suffering that was inflicted in the meantime. Thus, we have to feel that even a scheme of universal reconciliation and salvation would not truly redeem the universe or its maker; just as a teleology of progress in history—even if we could believe in it—would not make it up to all of the victims who perished before the coming of the promised millennium or utopia. As Camus quotes Vissarion Belinsky on this point—taking the logic of "Everyone or No One" a step further still, in a retort he penned to Hegel's philosophy of unfolding self-consciousness: "I have the honor to inform you that even if I had the opportunity of climbing to the very top of the ladder of evolution, I should still ask you to account for all the victims of life and history. I do not want happiness, even gratuitous happiness, if my mind is not at rest concerning all my blood brothers."
One feels that William James must have had something similar in mind—that it was the same "victims of life and history" who haunted him likewise—when he wrote in his Varieties of Religious Experience: "It may indeed be that no religious reconciliation with the absolute totality of things is possible. Some evils, indeed, are ministerial to higher forms of good; but it may be that there are forms of evil so extreme as to enter into no good system whatsoever[.]"
Surely family separation is among those irremediable and unforgivable evils in the universe—the ones entailing that—so long as they occur and have occurred—this universe can never truly be forgiven or redeemed. So long as we live our lives in a cosmos that contains such suffering and injustice, this universe will be a torn one. And our lives and our happinesses will be tainted and incomplete likewise.
One cannot change it now—at least not to the point of perfecting it. As Belinsky says, even correcting the policy for future generations does not make it up to the victims who went before. But one can do one's best to keep the pieces of a shattered universe together. One can try to keep this shared life of ours from being broken even further.
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