Crimes Against Humanity

Suzy Nguyen

I remember one famous quote from Jerry Costello ‘Crimes against humanity is an effort to systematically wipe out a person and a culture as well as individual lives’. In all parts of the world, ‘crimes against humanity’ has no limitations.  By analysing various texts I have studied such as The Pianist directed by Roman Polanski, Life is beautiful by Roberto Benigni, The Hunger Games by Gary Ross and the novel The Help written by Kathryn Stockett, I am able to compare and contrast significant connections between the four texts by looking at the plots, subthemes and settings . These connections bring me more understanding about the development of crimes fight against humanity in real life.

Through the eyes of these four texts, ‘crimes against humanity’ is truthfully developed by killing and punishing from a stronger as well as wealthier group to a weaker group of people. In the film Life is beautiful, the children and old Jews are forced to go into gas chambers, where they will be poisoned. The youngs and the olds, who have no strength to work, are the first on the death line. The quote ‘Children or old ladies, you don’t work! Shower time’ from German soldiers is a sign of something tragic is happening. As a result, these tortures by Germans highlight the ‘crimes against humanity’, suffered by Jewish people. In the film Jews have to obey Germans without any reasons, otherwise they will get shot or punished. Likewise, in the film The Pianist, Jews lose their lives, their souls in the most painful and unfair ways. The quote ‘You took everything I had, me a musician, you took my violin, you took my soul’ from Lednicki at one of the last scenes has shown the appalling treatment Germans do to the Jewish people. They seize, attack and murder thousands of innocent Jews. Viewers can easily see ‘crimes against humanity’ here, where Germans are not concerned about Jews’ feelings at all. How cruel is the fact that the Jews have to withstand those atrocities for an extremely long time. Similarly, ‘crimes against humanity’ is well represented in the book The Help, particularly in the quote ‘She telling everybody in town I’m stealing! That’s why I can’t get no work’, from Minny to Aibileen. This shows that Hilly is now officially pushing Minny to a dead end after firing her. Hilly knows Minny has to get a job to feed her children, since her husband becomes an alcoholic. This event tells readers even though Minny is no longer Hilly’s servant, she still cannot escape from Hilly’s social high-class power. Stockett uses this problem between the two women to illustrate how ‘crimes against humanity’ actually happened in that time of history, when Black maids are not able to be independent, and they are always ordered around by White people for no reason. Additionally, in the film The Hunger Games, ‘crimes against humanity’ is shown in a quote of Gale ‘They just want a good show, that’s all they want’. This tells viewers that the survival of the tributes is just a game show for rich people from The Capitol. The tributes have to use their lives to entertain other people who spend a lot of money on this ‘fight to the death’ show, which is ‘The Happy Hunger Game’.  Film audiences can recognise the tragic crimes of these wealthy people. The Capitol wants to use others’ survivals as entertainment, but in the process they are murdering young people without any acceptable reasons. I have never been through the feeling of losing lives by confrontation in my whole life. Living in this nonviolent environment, I realise how much peace affects to individual lives. Besides that, by looking closely at the texts, I understand more about ‘crimes against humanity’ in each person. It is easy to treat others nicely, but it is even easier to become enemies and fight against each other.