Semi-OT: Collaborators

[Webstral]

I watched the first half of Red Dawn the other day on a lark. I used to revile the mayor of the town in Colorado. Now, I find myself much more sympathetic. The guy’s in a tough spot. Freedom fighters hate collaborators, but someone has to work with the enemy to keep the machinery of daily life going. Patriotism should not demand that women, children, the infirm, and the elderly give up their lives in hopeless shows of defiance. Therefore, the mechanisms that keep daily life going must be maintained—even under occupation by enemy forces. Any given man can run off to the hills, but what if that man has a family who can’t make such a journey? What if that man has responsibilities that include keeping daily life going for those who must endure the occupation? War demands that all its participants make hard choices, and not all of them will be popular with single men in their teens and twenties. I don’t like the mayor especially, but I appreciate him as a character now that I have a wife and two young children.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

There are some that will collaborate simply to get the easiest life they can under the occupying forces. They are essentially selfish, looking to improve their own situation or they could simply be fearful/cowardly and looking for the easiest way not to suffer.

However, the situation with the mayor is I think, much worse than even that of someone simply trying to save their family. If the mayor cares about his community, not only would he be worried about his own family, but also all the other families in his community. He shoulders the burden of trying to keep everyone happy, those who are under the occupation as well as the forces of the occupation.

I'm not saying he should be liked but I'm also not saying he should be immediately disliked. Unless he's a complete toadying bastard with his nose buried in the enemy commander's arse, he would have some seriously difficult problems to resolve - collaborate and save some of his townsfolk or resist and see most of those townsfolk displaced at best or killed at worst.

[pmulcahy11b]

I remember one of the mayor's lines when the Cuban colonel asked him about potential guerrillas and those who might be aiding them. He said, "...well, there are certain families..." I think he was saving his own hide while trying to get rid of some people he didn't like. No better than a World War 2 Vichy.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Originally Posted by pmulcahy11b

I remember one of the mayor's lines when the Cuban colonel asked him about potential guerrillas and those who might be aiding them. He said, "...well, there are certain families..." I think he was saving his own hide while trying to get rid of some people he didn't like. No better than a World War 2 Vichy.

Unfortunately that's human history the world over, you only have to look at neighbours anonymously calling the police to claim that the house next door is a drug lab because they dislike their neighbours to see how current this situation still is. Or worse still, the modern day witch-hunts that plagued North America and the United Kingdom in the 1990s.

But then again the mayor in Red Dawn could have been sacrificing families who were troublemakers or who would not contribute to the greater wellbeing of the town - reducing the overall risk to the towns survival by reducing the bad elements within it. He might have considered that a sacrifice was necessary to appease the enemy and so he selected the towns least useful inhabitants.

Personally I was left with the impression that he's a jerk and was saving his own arse but I'm happy to play the devil's advocate in these circumstances because I do not believe such things are clearly black and white - there's lots of room for shades of gray.

[Adm.Lee]

Had the main heroes' dad already been arrested by then? If so, that leaves open the possibility that the mayor was "giving up" the ones that would already be arrested or fled. He could even be playing for time, hoping to warn some of them to skedaddle, or at least point the finger to the folks farthest out of town-- the ones best able to get away before the paras got organized to hunt them down.

Or, yeah, he could just be pointing the finger at whoever his enemies in small-town politics were.

I never liked him before, either, but I can see a more sympathetic point of view now. I did recognize that he is the legal authority in town, and for him to run off would be a dereliction of duty, too.

I was just looking at some stuff on the WW2 French Army yesterday, and wondering how I would have reacted, had I been in a blue uniform in 1940-- stay, rebel, quit?