Semi-OT: Collaborators

[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?