For some time now, I and many of my friends in their waning years have realized they have increased sensibilities. We are making choices not to allow the horrific, upsetting and guilt inducing entertainments into our lives. In some cases that includes loud music, rap and progressive jazz. Scary movies, war themes and violence are off the list as venues we embrace.
Lately, I find I have expanded my list of deletes to be more specific. I first realized this when I read Jodie Picoult’s “Small Great Things.”In all the years, that I have attended my book club, I have read everything selected. However, I could not finish this novel.The description of racism by the cult was so well-written that I became very anxious, upset and disgusted. I put the book down. When I discussed my displeasure with a friend, she explained that transformation was the theme and the racist protagonist has an epiphany. I determined that I could no longer read about slavery. The message of that horror is embedded deeply in my psyche.
On the heels of the novel, I went to Berkeley Repertory Theatre to see “An Octoroon.” This traditional melodrama, replete with white face for blacks and black faces for whites, underlines the racism that exists when a woman who is one-eighth black is denied entry into the white world. Again we had to be dragged through the horror of slavery. We left at intermission.
Needless to say this is also true of the Holocaust. Perhaps people that can’t believe that the murder of Jews by Hitler ever happened are not crazy. Perhaps they can’t or won’t believe of the depravity that is possible by humans to other humans. Unfortunately, Hitler and the Nazis happened, and I don’t need ever again to read or find entertainment whose theme is the Holocaust.
My pronouncement is that slavery and Holocaust themes are off my list
The trouble with pronouncements is that I find nothing is quite so black and white. Just as soon as I made my specific denouncements, I came upon the National Geographic series titled “Genius.” After 10 hourlong episodes, I concluded that the Holocaust was going to be the historical backdrop for some important stories. The story of Albert Einstein’s life would have been missed because of my desire to protect my sensibilities. This series was one of the best written and best acted pieces in a TV series that I have ever watched. There is one episode where Einstein is being interviewed by a bureaucrat for entry into the United States. The bureaucrat has been given a charge by J.Edgar Hoover to keep the Einsteins out of America. The unfolding of the interchange between the bureaucrat, raymond Geist, and Einstein is so well written and acted that I would have missed a wonderful story that is so heartening it made my heart soar.
Then this weekend, our movie buddy, Megan, wanted to see “Dunkirk.” There I was in the first row of the balcony, my favorite seat with the railing for my legs, watching a brilliantly done recreation of a time in history when the British boat owners moved 330,000 soldiers to safety while risking their own.
I am sure that I will continue to weed out those intrusions into my emotions. I will still try to keep away from those assaults on my hard earned peace and comfort. However, I do think it is best to keep away from pronouncements because they are apt to be modified as the situation demands to allow in those places where transformation and acts of bravery are possible. There is nothing that feels better than when people get over their negative, hateful stances and become better, more loving people. I make this pronouncement. I want to be in the first row of the theater, and in life when transformations happen because a protagonist choses the greater good and tolerance over hate.

Ellen Blaufarb is a marriage family therapist.

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