“They made their way up the coast of South America to the Galapagos Islands,” I said to Ryndal sitting in the back seat.
“You mean the Coast of Africa,” he said. “What’s that?”

“You mean the Galapagos Islands off the coast of Africa!”

I thought I was witnessing a segement from Jay Leno’s Jay-Walking series….young people asked simple questions and Jay listening to the answers with amusment and disbelief.

“Africa. The Galapagos Islands are off the coast of Africa,” he continued as Bryan stepped into the car from the front passenger’s side. “Tell him?” “Tell him what?” asked Bryan. “That the Galapagos Islands are off the African Coast.” “Nope. South America,” said Bryan matter-of-factly. “Darwin sailed south from England, rouded Tierra del Fuego and up the Chilean Coast, turned left and found Galapagos.”

A gloomy and dour pall fell over the passenger compartment. Six months later and it was Christmas. “Pretty Poinsettes,” said Ryndal. “You know about the Poinsetta and how it got its name,” I asked. “Nope, don’t think I do.” Bryan shut his eyes and shook his head as if he listened to the screaching brakes of train before it derails.

“The American statesman, Poinsette, had traveled to Mexico to purchase territory only to return with the red plant that bears his name?”

“So it had another name in Spanish before it was the Poinsette?” asked Ryndal’s father sitting on the couch.

“Guess it did,” I said, “but I’m not sure I know what it was….maybe ‘rosa flor’.”

Two days later and we’re watching TV. “Let’s do a movie. Inglorious Basterds”, the young folks shouted.

“You’re favorite Christmas movie?” I asked. “No, It’s a Wonderful Life,” said someone. “Mine’s Die Hard,” I said in gest.

“There’s something wrong with Terrantino,” I said. “Sure is,” said Bryan. “Physiological, neurological, maybe hormonal. Look at the size of his forehead.”

“No,” I mean he had no respect for history in that movie. Hitler killed in a movie theater in Paris and not in a bunker in Berlin? The kids are going to see that and believe that story and forget the truth.”

“Tarrantino’s brilliant,” said Ryndal. “And if you don’t like it go to another room.” A gloomy and dour pall fell over my own living room. I was being evicted by a young man who had just been given the nickname “orange peel”. I stayed in the room and sat quietly hoping to give Tarrantino a closer more sensitive screening. “Orange peel was right for once,” I thought when the movie was over.

Tarrantino had correctly altered history via artistic expression and juxtaposed Hitler’s propaganda machine of Joseph Goebels to a Jewish girl who survived the death of her parents and siblings to become a Parisian theater owner. Emblematic of the Jewish community’s genius in using the Western media to counteract the German bias against the Jews, Hitler’s fortress-Germania was effectively destroyed by the reels and reels of truth telling projected on the West’s screens in countless theaters. Paris had been ground zero for the death of despots and the cradle of modern democracy bent on confronting tyranny. Tarrantino’s message, though historically incorrect and filled with gratuitous violence that nowhere challenges the sadness of becoming what one opposes, was none-the-less true.
The fictitious little girl who owned the theater where Tarrantion has Hitler and his henchmen die, was not a little Jewish girl in France, but a New York lawyer named Louis Nizer, whose efforts prior to the bombing of Pearl Harbor had brought the truth about Nazi atrocities to light in the West. Nizer would go on to become the leading lawyer for the Motion Picture Association of America….the same organization headed in the post war years by Jack J Valenti who like Tarrantino shared an Italian heritage with Ryndal….good old “Orange Peel”.
Of course by forgetting that Hitler had died in an underground bunker like Saddam Hussein in Iraq, like the rats they had claimed the Jew were all along, Tarrantino missed the irony of reality, but believe it or not, sometime reality mimicks art, too.

Will Carr