Today is Veterans’ Day, and like we all do, I pause to think of those I know who have served our country in the armed forces. But Veterans’ Day is also significant to me because November 11 was my grandfather’s birthday. Papa would have been 89 today.

Both my grandfathers were World War II vets. Grandpa Benton fought in Germany and received a Purple Heart when he was wounded rescuing his comrades from a tank that hit a land mine. Papa was in the Pacific, a cook in the Army. Written like that, next to Grandpa Benton’s brave act in combat, Papa’s role in the war seems less than heroic.

Far from it.

While stationed in the Philippines, Papa met a little street kid–an orphan. Papa had a baby girl back home in Texas, born while he was overseas–a sacrifice I’m only beginning to understand as a new parent. But even though Papa missed out on the hands-on experiences of becoming a father, he was a natural dad. He looked out for the boy, feeding him leftovers from the Army mess. More than that, he befriended the boy, loved him–so much that he wanted to take him home with him. And not in that wishful thinking way so many people, myself included, have when they meet a child in poverty or without parents; Papa actually began the process of legally adopting him.

It didn’t work out. But even though it didn’t, Papa was a hero for trying to make a difference in that little Filipino boy’s life. In fact, he didn’t just try; for the time he was in Manila, he did make a difference. And continues to make a difference through this story as it’s passed down from his children to his grandchildren to his great-grandchildren.

And that’s what Veteran’s Day is all about.

So thank you, Papa–and happy birthday.

Last August I read John Boyne’s novel, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, and while I appreciated the unique perspective through which the book depicted the Holocaust (that of an eight year-old boy who doesn’t understand what’s being done to the Jews), I was underwhelmed.

However, I just watched the movie, and for the first time in my life I think I can actually say I prefer a film to the original source.

(Wait.  Scratch that.  I also like the 1995 adaptation of Sense and Sensibility better than the book, but I’ll let Jane Austen off the hook because it was her first novel and I’m sure if she’d had a little more experience, her version would have been just as good as Emma Thompson’s.)

Anyway…while the film version of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas remains doggedly faithful to the novel, it omitted what I now realize to be my key irritation with the book, which is the author’s device of depicting Bruno’s naïveté through his consistent mispronunciation of key words (fury for Führer and outwith for Auschwitz).  Also, the movie never named the concentration camp, which I thought lent a great deal more plausibilty to the premise of A) a free boy being able to observe the workings of a concentration camp from beyond the fence without being noticed by guards (not that other camps weren’t as horrific as Auschwitz, but its being the most notorious one, made it, in my opinion, perhaps not the best choice for the novel’s setting) and B) a young Jewish boy not having been immediately gassed upon entering the camp along with his grandparents.

So while the premise may still require an overall suspension of disbelief, the movie erases the flaws of the book so that this glimpse into the way we perceive good people and evil people (or, more accurately, people who are both good and evil — or have the capacity for both good and evil, which is all of us) stands out in a deeply profound way.  It’s a story that lingers with you after you’ve turned the final page (or turned off the DVD player), particularly after viewing it and having such clear visuals.

For me, even more than the utterly disturbing last scene, is the prominence of Nazi propaganda throughout the film.  Which was one other aspect of the book that bugged me; a boy Bruno’s age surely would have been indoctrinated against Jews in school — especially a boy who’s father ranks high enough to be made kommandant of a major concentration camp.  But this is not so in the book for the sake of Bruno’s absolute ignorance when he meets a young concentration camp inmate.  While the movie does stay true to this on Bruno’s part, it makes excellent use of his older sister, Gretel, who, after developing a crush on a young soldier, becomes enamored with The Hitler Youth and hangs on to the children’s Nazi tutor’s every word.  When Gretel is first introduced to us in the film, her arms are full of dolls; later, the dolls are relegated to the cellar while she plasters her bedroom walls with posters of Hitler and the League of German Girls.  The transformation is disturbing, to say the least; I’m not sure which is more so:  the image of a 12-year-old girl being so given over to a dangerous political movement, or of her mother being stunned speechless to see it.

Here I must comment that I particularly liked the way the film fleshes out Bruno’s mother.  The book focuses more on his father, and while the father remains at the heart of the film, I felt that, again, the plausibility of the premise was strengthened by the film’s omniscient point of view, which allowed us to see her dawning realization of just how final “The Final Solution” was.

Which brings me back to the other propaganda image that lingers with me almost an hour after I finished the movie.  At a crucial juncture in the story, Bruno stumbles upon his father, grandfather, and other Nazi officials viewing a propaganda film that depicts Jewish prisoners happily enjoying the “comforts” of the “work camp” after their day’s labor is complete:  they play organized sports, attend concerts, socialize at a cafe.  Bruno sees these images and believes his friend in the concentration camp is okay — that he is, in fact, happier than Bruno, who is not allowed to play in his own back garden and has no friends.  Despite having seen some Nazi propaganda, I’d never seen this, and was astonished and appalled that they could even have dressed up the concentration camps.  I almost didn’t believe it, thought it might have been an invention of the film-makers, so I googled.  Sure enough, a propaganda film was made at Theresienstadt in the now Czech Republic.

I really must get around to reading Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl and watching Schindler’s List, which I keep putting off because I’m never in the mood.  When is one in the mood for the Holocaust?  One must look at it anyway.

Monday’s post about Walt Disney Productions not hiring female animators in the 1930s may not have interested y’all much, but it has had me thinking — and talking.  (Perhaps because for years as a girl I harbored aspirations of being a Disney animator — until I realized I hadn’t had adequate training and I was better at writing, anyway.)

One friend I discussed the rejection letter with pointed out that it was dated 1938, and that WWII would soon change perceptions about women in the workplace.  I wondered if it was possible if, just as factories were short on employees when the men went off to war, Disney lost a number of animators to the military.  After all, Disney kept rolling out the annual theatrical animated features kept during the war years:

August 13, 1942 – Bambi

August 24, 1942 – Saludos Amigos

December 21, 1944 – The Three Caballeros

April 20, 1946 – Make Mine Music

September 27, 1947 – Fun and Fancy Free

May 27, 1948 – Melody Time

October 5, 1949 – The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad

(I do realize that the war was over in 1945; I included the latter dates from the 40s because production on these films certainly would have begun during the war, as hand-drawn animated films typically take three years to complete.)

So, did Disney relax its strict women-in-paint-by-numbers-positions-only rule during the war to work on some of these productions?

Another friend did the necessary googling and came up with this article:  The Mystery of the Female Disney Animator.  It’s a fascinating look into the history of women in the Disney Animation Studios, but here’s the pertinent bit:

Retta Davidson had a girlhood ambition. She loved art and wanted to be an art teacher. However, in July 1939 when she was only 17 years old and had just graduated from high school, she was hired by the Disney Studios as a painter for the feature film Pinocchio. She worked at the old Hyperion Studio location. When the Disney Studio moved to its current location in Burbank, Retta did special effects painting of fire, water and bubbles on animated features like Bambi and Fantasia. World War II provided Retta a unique opportunity and until now, a previously unknown anecdote in the story of Disney animation. With so many men being called into service, there was a shortage of animators. In 1941, women who worked in the Ink and Paint Department were invited to submit drawings of Donald Duck in order to be considered for jobs in the Animation Department. Retta and nine other women…were chosen to be trained as in-betweeners and background artists. According to my sources, only Retta and two other women of that special 10 stayed in the animation business.

The answer to my question is yes:  WWII did open up the field of animation to women.  However, I find it even more intriguing to learn that it didn’t last.  Or rather, I don’t; the Baby Boom certainly many drew working women back home to become the housewives of the 50s and 60s.  But according to a number of forums I’ve perused, even after the women’s liberation movement, even right now — today — the animation field is still dominated by men.

I’m not crying sexism.  But if it’s not sexism, then what is it about the field of animation that attracts more men than women?  It’s a strange concept to me, coming from two artistic backgrounds (literature and music) which always seemed heavy on women.

Mr. Burt theorizes that it might be an issue of spatial relations (apparently men are supposed to have better ones than women).  I don’t know about most, or even a number of women, but I know this woman got a special note on her TAAS test back in the day:  “Demonstrates poor spatial relations.”  (So poor, in fact, that I read the word as “spat-e-ul” relations and thought it had something to do with quarreling.)  Maybe it’s a fact, though, and I’m not capable of improving my drawing much even with training.  Maybe, if I could bend space and time and travel back to the 1930s, I would only be suited to paint-by-numbers at the Disney Animation Studios.  (Although I’ve also never been very good at following directions; but that’s a character flaw.)

Definitely I’m fascinated lately by issues of gender.  Which is something I can explore in those novels I’m writing.