I have seen the face of evil. I saw it last night on BS 2, the Japanese cable station that shows the occasional English-language movie. The scene was more chilling than a tag-team of Freddy Krueger, Jason, and the changing cast of black-caped, ghost-masked slashers of the Scream trilogy dropped in the middle of a ladies’ cutlery party.

It popped up in the middle of the 1972 Bob Fosse classic, Cabaret. That’s the flick that features the Liza Minnelli/Joel Grey gem “Money makes the world go ‘round,” proving the Liza’s acorn didn’t fall far from drag queen favorite Judy Garland’s tree.

The story’s set in early 1930s Weimar Germany on the eve of the Nazi power grab. The favored entertainment at the time was the burlesque cabarets featuring just enough skin and scathing political satire—all played for laughs before the world ran out of laughter—to put a Korean cockroach-sized bug up the Fuhrer’s ass. The Brownshirts, who had about as much sense of humor as a crash-test dummy, made the cabarets verboten after Hitler became dictator.

Midway through the film, Liza’s bisexual menage-et-trois beaus find themselves making a love connection over cocktails at a country gasthaus (that’s Deutsch for boon-shik chip). Sally Bowles’ (Liza) roomate-lover, played by Michael York, and the irresistibly seductive Baron Maximilian von Heune, played by Helmut Griem, have their mutual ogling interrupted by the mellifluous voice of an Aryan pubescent. The camera pans over for a head shot of a beautiful, blonde-haired teenager, his face simultaneously cheribic and chiseled, his blue eyes sparkling, and his mouth shinning the unnaturally brilliant red of a Maybeline lip-gloss commercial.
He’s warbling what passes for a Third Reich anthem:

The babe in his cradle is glossing his eyes
The blossom embraces the bee
But soon there's a whisper, “Arise, Arise”
Tomorrow belongs to me

O’ Fatherland Fatherland show us the sign
Your children have waited to see
The morning will come when the world is mine
Tomorrow belongs to me

 As the tension in the song builds to its obvious crescendo, the camera plays hopscotch, periodically transfixing on the haggard, nameless faces of the doe-eyed masses—aka ‘lumpen proletariat’ Germany—but returning at the start of each stanza in increasingly wider shots to the singing boy. Gradually we see the neckerchief, neatly pressed shirt, and lederhosen that were the hallmark of a Hitler Youth. The crowd lemming-like, rises, first one-by-one and then in small groups, to join in the anesthetizing hymn. They are transformed, redeemed, poisoned, and finally, condemned. They’re ready to be lead to the unspeakable inhumanity of world wars, death camps, and a thousand petty treacheries of conspiratorial complacency. All lead by Hell’s own angel from the Choir Invidious.

 As I watched the spectacle play out I physically shook. It was one of those death shudders like the victims in that Vincent Price 3-D screamfest, The Tingler. It reminded me how often evil comes dressed up as an angel, offering a soothing collective psychic balm to anyone willing to accept the evangelism of apathy. I thought about how important it is to never forget how easily the listless creep of hatred, ignorance, and indifference can give birth to an epic tragedy.

 The 15 of August—Korea’s Independence Day—marks the 55th anniversary of the end of World War II. Now no one is going to confuse the face of Kim Jong-il for a seraphim or cherubim, but his glad-handed, wisecracking demeanor at the recent summit with South Korean President Kim Dae-jung was about as expected as an August snow in Pusan. The ‘Dear Leader’ isn’t exactly the Prince of Darkness, but I doubt if there’s any need just yet for him to cut that shelf he’s always been meaning to build to hold all the humanitarian awards he’ll be receiving.

 I’m not one to rain on the parade passing by on the peninsula, but I can’t help thinking the man believed to have green-lighted the 1983 Rangoon bombing that killed several high-ranking ROK government officials and nearly snatched then-president, Chun Doo-hwan; the same man behind the 1987 bombing of KAL flight 858 that killed 115; a man also connected to numerous incidents of terrorism, espionage, and assassination, hasn’t suddenly ‘got religion’. I hope he’s more sheep than sheep’s clothing, but perhaps it’s a bit too early to let him baby-sit the children or take out your daughter.

The two Koreas’ joint commemoration of the anniversary of independence certainly is cause for celebration, the reuniting of 200 families being the capstone event of the day’s festivities. But when the fat ladies—or fresh-faced boys—start singing, I hope it doesn’t signal an end this time so much as a new beginning.

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