At the end of Alfred Hitchcock’s haunting “Vertigo” (1958) — perhaps his and cinema’s best — James Stewart’s detective figures out that the woman he’s fallen for (Kim Novak) is nothing but an imposter hired by a murderous husband to help make his wife’s death look like a suicide. And what clues him in? His beloved puts on a necklace that belonged to one of the dead woman’s ancestors.
“You shouldn’t keep souvenirs of a killing,” he tells her as he confronts her in the film’s harrowing final scene. “You shouldn’t have been that sentimental.”
“You shouldn’t keep souvenirs of a killing”:: I was reminded of that line as President Donald J. Trump prevented the demotion of Naval Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher, who had been convicted of posing with the corpse of an Islamic State militant captive, though not of killing him. Trump has also pardoned three other men who either admitted to or were convicted of killing detainees and firing on unarmed civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan — all this against the advice of military leadership. The brouhaha has led to the firing of Secretary of the Navy Richard V. Spencer.
Trump’s actions disrupt the chain of command. Why hire people if you’re going to undermine the way they do their jobs? Plus, if your motive is to stick up for the warriors, as Trump says, you’ve actually done them no favors. Their superiors will only resent your interference — and, by extension, them — while their comrades will only think justice has not been served. They may even be tempted to mete out justice themselves. Of course, Trump cares not a whit about this. What this is really about is shoring up his base, which includes people who think being strong means being tough and cruel.
But what’s really interesting here is the notion of how you conduct yourself in the untenable situation that is war. We’ve heard in many posts from people who say that unless you’ve been to war, you cannot know what it’s like. You’re going on adrenaline. You’re trying to stay alive and fighting for the comrades around you. Fair enough.
Soldiers have been raping and pillaging — taking souvenirs of killings — since warfare began, those sympathetic to these American servicemen say. To the victor goes the spoils. And indeed, cultures have not merely taken the possessions and the bodies of their captives; they have internalized them, so that the Aztecs would rip out the still beating hearts of captive warriors, who were sacrificed to the gods, and then eviscerate the bodies, donning their skins to propitiate the gods and ensure the earth’s fertility.
In so doing, the Aztecs would become the vanquished. They would become the dead — an idea hauntingly rendered in “A Shadow Born of Earth: New Photography in Mexico,” a 1993 touring exhibit that I saw at Purchase College’s Neuberger Museum of Art two years later. I never forgot it, particularly the work of Gerardo Suter, who would use masks and lines under the left breast — where the heart is — to capture the fusion of the vanquished and the vanquisher.
It’s a fascinating idea — to have so much power over someone that you take them on as a mantle. You get inside their skin. But in reality, it’s the opposite: They’re getting inside of yours. The French word “souvenir” means to remember. By dishonoring a captive and annihilating him, you’re not displaying your power. You’re empowering his memory.
Americans have fought wars in every generation for our freedom and the freedom of others against tyrannical enemies. Mistreatment of the conquered is just another form of tyranny. And the expression, “Everybody does it,” is just another excuse.
What’s the point of defeating an enemy only to become him?