The Tears of Things

Sorry, Theo, But Bat Boy Is In The Way

Illustration by JdB. I've written about Theo van Gogh in "Seven Statements For Muslims," "Theo Rests His Case," "Theo van Gogh Calls On Yasser Arafat," and "Theo van Gogh Calls On Mohammed Bouyeri."

by Jerome du Bois

For the last two Novembers 2nds, novelist and screenwriter Roger L. Simon made sure to note in his blog that nobody in the film industry has made a movie about the life and death of filmmaker Theo van Gogh, murdered that day in 2004 on the streets of his native Amsterdam by a Moroccan Muslim practicing jihad. (They haven't yet mentioned him at the Oscar ceremonies, either.) One of Simon's commenters last year gently told him to put his money where his mouth is and write the film treatment himself. As far as I know, he hasn't yet, even though his ideal collaborator, who he knows --Ayaan Hirsi Ali-- lives in the US now. Nobody has ventured anything --not a film, nor a play, nor a television miniseries-- and that's what this post is about.

Steve Buscemi, John Turturro, and Stanley Tucci are each remaking in English one of Theo van Gogh's films, which appears to be a nice gesture on the face of it, but such a trilogy is a left-handed tribute to a man who died with a long knife in his chest, the knife blade keeping a several-page Muslim hit list/manifesto from blowing off Theo's body.

Come on --all three of these very talented guys are much more than dumb-cattle actors like Brad Pitt; each one has written and directed films and plays, and each is also committed to live theater. And there's a story staring them in the face. The story of our times. Has been for three years. Why no action? Could it be because of the dagger at the center of the story? the bloody dagger of Islam? Nobody wants to make a movie that criticizes Muslims, much less the devout, murderous Mohammed Bouyeri. Instead, these three guys take material that has already been made --cutting their labor drastically in all areas of production-- just to slide a politically-correct feather in their caps and manage to avoid any mention of the misanthropic religion which took Theo van Gogh down. Smooth move, guys, but admit it --you're cowards.

At the same time, John Landis (Animal House, Trading Places, The Blues Brothers) is slated to direct the film version of "Bat Boy: The Musical."

The graphic above shows what our culture has rewarded nationally in three of our major dramatic media since Theo van Gogh was murdered. Here in Phoenix, what have we got? On stage, for example. We've got "Bat Boy" on stage; we've got "Virginia Woolf" and "The Bad Seed" ("The most conspicuous directorial "innovation," however, is having 200-pound Neil Cohen play the 8-year-old murderer, Rhoda." Innovation!? And Mohammed Bouyeri is a truly bad seed. Yes, he's still alive, and reading the same books in prison which fired him up to kill Theo.) Let's see: we've got some trippy tribute to the Mamas and the Papas, for grok's sake.

And we also had, until May 13, at the most prestigious venue in town, the Herberger, a play called "The Pillowman," which is about murdering children, lots of them --sometimes onstage-- and the best part is, it's funny.

According to Kyle Lawson:

Children die horribly in The Pillowman, McDonagh's Olivier Award-winning play being staged by Actors Theatre. They die in the stories written by the hero, and they die on the streets of the unnamed town where the play takes place, when a killer uses the tales as a blueprint for things too terrible to contemplate.

Worse, they die onstage as the audience laughs, which is the most horrible thing of all.

That should be reason enough to approach The Pillowman with caution. Yet the play is only marginally about children. It is more about truth, and how one man's version of reality is another man's vision of chaos. It's about censorship and what happens when artists are told what stories they can tell. It's about how the pursuit of justice can result in actions that are as horrific as the crime.

And it's always funny.

Yeah, I could use a good laugh. Excuse me while I call Ticketmaster. Wait, I missed it. Oh, well, they're probably tooling up a movie already.

We live in a culture both weak-kneed and sadistic --a bully culture. It's okay to dwell on the victimization of children, and even laugh about it, but it's not okay to shine a light on the price some pay for truth and true art.

The story of the last two years of Theo van Gogh's life is the story of postwar Europe, both compressed and magnified. It begins with Pym Fortuyn and his provocative television interview of February 9, 2002, with its themes of protecting Dutch national identity, no more Muslim immigration, and his call for rigorous efforts toward Muslim assimilation. A year before he had said, "I'd like to live together with Muslims, but it takes two to tango."

The Muslims didn't want to dance. On May 6 Fortuyn was assassinated by a Dutch non-Muslim, a tight-assed, wound-up, obsessive-compulsive environmental perfectionist with no ties whatsoever to Islam, Muslims, or jihad. He just thought Fortuyn was a bad influence on the nation, and he had to, you know, correct it, like straightening the bathroom towels. But the imams and their followers sucking off the body of the state must have given thanks to Allah, all over the land, for this strange instrument doing their work.

I'm not sure about fate, but Pym Fortuyn's death brought forth two consequences for Theo van Gogh: (1) it inspired in him the desire to attack Islam, and set him on the road to "Submission," the short film which sparked his death; (2) and the public outrage and uproar in the murder's aftermath created a model for the radical Islamists of Holland. Here is Dan Darling, of Winds of Change, writing six days after van Gogh's murder:

the Islamist extremist leadership in the Netherlands (personified by an individual that we know from the Milan wiretaps as an al-Qaeda leader called "Ismail" who has been operating there for decades) already has a perfect model for whipping up ethno-religious discord: the assassination of the Dutch politician Pym Fortuyn.

Fortuyn was killed by a deranged animal rights' activist, but the political unrest that followed from his death gave Ismail and his immediate superiors in London a perfect model for stirring up political unrest in the Netherlands. In addition, the al-Qaeda/GSPC/Salafi Jihad/Lashkar-e-Taiba networks that run through the Netherlands are extensive enough to ensure that if it does come to riots, Ismail will have anywhere between one and several hundred stormtroopers to call upon.

These people created a list:

The Saif al-Din al-Muwaheed (SDM, "Sword of Justice of the Faithful") group that appears to have carried out the Van Gogh murder also planned to assassinate Somali-born VVD MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali, independent conservative MP Geert Wilders, Immigration and Integration Minister Rita Verdonk, Amsterdam Mayor Job Cohen, and Deputy Mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb. All of these are fairly prominent targets, especially in a country as small as the Netherlands, and had even half of the attempts succeeded they would have unquestionably stirred up ethno-religious strife throughout the country.

Which is exactly what the Dutch (and European) Islamists want: to bring down Dutch society and replace it with shari'a and the other depredations of Islam.

That's just some of the backstory. The rest of the story writes itself, with characters like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Pym Fortuyn, Geerts Wilders, Theo's son Lieuwe, and the fanatics Bouyeri and his cell, and Azzouz, a dark, middle-level puppet master, and at the center the inimitable, Rabelasian, tortured Theo van Gogh, who made everyone uncomfortable, including himself. To me he embodies Holland staring at its own cowardice in the face of the Holocaust, and even though he could be in no way culpable, he spent a large part of his soul trying to get past that national guilt. He did it through caustic humor and brutal honesty. Perhaps he thought Holland could pay the debt by being strong in the face of the new Islamic invasion. And, when he selected the target to attack Islam on film, his aim was true: the way they treat women. It is both the worst aspect of Islam and the most necessary for its continued survival. No wonder the bastards put him on a hit list.

Theo van Gogh wouldn't have wanted his story written in blood, but some murderous Muslims had other plans for him. They have other plans for us all, and the arc of Theo van Gogh's final passion is a cautionary tale for our times. Ask not which heart the knife seeks; it seeks the hearts of all who love the truth.

Right now Tom Stoppard is getting kudos for his three-part stage epic The Coast of Utopia, which he wrote in 2002 and which is about . . . the philosophical debates among Russian intellectuals between 1833 and 1866. (Finally! I says to myself. We've been waiting for that story!) How could that possibly be more relevant than the current war, being waged on all levels, between Western civilization and retrograde, recalcitrant Islam? No way, no way, no way.

But Broadway, Hollywood and TV land, with few exceptions, will continue to be wallows of vamping vanity, impoverished imaginations (sequels & revivals), and continuously skanky sleaze. Still, there's no statute of limitations on the story of a brave man murdered by a religious fanatic for standing up for truth, humanity, and the Western Way. Somebody --please!-- step up and tell it.

Posted by Jerome at June 5, 2007 09:00 PM | TrackBack