Downtown

Like the coronavirus in the early 2020s, HIV/AIDS in the mid-1980s and for at least a decade after then paid little or no attention to national borders or even to nationalities. Even though coronavirus freely walked through the boundaries of our various group-identities with the implication being that they are actually artificial demarcated constructions, AIDS showed us that sub-societal cultural differences do exist. In fact, within a given sub-culture and thus group-identity, one set of values may be ethically and psychologically better than another set, so broad-strokes can be understood as over-simplifications. Even within the same group culture within a given society, drastic differences can exist to the extent that some people embrace and others reject cultural norms that are salient for the group. This is salient in the European film, Downtown (2026), which is about three gay men both when they are young adults in 1986 and old men in 2021. Even though the screenwriter and two producers emphasized in their respective remarks at a film festival in 2026 that that the filmmaking and the narrative of the film are both heavily Dutch, the lessons conveyed by the film transcend nationality and geography and thus betray the over-the-top states’ rights ideology in the E.U. that would claim that the E.U. state of the Netherlands is unique among the several states.

The film is saturated with death and yet the three men have survived. Lennart, immune-compromised from having had AIDS (not just HIV), refers to “Covid” as a “toy virus” relative to AIDS even though his father has died of “Covid” just two weeks before the dinner at Ronnie’s house in 2021. Lennart has paid a high price medically for having carelessly contracted AIDS in 1987 either from his own sexual forays or that of Bas, whom the film shows as living with Lennart for a time back then. In contrast, Ronnie, Lennart’s platonic friend from the mid-1980s on, is careful then and does not test positive for the virus in the film. Even though Lennart chastises Ronnie in 1987 for being too careful by “sitting on the sidelines” sexually and even for putting so much effort into helping men who are dying from the virus, it is Lennart rather than Ronnie who deserves the criticism, and not just sexually. The film demonstrates that gay men who are like Ronnie should confront gays who are like Lennart other on what boils down to fear and avoidance of emotional intimacy and the role of sex in distancing people where it counts. In fact, the difference between the characters of those two men renders efforts to generalize the gay “community” with a single stroke, as the Roman Catholic Church has done, as highly inaccurate and unhelpful, for the Lennarts should be “fair game” for ethical and even psychological critique while the Ronnies should be lauded.

Throughout his adult life, Lennart is uncomfortable with emotional intimacy being expressed physically, so he is drawn, at least as a young adult, to impersonal sex with guys whose names he does not even know, or care to know. This discomfort is dramatized in the early scene in which Ronnie tries repeatedly to put his arm around Lennart while the two are sleeping in the same bed (non-sexually). Besides being so self-centered that he does not notice that Ronnie is in love with him, Lennart is astonishingly rude when Ronnie invites him to go to a beach and then to a restaurant. In both cases, Lennart leaves with other men for impersonal sex; Ronnie can be seen to be visually stunned at the sheer rudeness of his new “friend.” Without doubt, Lennart is a narcissist who has emotional problems related to emotional intimacy likely stemming from his relationship with his emotionally-distant and harsh father (whose funeral attracts only six people).

Lennart’s distancing himself from any sort of emotional intimacy is once again on display in Lennart’s “relationship” with Bas, who moves in with Lennart. Bas confides to Ronnie that Lennart wants it “both ways” in being able to go out separately to have impersonal sex with other men and yet still wanting “a cozy domestic life.” The film’s message is that the two desires are incompatible, especially when “open” relationships include “poly,” which is when the outside sex includes romantic feelings. Frank Houtappels, the film’s screenwriter, arguably should have gone further by including in the dialogue between Bas and Ronnie, something to the effect that Lennart has a psychological problem that is impairing his ability to form and have genuine romantic relationships, and that he is acting like a child in wanting to have it both ways—anonymous sex separately while keeping Bas to himself. At one point, Lennart says to a worried Ronnie, “Why would Bas even look at other men? He just needs to look at me.” The asymmetry is not lost on Bas, which I suspect is why he moves out without leaving his new address as soon as he is diagnosed HIV positive. Such convenient (to Lennart) asymmetry belies trust, which in turn is requisite to an emotionally intimate relationship. Confronted with these points, had they been in the script, Lennart could have been made, as per the script, to have a temper tantrum befitting his abject immaturity and his related refusal to confront himself and make difficult choices. The stunted condition of his character would really have been made transparent.

Once at the beach, Bas quietly scurries away from lying with Lennart on the sand to have anonymous sex with a man, which is likely how Bas (and perhaps then Lennart, though he is being careful sexually) contracts HIV. Lennart has refused Bas’s preference that the two men be monogamous. Such a request is very reasonable, not only so the “couple” could build up enough exclusive intimacy to have a genuine romantic relationship, but also because so many other men around them are dropping like flies from having contacted HIV and then AIDS. Incredibly, Lennart even dismisses Ronnie’s question: “Do you trust Bas to be careful?” Ronnie, more so than Lennart, is looking out for Lennart’s best interest in terms of staying alive. Something is clearly wrong with Lennart, and his sexual promiscuity and avoidance of commitment evince something more serious than just a “lifestyle.”

In 2021, when Ronnie has both Lennart and Bas over for dinner, dramatic tension is palpable because Lennart and Bas have not been in contact since Bas left Lennart without even saying good-bye in 1987. At the dinner, Bas explains that he had been very angry at Lennart, and rightly so, for Lennart had not been fair at all with Bas sexually. Even at the dinner, while Lennart is upstairs talking with Ronnie, Bas leaves unannounced, which means that Bas is not interested in any contact with his former “boyfriend.” It is then that Lennart realizes not only that he has been needlessly lonely throughout his life—he tells Ronnie and Bas that they have been the only people who have really known him—but also that Ronnie has been and still is in love with Lennart. Finally, and therein lies the tragedy of it all, Lennart is able to embrace Ronnie both emotionally and physically and Lennart invites Ronnie to embrace him physically. Had enough gay men confronted Lennart in the 1980’s on his severe problem with emotional intimacy stemming from an emotionally-distant and very critical father, and on how Lennart was using anonymous sex to distance the men closest to him, perhaps he would not have been able to deny his psychological condition by assuming that he was behaving in line with a popular non-monogamous “lifestyle” that is admittedly so popular in the gay “community,” and had even become normative, and thus imposed, in the Castro gay district in San Francisco by 2026.

The film can thus serve an important role in its message that any “lifestyle” which uses promiscuity to foil emotional intimacy can legitimately be criticized rather than taken as valid in an “anything goes” relativism in which the feelings of other people don’t matter. The pathetic Don’t Judge excuse can finally be exculpated and replaced with valid criticism. Just because a lot of gay men use anonymous (and even “poly” so-called loves) sex to obviate emotional intimacy does not mean that validity follows. It may be that so many gay men are clinically compromised and thus weak in refusing to end their slavish addiction to momentary pleasure because “coming out” (i.e., admitting being gay to other people, especially close friends and family, especially to parents) has been emotionally traumatizing. Addressing the resultant scars goes completely under the radar under the subterfuge of the norm of gay promiscuity as “cool.”

Because not even the very real danger of AIDS motivated such men as Lennart in the 1980s to curtail anonymous, unprotected sex especially if there is a devoted man at home, the underlying emotional fragility and fear of the weak who are so prone to betray close romantic relations and even put life itself at risk can be assessed as severe.  Ronnie and even Bas, whose “infidelity” is understandable given Lennart’s passive aggression using sex with other men, can be viewed as healthy standards from which the sheer distance to Lennart’s can be perceived. Implied in the film is the value in making such distance transparent within the gay “community,” such that gay men like Ronnie and Bas can finally gain enough momentum to hold up a mirror by which the Lennarts in the gay world may finally see themselves for what they represent and instantiate. Even so, the sweet honey of momentary pleasure could forestall sufficient motivation to change even if the result of continued denial is a life of loneliness, such as Lennart has suffered until he and Ronnie “find” each other at the dinner in 2021 in the midst of another pandemic. Watching Lennart when he is a young man, it would be difficult to visualize him as a shrunken shell in some hospital bed, or, as is the case, as a bitter, lonely old man whose health has been ravaged by AIDS. That he somhehow defies the death sentence in the late 1980s may seem unjust, given how passive aggressive he is to both Ronnie and Bas as a young adult, until the depth of emotional pain is revealed on Lennart’s face at Ronnie’s house in 2021, when the former beauty of his youth can no longer mask his inner condition.

In discussing the film live to an audience in 2026, Houtappels, the screenwriter, said that at least the “covid” virus did not discriminate, whereas AIDS spread largely (though not completely) between gay men. The film can be interpreted as making the point that sordid values and bad behavioral choices (i.e., bad character) and even mental illness played a role in why the virus spread so, though admittedly the extent to which sexual promiscuity has been valued in the gay “community” even as normative (rather than sordid) can also be blamed. In The Normal Heart (2014), for example, Julia Roberts as Dr. Emma Brookner strongly advises gay activists to wear condoms during anal sex because how the virus is transmitted is not yet known. “You don’t know what you are asking of us!” one of the gay men in the room objects as if she is asking them to live like monks. Crucially, she stares the men down and is unrelenting: You need to wear condoms whether you like it or not. She is stunned that grown men would prioritize moments of momentary pleasure so highly that even wearing condoms to stay alive asking to much. In Downtown, Ronnie asks Lennart if he trusts Bas to be careful sexually. It is a pity that physician Brookner is not in the film to sit Lennart down for a reality-adjustment. I certainly am judging you for being so stupidly careless and even risking Bas’s life.

Lest it be concluded that every young gay man is like Lennart, it is important to note that Ronnie and Bas are also major gay characters in the film. Ronnie is out promoting societal awareness of the pandemic afflicting mostly gay men, and he is even caring for dying men in hospital beds. Religious organizations such as the Roman Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Convention gloss homosexuality as if every gay men were a Lennart, and thus miss the saintliness of gays like Ronnie even while hypocritically preaching on separating the wheat from the chaff! To castigate what Lennart represents from the pulpit is hardly anti-gay, and lauding the Ronnies and the Bas’s for compassion for the sick and courage for a committed romantic relationship, respectively, would prove that exposing the Lennarts is hardly “homophobic” (which is a convenient misnomer). The film provides a clear template from which preachers can separate the wheat from the chaff because Lennart and Ronnie are so very antithetical, even in their own relationship. 

The Aryan Couple

The matter of group-identity is salient in the film, The Aryan Couple (2004), which actually centers around two couples: Joseph and Rachel Krauzenberg, and Hans and Ingrid Vassman. The Krauzenbergs contract with Himmler, the man whom in Nazi Germany was tasked with riding the Reich of its Jewish population, to exchange the Krauzenbergs’ asset-rich and sprawling conglomerate for safe passage of the entire Krauzenberg family out of Germany to Palestine instead of being sent to a concentration camp. Joseph and Rachel are Germans, and yet, quite artificially, they refer to Germans in the third person, and to themselves as Jews. It is precisely this error that I submit may have contributed historically to the ostracism of the Jews in Germany even before Hitler’s rise to power, hence contributing to setting the stage for a final, horrific solution. Film can thus be used to widen people’s thinking on historical and political events, and thus play a deeper role than merely to entertain.

Joseph Krauzenberg is a good man; he is good to his employees and, moreover, is very empathetic as seen in his facial expressions, especially his eyes, which Martin Landau uses expertly to do a significant amount of his acting in the role of the rich industrialist whose assets Himmler is so motivated to get. “Even Hitler cannot override my orders,” he brags at one point regarding his guarantee of safe passage. Himmler’s concern is rather than Eichmann might ignore that order and send the entire Krauzenberg family, which includes extended relatives, to Auschwitz.

In spite of the appearance of orders being valued by Nazi officials, that many were essentially thugs accounts for the fact that a significant abuse of discretion even in violation of orders was not uncommon. In fact, Eichmann was convicted in a court in Israel in 1961 because he had violated an order by Himmler in sending many Jews in Hungary on a march to a camp in Poland; Eichmann’s defense that he was just following orders thus blew up in his face.

So, in the film, Himmler even orders Eichmann to coffee after the dinner at the Krauzenbergs’ art-filled mansion so to assure the couple that Eichmann would indeed be following Himmler’s order of safe passage. Cleverly, Joseph Krauzenberg negotiated with Himmler a clause that gold would be transferred to Himmler only once the Krauzenberg family has set foot on Swiss soil; otherwise, it would be very naïve to think that the Nazis would allow the Krauzenbergs to fly to Switzerland once Joseph and Rachel have signed the contract. Even the other couple in the film, Hans and Ingrid Vassman, the two remaining household servants of the Krauzenbergs, fear remaining in Germany after the dinner in which Himmler is a guest. The Vassmans are actually Jews even though Rachel believes them to be Aryans. It is precisely the dialogue between that couple and Rachel that can reveal so much about the salience of group-identities in Europe.

Even though Rachel tells Hans and Ingrid that she feels that they have shown love to the elder couple, Rachel maintains a mental wall between herself and the two Aryans until Ingrid tells Rachel and Joseph that she and Hans are actually Jewish and want to go to Palestine with the Krauzenberg family. At once, Rachel literally embraces Ingrid. That both couples are German is ignored especially by the Krauzenbergs, who incessantly refer to Germans as if they were another tribe. Rachel refers to the Vassmans both as Aryans and as Germans, which is strange because Joseph and Rachel are also German. In this mix, nationality, cultural identity, and even religion are conflated as if, for example, a cultural identity excludes a nationality. Making such vagrant category mistakes can be accounted for by ideology, and even as a manifestation of passive aggression. Rachel even makes light of one of her own category mistakes by referring to Hans as her “little Nazi,” as if “German” and “Nazi” were synonymous and, moreover, both mutually exclusive with “Jewish.” It would have been strange to find a Jewish Nazi, but I contend that Jews born and raised in Germany were Germans.

When I was a student at Yale, a woman I dated said once that she was a Jew who happened to be an American. She was born and raised in Pittsburgh, so she did not just happen to be an American. Her subordination of her nationality struck me as artificial. I would never say I’m a Midwesterner who happens to be an American even though I identify culturally as a Midwesterner. Were I to go around referring to Americans in the third persons, my compatriots would rightly take offence. I’m not one of you, I would be saying, in effect, even though I am. My passive aggression—a virtual slap in the face—would be palpable. Similarly, Germans who happened to be Jews in the first half of the twentieth century but referred to Germans in a way that excluded themselves even while they remained in Germany would not exactly be making friends and influencing people on the street. In fact, other Germans would rightly take offence. In short, the arbitrary decision to manifest passive aggression can trigger anger and even ostracism in people who resent the arbitrary self-exclusion from being a compatriot.

In the film, Rachel’s mentality belies her statement to Hans and Ingrid, “You’re Germans and I’m a Jew, but above all we’re all human.” Earlier, Rachel distinguished Aryans from Jews; unlike the German-Jewish mutually exclusive distinction, Aryan and Jew are indeed mutually exclusive terms because they are on the same dimension, or category, whereas German and Jew pertain to different categories and are thus not mutually exclusive. Were a Hispanic person, or a Catholic person, born, raised and still living in Chicago, Illinois to refer to Americans in the third person would sound strange to an American; we would even wonder if such a person were not of sound mind, and yet in the film, Rachel’s category mistakes are accepted by the other characters as if normal rather than as manifestations of passive aggression. The lesson is perhaps that when we act out in passive aggression, we should not be completely surprised when other people cease at the very least to be polite to us. From the standpoint of us all being human beings, the group-identities that we foist on each other as virtual walls of separation are artificial at best. Accordingly, such identities are best (and most accurately) viewed in relative terms rather than being absolutes. The change in Rachel’s feelings and behavior toward the Vassman couple once she is informed that they are Jewish rather than Aryan is so palpable that Rachel’s earlier claim, “we are all human,” rings hollow. 

The German philosopher, Schopenhauer, claimed that we are all of the One, and thus we should be compassionate to everyone rather than, as per Cicero’s ethic, show concentric concern first for friends and family, and then, to a lessor degree, to people further out. That Rachel felt love from the Vassmans should be enough for her and Joseph to help the Vassmans to join the family in Switzerland; being of the same group-identity should not matter, and that it does rings of sheer artifice. So much hatred has spewed through history as a result of people treating group-identity as an absolute. The genocides in Nazi Germany and, nearly a century later, in Gaza, speak to how horrible human beings can be because “group-identity” qua absolute can so easily lead to the perception that people outside one’s own group is subhuman and thus can be tortured and killed in even the most grievous ways.

Advise and Consent

A film that centers on the U.S. Senate’s role in confirming executive nominations made by the president, Advise and Consent (1962) is arguably about whether moral limits pertain to power.  Put another way, should we expect no-hold barred efforts to manipulate others in the political arena? Personal lives and personal pasts being fair game?  Moreover, is the aim power for its own sake, or the manipulation of others for the sake of a public policy and ultimately the good of the country?

The narrative begins with president’s nomination of Robert Leffingwell reaching the U.S. Senate for confirmation. The Majority Leader supports the nominee out of support for the dying president. The Leader appoints Sen. Brig Anderson to chair the subcommittee that is to hold the hearing. Brig is more concerned that the process be fair and competent than that Leffingwell be confirmed. Sen. Fred Van Ackerman strongly supports Leffingwell because the nominee is for peace in an otherwise harshly anti-communist climate brimming with a penchant for war. Sen. Seabright Cooley, on the other hand, strongly opposes the nominee both  out of a personal vendetta and a concern that he would give away too much for peace.

As the plot thickens, Sen. Anderson learns that Leffingwell lied under oath during the hearing. The senator pressures the president to withdrawal the nominee. The Majority Leader and of course Sen. Cooley support Brig’s decision to delay the subcommittee’s vote until it can be determined why the nominee lied. Sen. Van Ackerman is incensed, however, sensing that Sen. Anderson has turned against the nominee. Van Ackerman realizes he is excessively anxious in the cause of peace, but he goes ahead anyway with what he has uncovered of Brig’s long-past (likely drunken) gay encounter with a friend while in the army. Scared that the blackmailer will expose the skeleton, Anderson slits his throat in his office bathroom. It does not take long for the other senators to discover that Van Ackerman was behind the blackmail and that the president had no knowledge of it. Sen. Cooley, however, did know of it and let it go on in hopes that he could stop it in exchange for Sen. Anderson’s agreeing to oppose the nominee. The Majority Leader tells Cooley that he has gone too far, and this prompts the veteran senator to acknowledge on the Senate floor that part of his motive was his grudge against Leffingwell for having made him look bad four years earlier. Cooley also unbinds senators pledged to vote against the nominee. The Majority Leader in turn unbinds his senators, given the blackmail and suicide, and lets Van Ackerman know that he will not be expelled only because doing so would involve tainting Brig Anderson’s legacy. In other words, Van Ackerman is relegated to a sort of domestic exile in the Senate.

From an ethical perspective, the most transparent line is between political deals to get votes and going into a senator’s personal life to force a senator to vote a certain way. The film illustrates that even such a clear ethical line is like a semi-permeable membrane in the political arena. The fact that the sordid variety of political manipulation can be easily done anonymously makes enforcement difficult at best. Even so, at least the punishment for crossing the line can be strengthened such that it may act as more of a deterrent.

A more difficult ethical assessment lies in how the senators should vote on the Senate floor. The Majority Leader, for instance, favors confirmation even as he strongly opposes Sen. Van Ackerman’s use of blackmail to force a vote as soon as possible so the nominee could be confirmed before the news of his past attendance at a communist group on a college campus could be made public. Should the Majority stick by his friend, the sick president, and vote yes, or is not giving Van Ackerman what he wants (i.e., confirmation of Leffingwell) more important? Sen. Lafe Smith, who had been friends with Brig, votes no. The Majority Leader decides that giving the sick president the secretary of state that he wants is more important; after all, the Leader did unbind the senators pledged to vote yes. Sen. Cooley votes no, legitimately out of a philosophical difference he has with Leffingwell on the place of the U.S. in negotiating with the U.S.S.R.

 If the ethical denoument makes sense but you still feel that the blackmailer got off easy, I’m with you. Generally speaking, the view that aspiring politicians should expect the “hard knocks” of politics is ubiquitous. “You have to expect that your opponents will go after you,” a veteran politician might say to a first-time campaigner. I question this advice, as it leads to society and its government going light on efforts to “destroy” political opponents by using their personal lives (and respective pasts) against them.  It is hard, therefore, to keep “attacks” to the level of policy and office-conduct. Even the common use of words like destroy and attack point to an excessiveness in how political behavior is construed.

The question may therefore be how to raise standards when doing so involves a reconceptualization of politics. That is to say, what we as a people typically take for granted as politics would have to be changed in order that norms and enforcement mechanisms change as well. The strengthened focus on policy alone would be a boon to the viability of any republic. In debates, for example, efforts at a sustained back-and-forth on a given policy often fall to personal attacks with impunity from the moderators. A reconceptualization of politics could make it more costly to a candidate to interlard such attacks rather than concentrate on a sustained line of thought on a given policy domain.

In short, the assumption that politics naturally sinks to its most base level in the political arena can be linked back to how politics itself is understood. After all, it is easy to conclude that politics rules in its own arena and can thus legitimately run its own course, within the law of course. However, politics is that which makes law. Is politics therefore subject ultimately only to itself? If so, then we should expect that anything goes in its own arena. Yet if a moral limit rightfully exists in the human psyche on how far political manipulation should reach, then simply throwing our hands up in a sort of feckless impotence tacitly in favor of the status quo is no answer, for a line must surely be drawn somewhere. If just drawing it is too much for a self-governing people, its republics surely cannot be perpetual.