If anyone needs persuading that the newspaper headlines and the good people of middle-any-country-across-the-world, not, of course, to mention Hollywood, all love an underdog, then, proof positive is provided by the likes of Cool Runnings, with its Jamaican bob-sled team, Judy Garland & Mickey Rooney putting on shows in barns, and the downtrodden slave workers in Schindler’s List, whose slave-master eventually became the underdog of that story.
And so it is with Ukraine. And so it is with Holocaust Jews. And so it is with the Children of Gaza.
Ukraine’s less interesting now, of course. In Cool Runnings, the underdog had to be victorious within an hour and a half. With Garland and Rooney, six reels again. Schindler’s List absorbed our attention for a full 195 minutes, and three hours’ discussion in the pub afterwards.
I have a feeling, as do many Ukrainians, that, if they don’t win their war soon, people will switch off before the end of the show. With the Israeli state, the question is whether an underdog can be seen to be shooting a gun, even at its own people. And whether that is a tragedy for the own people, or for the shooters, or for the Israeli state.Â
No one rushed to see Garland & Rooney when Cool Runnings was on offer; and Schindler’s List surely outdid even the Jamaicans. But people still talk about David & Goliath. Thousands of years after the event.
Which of Ukraine, the Children of Gaza and Schindler’s List will people talk about a thousand years from now? All three? Or none?