{"id":86445,"date":"2015-06-08T16:08:49","date_gmt":"2015-06-08T20:08:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=86445"},"modified":"2015-06-09T09:33:17","modified_gmt":"2015-06-09T13:33:17","slug":"role-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/06\/08\/role-play\/","title":{"rendered":"Role Play"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"holidayintheprotectorate\"<\/a>

A still from Holiday in the Protectorate<\/i>.<\/p><\/div>\n

Readers of the\u00a0New York Times\u00a0<\/em>may have noticed a recent story<\/a> about a new Czech reality show. In the tradition of Victorian House<\/em> and other total-immersion programs, this one sticks modern people in another time\u2014specifically a 1939 \u201cremote mountain farm\u201d in what was then the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Hilarity does not ensue. As the article explains,<\/p>\n

\n

There, they must not only survive the rigors of rustic life with dated appliances and outdoor plumbing, but navigate the moral and physical dangers of life under Nazi rule.<\/p>\n

German troops (played by actors) kick down their doors in the middle of the night. Local villagers betray them to the Gestapo. Food is scarce. Conditions are crude.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Everything about this show sounds distasteful, certainly. Besides the obvious objections, the basic flaw in these time-travel shows\u2014the assumption that you can switch off modern mores along with central AC\u2014seems doubly true here. Reading about it, I was reminded of when my father and I had gone to an exhibit featuring artifacts from the Titanic<\/em>. To enter, we\u2019d had to show a \u201cboarding pass,\u201d and they\u2019d made us pose for an obligatory picture together at the top of the stairs they\u2019d re-created, just like Rose and Jack in the movie. <\/p>\n

When you consider that\u00a0Holiday in the Protectorate<\/em> has a \u201cwinner\u201d\u2014those who \u201csurvive\u201d the eight weeks of voluntary labor and master farm chores get a sizable cash prize\u2014 it\u2019s not hard to see why the show has prompted an outcry from Czechs and non-Czechs alike.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t find it as shocking as I probably should. You see, in our house, growing up, we\u2019d sometimes play a game not unlike this. It was a variation on another dinner-table game, \u201cTitanic.\u201d Both involved picturing various people we knew in historical situations that tested their mettle and imagining how they would react; we always included a local politician whom my father considered a toadying sellout, casting him as a collaborator or imagining him dressing as a woman to nab a spot in the lifeboat. (The two had had a falling out over a matter of principle.) \u201cHistory is stories of people<\/em>,\u201d my dad liked to say.<\/p>\n

But these exercises were not merely about settling scores. We tried to play with rigorous honesty. My dad would often reference the part in The Sorrow and the Pity<\/em> when a former resistance fighter is asked if he was surprised by his neighbors\u2019 actions, good and bad. Non<\/em>, he says. Not in a single case. In other words, it was possible\u2014given the chance, in theory\u2014to predict how people would act in moral extremis.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know what I\u2019d do,\u201d my dad would say. \u201cI like to think I\u2019d do the right thing, but I might be a coward. Of course, now, I wouldn\u2019t pass the initial inspection.\u201d (My dad thought about The Sorrow and the Pity<\/em> a lot\u2014also Sergeant York<\/em>, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance<\/em>, High Noon<\/em>. \u201cMovies about character,\u201d he would say.)<\/p>\n

We also agreed that my mother would try to be heroic, screw it up with her terrible lying or unpredictable temper, and end up getting herself and other people killed in the process\u2014a scenario that also applied to her hiding the victims of Nazis in occupied Europe. Invariably, these conversations ended with her storming upstairs and slamming the door dramatically, before returning a few moments later. I don\u2019t suppose my brother and I, as children, were really expected to make those decisions.<\/p>\n

When my dad and I visited a concentration camp in Poland many years later, he was disappointed by the hundreds of tourists, and the fact that the barracks had not been left wholly intact and unadorned. They showed us an informational video. \u201cThey seem,\u201d said Papa loudly, \u201cto assume total ignorance about the Holocaust.\u201d<\/p>\n

I whispered, \u201cI think that some people really didn\u2019t know. That woman over there seemed really shocked that Hitler wanted to wipe out the Jews.\u201d She had been dabbing at her eyes with a tissue, looking pale with shock.<\/p>\n

Talking about Holiday in the Protectorate<\/em>, one\u00a0Mikulas Kroupa, a historian of the war, told the Times<\/em>, \u201cIt has nothing to do with history or telling the stories of that time … It is just a game.\u201d He meant this as a defense.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Sadie Stein is contributing editor of <\/em>The Paris Review, and the <\/em>Daily\u2019s correspondent.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Readers of the\u00a0New York Times\u00a0may have noticed a recent story about a new Czech reality show. In the tradition of Victorian House and other total-immersion programs, this one sticks modern people in another time\u2014specifically a 1939 \u201cremote mountain farm\u201d in what was then the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Hilarity does not ensue. As the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":178,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13115],"tags":[18388,14918,18387,7447,18389,7007,7592],"class_list":["post-86445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-daily-correspondent","tag-crisis","tag-family-life","tag-holiday-in-the-protectorate","tag-reality-tv","tag-the-gestapo","tag-titanic","tag-tv"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\u201cHoliday in the Protectorate\u201d and the Ethics of Role-Playing<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Sadie Stein on the controversial new TV show.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/06\/08\/role-play\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Role Play by Sadie Stein\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"June 8, 2015 \u2013 Readers of the\u00a0New York Times\u00a0may have noticed a recent story about a new Czech reality show. 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