Facing Evil

Culled from the highlights of a three-day symposium entitled "Understanding Evil," held in 1987 at the Institute for the Humanities in Salado, Texas, this absorbing documentary tries to make sense out of evil. After a brief introduction by Bill Moyers, the program focuses on the comments-both on and off stage-of three principal speakers: Maya Angelou, Philip Hallie, and Raul Hilberg. Poet and author Maya Angelou, who was raped at the age of seven, recalls that shortly after her rape, the rapist was murdered. Thinking she had caused the man's death by speaking his name, Angelou was silent for five years. Silent, but not intellectually sedentary; she consumed a medium-sized library's worth of the world's great poetry and prose. In one sense, Angelou points out, good came out of evil. Philosopher and author Philip Hallie speaks of the personal paradox he lives with daily. He recalls his WWII experiences, shooting shells into Mannheim and watching the people burn. "I am a decent murderer - and would do it again if I were in similar circumstances. Yet I have disgust for it-it ruined my life," says Hallie. And Holocaust scholar Raul Hilberg examines what is, undoubtedly, the supreme expression of evil in this, and perhaps any, century: the Holocaust. In addition Dr. Samuel Proctor talks about his experience with the evil of racial prejudice, and dancer Chung-Liang Al Huang humorously and lovingly demonstrates the calming power of Tai Chi dance. This is a thought-provoking, yet accessible, philosophical foray into the question of evil. (See CAN'T AFFORD TO GROW OLD for availability.)