Tatort (TV Series) Leiden wie ein Tier (2005) User Reviews

Dignity and Soul

[semiotechlab-658-95444 · 10/10 · 7 September 2010]

The Tatort's, insofar different from their beginnings in the early 70ies from similar criminal series, are "engaged", i.e. they react on daily happenstances, they take part. In their episodes there is never a general crime structure in the center with people acting from stereotypes, but everyday's people in all their contradictions, addictions and difficulties. Therefore, it is not astonishing that the Tatort's are "children of their time". If you watch one of the 70ies or 80ies, you will necessarily meet the reality-betrayer problem that was rampant at that time in Germany, the rest of the hippies and first open-street junkies, the endless pro-Communist discussions in the East, etc. If you enjoy one of these early episodes, you are astonished how nice the criminals still are, how well the children behaved in school, how simple the methods of the police are and how easily the violators could be convicted. What happened in the meantime? - Nothing but the much higher tolerance threshold in today's Germany than in the one 40 years ago. The present Tatort is insofar remarkable as it shows a strong engagement against animal experimentations. The loving father uses his laboratory's animal for cannon fodder, allegedly for the salvation of mankind, closer to truth for his collection of publications and his citation index as a university professor. The questions that arise are if somebody who abuses animals has even a soul and if animals have or have not a soul. - By the way, a question whose positive answer is known outside of biology since a few thousands of years. - The young son asks one of the Kommissars: What is soul? The Kommissar's tentative answer is: the dignity. Correctly, the child infers that, then, animals, too, have a soul. Personally, watching this wonderful and severe movie, I think that dignity is what a human is capable to attest an other human or animal in order not to cut him his freedom. The soul, however, is the pain-center of a human or animal. Sometimes, the self-consciousness acts as an intermediary between soul and dignity, this is a healthy weapon that is mostly misunderstood as arrogance.