Kingsman: The Secret Service

Advertisements
Advertisements

8 min read

FacebookTwitterLinkedInPrintFriendlyShare

Mathew Vaughn’s new film has at its core the message that “Manners maketh man”. Or, to put it into Jewish terms, “Manners maketh mensch.” A surprisingly fitting Purim message.

(The Kingsman is an independent international intelligence agency operating at the highest level of discretion. This article is not. Spoilers below.)

Watching the new movie, Kingsman: The Secret Service, actually makes you want to run around in a suit. A bespoke suit, whatever that means.

Kingsman is a British-based spy organization whose members maintain secrecy by adopting code names and wearing suits and glasses as a disguise.

Just like the Kingsmen, God, too, is hiding in the Megillah.

It works for Clark Kent.

Okay, so the glasses are not a disguise. The agents’ chosen look – and the fact that they’re all well-spoken and well-mannered – mean they can suddenly surprise everyone when they expertly but calmly kick tuchus using sophisticated weapons such as umbrellas and Oxfords.

(Oxfords are shoes. I looked it up.)

It’s very impressive. I don’t know that I could run around killing bad guys in my Shabbos suit like that. I can’t even eat with a tie on.

But the Kingsman agents live by a code: “Manners maketh man.” Manners are what separate us from the animals. The Kingsman agents have manners even as they’re beating people up.

And Kingsman is not about glamour. They hang newspaper headlines on their walls from the specific days on which they’ve saved the world – headlines that say nothing about it – to show that they’re not in it for the glory.

The Kingsman agents don’t work for any specific government, and they take no prisoners. Except for that one prisoner in the opening scene, who, it turned out, had a grenade in his mouth, and one agent jumped on it and sacrificed himself to save everyone else, including Galahad, played by Colin Firth. So no more prisoners. Live and learn.

The movie involves the son of that man – Eggsy – who is not well-mannered. He’s a petty thief who lives in the part of England where everyone speaks in unintelligible Cockney accents, and everyone is poor, because it’s hard to get a job when no one can understand a word you’re saying at the interview. Galahad wants to draft Eggsy to replace an agent, Lancelot, who, for reasons we’re not going to get into, has apparently split. Eggsy may not seem like Kingsman material, but Galahad sees something in him. The goodness is there, it’s just buried inside.

Which brings us to the villain – a wealthy software engineer with a high-pitched voice and a cartoonish lisp, played by Thamuel L. Jackthon.

Jackthon, on the surface, appears to be the benevolent donor of free SIM cards that provide everyone in the world with free phone service and internet for life. And there’s no catch! Probably.

But in actuality, it’s a scheme to deplete the earth of mass amounts of people. By having them drive into telephone poles while texting, apparently.

Why would there still be telephone poles?

Actually, as we later find out, the SIM cards are programmed to send out a signal that builds up people’s existing rage and lowers their inhibitions. And as it turns out, when people’s inhibitions are lowered, they basically just wail on each other. (Whale on each other?  I’m not sure. They beat each other up.) The whole world becomes a drunken bar brawl, the idea being that this will thin the population and stop global warming.  And I, in the audience, might have actually felt for him if it wasn’t 3 degrees outside when I saw this movie.

His intentions are noble. He’s trying to save the planet. It’s nice when the villains are environmentally aware. Most of them have things like robot laser sharks, which can’t be too good for the environment. Or at least global warming.

“How does people killing each other stop global warming?” you ask. To oversimplify, it’s kind of like when there are too many people in shul, and you need to crack a window. Global warming is caused by body heat, apparently.

“Mankind is a virus,” he says.

Is he right? Well, if when our inhibitions are lowered our first reaction is to kill each other, then he probably is. But what if we’re GOOD on the inside? What if we’re mannered through and through? What if there are no bottled rage issues inside us waiting to get out? Would we be animals then? Or would manners maketh us man?

The point of the Kingsman is that if you’re good deep down inside – a Kingsman through and through – and aren’t just stuffing negative thoughts down with your foot, then you’re not part of the problem; you’re part of the solution. You’re not a virus; you’re a man.

What defines “man”?  Manners maketh man. Or, to put it into Jewish terms, “Manners maketh mensch.”

Ok, just kidding. The Jewish terms are, “Derech ertetz kadmah l’Torah – manners come before Torah.” Man has an obligation to learn Torah and live by it, but manners maketh man in the first place. The outside of a person has to reflect his insides. It’s not enough to be wearing a suit on the outside, we have to be wearing a suit on the inside as well. Also glasses, because of our genetically weak eyesight.

Harry saw that Eggsy was really a good person on the inside no matter who he was on the outside, and recruited him. After all, being a spy on the first place is about what’s on the inside, innit? Everything they carry seems like regular items that a gentleman never leaves home without, such as cufflinks, lighters, umbrellas, and glasses, but all of those are actually weapons – on the inside. There’s an electrified signet ring, an umbrella that lets you fire bad guys at other bad guys, and shoes that used to contain a phone in the heel until technology caught up with the spy industry. Even the bespoke suits are bulletproof, and would be great to wear on Shabbos if you live in a bad neighborhood.

Not everyone’s insides are readily apparent on the outside. Queen Esther of the Purim story, who, like Eggsy, was recruited from among several other recruits over the course of a really long time, did not tell anyone who she was. In fact, the name “Esther” means “hidden”, and our rabbis say that Esther might not have been her actual name. Her name was Hadassah, which means “Myrtle”, and if she would have gone by “Myrtle”, the king wouldn’t even have auditioned her, seeing as Myrtle is a name for elderly Jewish women. So she hid that deep down inside, becoming a secret agent, of sorts, in the king’s palace. And because of that, Haman didn’t know what to expect, and Esther was able to entrap him. Haman’s plan was not very secretive. He sent out his schedule to all the king’s provinces, and he even built a gallows, which I think is the least secretive way to kill a person. If Haman would have known that Esther was Jewish, he probably would have planned around it, and probably tried to kill her first or something, by putting poison in her cup and then not talking about it around Mordechai. The point, though, is that having your good on the inside is even more important than displaying it on the outside, because, as this movie shows us, in vivid detail, you never know when your insides are going to come out.

Like on Purim. When people drink, as they sometimes do on Purim, their inhibitions are lowered. “Nichnas yayin yatza sod”, the Gemara says. You drink wine, your insides come out. Often on the carpet. Are you at a place in your life that what you do when that happens isn’t something you’d be embarrassed of the next morning?

It’s like when your mother says, “Always wear clean underwear. You never know when you’re going to get into an accident, and the doctor won’t be able to do anything to help you because he’ll be convulsing with laughter over your dirty underwear.”

In fact, God, too, is hiding in the Megillah. He doesn’t seem to be there at all, until you realize that sometimes an ending is too perfect for the writer not to have had it in mind when he started the story. The Megillah never says God’s name, but he’s there, hidden. In fact, some say that whenever the Megillah just says, “Hamelech – the king,” it means God. God is the King. And we need to be his Kingsmen.

Click here to comment on this article
guest
0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
EXPLORE
LEARN
MORE
Explore
Learn
Resources
Next Steps
About
Donate
Menu
Languages
Menu
oo
Social
.