“Jewish guys get an image makeover”

Our friend freelance entertainment journalist Lewis Beale had this article in Sunday’s LA Times, the gist of which is:

In fact, the release of “Defiance” last week — a film starring Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber as real-life World War II Jewish partisans so tough they make the “Munich” crew look like Cub Scouts — caps a recent sea change in the way Jews are depicted in the mass media. In “American Gangster,” for instance, Russell Crowe plays a Jewish detective who wears a Star of David but is also one of the guys. Last fall’s teen comedy “Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist” features actress Kat Dennings as a self-identified Jew who is not only the beautiful love interest but also easily the coolest kid in the room.

Can you imagine a post-Woody Allen movie world?

The neurotic Jewish male has a lot to do with “the prominence of Jewish men in comedy,” says Michael Renov, associate dean of USC’s film school. “This is being played for laughs, and Jews for a long time have been central to the world of comedy in pop culture. It’s somewhat self-critical; it’s in on the joke.”

So Allen and Mel Brooks begat the Seinfelds, Adam Sandlers and Apatows of the world. But even though these artists seem to be playing the same game of Top This Neurosis, there are actually significant differences between the generations. Unlike Allen, for example, who obsessed about murderous Cossacks and anti-Semitic Midwesterners in “Annie Hall,” the new generation of Jewish jokesters is more self-confident and fully assimilated into American life.

“This generation is more comfortable with being Jews,” Rivo says. “They are more self-critical, and that has to do with the comfort level Jews feel in America; they are more comfortable in general.”

Renov agrees. “Woody Allen is a generation closer to the experience of immigration and the insecurity of the new arrival, and someone like Apatow might be two generations removed, so there’s less insecurity about his status as an American.”

There is a sociological theory about immigrants and the U.S. , that the first generation does everything they can to assimilate into American culture, in effect playing down their distinctive cultural trappings, and that succeeding generations actually go back into their personal history to rediscover their cultural heritage. Over time, however, assimilation does occur and as it does, the children and grandchildren of original immigrants do feel increasingly comfortable with who they are and where they stand in American culture.

The article notes a book called “An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood” by author and journalist Neal Gabler. It’s a fascinating read, well worth the time, that tells the remarkable story of how a handful of Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe and Russia came to America and founded Holllywood. Their numbers include Carl Laemmle (Germany) who founded Universal Studios, Adolph Zucker (Hungary), who built Paramount Pictures, William Fox (Hungary), who founded the Fox Film Corporation, Louis B. Mayer (Russia), who eventually headed up Metro-Goldwynn-Mayer (MGM), and Harry, Sam, and Jack Warner, who’s father Benjamin left Poland for the U.S., he bought a broken movie projector, which started a chain of events that led to Warner Bros. In his book, Gabler suggests:

“The evidence certainly supports the view that the sons, embittered by their father’s failures, launched a war against their own pasts, a patricide one could say, against everything their fathers represented. To escape their father’s fate meant escaping their past: The European roots, the languages and accents, the customs and the religion. One had to erase it — and adopt a new style — a style for America. America was the baptism to cleanse and renew.”

I’m not sure if Seth Rogen, Adam Sandler, and Judd Apatow are actively waging “war” against their cinematic ‘father’ Woody Allen by barely acknowledging their Jewish heritage in the movies they make. However, from an historical point of view, I guess it’s not surprising that Louis B. Mayer claims he forgot his birthday, so he selected one for himself: July 4th.