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osewalrus One of the major contributing factors to dropping off FB was when I posted a scathing critique of the new movie Disobedience by a Jewish woman upset with how the religious Jewish community is generally portrayed in an exploitive rather than accurate manner. This prompted some non-Jewish lesbian friends of mine to tell me what a wonderful film it was an how their (non-religious, but definitely having a religious relative somewhere) Jewish lesbian friends thought it was totally awesome and telling their story.
Which, as I said, I'm glad it's all about them but rather beside the broader point I was trying to make. Like just about every other minority, Hollywood has a tremendous tendency to typecast. Just about all Jews portrayed in movies (and TV, for that matter) end up falling into two categories. Either they are neurotic, intellectual Woody Allen clones or they are "exotic" ultra-religious living in the modern shtetle. As with all cultural stereotypes, it's not as if these people don't exist in real life. And there are Latino gang members and African American pimps. it's when these representations are the only representations that it becomes troublesome.
Which is why I am grateful to TheLongshot for forwarding me this review from film critic and formerly-religious-now-not-religious Jewish film critic Elazar Fine, which nails what is so annoying about films like this much better than I can.
https://filmschoolrejects.com/on-the-fakeness-of-disobedience/
It's not the subject matter. It's the treatment of the characters and everything about them. As Elazar points out, filmmaker Sebastian Leilo has absolutely no interest in Judaism per se. It is simply a suitable religious and exotic background for him. This shows in the details. Leilo is big on having things like challah or a canister of matzo meal prominently displayed. But characters say things in English that Orthodox Jews (particularly the right-leaning ones portrayed here) would say in Yiddish or Hebrew (our Jewish version of Spanglish). They say the wrong prayers, they don't say the right blessings or grace after meals. There are a thousand little details that scream "fake" to anyone actually familiar with the culture and which no one unfamiliar with it will notice. But worse, those unfamiliar with the culture *think* they are getting an authentic view -- because challah and matzo meal.
This lack of regard for the details of the culture spills over into the lack of regard for authentic reaction and behavior. I have not read the original book (written by English author Naomi Alderman), so I have no idea if it did a better job. But the review is quite scathing about the fact that Leilo (whose films generally explore conflict between what Leilo has described as "the Judeo-Christian" worldview and the secular worldview) basically wanted to tell a story of a lesbian awakening/rebellion against a religious community/background and was happy to grab this one.
Some good quotes:
"There has never been a good Hollywood movie about contemporary Orthodox Jewry. From Holy Rollers to A Stranger Among Us to A Price Above Rubies to Fading Gigolo to… nope, I think that’s all of them, every attempt by a Hollywood studio to set a film in the Ultra-Orthodox world has been an embarrassing disaster. All of these films seek to exploit the perceived exoticism of the Orthodox community for the sake of lurid stories of sexuality and drug use; none of these films care to explore the Orthodox way of life in any real sense.
"Rather than demonstrate the authenticity of his Jewish setting through incisive characters and complex psychologies, Lelio proves his Jewish bona fides by sloppily throwing a tube of matzo-meal on a windowsill. Rather than explore what it must really be like for an off-the-derech woman to return to her family, Lelio wrote and directed an entire movie about an unlikely lesbian romance and then cast Rachel McAdams (Rachel McAdams!) as a British Jew. Rachel McAdams!
It's always easy to dismiss these complaints -- especially from those of us in the religious community -- as being a mask for complaints about the content. To this I can only shrug and point to the wealth of Israel cinema doing a much better job (no surprise) exploring the same themes and thus enabling genuine conversation within the broader religious and OTD Jewish community. Sure, there are plenty of religious Jews who are going to react angrily to any sympathetic treatment of LGBT as anything other than sinful. But the broader religious community is far more genuinely engaged in the discussion.
But again, it's not even so much this one movie. It's the general problem of having one's life treated as a prop. Whether it is Stranger Among Us or Annie Hall, it gets depressing to never see your actual self portrayed on screen. it gets even more depressing when you discover how many people *think* they understand your culture based on the constantly showcased cultural stereotypes.
Which, as I said, I'm glad it's all about them but rather beside the broader point I was trying to make. Like just about every other minority, Hollywood has a tremendous tendency to typecast. Just about all Jews portrayed in movies (and TV, for that matter) end up falling into two categories. Either they are neurotic, intellectual Woody Allen clones or they are "exotic" ultra-religious living in the modern shtetle. As with all cultural stereotypes, it's not as if these people don't exist in real life. And there are Latino gang members and African American pimps. it's when these representations are the only representations that it becomes troublesome.
Which is why I am grateful to TheLongshot for forwarding me this review from film critic and formerly-religious-now-not-religious Jewish film critic Elazar Fine, which nails what is so annoying about films like this much better than I can.
https://filmschoolrejects.com/on-the-fakeness-of-disobedience/
It's not the subject matter. It's the treatment of the characters and everything about them. As Elazar points out, filmmaker Sebastian Leilo has absolutely no interest in Judaism per se. It is simply a suitable religious and exotic background for him. This shows in the details. Leilo is big on having things like challah or a canister of matzo meal prominently displayed. But characters say things in English that Orthodox Jews (particularly the right-leaning ones portrayed here) would say in Yiddish or Hebrew (our Jewish version of Spanglish). They say the wrong prayers, they don't say the right blessings or grace after meals. There are a thousand little details that scream "fake" to anyone actually familiar with the culture and which no one unfamiliar with it will notice. But worse, those unfamiliar with the culture *think* they are getting an authentic view -- because challah and matzo meal.
This lack of regard for the details of the culture spills over into the lack of regard for authentic reaction and behavior. I have not read the original book (written by English author Naomi Alderman), so I have no idea if it did a better job. But the review is quite scathing about the fact that Leilo (whose films generally explore conflict between what Leilo has described as "the Judeo-Christian" worldview and the secular worldview) basically wanted to tell a story of a lesbian awakening/rebellion against a religious community/background and was happy to grab this one.
Some good quotes:
"There has never been a good Hollywood movie about contemporary Orthodox Jewry. From Holy Rollers to A Stranger Among Us to A Price Above Rubies to Fading Gigolo to… nope, I think that’s all of them, every attempt by a Hollywood studio to set a film in the Ultra-Orthodox world has been an embarrassing disaster. All of these films seek to exploit the perceived exoticism of the Orthodox community for the sake of lurid stories of sexuality and drug use; none of these films care to explore the Orthodox way of life in any real sense.
"Rather than demonstrate the authenticity of his Jewish setting through incisive characters and complex psychologies, Lelio proves his Jewish bona fides by sloppily throwing a tube of matzo-meal on a windowsill. Rather than explore what it must really be like for an off-the-derech woman to return to her family, Lelio wrote and directed an entire movie about an unlikely lesbian romance and then cast Rachel McAdams (Rachel McAdams!) as a British Jew. Rachel McAdams!
"Lelio’s interest in the Jewish community is transparently superficial. He wanted to make a movie about a lesbian affair in a repressed community that frowns on such behavior, and of the myriad communities that fit that description, he happened to choose this one. His characters purport to be Jewish, but his is not really a Jewish movie. The dialogue is stilted and unnatural due partly to the fact that Lelio does not allow his characters to speak in any language other than English for the majority of the film; things that an Orthodox Jew would say in Yiddish or Hebrew sound intrinsically tin-eared when said in English, doubly so when Rachel McAdams is the speaker. I have interacted with Orthodox Jews of every imaginable stripe in my lifetime, I have never ever heard one Orthodox Jew say to another, in English, “may you live a long life.” And yet, the characters of Disobedience are constantly saying “may you live a long life” to one another like they’re in the fucking Handmaid’s Tale."
It's always easy to dismiss these complaints -- especially from those of us in the religious community -- as being a mask for complaints about the content. To this I can only shrug and point to the wealth of Israel cinema doing a much better job (no surprise) exploring the same themes and thus enabling genuine conversation within the broader religious and OTD Jewish community. Sure, there are plenty of religious Jews who are going to react angrily to any sympathetic treatment of LGBT as anything other than sinful. But the broader religious community is far more genuinely engaged in the discussion.
But again, it's not even so much this one movie. It's the general problem of having one's life treated as a prop. Whether it is Stranger Among Us or Annie Hall, it gets depressing to never see your actual self portrayed on screen. it gets even more depressing when you discover how many people *think* they understand your culture based on the constantly showcased cultural stereotypes.
no subject
Date: 2018-05-10 01:19 pm (UTC)Never mind how often non-Jews are cast as Jews (Matt Bomer in The Last Tycoon, Rachel Brosnahan as Mrs. Maisel).
But as it happens, we did have a box of matzah meal on the kitchen counter for the past year, since things tend to land there at Passover and stay there till we throw it out at the next Passover. So this aspect is the tiniest bit believable.
no subject
Date: 2018-05-10 03:00 pm (UTC)I don't even need a positive portrayal. I remember how excited I got when watching an episode of Serenity when the bit character fencing the goods for Mal and the crew was wearing a kippah. I was like: Yes! There will be Jews in the future, and they will be normal people doing ordinary stuff! Woo Hoo!!
no subject
Date: 2018-05-10 04:59 pm (UTC)I haven't seen the movie, but I have no interest in seeing how non-Jews think ultra-Orthodox Jews live. I cringe when TV characters mispronounce Jewish words/phrases as it is (do they not bother to get consultants with the right knowledge base?).
no subject
Date: 2018-05-10 06:06 pm (UTC)Which is one of the things that really annoys me. In this day and age, there is no excuse for not getting some consultants and doing some basic dialect coaching. It's not even like getting the details right would be hard. It's just they don't care enough to bother. Or worse, they think they already know.
no subject
Date: 2018-05-12 08:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-05-14 09:57 am (UTC)