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Sample Student
final answers 2013 (2013 final exam assignment) #1: Research Reports |
LITR 4333
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Adam Glasgow
FINAL EXAM PART II: Research Report
A Serious Paper: Jewish American Identity, Assimilation,
and the Coen Brothers
Jewish Americans are perhaps one of the most
deeply assimilated immigrant groups in the United States. Many have adopted the
dominant culture to such a degree that famous Jewish Americans are frequently
not commonly recognized as Jewish. Everyone knows who Steve Ballmer, Ralph
Lauren, and Robert Downey, Jr. are, but they are simply thought of as Americans,
not Jewish Americans. Such is the case with filmmakers Joel (1954) and Ethan
Coen (1957), commonly known as "the Coen brothers." Despite growing up in a
Midwestern Jewish household, the Jewish influence on their films is subterranean
enough to go largely unnoticed, with one movie being an exception to that rule.
The 2009 film A Serious Man deals
directly with Jewish culture in Midwestern America, and the loss of Jewish
identity throughout successive generations of Jewish Americans. But, who exactly
are the Coen brothers?
Unlike most filmmakers, the Coens write,
direct, produce, and edit movies themselves—giving them end to end control over
the final product. Most of their films are original stories; only a small number
of their 15+ projects have source material in a book or another film. Their
filmography includes Fargo, The Big
Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, No Country for Old Men, and the 2010
version of True Grit. Between the two
of them they have been nominated for 13 Academy Awards, the same number Stanley
Kubrick earned before he passed in 1999. Their style is often imitated and the
Coen name frequently appears on other filmmakers' lists of influences.
The Coens' Jewish American identity is
embedded in their work, but it usually goes unnoticed by the general public. It
probably even goes unnoticed by the brothers themselves. In one interview with
Haaretz, the brothers were asked if being "strangers in a strange land [the
Coens grew up in the Midwest where Jewish communities are much smaller] affected
how they approach their story telling." Joel replied:
I guess everything to do with your background has some
influence on how you tell stories, but it's hard to parse, I think, how growing
up in a Jewish community in Minnesota really affected it. There were other
things which were probably much more culturally influential on us than that in
particular, things like television, pop culture that other kids are exposed to
at the time, if you want to sort of look at things that were probably most...
formative, but I really don't know (Schwartzberg, "'A Serious Man' - The Coen
brothers' most Jewish film to date") .
Here Joel is essentially admitting that the influence of the
dominant culture is likely more of a factor in their filmmaking than their
Jewish American roots are. The Coens are
deeply assimilated. This brings us back to the one film that tackles Jewish
identiy head on, instead of it existing only as an undercurrent in the movie.
A Serious Man
is a story about a Jewish American college professor named Larry Gopnik and his
family in 1960s Minnesota. They live in a largely Jewish community, and Larry
makes sure to frequent Jewish-owned businesses. His son goes to Hebrew school,
though his daughter does not. His son also is also seen preparing for his Bar
Mitzvah multiple times in the film. His wife reveals that she wants a divorce in
order to be with another Jewish man, and she wants a "get," a document that a
husband must provide a wife in order for the divorce to be considered valid in
the eyes of biblical law. Jewish culture (or at least American Midwestern Jewish
culture) is central to the film, and while some of the influence is obvious,
like the examples listed above, much of it is more subversive. For example,
while watching the movie I noticed many of the doorframes had something hanging
on them—a small box of some kind. After some research, I discovered those are
containers that house a small rolled up scroll called a "mezuzah." Their
presence is meant to remind the inhabitants of their heritage and connection to
God (Chabad). These characters live in America, but they—they being the adults
who own the houses and run the businesses—are still deeply connected to their
Jewish culture. But the Jewish American influence in the film goes far beyond
the setting and even the characters. It is embedded into the plot.
The story of the film is a retelling of the
Book of Job; one of the books found in the Hebrew Bible. Job is about a
God-fearing man whose devotion to God gets constantly tested through hardships.
Everything he owns gets destroyed, he becomes sick, and all of his children die.
In A Serious Man Larry is in the
process of losing his family via divorce, his job is threatened by both a South
Korean exchange student trying to use bribes to pass his physics class and
mysterious letters sent to the university urging the school not to grant him
tenure. His mooching brother lives at his house without contributing anything,
the Columbia Record Club is harassing him to pay for a service he didn't sign up
for, and his rabbis are supremely unhelpful in regards to helping him through
his adversities. A major difference worth noting, however, is that at the end of
Job he is given a new family and becomes more prosperous than he ever was
before, while at the end of A Serious Man
his doctor calls him and asks to speak with him in person (it sounds like more
bad news), and a tornado prepares to rip through his son's school, possibly
killing him. Job was given a happy ending (or maybe a "happy" ending; I don't
think getting a new family makes up for killing his old one), but things seem to
be looking mostly terrible for Larry at the end of the movie. His children, for
example, seem eager to assimilate into the dominant culture and leave their
Jewish roots behind.
In the film, Larry's son, Danny, attends
Hebrew school, but seems to do his best to ignore everything that's going on
around him, especially his teachers. Instead of participating in class he
secretly listens to rock and roll music on a portable radio, which creates a
strong visual image of a young man ignoring his culture in favor of the dominant
culture. Danny also fixates on television, going as far as to call Larry at his
work to pester him about coming home and adjusting the antenna so his favorite
shows will come in more clearly. Near the end of the movie Danny turns thirteen
and has a Bar Mitzvah, but hides in the bathroom with his friends (who seem to
hold much more sway over Danny than his parents) beforehand and smokes copious
amounts of marijuana. This ensures that throughout the holy ceremony of Danny
passing into manhood, he is completely stoned. Once again he is rejecting his
native culture while embracing another.
Larry's Daughter, Sarah, is maybe even more
assimilated into the dominant culture than Danny. Danny at least attends Hebrew
school and goes through the basic ceremonies his Jewish culture demands, but
Sarah has rejected them all entirely. The only excuse offered throughout the
film for Sarah not attending Hebrew school is from Larry, who says that she
doesn't have the time for Hebrew school because she always has to "wash her
hair." Not only is this funny, but it points to the idea that Sarah is much less
interested in tradition and being Jewish than she is with fitting into the
dominant culture by looking good. One running gag throughout the film is that
she is stealing money from her parents in order to get cosmetic surgery on her
nose so she will "look less Jewish." Sarah is rejecting her Jewish ancestry that
her parents care so much about to the point where she wants to physically alter
her body to remove any hint that she might be Jewish.
Larry himself appears to be in the midst of
something of a religious, and therefore cultural, crisis. Throughout his
hardships he seeks help and answers from a number of different rabbi, a few of
who are vague, confusing, and unhelpful, and one who completely refuses to see
Larry at all, despite appearing to have nothing else going on, ever. Larry
points out over and over that he didn't do anything to deserve the horrible
things that have happened to him, something that links him to the Biblical Job
story. However, unlike Job, Larry eventually turns his back on God and makes the
decision to accept the bribe from the South Korean student. Immediately after
doing so he gets the good news at his job that he is likely to be granted
tenure, and then receives a call from his doctor who seems to have bad news. The
very last scene of the film is a tornado on a destructive path straight to
Danny's school, with Danny standing outside staring right at it.
This ending seems mostly bleak, but the
audience is left unsure of what will happen. What is the news that the doctor
had for Larry? Does Danny survive? A critique published on Slate wisely points
out that in the Book of Job, "God delivers his lecture "out of the whirlwind,"
then softens up and gives Job 'double what he had before'" (Lapidos). Perhaps
this is when Hasem (God) will finally intervene, give Larry a good talking to,
and then reward him for his perseverance throughout this difficult time. After
all, Larry stayed loyal to his faith and culture until the end. Or, perhaps, God
is disappointed that Larry has been unable to keep his family on the straight
and narrow path of Jewishness, and now that Larry has strayed himself, he will
receive his final punishment.
A
Serious Man is a film based on the experiences
of two brothers growing up in a Jewish household surrounded by a Midwestern
American culture that was simply not interested in their religion or history.
Today, Joel and Ethan Coen seem to have embraced the dominant culture
themselves; after all, what's more American than Hollywood? But
A Serious Man shows that, on some
level at least, they are capable of meditating and satirizing the process of
losing one culture and assimilating to another. How they really feel about where
they stand in relation to their apparent abandonment of their Jewish heritage,
then, is a question as shrouded by mystery as the ending of their film.
WORKS CITED
A Serious Man. Dir. Joel
and Ethan Coen. Perf. Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Kind, Sari Lennick. Focus
Features, 2009. DVD.
Academy Awards Database.
Web. http://awardsdatabase.oscars.org
Forward, The, and Schwartzberg, Shlomo. "'A Serious Man' -
The Coen brothers' most Jewish film to date."
Haaretz. 9 October 2009. Web.
Retrieved from
http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/2.209/a-serious-man-the-coen-brothers-most-
jewish-film-to-date-1.6888
Internet Movie Database.
Web. http://www.imdb.com
"Jewish Divorce 101." Chabad.org. Web.
http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/557906/jewish/Divorce-Basics.htm
Lapidos, Juliet. "What's going on? Revisiting A Serious Man,
the most puzzling of the best- picture
nominees." Slate. 2 March 2010. Web.
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/the_oscars/2010/03/whats_going_on.2.html
"What is a mezuzah?." Chabad.org. Web.
http://www.chabad.org/generic_cdo/aid/278476/jewish/Mezuzah.htm
