Fall Term – Room 204
Friday, Sept. 09-Friday, Nov. 11, 2016
Morning, 9:50-11:50
COURSE A
Co-chairs: Norbert Hartmann and Brian Thompson
Course Director: Kevin Courrier, Film critic < writer, lecturer and broadcaster
HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT: JEWISH SENSIBILITY IN HOLLYWOOD FILMS
Some of the Jewish immigrants who came to America at the beginning of the 20th century to escape persecution headed west and created “Hollywood.” They established what author Neal Gabler called “an empire of their own.” The movies they created in that empire provided a vision of America that wasn’t real but rather a false utopia, designed to protect them from anti-Semitism, a place where they could hide in plain sight. Although these Hollywood moguls sought to mask their Jewishness in the American vision they created, did their Jewish sensibility nonetheless come through? In this course, Kevin Courrier examines the many ways that the values of Jewish life and culture permeated the pictures that Hollywood created despite the moguls’ efforts at disguise. From the early days of sound pictures to contemporary movies, we will explore how Jewish sensibility found various forms of expression in drama, comedies and musicals.
1 Sept 9 Home and Exile
The traditions of Jewish life in Europe leading to Jews’ exile to America are depicted explicitly in films like Fiddler on the Roof, Hester Street and Once Upon a Time in America, further leading to the exodus west to create Hollywood.
2 Sept 16 The Dream Factory
When the Jewish moguls created Hollywood, they invented in their films a fantasy vision of America into which they could assimilate and in so doing hide in plain sight. Two young Jewish boys from Cleveland would, however, simultaneously create a fantasy figure (Superman) who would bring the reality of the Jewish past into American popular culture.
3 Sept 23 Fame and Loyalty
In order to hide in plain sight the Jewish moguls developed a survival instinct to deflect the anti-Semitism of the predominant culture that deemed them outsiders. But the conflict between being loyal to one’s outsider roots and gaining success and access in the secular gentile world (as seen in The Jazz Singer) would create both conflict and controversy.
4 Sept 30 Imaginary Witnesses
Although fascism raged in Europe and the Holocaust brought Jewish persecution to national awareness, the Jewish moguls in Hollywood ignored it in their movies. If The Mortal Storm (1940) addressed fascism, it ignored its target: Jews. Ironically, it was gentiles like Charlie Chaplin (The Great Dictator), and Elia Kazan (Gentleman’s Agreement) who would address both the Holocaust and anti-Semitism.
5 Oct 7 True Believers
When the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) came after those who were supposed members of the Communist Party, the moguls instituted a blacklist, in part to protect their power. Despite their avoidance of controversial subjects in their pictures, which were largely Biblical epics, the subject of persecution still found its way into their films.
6 Oct 14 Horrible Images
As the blacklist ended and Hollywood moguls began to retire and die, images of the Holocaust began to make their way into the movies through pictures like The Pawnbroker and into television mini-series like Holocaust.
7 Oct 21 The Haunted Smile (Part One)
Behind every Jewish joke likes the shudder of the horrors of the past. We begin a two-part examination of how Jewish humour remains a haunted smile in films from Mel Brooks’ History of the World, Part II to Barry Levinson’s Liberty Heights.
8 Oct 28 The Haunted Smile (Part Two)
In Part Two we examine how the haunted smile of Jewish humour masks subversion and offers protest against persecution and prejudice.
9 Nov 4 Unmasked
With a new generation of writers, producers and directors in control of Hollywood in the late sixties, a whole new Jewish sensibility emerges in the work of Woody Allen (Annie Hall), Paul Mazursky (Next Stop, Greenwich Village) and Elain May (The Heartbreak Kid).
10 Nov 11 Pride
In contemporary Hollywood culture, Jewish culture is no longer hidden but examined with complexity in films from Yentl to Zohan.
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