David Mamet
Jewish Journal, July 3, 2024
“The Diaspora meme; “I’m Jewish, but I’m not that Jewish,” has, again, been corrected by a mob’s screaming, “Yes. You are.””
Marilyn Monroe was one of the screen’s great clowns. Her schtick, though tagged as sexual or provocative was actually an affectionate send-up of sexuality.
Woody’s screen persona was also that of a clown, mocking a stereotype: Jewish Passivity. In all his films he is bumbling, physically inept, and out-of-phase in a (largely) Christian world. But he always gets the Girl.
Just as Marilyn, for all her charming doofishness, always gets the guy she wants.
These are ancient stereotypes — Woody’s the Schlemiel of Ashkenazi Jews,
amended here, only by his eventual sexual triumphs. He may bumble his way through life, but he can laugh any woman into bed. Psychoanalytically, he asserts his masculine superiority to the supposedly more macho Christians he moves among.
The stories of Chelm, the City of Fools in Ashkenazi folklore, mocked Jewish intramural foolishness. Mythic encounters with the Goyim left the Jews baffled by their incomprehensible, dull, or doltish ways, but generally, a Jew came off the winner in most contests — if only in his superior understanding of the situation.
Segregation and the Jim Crow South knew the Crime of Reckless Eyeballing, the very suspicion of which put a Black man at risk of his life. (See Emmett Till.) The Black Folklore of the Old South, of course, contained innumerable instances of Black contempt for White stupidity, and (variously modified) references to revenge.
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