Paul Newman, The Last Of The Epic Jews?

Kyle Smith writes in The New York Post about the different flavors of Jews that can be found in Hollywood:

American movies have given us tragic Jews ("The Pawnbroker"), cold-blooded Jews ("Rope"), devout Jews ("The Chosen"), sidewalk Jews ("Crossing Delancey"), intellectual Jews ("Enemies: A Love Story"), thrilling Jews ("Marathon Man"), ambitious Jews ("Avalon,"), showbiz Jews ("Funny Girl"), gangster Jews ("Bugsy"), JAPy Jews ("Private Benjamin"), political Jews ("The Way We Were"), funny Jews ("Biloxi Blues"), self-hating skinhead Jews ("The Believer"), hairy Jews ("Fiddler on the Roof"), scary Jews ("Oliver Twist"), Jews who couldn't have been less Jewy (Laurence Olivier yelping "I heff no son!" in 1980's "The Jazz Singer") and rough-and-tumble Jews: who can forget the sight of Woody Allen beating a guy senseless with a giant strawberry in "Sleeper"?

All of these are background acts, though, when compared to Hollywood's favorite flavor of Jew: the eternal victim. Another awards season, another Holocaust movie.

Paul Newman was no victim. He was an Epic Jew, the kind of stalwart, forceful, tireless nation- builder Hollywood can't seem to dream up anymore, though "Exodus" was the fourth-biggest box office hit of 1960.

But there is a problem with the Epic Jew--there is no longer a demand for a movie with a Jewish hero based on the Paul Newman (Exodus)/Kirk Douglas (Cast A Giant Shadow) model.

If you asked filmmakers why they shy away from modern Israel, they'd respond, correctly, that there isn't much of an audience anymore for films about foreign countries or historical epics, plus the international sales (and Happy Meal profits) are bound to be minimal for a movie with political content. Parting the Red Sea makes for a much more cinematic experience than a meeting at Camp David.

But Jewish filmmakers are also silencing themselves because their pride in Israel is negated by their knee-jerk distaste for overdogs. Hollywood is the only place where billionaires fancy themselves outcasts fighting the system. Israel, for all its enemies, is a success story, but a complicated one. If the situation there were reversed - with the Palestinians in charge and the Israelis throwing rocks and submitting to checkpoints - there would be a Hollywood movie about it every other year.

But Exodus was about more than just a particular Jewish stereotype. Don't forget the impact that the book Exodus itself had when it came out--independent of the movie that was made out of it.

Back in 2001, Edward Said wrote:

The main narrative model that dominates American thinking still seems to be Leon Uris's 1950 novel Exodus.

Said may have been exaggerating a bit, but at the time Exodus was more than a literary event. When it first came out Exodus was a best-seller in hardcover for over a year. It was in the number 1 slot for 19 weeks. In the US alone, it sold as many as 20 million copies. Then the paperback edition went through 80 printings. It was the biggest best seller since Gone With The Wind. This is according to Charles Paul Freund in his article, Exodus and Anti-Exodus: The power of literary mythmaking. But the book Exodus was more than just a best-seller:

The work's real impact, however, lay beyond mere literature. For a great many people, the plot of the novel—and of the even more popular 1960 film—became the popular template for understanding the Mideast, especially issues involving the unending Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Uris popularized Israel as a place of righteous refuge, solidifying a link between the Holocaust and Israel that is actually a matter of contention among Israel's own historians and intellectuals. This is not to say that his story was false; the refuge narrative is at least one valid Israeli theme. But Uris helped make it the primary such narrative, characterizing critics of Israeli policy in terms of that story, and setting the terms of debate for decades.

For example, academic Melani McAlister, in a recent analysis of the relationship between American culture and U.S. Mideast policy, argues that when the novel came out, "most Americans still knew little about Zionism or Israel," and that the Uris story was "a foreshadowing of what Israel was to come to mean to Americans."

Exodus was about more than just a Jew that was not a victim--it was about a narrative that we took for granted and have consequently lost.

Crossposted at Soccer Dad

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