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Protection, I'm giving you up—correction, I'm saying that I'm right enough
Carrie Rickey's "Hollywood: Where Jews Don't Get to Play Jews" is a very good article about exactly the phenomenon the title describes: the venerable Hollywood tradition of casting non-Jews to play Jewish characters, of which the flipside is all the Jewish actors you wouldn't know from their changed names. She calls it "Hollywood's Jewish Paradox" and ties it to anti-Semitism and the Production Code, Henry Ford and Joseph Breen, the Jewish studio moguls' fears of the perception of undue Jewish influence. It's part of the reason The Ten Commandments (1956) is such a surreal experience and Out of the Fog (1941) stings so badly and I remain grateful and amazed that a movie like The Heart of New York (1932) even exists. I recommend reading. There's just one point I wish she had articulated a little more:
It may seem counterintuitive, but Darryl F. Zanuck, the one Gentile studio chief, was committed to making films about Jews.
I have noted the issue before and I am hardly the first to feel it: that part of being accepted as a Jew in a majority non-Jewish society is not talking about anti-Semitism. Agree it's a problem when disinterested goyische parties point it out. Otherwise it's that special pleading that Breen complained about with Crossfire (1947), it's playing the Holocaust card, it's stealing attention from really marginalized people. So it's not counterintuitive at all. It was safe for Zanuck to make movies about Jews because he wasn't one of them. He wouldn't be accused of tribalism, of exploiting his control of Hollywood to advance his people's agenda. He could rock the boat without being ascribed ulterior motives. Rickey alludes to these forces earlier in her article: "Given this charged atmosphere, no Jewish mogul wanted to make his studio, his movies or his religion a target for attacks. Jewish producers worried that movies about Jews would incite anti-Semitism. Thus Jews as Jews on screen were almost invisible, and Jews played by non-Jews scarcely less so." I just wish she'd drawn the link to the latitude afforded Zanuck—and non-Jewish actors, playing ideas of Jewishness with no danger of being reduced to the real thing—a little more strongly. I mean I still want to have seen Defiance (2008) with Jason Isaacs. The next person who tells me that Call Me by Your Name (2017) wasn't groundbreaking had better have a list of big, sweeping, non-Holocaust, non-Orthodox, non-tragic queer Jewish romances to back it up.
It may seem counterintuitive, but Darryl F. Zanuck, the one Gentile studio chief, was committed to making films about Jews.
I have noted the issue before and I am hardly the first to feel it: that part of being accepted as a Jew in a majority non-Jewish society is not talking about anti-Semitism. Agree it's a problem when disinterested goyische parties point it out. Otherwise it's that special pleading that Breen complained about with Crossfire (1947), it's playing the Holocaust card, it's stealing attention from really marginalized people. So it's not counterintuitive at all. It was safe for Zanuck to make movies about Jews because he wasn't one of them. He wouldn't be accused of tribalism, of exploiting his control of Hollywood to advance his people's agenda. He could rock the boat without being ascribed ulterior motives. Rickey alludes to these forces earlier in her article: "Given this charged atmosphere, no Jewish mogul wanted to make his studio, his movies or his religion a target for attacks. Jewish producers worried that movies about Jews would incite anti-Semitism. Thus Jews as Jews on screen were almost invisible, and Jews played by non-Jews scarcely less so." I just wish she'd drawn the link to the latitude afforded Zanuck—and non-Jewish actors, playing ideas of Jewishness with no danger of being reduced to the real thing—a little more strongly. I mean I still want to have seen Defiance (2008) with Jason Isaacs. The next person who tells me that Call Me by Your Name (2017) wasn't groundbreaking had better have a list of big, sweeping, non-Holocaust, non-Orthodox, non-tragic queer Jewish romances to back it up.
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Kara Hurvitz who does the weekly national news roundups has just posted, "To be clear, since I'm wrapping up analysis on the opinion now, the actual results of this case are not as bad as commonly feared, and the precedent created by it is pretty legally useless for a variety of reasons," which is nice to hear. But she also acknowledges that people are anxious and upset and have reasons to be.
I blew right past your comment as related to the original point of this post. Once again I wonder what the majority would have been able to demand of Hollywood without the Production Code. It told America what normal looked like for so long that some of us still believe it. Normal was an absence of a lot of things.
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And -- even if they were right, would that really have been worse? How much worse? I mean, we're never going to know, because they did what they did and then handed over the gatekeys to fucking Joseph Breen. But I have a hard time even imagining what film-making would have looked like in this country if they'd never implemented it so effectively.
My feelings on Joseph Breen are, as I suspect you sympathise, unprintable; not because I would censor myself, but because I can't actually articulate my rage into words.
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That's one of the reasons I love and watch and pursue pre-Code movies, because they are as close to that alternate universe of film as we are going to get. (We're not it. We are still not out of the shadow of the Code. I worry, especially now, that we never will be.) Sometimes they are brilliant. Sometimes they're weird. Sometimes they're awkward and sometimes they're not at all good. But they feel more like the world that really existed—that still exists—than the white picket fiction of the PCA. Some of this reality leaks through into other movies of the Code era and I treasure it wherever I can find it: there's a lot in film noir. Individual movies in other genres. I just watched Battleground (1949) last night and the first thing I said to
My feelings on Joseph Breen are, as I suspect you sympathise, unprintable; not because I would censor myself, but because I can't actually articulate my rage into words.
Yes, that makes sense to me.
Have we spoken before? If so, I apologize for not recognizing your handle. If not, pleased to meet you!
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Oh, god, this is very true. I admit I laugh bitterly when people say the Code is gone. No, it isn't gone at all; we only escaped the formal process of an actual seal. What we've got now is worse in a few ways, at least, and certainly not better across the board, and well. Post-Code Hollywood is, I think, about like post-modernism. It can only exist or be understood in the wake of the thing that it followed. A world in which there is no shadow cast by the Code would be something entirely different altogether.
(And, yes, clearly I really need to watch more pre-Code movies! I have long wanted to watch more of them, but my brain has unfortunately not cooperated a bundle on watching live action the last few years.)
Have we spoken before? If so, I apologize for not recognizing your handle. If not, pleased to meet you!
I don't actually recall how directly we have spoken or not, previously, to be honest! But I'm in
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That's a very good way of articulating it. With the weird twist that the Code itself was so inescapable, it became invisible; most people have no idea how carefully it shaped America's image of itself: it just looks like "America." I had very little idea until about ten years ago, when I fell into the pre-Code careers of Richard Barthelmess and William Wellman simultaneously and it was like the top of my head lifted off.
A world in which there is no shadow cast by the Code would be something entirely different altogether.
Yes. And I would very much like to have known what it was like.
(And, yes, clearly I really need to watch more pre-Code movies! I have long wanted to watch more of them, but my brain has unfortunately not cooperated a bundle on watching live action the last few years.)
I have not written about as many pre-Codes as I've seen, but these should be all of the ones I've reviewed for my Patreon:
Mystery of the Wax Museum (1932)
Baby Face (1933) with Heroes for Sale (1933) and Wild Boys of the Road (1933) in comments
Night Nurse (1931)
The Lost Squadron (1932)
The Last Flight (1931)
Dracula (1931)
Roar of the Dragon (1932)
Fast Workers (1933)
Twentieth Century (1934)
Lady with a Past (1932)
Gold Diggers of 1933 plus Dames (1934)
Wonder Bar (1934)
a triple and a half feature of Wheeler and Woolsey
The Ghost Camera (1933), British quota quickie
Girl of the Port (1930)
Way Out West (1930)
Speak Easily (1932)
The Heart of New York (1932)
Hell's Angels (1930)
Plus a couple I wrote about pre-Patreon, probably more lost to the depths of LiveJournal:
pre-Code marathon notes
Picture Snatcher (1933)
Captured! (1933)
White Zombie (1932)
No obligation to watch or even read, but I think that's the bulk of my contribution to the literature.
But I'm in yhlee's comments on a regular basis, and I have often found you very interesting and sage over there.
Thank you! I note you say intelligent things likewise.
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I've seen two quick reactions so far from lawyers I trust: Kara Hurvitz and David Schraub. Neither is apocalyptic, but neither is cause to stop worrying and love the current administration, either.
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The double standard for queer and straight sex scenes was the part of This Film Is Not Yet Rated (2006) that sticks with me to this day. That and the tiny adorable cartoon bestiality whale. And I've meant to see Where the Truth Lies (2003) for twelve years now and really should, especially now that it looks to me like an interesting neo-noir.
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And didn't Pride, a movie with NO SEX IN IT, get an R rating? FFS.
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It did! And the Region 1 DVD cover is mysteriously missing the all-important banner with the words "Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners." Because we must think of the children. The straight children. With narrow-minded parents and a helicopter of concern trolls.
(I still love that movie. I keep meaning to buy a copy and keep hating the straightwashing of the packaging and keep not being able to play a Region 2 DVD if I bought it.)
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