Tag Archives: Daniel Itzkovitz

Pajama Boy, The (New) Schlemiel, and Obamacare

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When I woke up this morning I noticed an article by Politico (which is not a right-wing publication) that registered a high frequency on my schlemiel radar.  The words that caught my attention were in its headline: “Pajama Boy, An Insufferable Man-Child.”   The article was written in response to an ad tweeted by “Organizing for America,” a group that has been putting out ads in support of Obamacare.   The ad has been responded to by the likes of Chris Christie who tweeted – in one of several tweets – that he should “get out of his pajamas and get a job.”  And George Will, a well-known conservative who writes for the Washington Post called this an expression of the Democratic party.

Organizing for America was obviously shooting for a large demographic which emulates the man-child; that is, the schlemiel.  To be sure, as Sidrah DeKoven Ezrahi writes in Booking Passage: Exile and Homecoming in the The Modern Jewish Imagination, the schlemiel has become a “cultural icon.”  Daniel Itzkovitz has also noted this trend in his essay “They Are All Jews” and points out that the “new schlemiel” is the “everyman.”

The people on Morning Joe on MSNBC found it – like America finds many “new schlemiels” – very funny.

Regarding this tweeted ad, Lowry of Politico writes:

Pajama Boy is about as threatening as Michael Cera and so nerdy he could guest-host on an unwatched MSNBC show. He is probably reading The Bell Jar and looking forward to a hearty Christmas meal of stuffed tofurkey. If he has anything to say about it, Obamacare enrollments will spike in the next few weeks in Williamsburg and Ann Arbor.

Lowry’s characterization is trying to dig up the stereotype that would appeal to a certain demographic.  And this demographic is one that finds great interest in the everyman as the new schlemiel.  He likens the subject to “Michael Cera,” who isn’t Jewish and isn’t cast as a Jew in any films; indeed, Michael Cera and “pajama man” are new schlemiels.  Indeed, many characters in Portlandia or Big Bang Theory qualify as “new schlemiels.”

Nonetheless, Jay Michaelson recently wrote a piece for the Forwards suggesting that the characterization of the Pajama Boy as a “man-child” (Michaelson, strangely enough doesn’t use the word “schlemiel”) was a negative characterization that draws on what he would call “fascistic” stereotypes of Jews-as-schlemiels (effeminate males):

In fact, Pajama Boy stands at a centuries-old nexus of anti-Semitism and misogyny. As scholars including Sander Gilman and Daniel Boyarin have shown, Jewish men have been accused of being unmanly for hundreds of years – including by other Jews, such as the early Zionists, whose muscular Judaism was a direct response to diaspora Jewish emasculation. This is an old, old motif.

The Jew is the Other is the Effeminate is the Liberal. He is the urbanite, the parasite, the usurer, the lawyer. His effeminacy corrupts the Volk or the Heartland or the real American values. He wouldn’t know how to drive a pick-up truck if it was on cruise control. And he definitely votes for Obama.

While I can understand what Michaelson is getting at, I think he is going to far.  He claims that the Pajama Boy – because of his looks – signifies as a Jew and that the Right thinks of all progressives, unconsciously, as Jews.

These last words go a little too far and go beyond politics to suggest anti-Semitism on the part of the Right.  It suggests that any characterization of the man-child draws on this age-old stereotype – that emerged by and large out of Germany – that was leveled against Jews.  I will quote them at length:

Normal human beings are gentiles. They spit or smoke tobacco, they speak plainly, and they are manly men who don’t wear pajamas, don’t raise their eyebrows, don’t support affordable healthcare, and definitely don’t flay their arms around like Woody Allen. Or Shylock. Real men. Not Jews.

Whether or not the Pajama-Boy bashers are unconsciously anti-Semitic or not, I don’t know. Consciously, they are against everything “Judaism” stands for, at least as construed by its enemies: outsiderness, cosmopolitanism, liberalism, a progressive rather than nativist agenda, an opposition to the notion that there is one kind of “normal” person, a sympathy for the underdog and the immigrant as opposed to the successful and the privileged, and, yes, a rejection of a certain gendered, masculinist understanding of justice wherein the strong survive and the weak are trampled underfoot like the untermenschen they are.

That fascistic outlook has long been a part of far-right conservatism – whether in revisionist Zionism, contemporary French/Hungarian/Greek nationalism, American Republicanism, or German fascism. Real men are strong, and the weak don’t deserve our pity. Let them get sick for lack of healthcare; they probably deserve it. And as for women, and the parasitic “Jewish” men who resemble them? They are to be suppressed and domesticated, not empowered. Patriarchy is good. Sexism is natural. Get out of your onesies, America. And put on your jackboots.

While I think there is some truth to what Michaelson is saying (since there is a history of negatively characterizing Jews as effeminate, schlemiels; and I have written on this, extensively), the fact of the matter is that the “ideal of work” (which he calls patriarchal) is at the core of the right’s characterization.  But I wouldn’t call this fascistic.  And do “they” deplore “everything a Jew stands for?”  Do they hate Jews like they hate liberalism?  Do Jews = Liberalism?  Do Jews = Progressivism?

The fact of the matter is that the effeminate male, the nerd, is the new schlemiel.  But many new schlemiels work and are successful.  All of the nerds, for instance, in a show like Big Bang Theory may have their trials and tribulations with sexuality, but they will all likely be successful.  (The new schlemiel is not necessarily a slacker, despite some (not all) of Judd Apatow’s characterizations.)  And the whole country right and left knows this.  The problem is tactical.  The ad campaign made a big mistake in producing this character in pajamas which, obviously, would suggest that he is a “dependent” child.

Regardless, I think it is problematic for Michaelson to present things in this manner as it suggests that half of this country hates Jews and thinks of all Jews as progressive man-children.  The connotation of the man-child who doesn’t work and isn’t a “real-man” is a problematic, obviously.  But, if we are going to go there, then are we going to slight Woody Allen and his latest films or Judd Apatow and his for giving in to patriarchal fascism?  After all, at the end of most of their films, the man-child becomes a man.

I find this problematic.  But I wouldn’t call it fascism or even anti-Semitic.  If anything, it denotes a move away from the “little failure” (as Gary Shteyngart calls himself) to a success. This tension is what defines America, today.  It’s the tension that is produced by the schlemiel.  I notice it.  I try not to politicize it.

So when I saw the tweets, the right-wing responses, and Michaelson’s reaction, I decided to step back and present it the whole spectrum.  What we have here, as I have argued, is an America that is coming to grips with the “new schlemiel.” Its not Jewish so much as the “everyman.”  The question that this ad evokes is the question of what it means to be a young American.  What does it mean that some people see themselves through Duck Dynasty while others see themselves through Portlandia or Big Bang Theory?    What happens when people watch both programs?  Are they confused about whether or not they are an American schlemiel?

Regardless, I want to be careful and say that the equation may be with progressivism and not with pajama-boy-as-Jew.  Although I had the brief thought that the Pajama Boy was a Jew  and was tempted by it, it occurred to me that this is a new schlemiel, not an old one (that emerged out of Germany, and NOT Eastern Europe).  And I would suggest that we don’t use the word ‘fascism” and make such comparisons.  Its not the right tact.

We need to find another language for this, one that doesn’t enter into the register of anti-Semitism and suggest that America has more in common with Nazi Germany than ever in its characterizations of the “pajama boy.”

Yes, this is – in major part – a masculinity issue that emerges out of a country that wants to see itself, once again, as a nation at work, not on vacation.  If that’s fascist, anti-Semitic, and patriarchal, what does that imply about Communist social-realism or the images that progressives in this country used to signify what it means to be an American?

In other words: how does the new schlemiel fit into the American image? And how do we characterize these kinds of reactions?  Is it right to make analogies of Nazi Germany and to argue that the negative schlemiel stereotype (the Jew as man-child) is at work, today?

The Transformation of Seth Rogen: From a Schlemiel into a Green Hornet

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Seth Rogen is often cast as a schlemiel in many Hollywood films.  We can see this in films like Knocked Up (2007), Superbad (2007), and Pineapple Express (2008).

But in films like Knocked Up we start seeing the transformation of Rogen’s character.  In that film, Rogen goes from a pot-smoking “lord of dreams” to a responsible father and “partner.”  By the end of the film, we can see a distinct difference between him and his schlemiel friends.  To be sure, Apatow, in this film (and in many others), defines the schlemiel in terms of someone who can’t be a “man” and as a “slacker” or “geek.”  This, unfortunately, reduces the radical potential of this character and makes him into the American “everyman.”

Moreover, it effaces any Jewishness this character may have had for nearly a century.   This act of effacement, according to Daniel Itzkovitz in an essay entitled “They are All Jews,” has been going on for a while.  It evinces a “not-so-subtle shift in U.S. popular culture regarding Jewishness.”  Itzkovtiz takes note of a few films that illustrate this “not-so-subtle shift”:

Independence Day with all the expectations it places on Jewish shoulders is just one example…The Billy Crystal vehicle City Slickers (1991) – a banal formula comedy that re-imagines Mel Brook’s Blazing Saddles (1974) with yuppie angst replacing giddy anarchy – was an early touchstone in this process.  Such films’ aggrandizing but flattening out of Jewishness also helps explain why critics seem to read American mass culture’s relationship to Jews in such disparate ways.  (235)

The casting of Seth Rogen gives us an excellent example of this “flattening out of Jewishness.”   As a part of this process, Rogen goes from a character who transforms from a schlemiel into a responsible adult – as in Knocked Up – or from an outright schlemiel – in films such as Pineapple Express or Superbad – to the son of a WASP whose dreams become realities by way of inherited wealth in a film like The Green Hornet (2011).

I was astonished by what I saw in this film because it took Rogen’s already post-schlemiel character of Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008) and brought it to an entirely different level.  In Zack and Miri Make a Porno, Rogen plays a character who has a business idea and works it with other odd-balls; but, in comparison to what is shown in Knocked Up (regarding a porn-on-the internet business), this business is actually more solid and tangible than the foolish plan sketched out in Knocked Up.  It is laughable but, ultimately, it is less laughable (as is Rogen).  The greater laugh can be found in the characters Zack and Miri find.   Moreover, in this film, Zack (Rogen) is in a start up kind of business.  He is not wealthy; he is borne out of a slacker ethos.

But in The Green Hornet, we are first introduced to Rogen by way of his character Britt Reid – a playboy; the son of a wealthy newspaper mogul.  We see him at parties with many women fooling around here and there – something we don’t see in his earlier schlemiel films.  And, upon waking with a woman he had ended up with in a party (in his mansion), we learn that he doesn’t own the mansion; he only lives in it.  Nonetheless, he is still a playboy.  And his father is a consummate WASP by the name of James Reid.

In this film, not only is the schlemiel effaced but any sign of Jewishness is as well.  (To be sure, Rogen’s characters always had some small hint of Jewishness, but this film leaves no doubt in our minds that this is no longer even on the table.)  And instead of the Jew being the genius-geek-schlemiel who works together with another minority (as we see in Independence Day by way of Jeffrey Goldblum and Will Smith), we see an inversion of the geek, genius position.

Now, an Asian and not a Jewish character plays the “geek.”  But Kato (Jay Chou) isn’t exactly a geek in the sense Goldblum was; in fact, he’s really cool.  He rides a cool motorcycle, invents things like a special espresso machine (that fires up like a jet engine),  bulletproof glass, a hidden liquer cabinet, etc.  He’s a “genius” who Britt Reid (Rogen) takes as his guide.

Now the dreams we bear witness to are not the dreams of a schlemiel and they are not the dreams of a Jeff Goldblum who, in the process of fighting with Will Smith, becomes a man.  Rather, Kato is already a man.  And Rogen, who is already a WASP yet not fully integrated into the task of making wealth (as was his father), takes on Kato as a cool kind of partner (who, in reality, takes the role of a kind of father figure or midwife for Rogen).  Through Kato, Britt becomes a superhero.

And even though we see comic blunder on and off the film, such as in his encounter with Cameron Diaz (Lenore Case) or with many others, this is overshadowed by his comicbook heroism.  And that’s the point.  In the end, he’s no schlemiel or fool; he’s a responsible hero who can fight crime.  He’s not Clark Kent; he’s the Green Hornet.  Nonetheless, the end of the film includes a few comic moments.  But, as I noted, this doesn’t overshoadow or contaminate the heroism so much as make it a little more human and mundane.

This gesture away from the schlemiel toward the hero speaks to what Hannah Arendt said in the “Jew as Pariah” regarding the “failure” of Charlie Chaplin’s Hitlerian schlemiel in his film The Great Dictator (1940).  For Arendt, it failed because people wanted Superman and not Chaplin’s schlemiel.   And, I would add, they wanted the everyday hero.  Here, Rogen isn’t simply a working class hero or a slacker hero.  He’s a hero who comes from wealth.  And what we get is a spotted hero who is a little silly and a lot like us.  The potential of the schlemiel that we see in Yiddish literature or even in I.B. Singer or Saul Bellow is left behind for a character devoid of anything Jewish or anything that challenges what Ruth Wisse – in the first pages of The Schlemiel as Modern Hero – would call the “political and philosophical status quo.”

As a final note to this blog entry, I just want to point that one of Rogen’s most recent films, Guilt Trip (2012) casts him with a very Jewish mother (Barbara Streisand).  But in this film she plays the schlemiel, not he.  In fact, he’s the responsible one.  Regardless, the schlemiel that we see, with all of its little Jewish mannerisms, shows us something flat and ineffectual.  The schlemiel we see is cast as an “older mother” who is full of life but unable to fully navigate herself through modern life.  We – as audience members – are supposed to laugh at her lack of technical expertise and her lack of decorum.

But I find nothing funny here.  In fact, I find it quite sad that, as a Jew, I have to see this kind of representation.  The schlemiel is done a disservice in such silliness and such a condescending reading (although Streisand does her utmost to play the absent-minded one, I found it to be too schmaltzy and even insulting).

That said, I hope to return to this film and others of Rogen.  This blog entry is more or less a sketch of how Rogen has been casted.  And, in many cases, since he writes many of the films he stars in, he casts himself in this way.  Perhaps a more nuanced understanding of the schlemiel would be of great use to him; but, then again, that’s not what sells these days in Hollywood.