🎥 FA2023 Course: Jews in American Film

📅 July 21, 2023

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Course Description: On the syllabus, I describe this course as such: “In this course, students will explore contemporary films by Jewish directors and consider larger questions posed by these films and their genres; questions about love, war, belief, life, death, existence, and one’s place in the world—and just how unusually entertaining it can be to try to figure these things out. We will watch films by directors such as Mel Brooks, Maya Deren, Seth Rogen, Elaine May, Taika Waititi and more, and see how a diverse range of directors tackle such themes. We will also read critical essays not just about our films but also about film form writ large, discuss basic film form, and learn how to talk about films.”

This is mostly true, but, as you’ll see, it’s a lot more complicated than that. Some of the filmmakers we will discuss are not Jewish or wouldn’t describe themselves as Jewish. Some of the films feature Jewish characters, some largely do not. Some have Jewishness at their core, exploring it in every frame, and some are about something else entirely but feature Jewish characters or themes. “Jews in American Film” can mean so much—how Jews are portrayed, how Jews portray other identities or themes, how Jews tell Jewish stories, how Jews tell other stories, or sometimes how non-Jewish directors tell Jewish stories. The hardest part about teaching a course like this is 1) doing justice to all of these possibilities and 2) not cramming us with too much material! So, this course is divided into a few “units,” with some overlapping themes or genres, and we will watch a film each week (usually over the four days between Thursday and Tuesday), discuss the films on Tuesday alongside any readings we had, then on Thursday we will discuss new readings with the film in mind.

Some readings will be about the Jewish content of the films, some will be about film form, and we will discuss some theory here and there: since this course is cross-listed as three courses, many of you come from different backgrounds and are here for different reasons. We will try the best we can to keep discussion balanced and rich, bringing our own perspectives into the mix.

Films: Deren, Maya. Meshes of the Afternoon. | May, Elaine. The Heartbreak Kid (1972).

Silver, Joan. Hester Street. | Seligman, Emma. Shiva Baby. | Allen, Woody. Annie Hall.

Bluth, Don. An American Tail. | Guadagnino, Luca. Call Me By Your Name.

Rogen, Seth. An American Pickle. | Waititi, Taika. JoJo Rabbit. | Brooks, Mel. The Producers (1967).

Wyler, William. Funny Girl. | Brooks, Mel. Blazing Saddles. | Peace, Olivia. Tahara.

Peerce, Larry. Goodbye, Columbus. | Weill, Claudia. Girlfriends.

Close Reading of a Scene:

Syllabus Description: The first major assignment, a close reading, asks you to briefly (3-5 pages) analyze and close read a scene from any of the films. You should not incorporate secondary readings; tell me what you see going on in the scene and think through it.

Further Detail: Choose a scene from either Hester Street, Funny Girl, or The Heartbreak Kid. A "scene" is going to look different for each of you, and depending on the film, but generally, it should be a short portion of the film with a beginning, middle, and end of its own, usually involving some sort of change for a character, or containing an "event." Your close reading should describe the scene (think back to the terminology of our first reading, and use the Villarejo reading for further info), tell us where the scene is in the film (providing some context), and then perform a close reading. What happens in the scene, and why? How does the director show us what happens, and why? You can break down the writing as well as the performances, mise-en-scene, etc, putting the focus on whichever aspect of the scene seems most important.

Comparative Close Reading:

Syllabus Description: The second major assignment, a comparative close reading, asks you to briefly (3-5 pages) analyze and close read two scenes from two of the films (one scene from each film). You should not incorporate secondary readings; tell me what you see going on in the scene and think through it. The idea of this assignment is to close read two scenes in conjunction with each other; how, when read together, do they change/tell us something new?

Further Detail: Choose two scenes, from any of the films we've watched thus far, and close read them in comparison to one another. You should choose two films you have not yet done a close reading on. If you MUST choose the same film as your first close reading (you really shouldn't!) then it MUST be a different scene than the one you used in the previous paper.

A "scene" is going to look different for each of you, and depending on the film, but generally, it should be a short portion of the film with a beginning, middle, and end of its own, usually involving some sort of change for a character, or containing an "event." Your close reading should describe the scene (think back to the terminology of our first reading, and use the Villarejo reading for further info), tell us where the scene is in the film (providing some context), and then perform a close reading. What happens in the scene, and why? How does the director show us what happens, and why? You can break down the writing as well as the performances, mise-en-scene, etc, putting the focus on whichever aspect of the scene seems most important.

The important thing this time around though is giving good space to both films, both scenes; you shouldn't spend more than a sentence or two summarizing the films and their context; the scenes need to be the star!

Final Research Paper:

Syllabus Description: The third major assignment for the course is the final paper, a 7-10 page paper in which you will include at least five critical sources and discuss elements of more than one of the films and how they help us understand something about the world.

Remember, the critical sources must be scholarly and peer-reviewed.

The goal is to include at least two films and using the five sources show us what we can learn from the films being read together.

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