Originally written on November 17, 2013.
It might be really hyperbolic to declare that this paper was the one I was born to write. But goddamn it, I was born to write this paper. Woody Allen is one of my heroes despite the many controversies that have surrounded his career, and his constantly entertaining and intellectually stimulating films present a sophisticated approach to comedy, one I can only help to reach in my career. (I’ll now take a break to film myself dancing like an idiot). Okay, I’m back. Oh right, context. I wrote this paper almost a year ago for my Jewish Image in Popular Film class. It’s one of the few papers I’ve written in college that I loved doing from beginning to end, relishing the days I could type up the next page with the enthusiasm that I have filming my silly projects. We were assigned to write about any kind of aspect of Jewish culture in relation to film. The first thought that popped into my head was “Woody Allen”. “Woody Allen.” Originally, this paper was much more ambitious as I wanted to talk about 3 films, but when I remembered I only had to write 10 pages, I stuck to just Annie Hall (1977) and Zelig (1983) as potential films to examine. I was lucky enough that I discussed Zelig the previous semester for a Comic Film class so I had my sources ready. I don’t why it’s taken this long for me to finally post it on the blog, but I’m glad that it’s finally here, after numerous re-edits. Brace yourselves, this is a long one.
Woody Allen is one of the most renowned Jewish filmmakers still working today. Beginning as a comedy director with many very broad Marx Brothers-like parodies, his nearly 40 year long career has seen him delving into different topics and situations that make it difficult to predict what his next film will be. Many agree that Allen's departure from broad comedies and into a more serious kind of comedy led to a development of Allen as a distinguished filmmaker. What Allen cannot completely remove from his reputation is that he was one of the funniest Jewish comedians in the early 60’s. The Woody Allen archetype of the neurotic Jew had been seen in many films since Allen began making comedies like Take the Money and Run but that might be one of the reasons why Allen tried to expand his abilities as a filmmaker and abandon the persona that endeared him to many audiences at the time. Critics note this departure after the release of his Oscar-winning film, Annie Hall, released in 1977 (1). The comedy in Annie Hall is derived from the characters, rather than extraordinary situations, and the grounded reality that the film both displays and takes advantage of due to the amount of times Allen breaks the fourth wall. Allen was aware of the success of Annie Hall but became resentful of it, especially with the amount of critics who claimed it was an autobiographical film. 6 years later, Allen made Zelig, a film which criticizes the culture that made him successful in the first place. Annie Hall's popularity was such that Allen's characterization became a cultural hero amongst the many other classic characters of cinema. This had a two-pronged effect, however, giving audiences another template to perceive Jews, leading to the contemporary variation of the neurotic Jew stereotype. Allen, in both Annie Hall but especially in Zelig, analyzes the culture that both canonized his character and oversimplified it to allow the neurotic Jew stereotype to become a part of the American culture.
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Annie Hall is considered as Woody Allen's first foray into a more serious form of comedy and this is shown via the characterizations and the more broad vision depicted in Annie Hall. Woody Allen plays Alvy Singer, a middle-aged comedian, who leads the audience through the ins and outs of his relationship with Annie Hall, played by Diane Keaton. Vincent Canby, in his review of the New York Times, details how the experimental format of flashbacks, brief animated segments, and Allen's direct monologues to the audience are parts of "Alvy Singer's freewheeling, self-depreciating, funny and sorrowful search for the truth about his on-again, off-again affair with a beautiful young woman who is as emotionally bent as he is”. (2) Allen, unlike his more bombastic and entertaining comedies, focused himself in Annie Hall. The film goes in excruciating detail over every aspect of Alvy and Annie's relationship but does not detail specifically as to why the relationship eventually ends. The film's success exists in how it treats the relationship as a mature and adult complication that does not reduce itself into a simplistic melodrama. Allen shows the many relationships as they happened and how both sides were at fault to their eventual end. The film's realistic portrayal of relationships was a part of its mass appeal, but the American culture latched onto Allen's inimitable character of Alvy Singer.
Woody Allen's character of Alvy Singer is unabashedly Jewish yet has nuances that makes the character distinctly a Woody Allen character. Alvy, as a comedian, makes many intellectual observances about the world as a whole yet also constantly questions the necessity of life ever since he was a child knowing that the universe would spread apart in billions of years. Alvy's comedy routine is his public forum for his theories and ideas but he does not limit it to only that audience, but also the audience watching the film via his brief monologues to the camera. While Allen does not strictly attach himself personally to Alvy's character, David Galef, in his essay, Getting Even: Literary Posterity and the Case for Woody Allen, notices that "Allen's image, it turns out, is quite carefully cultivated: straddling know-ing and knowledgeable, hapless yet hip-in short…" (3) In this sense, Alvy Singer and Woody Allen are almost inseparable except if its considered that Alvy is a character that Woody Allen plays instead of an autobiographical depiction of himself. According to Don L. F. Nilsen, this is not the case. Nilsen, in his essay, Contemporary Jewish-American Authors, notices the trend Allen constantly portraying himself as " a bumbling Jewish neurotic with thick eyeglasses and a sad expression on his face. He has obsessive worries and guilts, a tentative voice, and various physical mannerisms like shrugs, quivers and hesitant pauses.” (4) The autobiographical aspect is questioned with how similar Alvy's life is similar to Allen's upbringing as a comedian but the audience viewing the film cannot help but have difficulty separating the character of Alvy from Allen himself. Ruth Perlmutter, in her essay, Woody Allen's Zelig: An American Jewish Parody, observes how "[Allen] is forever playing with the tension between star status and his own self-berating position as the typical schlemiel-that is, the bumbling inferior Jew…" (5) Allen begins to challenge the audience's perception of his Jewish characterization via his own character's insecurity with anti-Semitism.
Annie Hall directly acknowledges the American public’s tendency of simplifying Jewish cultural aspects via Alvy Singer's observations of the culture's perception of Jewish people. Alvy constantly tells his movie-star friend Rob, played by Tony Roberts, about how the culture sees him first as a Jew then as a person. Alexandra Heller-Nichols, in her essay, If Life Were Only Like This: Truth, Love and Annie Hall, details Alvy's perception of himself when he speaks to Rob as they walk over to the tennis courts: "Alvy has no illusions about the city, and even jokes about its perceived difference from the rest of America: 'Don't you see the rest of the country looks upon New York like we're left-wing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers?'...'I think of us that way sometimes and I live here’”. (6) He is aware of the public's perception of himself as a Jew based on his physical traits and behavior. Alvy's anxiety leads him to think that someone, who he has a meeting with, was saying "Jew" instead of "you". Alvy is also guilty of stereotyping someone, specifically his first wife, Allison Portchnik, played by Carol Kane. Alvy meets Allison at a public rally and goes on to describe everything he notices about her in excruciating detail that even he notices that he been rambling on for too long. Allison responds by saying, "That was wonderful. I love being reduced to a cultural stereotype." Here, Allen demonstrates how ridiculous typecasting is and how its constant use makes it difficult to reject its effect and, in Allison’s case, relish it as well. In another blink-or-you-will-miss-it moment, Alvy has dinner with Annie's relatives, including Annie's anti-Semitic grandmother, who briefly pictures Alvy as a Hassidic Jew. This depiction of Alvy is a very ignorant and fear-mongering portrayal of all Jews with the impression that they do not change with time. Allen's choice in depicting himself this way is an aspect of self-depreciating humor that's regularly recognized as a Jewish trait.
Alvy Singer can be described as an inherently Jewish character although this perception of his humor is also perpetuating the stereotype of the neurotic Jew. Woody Allen's character has been considered as a Jewish character because of the many jokes he makes about himself. Allen, as understood by his birth name of Allen Stuart Konigsberg, was born a Jewish person and the characters he portrays are similar to the schlemiel. Nilsen describes the schlemiel as " vulnerable and inept...not saintly or pure, just weak. But he is highly symbolic of Jewish culture. The Jew, like the schlemiel, has traditionally not been in a position of strength, but has allowed humor to turn his weakness into strength”. (7) Alvy Singer does make up a lot of the traits as described by Nilsen but this limits Alvy's character into a template that ignores other aspects of Alvy's character like his diffidence in terms of sex. Joseph Mintz, in his essay, Stereotypes of Traditional Jewish Humor, perceives that "the 'uniquely Jewish' psyche is a fallacy of the same order as those that allow...the proliferation of Jewish stereotypes. It is generally agreed upon that there is no biological basis for the idea of race, and the idea of a "Jewish mind" is certainly a racist idea”. (8) In every subsequent characterization of a Jewish male, each of them follows the same template of the schlemiel as depicted with Alvy Singer's character. With this type of simplification, the culture latches onto Alvy Singer as the go-to portrayal for most Jewish males and hence, another simplified way the culture can observe the Jewish people. As Mintz mentions, "...the notion that Jewish humor is a uniquely self-deprecating tradition is itself a cultural stereotype". After Annie Hall, it would be 6 years until Allen directly referenced the nature of the American culture in his mockumentary, Zelig.
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The film, Zelig, released in 1983, has a documentary-style and that also applies to the performances depicted in the film. (9) The film alternates from black and white archival footage to color interviews of people who either knew Leonard Zelig, played by Woody Allen, or discuss Zelig's cultural and historical relevance. Allen's performance of Zelig is very restrained in comparison to Alvy Singer who gets the majority of attention in Annie Hall. This allows the film to construct an idealized vision of who Zelig really is. Leonard Zelig becomes a more enigmatic character via the countless amounts of black and white photography showing Zelig metamorphosing into the people he is around. Perlmutter notes that Zelig "can change color, time, space, and dialect, thus personifying the comic's ability to defy natural and physical laws with his body distortions. Zelig can swell, dislocate, and forever adapt”. (10) The only fully formed character is Eudora Fletcher played by Mia Farrow. Farrow plays a determined psychiatrist who is the only one who sees Zelig as a human being and wants to cure him of his unusual condition. Eudora's involvement with Leonard humanizes her from every other character including the narrator, voiced by Patrick Harris, whose narration involves him in Zelig's exploitation as much as anyone else caught in the Zelig craze. Zelig details Leonard's life in an approachable format that is easy for the public to digest but, at the same time, disguising it to portray what the public wants to see.
The film Zelig knowingly chooses certain aspects of Leonard's life to highlight and expunge the culture's approach to glorifying its heroes. Leonard Zelig is a major departure from Allen's other characters. In his review for Film Quarterly, Robert Greenhut notices that, though" the title character takes his place among the neurotically self-deprecating comic-romantic protagonists of Allen's films, Zelig is perhaps the most distanced figure in that group”. (11) Discussion about Zelig begins with other intellectuals talking about his cultural relevance and impact and the film deliberately waits until a few minutes in before Leonard is allowed to speak and even then, he believes that he is a psychologist so the audience is delayed even further to Zelig's actual personality. The film is not only about Zelig; it also follows the struggles of Eudora Fletcher who is seen smoking by herself in some brief camera shots that are voyeuristic in nature considering how Eudora's private moment is now exposed to the audience against her wishes. The documentary begins tracing the growing relationship between Leonard Zelig and Eudora Fletcher as a way of understanding the fantastical scenario of a human chameleon. Perlmutter notes that "Zelig's uncanny ubiquity challenges the foolish consistency of trapping a central figure within a single-line discourse. The film thus interrogates the classical method of wooing the audience with the logic of sequential flow, progress toward closure, and other structures that propel invested characters along a narrative trajectory”. (12) Nevertheless, the film is about Zelig's extraordinary ability although Allen makes constant allusions to how Leonard Zelig is an allegory for the American Jew.
Zelig’s ability to morph into a different character is very similar to the actual dilemma of Jews trying to assimilate in America. Throughout the film, the audience learns of Zelig's motivations for trying to change into a different person. Zelig first gains his ability after he is startled by someone and transforms into that person to make himself feel more comfortable. Perlmutter notes how Zelig's eagerness "to be absorbed into the dominant culture...epitomizes the dilemma of the American Jew who wants to change his or her ethnic envelope in order to be socially integrated”. (13) This idea is highlighted further when Zelig can successfully transform into a black person and, as the narrator states, as an "Oriental". Seeing Allen in blackface immediately recalls the difficulties Jewish people had in the early 20th century trying to succeed in the entertainment industry and the only way they could ever get any work is by performing in blackface. As Greenhut notices, "the conformist impulse leads Zelig to become a Nazi in Hitler's Germany: as such he is not only "the ultimate conform-ist" but also a bitterly ironic comment on the Jew who, in the words of one of the film's Reds-like "witnesses," "wanted to assimilate like crazy”. (14) Zelig's success could not have happened if it was not for the wanton desire of the culture to cash in the Zelig craze.
Zelig becomes an unusual mockumentary when the audiences notes just how charged American culture became with its rampant obsession with Leonard Zelig. The brief interview from academic intellectuals only hints at the impact that Leonard had in America during the apex of his popularity. Not long after, the film's narrator talks about the immense amount of products and advertisements that plastered Zelig's image almost everywhere. This was the result of Zelig's uncle manipulating Leonard from the beginning of his life, including keeping Zelig in a cage in a carnival where he could seen along with the other “freaks”. Perlmutter discusses how "[t]his character hybridization–Zelig as both a freak (societal deviant, exceptional man with a unique identity) and a conformist (loser of identity) fed to the consuming public–reinforces a view of parody as a modal barometer of the social self”. (15) The public puts both Zelig’s achievements and his failures into view. Zelig's personal life becomes the source of scandal and the public's shifting views of him as a hero or as a scoundrel depend entirely on what their moral viewpoints are. For example, Leonard is forced into exile once allegations of women he slept with begin to turn up and the public vilifies Zelig’s adultery. Simply put, Zelig is at the mercy of the public's view and his survival is dependent on what their opinions are of him. Greenhut states that "...Zelig is also the bewildered and dehumanized victim of a society in which he is alternately glamorized and vilified, glorified and institutionalized, celebrated and commercialized, liberated and "fine-tuned," commemorated and forgotten”. (16)
Throughout Zelig, Allen finds many opportunities to put the culture's values into question into understanding why they misused Leonard Zelig. The documentary itself is guilty of exploiting Zelig. During one of the interview segments, a TV personality interviews Eudora Fletcher's mother. Every one of his questions has a positive inflection to it but Eudora's mother could not care less about her daughter's notoriety and tells the interviewer how much she hates her daughter much to the interviewer's chagrin who cuts the interview short. Here, the film details the culture's obsession to only wanting to observe a digestible aspect of the story and ignoring the most humane ideas that flesh out Zelig as a character but does not reduce him to a novelty. Perlmutter notices that "[Allen's] mockery of the movies' promotion of fandom, imitation, and fantasy and a preoccupation with his status as an American Jew [is] inserted into and engulfed by a problematic culture”. (17) Allen, throughout the film, pinpoints the viewers to Zelig's reputation and public image existing only because of his ability to transform into other people, a remarkable yet simplistic feat. Allen also chose to have his spoken character reduced to only a few short segments as the legend of Leonard Zelig grew. Here, Allen notifies to the audience how the public's view of ideas is the only one that matters, no matter how general it is. Allen is aware of his neurotic Jew personality that lead to stardom but also notes how the public chose to exploit that character in order to simplify the culture's view of male Jews, bringing back into mind how Annie's anti-Semitic grandmother immediately viewed Alvy as a Hassdic Jew and nothing else. Even the film, Zelig, acknowledges this at the very end once Zelig and Eudora are reunited and the camera chooses not to follow them when they stroll behind their house, out of the public's eye and out of the audience’s as well.
Woody Allen has explored many different themes and genres since directing Annie Hall almost 35 years ago, going far beyond his character of Alvy Singer with the interest of exploring different assortments of characters. Allen never completely abandons his schlemiel character, playing a director who falls in love with a TV producer in Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) but his treatment of the character in Zelig demonstrates Allen’s acknowledgement of the character’s effect to the culture yet challenges himself to go beyond the character and the culture’s simplification of the character. Allen, as a Jewish filmmaker, did not hesitate to present aspects of his culture or his insecurities and that alone is an admirable accomplishment considering how, beyond the simplicities of the schlemiel, Allen’s characterization harkens on difficult themes of death, philosophy, and identity. Once the American culture can notice these characteristics, a more intellectual discussion of his films can begin.
Works Cited:
(1) Annie Hall. Dir. Woody Allen. By Woody Allen and Marshall Brickman. Perf. Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, and Tony Roberts. MGM Home Entertainment, 1977. DVD.
(2) Canby, Vincent. "Annie Hall,' Allen at His Best" New York Times (1923-Current file); Apr 21, 1977; ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The New York Times (1851-2009) pg. 77. 17 Nov 2013.
(3) Galef, David. "Getting Even: Literary Posterity and the Case for Woody Allen." South Atlantic Review, Vol. 64, No. 2 (Spring, 1999), pp. 146-160. Published by: South Atlantic Modern Language Association. JSTOR. 17 Nov. 2013
(4), (7) Nilsen, Don L. F. "Humorous Contemporary Jewish-American Authors: An Overview of the Criticism.” MELUS, Vol. 21, No. 4, Ethnic Humor (Winter, 1996), pp. 71-101. Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS). JSTOR. 17 Nov. 2013
(5), (10), (12), (13), (15), (17) Perlmutter, Ruth. (1991). “Woody Allen's Zelig: An American Jewish Parody”. A. Horton (Ed.), Comedy/Cinema/Theory, (206-221). Berkley, CA: University of California Press.
(6) Heller-Nicholas, Alexandra. "If Life Were Only Like This: Truth, Love And Annie Hall." Screen Education 70 (2013): 94-97. Film &Television Literature Index with Full Text. Web. 20 Nov. 2013.
(8) Mintz, Joseph. “Stereotypes of Traditional Jewish Humor”. Case Jewish Studies E-journal, Vol. 2, No. 2 (December 2009), pp. 3-4. Published by: Judaic Studies at CWRU. PDF. 17 Nov. 2013
(9) Zelig. Dir. Woody Allen. By Woody Allen. Perf. Woody Allen and Mia Farrow. Orion Pictures/Warner Bros, 1984. DVD.
(11), (14), (16) Greenhut, Robert. "Zelig by Woody Allen; Review by: Peter Hogue and Marion Bronson". Film Quarterly, Vol. 38, No. 1 (Autumn, 1984), pp. 28-31. Published by: University of California Press. JSTOR. 17 Nov. 2013
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