New Archive:

February 2001 Issue

Uhappily Ever After?: Hollywood and its Unhealthy Depiction of Jewish Love

By Michael Aushenker
Since the days of Chaplin and Keaton, Hollywood has been on a tear to force feed us the concept that true love conquers all, no matter how improbable the pairing, how vast a couple's differences, how all-encompassing their obstacles.

Lubitsch's Shop Around The Corner united two thoroughly incompatible characters through correspondence who loathed each other in person. Wilder's Sabrina coupled an aging curmudgeon tycoon with his chauffeur's nubile daughter despite bumpy chemistry (the fact that both movies were recently remade only attests to the "true love" concept's durability).

As Good As It Gets actually attempted to connive us into believing that a young svelte waitress would fall for a crusty, paunchy, balding, obsessive-compulsive bigot nine times her age. And what about the classic Wuthering Heights, which had the gall to escalate from epic love to eternal love to supernatural love--all within the same story!

Naturally, films have deviated from the happy ending scenario. Take the Academy Award magnet, Titanic, to which people swarmed like maggots to meat.

Yet curiously, many of the aberrations that stand out in my mind involve Jewish characters. And the questions they raise are frightening.

In The Way We Were, Robert Redford courts Barbra Streisand right up until the climax, where they realize that they are not meant to be and make the mutual, painful decision to separate. If a matinee idol like Redford can't win over his ideal Jewess, what chance do the rest of us shlubs have? And can Jewish women really be that high maintenance?

The Heartbreak Kid seems to suggest so. Charles Grodin dumps his pain-in-the-kishkas wife to woo, win, and wed Cybill Shepherd, shiksa of his wet dreams. But the ending implies that Grodin's is a hollow victory.

Can Jewish men really be that jaded and detached?

People I know were charmed by the Jewish fairy tale, Crossing Delancy, but frankly, I found Amy Irving horrendously unappreciative of her suitor. The Pickle Man definitely deserved better than this Fickle Woman. And Irving's character should've spent the rest of her life celibate and pickleless.

Remember Sophie's Choice, where the Jewish Nathan (Kevin Kline), turns out to be a certified lunatic engaging his lover, Catholic Holocaust survivor Sophie (Meryl Streep), in a twisted, psychologically-manipulative relationship?

And how about the aforementioned As Good As It Gets, where a young Jewish couple are shown arguing in a diner (that is, until Nicholson's character disperses them with an anti-Semitic remark). Is this the only way we are to be perceived--neurotic, bickering, unattractive? (I don't even have time to get into A Price Above Rubies. That one you have to see for yourself to believe! ).

Of course, everyone knows that Hollywood endings are the ultimate cheat since the stories always end at the beginning. The moment Boy finally wins Girl is the second before the final credits crawl. We never see what happens next--whether the blissful note we leave the theater on sours; whether they'll weather the discord that leads to relationship wreckage. Like how he hogs the remote. Or the way she snores at night.

Living in Hollywood, you can't help but notice how thoroughly the entertainment and advertising industries have campaigned the myth of perfect love into our collective conscience. And I wonder if the lack of credible Jewish relationships onscreen figures into the equation of how we singles view our relationships. No union is simple anymore, it seems. Anyone short of perfection gets the vaudeville cane. Everything must fall precisely into place, like one of those impossible palm-held plastic puzzles where you must get the tiny metallic balls into their little holes.

From The Blue Lagoon to Creature from the Black Lagoo, the pursuit of perfect love has been a driving engine. And like the former's Brooke Shields and the latter's Gill-Man, the concept will--for better or for worse--resurface again and again. Now that we've finally moved past the stage where externally-Jewish characters are presented as second class citizens to be protected from anti-Semitism by the Great White Hope (Crossfire, The Young Lions, Gentlemen's Agreement, Schindler's List), it would be nice to see some Jews portrayed in healthy romantic relationships.

We've seen kvetching Jewish males pursuing gentile ice queens. Is the idea of a Jewish couple in love so unappetizing to mainstream America that they will not buy it? I don't think so.

After all, until recently, I never would have thought that a romantic tragicomedy set in a concentration camp could have worked either.

This article is reprinted from the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles where Michael Aushenker is a staff writer.

lifestyles | fiction | politics | daily buzz | relationships | culture | social action | spirituality | chatroom | J-TV giude | win stuff | e-postcard | about us | archive | disclaimer