Mamet__Jewish_Identity

David Mamet: The Americanist: Jewish identity This part of the paper will try to examine David Mamet’s identity and vision of Judaism and how this fits into contemporary American society. Therefore Mamet’s Jewish identity will be compared to the analysis of one of his own created fictional characters “Bobby Gold” from the movie Homicide which he both wrote and directed himself in 1991. This police drama is probably his most obvious film about Jewish culture, it portrays a rather hostile world filled with cultural ignorance and confusion about loyalty and also questioning the themes of ethnicity, identity and integrity themselves. Mamet investigates here what it means to belong to race and place through the quest for a criminal on one hand and on the other a spiritual journey to home. The protagonist of Homicide is a homicide detective on a big city police force named Robert (Bobby) Gold, only a Jew in name. He has repressed his Jewishness but remains defenseless both in the face of anti-Semitism from non-Jews and rejection by other Jews, because he isn’t sufficiently Jewish, for he has been assimilated to American culture. According to the Jews in the film, one can only call himself a Jew when he is aware of Jewish history and the perpetual threat against their kind. In a nutshell “To the non-cops he’s a cop, but to the cops he’s a Jew” (Mamet, D. 1992) On the surface structure he solves murder cases like any other detective, but on a deeper level he is actually looking for a place somewhere he belongs and an identity in this world he can call his home. Mamet conjoins “place and personal identity” with “the figures of belonging and exile” (Chaudhuri, U. 1995) “home” is one of the key principles of Homicide and is constantly contrasted to the homelessness and exile of the American Jew. This mirrors the personal experiences of Mamet and his friends “who grew up in reformed Judaism and didn’t feel sufficiently either Jewish or American which is much the position that Gold in this movie finds himself” (Brunette, P. 1991) Quoting Mamet about home “ I don’t know what Jewish homes look like” (Mamet, D. 1989). In the beginning of the movie Gold is an assimilated, white washed American Jew, who denies himself his heritage and this has led him to accepting the police as his family. (Horn, B. 1993) However this so called “home” is actually an illusion. At the police station Gold is victim of anti-Semitism by his colleagues and his loyalty is put into question several times. However Gold still believes his fellow officers are his family and he theirs. “Homes” according to Leitch, have various “thematic associations. For instance: the safety of a place of shelter or refuge, the stability and security of longstanding assumptions, the basis for self-definition through family relations and a genetic sense of identity” When Gold gets reassigned to the homicide investigation of Mrs. Klein, an old Jewish shopkeeper, supposedly killed because of her ethnicity, the idea of “home” gets turned upside down by pulling the protagonist out of a safe haven. (Leitch, T. 1991) Mamet now places Gold’s old home in contrast to the Jewish home he now has to investigate for the murder of Ms. Klein. This household is covered in a holy mourning atmosphere and awkwardly silent in comparison with the noise and profanity of the police station. Gold, even though he is also Jewish, is linguistically excluded by their use of Yiddish, which he doesn’t understand and removes himself from these people by his self-hatred and anti-Semitism. He even makes the gap bigger when trying to strengthen his ties with his previous “home” the police station, making anti-Semitic remarks over the phone about how the Jews themselves were responsible for being hated, while one of the family members eavesdrops his conversation and afterwards confronts him about it. Home takes on a different perspective when Gold faces Benjamin, an influential Jew, in a secret meeting. Nor the imperfect home of the police department nor the alien home of the Jewish family, the home Benjamin mentions is one of a literal and spiritual sorts, namely the home of Israel, Zion. Caught in a dilemma, Gold is told he will be welcomed home if he gives up a logged piece of evidence (the list of names found in Mrs. Klein’s basement), currently in police’s possession, and he gets thrown out if he does not cooperate. Gold is thus forced to choose between his loyalty to the police force that has been his home all the time, and Judaism, which is yet alien to him. “Where are your loyalties” Benjamin inquires, meaning that only a true Jew would do everything for the sake of his people. According to Ozick’s definition of a Jew: “Being a Jew is something more than being an alienated marginal sensibility with kinky hair. Simply: to be a Jew is to be covenanted; or, if not committed so far, to be at least aware of the possibility of becoming covenanted; or, at the very minimum, to be aware of the Covenant itself” (Ozick, C. 1984) The conclusion of Homicide is a rather dark one. Gold ends up as both an emotional and physical cripple when he gets shot by Randolph the cop killer and gets deserted by both families: the cops and the Jews. Gold thus fulfills the classical requirements of a scapegoat: he is broken, crippled, outcast, and finally enlightened. He is the historical figure of the Jew as “the Other, whose faulty gait has long been viewed as a racial marker that distinguishes the Jew” (Gilman 1991 b, 39). Gold thus has found his identity; he is no longer a stranger to himself. Those who search for a moral in Homicide will find none, suggests Mamet : “it has no moral. It is not a cautionary tale…It’s a myth” (Vermeulen, M. 1997). Robert Alter’s “The Jew Who Didn’t Get Away” might shed another light on the conclusion: “The central fact about American Jewish fiction, is that it is an expression of Jews in transition, an attempt by American Jewish writers to articulate the ambivalences of a confused cultural identity, or the reflex of guilt in the transition from one identity to another.” (Alter,R. 1969) Therefore we can conclude that American Jews who lack religious or communal commitment are likely to base their sense of Jewishness on support for Israel and on the Holocaust and formulate a reactive Jewish identity inspired by fear of persecution and the desire to use force in which we can carefully include both Gold and Mamet. Word Count: 1097 Bibliography * Alter, R. (1969). After the Tradition: Essays on Modern Jewish Writing. New York: E.P. Dutton. * Brunette, P. (1991,10th February). “Mamet Views Cops Through a New Lens.” New York Times, sec 2,13,21. * Chaudhuri, U. (1995). Staging Place: The Geography of Modern Drama. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. * Gilman, S. L. (1986). Jewish Self Hatred: Anti-Semitism and the Hidden Language of the Jews. Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press. * Horn, B. (1993)“Jews, Cops, and Jokes” Midstream 39, no. 9:19-20. * Kane, L. (1999). Weasels and Wisemen. Macmillan Press LTD. * Leitch, T. (1991). Find the Director and Other Hitchcock Games. Athens, Ga. and London: University of Georgia Press. * Mamet, D. (1989). Some Freaks. New York: Viking Penguin. * Mamet, D. (1992). Homicide. New York: Grove Press. * Ozick, C. (1984). Art and Ardor. New York: E.P. Dutton * Vermeulen, M. (1991, 7th October). “Mamet’s Mafia.” New York Observer.