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since Wed, 26 Dec 2007 20:04:17.
Sandler Succeeds Where Spielberg Failed
by Joachim Martillo (ThorsProvoni@aol.com) and Karin Friedemann
Political Meaning of You Don't Mess with the Zohan
Adam Sandler and his co-writers constructed a screenplay from You Don't Mess with the Zohan from elements consisting of
- the exhausted Israeli assassin theme,
- the Israeli-Jewish Palestinian Romeo and Juliet plot, and
- comedic or action-adventure routines from various Israeli, American, Jewish, and British films.
Not only is the movie above average for an American comedy -- laughs, and lots of them for Americans -- not just a chuckle, but it is also exceptionally political, for the screenwriters injected many liberal Zionist ideas into the script possibly as part of a strategy to get it past Zionist Jewish gatekeepers in the American film industry.
With the exception of an allegorical reading of the remake of Planet of the Apes, Zohan is possibly the best Hollywood movie out there on the Palestine-Israel conflict and even implicitly advocates a one-state American-style equal rights democracy albeit under the aegis of a secular leftist ideology of "working class unity" against bigoted redneck Second Amendment fanatics, who carry out false flag operations on behalf of an implausibly gentile NY real-estate developer named Walbridge in a barely concealed reference to the Walton family.
The movie is full of pre-adolescent sex jokes from start to finish and loaded with anti-Muslim, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian stereotypes.
Any religious person offended by sex jokes will be offended by this movie.
Because the film superficially obeys unwritten Hollywood rules that invariably require the hero to be a Jewish Israeli stud while the best Palestinian males must be ineffectual by comparison, Palestinian reviewers generally hated Zohan. (See Remi Kanazi's al-Jazeera article below.)
The grief that Spielberg and Kushner received for giving at best 20 seconds to the Palestinians point of view in Munich suggests that no other approach would have guaranteed successful distribution and exhibition.
Working within the Hollywood rules, Sandler subverted the Hollywood narrative. Zohan made it with about 2000 women over the age of 65 while all the women hanging on the Palestinian "villain" were under 18 including the pile of wives sharing his bed. Zohan's Palestinian archenemy wears a cap stiched with his nom de guerre of al-Shabah or in English the Phantom.
The whole shtik of sexually servicing middle-aged and elderly women seems to combine material from The Producers (2005, Stroman) and Melech LeYom Ehad (King for a Day, Assi Dayan, 1982). The former is a musical remake of the older Mel Brooks Zero Mostel version of The Producers (1968, Brooks) while the latter is a comedy focusing on false self-representation. While he was growing up, Sandler almost certainly saw both films as part of the cultural material with which Jews indoctrinate themselves.
Throughout the movie the Phantom proves to be a more successful and better person than his Israeli Jewish opponent. While Zohan feeds some bikini clad babes on the beach and uses the fish for some stupid butt crack antics, the Phantom feeds Lebanese and Palestinian orphans with fish killed during his battle with Zohan.
The movie is full of liberal Zionist slogans and delusions like: "We are all just a bunch of people trying to get jobs." It is a sort of self-serving gutter Marxism. Before the Zionist invasion Palestinians were mostly peasant farmers and not just a bunch of people trying to find jobs. According to Marxist or Socialist Zionist analysis destroying Palestinian traditional culture is a necessary first step before Palestinians and Israelis can be united in the working class revolution.
In a particularly offensive scene a Palestinian cab driver in the presence of his humiliated wife negotiates with the Phantom about a reward for capturing Zohan, and he settles for something really gross and insulting. The negotiation may have been an imperfect metaphor for the Oslo Accords and every agreement in which ordinary Palestinians get less than nothing.
In other regards the film is exceptional for Hollywood in attempting to depict Palestinians as real human beings and not as psychopathic killers. In a reprise of the 20 Palestinian seconds in Munich, the Phantom calls Israeli Jews land stealers, and Zohan replies, "You're right. My ancestors never stepped foot in this land." In addition, Zohan may be the first Hollywood movie to show hijabs correctly. No other Hollywood (or Israeli) dramatic feature film ends with a marriage where the Israeli Jewish and Palestinian couple lives happily ever after.
Sandler can get away with failing to depict the genuine abuse and suffering of Palestinians at the hands of Zionists because very little of the film actually takes place in Palestine.* Thus, You don't mess with the Zohan is not as dishonest as West Bank Story (2005, Sandel) even if it is some sort of weird male fantasy to think that a Palestinian (or Jewish) gal would want a guy, who poked so many women in her presence.
The film Seres queridos (2004, Harari and Pelagri -- Only Human), which was also a highly gimmicky comedy, addressed Palestinian Jewish (not Palestinian Israeli-Jewish) intermarriage but far more superficially.
Waiting for Quds (2005, Blachor) provides a more serious documentary approach to the topic from an Israeli standpoint as does Forbidden Marriages in the Holy Land (1995), which was an Israeli television documentary directed by the Palestinian director Khleifi.
Torn Apart (1989, Fisher) is the archetypal Israeli Jewish Palestinian Romeo and Juliet film, in which the Palestinian gal is killed under circumstances such that Palestinians could be blamed. Hamsin (1982, Wachsman) and A Very Narrow Bridge (1985, Dayan) also address the topic.
In many scenes Zohan has a massive codpiece to suggest Israeli Jewish power and potency, but eventually Zohan admits that it is really all Bush as if to say that Israel's might is not real but actually derives from decisions of President Bush.
The pubic hair shtik may also be an allusion to Austin Powers chest-hair joke as well as a subtle reference to the visual effect of Ronit Elkabetz' impressive pubic fur in Hatuna Meuheret (2001, Koshashvili -- Late Marriage), which addressed tensions in sexual relations among various Jewish communities within Israel.
Sandler borrowed scenes from Rocky and several other American films. The disillusioned assassin plot with metrosexual subthemes probably indicates familiarity on Sandler's part with Walk on Water, (2004, Fox)
You don't mess with the Zohan was noteworthy
- for not mentioning the Holocaust,
- for mocking Israeli achievements in the 1967 war, and
- for implicitly ridiculing Neocon scare-mongering.
The movie ended somewhat weirdly, for the Palestinians and Israeli Jews build their own "Peace and Harmony Mall" after they defeat Walbridge's plan to destroy their neighborhood to make space for his mall. It appears to be a metaphor for the one-state solution. [West Bank Story implied a similar outcome for its protagonist couple also consisting of a Palestinian Female and Israeli Jewish male.]
Cultural Implication of You Don't Mess with the Zohan
As the old Eastern European-based Jewish humor loses meaning in contemporary America, Sandler's film may presage a new Jewish humor that develops comedic themes by using Israel and Israeli Jewish Palestinian relations in combination with a few surviving familiar Hollywood Jewish humor devices like Zohan's patently American very not Israeli Jewish parents or the feygele (fag) jokes.
The Nanny television series showed an early weakening of traditional Jewish humor themes in that the key comedic element lay in the tension between the British father and the American nanny, who happened to be Jewish, and not in tensions between Jews and Gentiles. In a few episodes the writers attempted to introduce more purely Jewish comedy by using Israel as the location.
The Buffy the Vampire-Slayer television series provides more evidence of the demise of traditional Jewish humor in that Sander Harris and Willow Rosenberg occasionally mention their Jewish heritage, but the writers never managed to develop any plots, themes or comedy as a result of this Jewish background.
The Spielberg production of the Farrelly brothers remake of The Heartbreak Kid is the smoking gun for the death of traditional Jewish humor in that the Farrelly brothers as directors completely eliminated all the Jewish subthemes that were so important in the original Elaine May version of the story. In contrast, my rewrite of The Heartbreak Kid experimented with creating a new Jewish humor in the context of the conflict between Israeli Jews and Palestinians.
[Zohan also introduced a new vocabulary to replace traditional Hollywood Yiddish. See The "You Don't Mess With the Zohan" glossary.]
Other Movies From Which Zohan Borrowed Important Elements
Wanted Dead or Alive -- proving hero's decency by disinterested intervention to resolve a conflict to which the hero has no connection, similar story, plot structure, and scene breakdown
The Naked Gun -- some Leslie Nielsen comedy routines
Long Kiss Goodnight -- false flag operation to blame Arabs
Black Sunday -- exhausted Israeli agent that wants out of the service
Borat -- see Kazakhstan is here - Israel Opinion:Ynetnews and The Jewish Chronicle - Borat: the backlash starts here
Coneheads -- where Coneheads used French, Zohan uses Australian -- routine also appeared in a Star Trek:TNG time-travel episode in which Data explains his paleness by French origin
Little Drummer Girl -- exhausted Israeli agent that wants out of the service
Note
* Sandler probably could not have created effective humor if the predominant locale had been in Palestine while putting most of the dramatic action within the USA increases American audience identification.
| You Don't Mess With the Racism |
| 28/06/2008 03:19:00 PM GMT |
 Sandler's new flick takes Hollywood chicanery and stereotypes that denigrate Arabs to an unprecedented level.By Remi Kanazi I love Adam Sandler. From Billy Madison to Happy Gilmore to the Chanukah Song, the predecessor of the Superbad generation has effortlessly conquered the domain of slapstick comedy and inappropriate jokes. But damn you Scuba Steve! If you're going to propagate misinformation about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, do it quietly—or at least in your non-comedic life. You Don't Mess With the Zohan, Sandler's new flick, takes Hollywood chicanery and stereotypes that denigrate Arabs to an unprecedented level—surpassing hit flicks like the Kingdom, the Siege, and every Arnold Schwarzenegger and Chuck Norris movie that came before it. I group Zohan with other shamelessly racist action movies because a film should at least be minutely funny to be categorized as a comedy. For the Sandler diehards and hilarity-loving skeptics, I should clearly state: using race and prejudices to engender laughter is not the problem. Mel Brooks and the creators of South Park exploit stereotypes far beyond anything Sandler has ever done, but unlike Zohan, I don't think insidious propaganda and underlying racism drive their comedy. After all, if this hebetudinous clunker was just comedy, Sandler and company wouldn't have, as the New York Times reported, sought out Arab actors to give the movie "legitimacy." Their search was successful and a few token Arabs showed their presence to innocuously inform the public that it is okay to vilify the crazy towel-headed terrorists once again. What makes this movie even worse than many of the unfavorable movies made post-9/11 is Zohan's disarming presentation; it is a comedic approach to understanding the inner workings of the substandard Arab people. Like the job stealing Mexicans, the liquor store robbing Blacks, and the HIV infested gays, negative stereotypes in Zohan strip down the Arab people to RPG wielding animals that senselessly thirst for Jewish blood. From the start of the film, Sandler's character, Zohan, is positioned as the altruistic hero—an Israeli Mossad agent who reluctantly kills Palestinian "terrorists," while forgoing his real dream: to cut hair in the US for Paul Mitchell. Zohan is "brave," "lovable," and "funny," and even his stereotypical chauvinism is eaten up by women (and men) throughout the movie—including his eventual Palestinian love interest, Dalia. The Israeli narrative is interwoven into the fabric of the film, including propagandistic reminiscences by Zohan's father who recalls the oft-repeated myth of being surrounded "on all sides" by powerful enemies during the Six Day War—a war in which Israel preemptively struck and dominated those "enemies." In line with Israeli and Western intelligence, Israel won the war in six days (and five hours, as Zohan's father dutifully reminds us)—so much for existential threats and heroic narratives. Other historical revisions include a reference in a verbal battle between a Palestinian and Israeli shop owner, in which the Palestinian proclaimed, "Give it up, like you gave up the Gaza Strip!" This biting taunt, while not as blatant as the common stereotype, infers that Israel "gave up" the Gaza Strip and further insinuates that Israel had claim to it. The "humorous" jeer glosses over the glaring reality: Israel still occupies Gaza's borders, airspace, imports and exports, and has economically strangulated and suffocated 1.4 million Palestinians in the world's largest open-air prison. But rewriting history (and regurgitating jokes from 1996) is hardly the movie's worst crime. The portrayal of Palestinians as ugly, dirty, incompetent, stupid, goat loving terrorists was jammed down the viewer's throat more times than Zohan's lame hummus jokes. It becomes obvious to the audience why these good looking, suave, kindhearted Israelis have to kill these evil Palestinian "terrorists"—because they hate Jews more than they hate soap. The most egregious grievance by a Palestinian "terrorist" throughout the film was the stealing of a pet goat. Israel has killed more than 4,000 Palestinians since the start of the second intifada, including nearly a 1000 children, yet the main gripe of these rabid "terrorists" is a stereotypical love for hillside animals. This "inoffensive" scenario is the equivalent of a scene in a Hollywood "comedy" made by a Palestinian filmmaker stereotypically portraying Jews as pissed off about being sent to Auschwitz because they found out that Hitler was going to make them pay for the train ride. A particular scene in Zohan went beyond comprehension: Sandler's casting agency rounded up a handful of children to play Palestinians throwing rocks at Zohan. What does Zohan do in response to the actions of these soon-to-be terrorists? He gleefully catches the stones and turns them into the equivalent of a balloon animal. One is supposed to toss aside any arising sensitivities and overlook the many instances Israeli snipers and soldiers have shot Palestinian children in the head or taken their eyes out with rubber bullets because of these rocks Zohan takes with a smile. The posturing of the noble and affable Mossad agent is a slick attempt to humanize Israel and make the Mossad (an outfit that has engaged in countless operations of state terrorism) look like the valiant GI Joe force in the Middle East combating jihadi thugs in the name of good. But Sandler's character is not only a hero, he's also a humanitarian. There are multiple scenes where Zohan informs the audience that Israelis do their best to minimize the loss of innocent Palestinian life, when an examination of the conflict by Israeli human rights organizations exposes quite the opposite. Other stereotypes saturate the movie. The Palestinian salon that Zohan gets a job at is described as a dump, Palestinians constantly cheer for the "terrorists," a crowd of Palestinians applaud the death of "heroic" Zohan (which he faked), and the "terrorists" are so stupid and illiterate that they purchase Neosporin instead of liquid nitrogen to make their bomb to kill Zohan. There is no distinction made between Hezbollah and Hamas. Furthermore, the film conveniently illustrates how Israelis in the U.S., as "fellow" natives of the Middle East, suffer the same discrimination and tribulations as Arabs in a post-911 world. Oddly, Israelis are passed off as "brown" and "other" like the Arabs in the film, yet Zohan's parents look like European Ashkenazi Jews. Moreover, while Israelis are shown as native hummus loving Middle Easterners, Zohan's family is portrayed distinctively differently from the backwards Arabs. Zohan's parents are sweet, comforting, reasonable and accepting from beginning to end, not rigid like their Arab counterparts. Even when Zohan finally captures Dalia's heart, his parents show up in America and warmly embrace their relationship without question—while Dalia and others resist the notion of a courtship between the two and tells Zohan that her family would never accept him. Ah, if only all Arabs could just get to know Israelis and see how kind, generous, and amorous they all are, the sooner we could all sit in a circle singing Kumbaya over s'mores and unfunny Zohan hummus jokes. The worst dialogue throughout this 102 minute laughless action flick is made by Dalia (played by Emmanuelle Chriqui), Zohan's eventual Palestinian love interest. She serves at the omnipotent propagandist—blaming the troubles of the conflict on "extremists" and "hate" on both sides. She endlessly and vaguely laments about how much "hate" there is "over there," and describes to Zohan that things are "different here." As any knowledgeable American knows, Palestinians and Israelis love each other here in the U.S.; they frequently have bake sales together; they form sit-ins for blind coexistence on college campuses; and have Palestinian/Israeli karaoke nights where they sing their favorite Beatles tunes like Give Peace a Chance. What Sandler, and co-writers Judd Apatow and Robert Smigel, fail to understand is that before there was Hamas, Yasser Arafat, Fatah, the PLO, or any resistance movement, there was the dispossession of the Palestinian people, whereby 780,000 indigenous Palestinians were displaced from their homeland by Jewish gangs and terror groups. Flash forward 60 years and the Palestinian people are living in squalor in demolished towns and refugee camps enduring a 40 year occupation that strangulates their economy and diminishes any semblance of normalcy or a proper life. What we are to believe by watching this film is that if everyone would just stop "hating" (which Israelis are depicted as clearly willing to do, while Palestinians resist it vehemently) Israelis and Palestinians could effortlessly live together in harmony. But "hate" has little to do with a conflict rooted in a people's desire for basic human rights and an end to oppression. In the end, everything ends up happy and joyful: Zohan gets the girl, he saves the block from a conniving mall developer, and the "terrorists" stop terrorizing. But the jovial ending left a sour taste in my mouth. As nearly a dozen "nameless" Palestinians were killed by innocent and heroic Israeli soldiers last week and another report of the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza went unnoticed in the US press, people were laughing all over the country at how stupid, feeble, violent and backwards Arabs are. A diehard Sandler fan proclaimed: "He's making it for 13 year old boys. It's Critic Proof." That's what scares me most of all. -- Remi Kanazi is the editor of the forthcoming anthology of poetry, Poets For Palestine, which can be pre-ordered at www.PoetsForPalestine.com. Remi can be contacted at remroum@gmail.com. -- Middle East Online |
You Don't Mess With the Zohan
Copyright © 2008 Sony Pictures
In You Don't Mess With the Zohan, a comedy from screenwriters Adam Sandler, Robert Smigel (Triumph the Insult Comic Dog), and Judd Apatow (Knocked Up), Sandler stars as Zohan, an Israeli commando who fakes his own death in order to pursue his dream: becoming a hairstylist in New York. Dennis Dugan directs.
Dennis Dugan (dir.)
Adam Sandler
John Turturro
Emmanuelle Chriqui
Nick Swardson
Rob Schneider
Sphere: Related Content
Copyright © 2008 Sony Pictures
In You Don't Mess With the Zohan, a comedy from screenwriters Adam Sandler, Robert Smigel (Triumph the Insult Comic Dog), and Judd Apatow (Knocked Up), Sandler stars as Zohan, an Israeli commando who fakes his own death in order to pursue his dream: becoming a hairstylist in New York. Dennis Dugan directs.
Dennis Dugan (dir.)
Adam Sandler
John Turturro
Emmanuelle Chriqui
Nick Swardson
Rob Schneider
