Woody on Rye: Jewishness in the Films and Plays of Woody Allen

Introduction

Vincent Brook and Marat Grinberg Introduction “You don’t have to be Jewish to appreciate Woody Allen, but it helps.” Thus quipped Foster Hirsch in the “Jewish Connection” chapter of his 1981 study of Allen’s films, Love, Sex, Death, and the Meaning of Life.2 As the title of this book proposes, Hirsch’s one-liner—if expanded to the Jewishness of Allen’s oeuvre and extended to the present—still holds. Curiously , however, few scholars have taken up the “Jewish question” in the three decades since Hirsch first broached it, even fewer since the major fissureinAllen’scareercausedbytheMiaFarrow/Soon-YiPrevinscandalof 1992/93.JeffreyRubin-Dorsky’sarticle“WoodyAllenaftertheFall:Literary Gold from Amoral Alchemy” (2003), which touches on Jewish issues and whose title foregrounds the scandal’s significance, is a notable exception.3 Yet Rubin-Dorsky’s analysis ends with Deconstructing Harry (1997), thus leavingJewishnessinAllen’soverallbodyofwork,especiallyhismorerecent efforts, still largely unexplored. Hirschhimself,insubsequentupdatesofLove,Sex,Death,andtheMeaning of Life in 1990 and 2001, has left his original “Jewish Connection” chapter unchanged. Mashey Bernstein’s 1996 essay “My Worst Fears Realized: Woody Allen and the Holocaust,” in an exhaustive list of Holocaust references in Allen’s films, similarly stops at 1992’s Shadows and Fog.4 Ruth B. Johnston’s “Joke Work: The Construction of Postmodern Jewish Identity inContemporaryTheoryandAmericanFilm”(2003)retreatstoAnnieHall (1977) as the fulcrum for her psychoanalytic study of Allen’s Jewish-inflected humor.5 Charles L. P. Silet’s 2006 anthology, The Films of Woody Allen: Critical Essays, contains three entries (out of twenty-four) dealing withAllen’sJewishness:SanfordPinsker’s“WoodyAllen’sLovableAnxious Woody Allen Retires [along with the Pope]. Two World Religions Now Leaderless! •Jewish Journal, 2013 Purim issue headline1 x Brook & Grinberg•Introduction Schlemiels,” Mark Bleiweiss’s “Self-Deprecation and the Jewish Humor of Woody Allen,” and Iris Bruce’s “Mysterious Illnesses of Human Commodities in Woody Allen and Franz Kafka: Zelig.” Yet all three fail to expand the discussion into the postscandal period; indeed, no mention is made of the scandal in the entire anthology, much less of its possible impact on Allen’s work.6 Even the latest entry in the fray, a 2012 issue of Post Script devoted exclusively to Allen’s post-1990 output, has only one Jewish-themed article —Toni-Lynn Frederick’s “Eleventh Jew: Humor and the Holocaust in WoodyAllen’sAnythingElse”—thattiptoesintothepost-2000period.7 The curious reluctance to more fully examine Jewishness in Allen’s “complete works”ishighlightedinVittorioHösle’sWoodyAllen:AnEssayontheNature of the Comical (2007). In an eighty-seven-page disquisition that manages to tie Allen to Aristophanes, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Bergson, Cervantes, Dostoevsky,andTolstoy,amongothers,Höslewaitsforthefinalparagraph tosubmitthat“Allen’scomicuniverse”owessomethingtohis“Jewishform of intellectuality.”8 This puts serious investigation of Jewishness in Allen’s pre- and postscandaloutputaboutwhereitwasin1993.InadditiontoHirsch’schapter and the aforementioned essays, this includes the following: Gerald Mast’s “Woody Allen: The Neurotic Jew as American Clown” (1987); Richard Feldstein’s“DisplacedFeminineRepresentationinWoodyAllen’sCinema” (1989);RichardFreadman’s“LoveamongtheStereotypes,orWhyWoody’s Women Leave” (1993); Sam B. Girgus’s “Philip Roth and Woody Allen: Freud and the Humor of the Repressed” (1993); the lengthy Allen section inDavidDesserandLesterFriedman’sAmerican-JewishFilmmakers(1993); and Thomas Kinne’s German dissertation Elemente jüdischer Tradition im Werk Woody Allens (Traditional Jewish elements in Woody Allen’s work; also 1993). The lack of a more all-inclusive discussion of Jewishness in Allen’s work hasnotgoneunnoticed.DanielleBerrin,inareviewofa2011PBS documentaryon Allen’scareer,found itcuriousthatforallthe“Jewishmeninvolved with the project [director Robert Weide, executive producer Bret Ratner, and financier Fisher Williams], there is little in the film that deals with Allen’s Jewish identity. And given that it’s a recurrent theme in his work, both in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, the disregard feels like a gap.”9 One gap, in particular, that pleads to be filled, from a postscandal perspective Brook & Grinberg•Introduction xi especially, is Allen’s “treatment” of women—Jewish and non-Jewish, onscreen and off. One section of Woody on Rye is thus devoted to women’s issues in Allen’s body of work. And on the “women’s question,” as on the Jewish question, Hirsch provides a lead-in. “What, again?” a friend questioned his updated coverage of Allen’s films in 2001. “Why do you want to write about that pathetic creep?” another friendcomplained,whileathird“madeanunprintablecomment.”Allthree anti-Alleniteswerewomen,fromwhichamalefriendextrapolated,“Women can’tforgivehim[forthePrevinaffair],guyscan.”10 A2012Newsweekarticle concurred:“Mostshockedofall[aboutthescandal]wereAllen’slegionsof female fans,” who felt betrayed by the quasi-incestuous action and insulted by the mangled...