Woody on Rye: Jewishness in the Films and Plays of Woody Allen ed. by Vincent Brook, Marat Grinberg (review)

Woody on Rye, when viewed from outside of the circle of scholars interested in Jewishness and Woody Allen’s movies, seems like an insider conversation content to remain that way. The volume brings together a series of respected scholars to explore ideas and themes in Allen’s movies from c. 1992 onward—films, Brook and Grinberg claim, largely overlooked in scholarship due to the “the major fissure in Allen’s career caused by the Mia Farrow/Soon-Yi Previn scandal” (ix). Unfortunately, the addition of a lens of “Jewishness” appears to hamstring the contributors—and their volume’s contribution—more than it helps. Grinberg, in his own essay, provides a justification: “Woody Allen ought to be viewed as a serious Jewish artist and philosopher, whose Jewish or indeed Judaic thinking shines through even or especially in the absence of apparent Jewish markers, thematics, or identity” (38). Yet while this pairing seems natural on the surface (and may appeal theoretically to Jewish studies), these dual foci too often turn the volume into an exercise in scholarly self-affirmation. Despite Woody Allen’s complex, and often dismissive, relationship to Judaism in his own accounts, his voice is drowned out here by scholarly fiat.

Scholarship that explores a celebrity’s or artist’s “Jewishness” has become its own cottage industry, achieving varying degrees of success. Often such studies involve combing a subject’s works for indicators of Judaism, whether obvious or coded; triangulating these observations with other mediated accounts of the artist, such as newspaper interviews or profiles; and anchoring the discussion to more general thematic ideas in the work of prominent scholars. While at times illuminating, these kinds of studies have been critiqued as more interested in arranging data to achieve a preconceived end than in letting the evidence speak for itself. An entire volume predicated on such a preconceived end, moreover—here, Allen’s Jewishness—has the trap already set. Attractive writing and humorous turns of phrase, as well as a whimsical design that replaces colons in chapter titles with a broken pair of glasses, cannot save many of the essays from suffering as a result. Historians might find particularly annoying the lack of primary materials engaged beyond Allen’s films, leading, among other things, to long plot narrations/readings (especially Annie Hall, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Deconstructing Harry, and Scoop) that can repeat across several essays. Without other historical benchmarks, moreover, the films double as their own insular history, leading to a false impression of hermeticism.

I also had difficulty with the frequency by which authors asserted signs of “Jewishness” through acknowledged stereotype: how discussions of a nose, or hypersexuality, or shortness of stature, unproblematically become paradigms of Judaism in order to establish a dialectic with Christianity or to address gender relations. A three essay “Schlemiel Studies” section proves emblematic of this approach, proclaiming the Schlemiel as a distinctive Jewish character and then labeling Allen’s characters as Schlemiels-by-presumption. A three essay section on Allen’s female characters includes a number of interesting ideas about the portrayals of Jewish women but works with such a limited amount of material that by the end arguments seem repetitious. And assertive speculation about Allen’s creative choices, given that none of the authors appeared to make any efforts to contact him, seem to emphasize the artifice of scholarly convention and its questionability here. Among many examples: “what is especially striking about Cassandra’s Dream is that Allen brings God back with a vengeance” (51). I came to wonder, as I arrived at the end of the book, if releasing the authors from the “Jewishness” target might have led to a more diverse—and, frankly, better, collection.

In contrast, James Fisher’s essay on Allen’s Broadway plays offers a glimpse of what this volume could have become. A refreshing detour from the film analyses, Fisher’s more...