First Person Jewish (Visible Evidence)

240 Pages·2008·2.31 MB·English

by  Alisa S. Lebow

 
First Person Jewish
V I S I B L E E V I D E N C E
Michael Renov, Faye Ginsburg, and Jane Gaines, Series Editors
V olume 22 :: Alisa S. Lebow
First Person Jewish
V olume 21 :: Malin Wahlberg
Documentary Time:
Film and Phenomenology
V olume 20 :: Jeff D. Himpele
Circuits of Culture:
Media, Politics, and Indigenous Identity in the Andes
V olume 19 :: Jennifer Deger
Shimmering Screens:
Making Media in an Aboriginal Community
V olume 18 :: Abé Mark Nornes
Forest of Pressure:
Ogawa Shinsuke and Postwar Japanese Documentary
V olume 17 :: Alexandra Juhasz and Jesse Lerner, Editors
F Is for Phony:
Fake Documentaries and Truth’s Undoing
V olume 16 :: Michael Renov
The Subject of Documentary
V olume 15 :: Abé Mark Nornes
Japanese Documentary Film:
The Meiji Era through Hiroshima
V olume 14 :: John Mraz
Nacho López, Mexican Photographer
V olume 13 :: Jean Rouch
Ciné-E thnography
V olume 12 :: James M. Moran
There’s No Place Like Home Video
V olume 11 :: Jeffrey Ruoff
An American Family:
A Televised Life
V olume 10 :: Beverly R. Singer
Wiping the War Paint off the Lens:
Native American Film and Video
Volume 9 :: Alexandra Juhasz, Editor
Women of Vision:
Histories in Feminist Film and Video
(for additional series titles, see page 204)
VISIBLE EVIDENCE SErIES, VOLUME 22

First Person Jewish


Alisa S. Lebow
University of Minnesota Press
Minneapolis
London
Portions of chapter 1 were previously published as “Memory Once Removed:
Indirect Memory and Transitive Autobiography in Chantal Akerman’s D’Est,”
Camera Obscura 52 (vol. 18, no. 1) (2003).
Copyright 2008 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a r etrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290
Minneapolis, MN 55401-2 520
http://www.upress.umn.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lebow, Alisa.
First person Jewish / Alisa S. Lebow.
p. cm. — (Visible evidence ; v. 22)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8166-4354-7 (hc : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8166-4355-4
(pb : alk. paper)
1. Jews in motion pictures. 2. Jewish motion picture producers and direc-
tors. 3. Documentary films—History and criticism. 4. Autobiography.
5. Identity (Psychology) in motion pictures. 6. Stereotypes (Social psychology)
in motion pictures.—I. Title.
PN1995.9.J46L43 2008
791.43'6529924—dc22
2008005308
Printed in the United States of America on acid-f ree paper
The University of Minnesota is an equal-o pportunity educator and employer.
15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: Reading First Person Documentary xi
1  M emory Once Removed: Indirect Memory and Transitive
Autobiography in Chantal Akerman’s D’Est 1
2  R eframing the Jewish Family 36
3  A Treyf Autocritique of Autobiography 87
4  A mbivalence and Ambiguity in Queer Jewish Subjectivity 111
Conclusion: A Limit Case for Jewish Autoethnography 149
Notes 161
Bibliography 183
Selected Filmography of Jewish Diasporic
First Person Documentaries 195
Index 199
This page intentionally left blank
Acknowledgments
A book that takes the first person as its main focus would seem a likely
place for an expansive first person narration. It is the logical choice for an
author, to match subject and subjectivity. Yet, surprisingly and perhaps in a
misplaced deference to a misbegotten sense of academicism, with the excep-
tion of the chapter about my own film Treyf I have mostly eschewed, if not
the first person grammar, at least the first person account. Even as I aspire
to the elegantly agile intellectual acrobatics of “personal criticism” projects
such as Nancy K. Miller’s Bequest and Betrayal and Annette Kuhn’s Family
Secrets—o r, for that matter, Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida—w hich
effortlessly fuse autobiographical and theoretical reflection, I have not
managed to achieve such a dignified balance here. Still, I had such studies
in mind as I wrote, and this book owes an intellectual debt to these bold
and brilliant forays into what I have come to think of as the “first person
critical” tense. And if nothing else, I will avail myself of the first person
voice liberally in this admittedly circumscribed prefatory space.
Chantal Akerman has said that a filmmaker doesn’t realize what her
film is about until it’s finished. In my case it has taken much longer than
that. This project began, without my quite realizing it, when I set out to
make a first person Jewish film with Cynthia Madansky back in 1995. We
finished the film Treyf in 1998, at which point I began researching more
seriously questions of Jewish first person representation. I had to explore
the issues raised not only by my film but by many others before begin-
ning to understand even a fraction of the forces at work on these cultural
artifacts. This exploration was the basis of a critical study that eventually,
after many incarnations (and with the assistance of a grant from the UK
Arts and Humanities Research Council and research leave granted by
the School of Cultural Studies of the University of the West of England),
turned into the book you hold in your hands.
vii
G o i n g f r o m p r a c t i c e t o t h e o r y r e q u i r e s a c o n c e p t u a l s h i f t . T h e m a k i n g
o f a f i l m , h o w e v e r p r o f o u n d i t s e f f e c t a n d m u l t i d i m e n s i o n a l i t s a p p r o a c h ,
s t i l l a l l o w s f o r o n l y l i m i t e d t h e o r e t i c a l e x p l o r a t i o n o f t h e c o n c e p t s i t
r a i s e s . O n e ’ s c o n c e r n s a r e d r i v e n b y , a n d l i m i t e d t o e x p r e s s i o n w i t h i n , t h e
t i mb e a- s e d a u d i o v i s u a l m e d i u m . F i l m m a y b e a t h i n m e d i u m f o r t h e o r y
( a s k a n y o n e w h o h a s a t t e m p t e d t o t a k e o n d e n s e t h e o r e t i c a l i s s u e s i n a
f i l m ) , b u t i t i s a n i n f i n i t e l y r e w a r d i n g o b j e c t o f s t u d y f o r t h e t h e o r i s t a n d
o n e m a d e e v e n m o r e i n t e r e s t i n g w h e n o n e w a d e s i n u n k n o w n t e r r i t o r y .
W h e n I b e g a n w r i t i n g a b o u t J e w i s h a u t o b i o g r a p h i c a l d o c u m e n t a r y , t h e r e
w e r e n o m o n o g r a p h s a v a i l a b l e o n a n y a s p e c t o f f i r s t p e r s o n f i l m m a k i n g ,
l e t a l o n e a n y t h i n g s o s p e c i f i c a s a c a s e s t u d y . I h a d t o r e l y o n i n d i v i d u a l
a r t i c l e s b y s u c h i n t r e p i d f i l m a n d l i t e r a r y s c h o l a r s a s M i c h a e l R e n o v ,
S u s a n a E g a n , a n d J i m L a n e , a s w e l l a s o n w r i t i n g s b y l i t e r a r y c r i t i c s w h o
h a d n e v e r c o n s i d e r e d h o w t h e i r t h e o r i e s m i g h t ( o r m i g h t n o t ) a p p l y t o
film, but who had nonetheless made important contributions to auto-
biography studies (I’m thinking of Sidonie Smith, Philippe Lejeune, James
Goodwin, and of course Jacques Derrida). By the time this study devel-
oped into a book, there were two books published on first person film—
which attests to exactly how long a road this has been. On such a long
and circuitous journey, there are inevitably many people to thank, and
indeed many unpayable debts of gratitude. Perhaps at least an acknowl-
edgment here of my thanks will go some way to convey my deepest appre-
ciation of the support, advice, assistance, and love I have received.
My greatest debt of gratitude goes to Cynthia Madansky, without
whom none of this would have gotten off the ground. Together we made
not only a film that I’m still proud of many years later, but much more.
No other single individual has had so profound an influence on my think-
ing and creativity. I hope she is pleased with the result.
The intellectual encouragement of the documentary theorists I
most respect, among them Michael Renov, Elizabeth Cowie, and Janet
Walker, meant more to me than I can convey here. Chris Straayer, Faye
Ginsburg, and Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett never failed to amaze me
with their endless generosity, not to mention their brilliance. I thank Faye
and Barbara in particular for inviting me into their hotbed of intellectual
ferment, the New York University Center for Media and Religion. I had
the privilege to present my work to the center’s working group on Jews,
media, and religion, whose members (especially Jeffrey Shandler) gave me
useful feedback. I thank Barbara Abrash and Angela Zito at the Center
for inviting me to further benefit from my connection to this community
of scholars as a CMR Visiting Fellow in autumn 2005.
Thank you to my stalwart editor at the University of Minnesota
viii a C k N O w L E D g M E N t S
Press, Jason Weidemann, and to the editors of the Visible Evidence series.
A special mention goes also to Nancy Sauro, Paula Friedman, and Adam
Brunner at the Press. A prize for unshrinking tenacity should go to Senem
Aytac, who patiently and laboriously input my barely legible changes to
the manuscript; the award for technical support in the wayi novf a luable
video dubs goes to Lauren Steimer. Thanks to the editors of Camera
Obscura, especially Patty White and Lynne Joyrich, who believed in this
project enough to publish two articles originating from it.
Ivone Margulies’s encouragement with regard to my work on Akerman
was an unexpected pleasure. I thank Bob Stam, who may still be in search
of the latent film scholar in me, and Anna McCarthy, who encouraged me
to ferret out the not-s o-l atent links in my analyses to discourses of race
and racism—w hich I have perhaps not done to her satisfaction, or even to
mine. Jane Arthurs first suggested I apply for research leave after working
at the University of the West of England for barely three months, something
I would never had had the chutzpah to do on my own. Her support and
mentorship continues to be a precious gift. Other colleagues and friends
have given their time and attention to work through sticky ideas or read
a passage or chapter. Here I would like to especially mention Sara-J ane
Bailes, Jonathan Boyarin, Michael Chanan, Tuna Erdem, Rachel Gabara,
and Bülent Somay.
In the process of writing and rewriting this manuscript I have bene-
fited from the close scrutiny of old and new intellectual companions, some
of whom, like Michele Aaron and Jeffrey Skoller, really got to know me
only through my writing, and with whom I hope to continue a more mu-
tual dialogue in the future. Marcos Becquer and Bliss Lim (whom I also
admire deeply) suffered through many early drafts only out of love for the
person they already knew. Our dialogues were responsible for advancing
my thinking well beyond the limits of my own imagination. To Marcos,
I must apologize for at times selfishly privileging the state of my book over
the infinitely more important state of his health.
My fellow Bristol Docs First Person Films Symposia Series organiz-
ers, Jon Dovey and Tony Dowmunt, made me recognize that there really
is strength in numbers. The symposia that we organized helped me to
clarify what is most salient about first person filmmaking and to see that
there are many others who are interested in developing this particular
line of theoretical inquiry. I learned much from the participants of these
symposia as well.
Of course, this book could never have been written if not for the
filmmakers who made the fascinating films discussed within it. For this
reason, I am grateful to Chantal Akerman, Jan Oxenberg, Alan Berliner,
a C k N O w L E D g M E N t S ix