The Literary Mind

Thanks, Ilana, for a very insightful blog. In reading it, I couldn't help but think about the complicated relationship that exists between black and Jewish communities, a relationship that is hinted at -- and I don't know if this was intentional, although it's hard to imagine that it wasn't -- in Precious: in the movie, both the high school principal, Mrs. Lichtenstein, and the welfare caseworker, Mrs. Weiss, have Jewish sounding names. Both of these women are well meaning in their desire to help Precious, but ultimately lack the ability to see the situation from Precious's perspective. Which makes perfect sense since, as these movies make clear, the Jewish experience and the black experience, although similar in some ways, is so incredibly different in others.

Thanks for a great noticing. It's interesting that Weiss does want to be helpful to Precious--but the movie makes it clear that before she can really help, she needs to admit that there are some experiences about America that she has not had and can not presume to know or control. She needs to trust and listen before she can control.

Your comment is really great... Lichtenstein and Weiss might represent two moments of cultural clash between black and Jewish culture.

I have always felt that whenever a discussion about race came about, people actually hate it. It seems painful for whites and blacks alike, but for different reasons. Here in Chicago when I was a teen, a young black couple moved into Cicero, a notoriously prejudiced suburb of Chicago. The hatred was open and the people did not care that what they were doing was being filmed, and it became a national story. The award winning columnist Mike Royko could not understand what the big deal was about; he hated that it made national news and could not understand it. I always felt he was angry and ashamed because most of the people who lived in Cicero was Polish, like he was. I have never gotten over that, because I always read his columns, and admired his writing. His childish diatribe against the media for the racist reaction to the young couple always escaped me, until I read your blog today. Now that suburb is no longer a Polish enclave, there mostly Latin people who live there. I guess they were less frightening than Black people.

Let's not mistake that A Serious Man can only be identified to just the Jewish community. Come on, don't we Christian also are exposed to the story of Job in our Bible? And arn't many of different religions have paid attention to all the folklore and beliefs created by and inherited from radical religious leaders,leading us to believe in ideologies that didn't come from God, but from other human beings? The difference in Precious is that the movie throws an ugly image of Blacks in America - fat, dark skinned Blacks who are obese, Black perverted men and their bad sexual habits, Black children born of incest, Black skinned mothers who lack parental responsibilities and would rather trade them for sex, Black illiteracy, Blacks looking out for welfare handouts with lies, poor Blacks and drugs seeming synonymous, and any success of dark skinned Blacks only equates to nothing more than completing high school or GEDs. Good Lord, the filmmakers must be rejoicing to prove the ugliest images possible to remind the world who the poor black-skinned Americans are... almost to say that these folks live their lives like wild jungle animals, confirming what so many worldwide used to be as indoctrinated by the white colonists of heydays! And it's time such ugly stereotypes ought to stop!