stop blaming everything that goes wrong on me (To Be or Not To Be). After being
warned to stop making jokes about Hitler, Erhardt promises, "No. Never,
never, never again, [emphasis added]" strange words to hear from a nazi.
Although this movie is not about Jews, there are a few Jewish characters and
encounters. Bronski hides a Jewish family in his theater’s cellar and during the
course of the movie, they’re number increases. At one point, the intelligence
agent goes to the theater to find his lover, Bronski’s wife. The Jewish women
hiding there tells him "You know that big house on Posen Street? Well don’t
go there, it’s Gestapo headquarters," before actually telling where she was
staying (To Be or Not To Be). At the end of the movie, they dress up all the
Jews hiding in the cellar (closer to 20 than the 3 who originally hid out in the
cellar) as clowns to have them run through the aisle (in the middle of a
performance for Hitler) to a truck to safety. One old lady panics in the aisle,
surrounded by Nazis. To save the old lady, another clown runs up to them and
pins an oversized yellow star, yelling "Juden!," this causes an
enormous laughter from the Nazi audience. To stall the Gestapo, Brooks dresses
up as Hitler, and listens to a Jewish actor perform the "Hath not a Jew
eyes" speech from Merchant of Venice. To Be or Not To Be appears to be
Brooks’s final way of coping with his lack of combat in WWII. While he has The
Producers make a play in which they portray the Nazis comically, the ultimate
message is that the two Jews in the movie still find them to be patently
offensive, and therefore, worthy of some form of respect. In To Be or Not To Be
he makes the Nazis into purely comical characters, and this is a step further
than Brooks went in The Producers. However, this simply may be because at the
point of To Be or Not To Be, Brooks was well into his career as an established
moviemaker, so he had more freedom to be offensive. Unfortunately, To Be or Not
To Be ended the golden age of Mel Brooks movies, at least from a specifically
Jewish point-of-view. His later films make only small mentions of Jewish topics.
An example of this is Spaceballs, a parody of Star Wars where the main
characters have to save a princess from Planet Druidia ("Funny, she doesn’t
look Druish") from the evil Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis) (Spaceballs). The
only Jewish reference in the movie were playing off the theme of the Druish
princess and a short scene with Mel Brooks as Yogurt, a reinterpretation of Yoda
as an old, Jewish man. Brooks also renamed "the Force" from Star Wars
to something more ethnic-"the Schwartz." Although these Jewish
references may be equal to the Yiddish-speaking Indian in Blazing Saddles, it is
too big of a stretch to link a deeper meaning to them as can be done in his
earlier films. In the Big Book of Jewish Humor, Jewish humor is defined as
having these five qualities: 1. It is substantive in that it is about some
larger topic. 2. It, in many cases, has a point-"the appropriate response
is not laughter, but rather a bitter nod or a commiserating sign of
recognition." 3. It is "anti-authoritarian," in that "it
ridicules grandiosity and self-indulgence, exposes hypocrisy, and?.is strongly
democratic." 4. It "frequently has a critical edge which creates
discomfort in making its point." 5. It is unsparing-it satirizes anyone and
everyone (Novak and Waldoks xx-xxii). Telushkin’s definition of a Jewish joke is
much simpler. He say’s "it must express a Jewish sensibility" (16). To
Bernard Saper, a "uniquely Jewish joke must contain incongruity, a sudden
twist of unexpected elements" (76). Christie Davies, points out "that
people such as Jews, who belong to a minority or peripheral ethnic groups tell
jokes both about the majority group and about their own group, and they may tell
more ethnic jokes about their own group (and find them funnier) than about the
majority"(29-30). Are the four films discussed within these definitions?
Brooks’ movies definitely fit the Telushkin test of expressing Jewish
sensibility, weather it is through how he attacks the Nazis or the random
Yiddish expressions that he uses. A lot of Brooks’ humor is also incongruous.
For example, having a Nazi say "never again," fulfills Saper’s
requirement. Brooks’ films have a lot of ethnic jokes in them, which deal with
Jews or Jewish topics. Brooks probably put these jokes in his movies because he
found them funny, therefore fulfilling the Davies test. The definition in The
Big Book of Jewish Humor is harder to fit because it is in greater detail.
However, the films that were discussed fit them well. Many of Brooks’s films are
substantive in that he deals with racism and Anti-Semitism in almost all of his
movies. The point of his films may not be so sharp that when people see them
they automatically feel bitterness toward someone, but his movies are definently
not pure slapstick which fulfills the second part of the definition. Brooks
never attacked Jewish leadership but his films are anti-authoritarian because he
clearly attacks government officials such as the Nazis and the Grand Inquisitor.
Since there is constant controversy about Brooks’ films there is always
potential for discomfort to arise. Finally, Brooks leaves out nobody from his
satire-Nazis, cowboys, and 15th century Spanish Jews are all satirized and made
fun of in these films. Even though some of his scenes or individual jokes are
not typical Jewish humor, he is a Jewish comedian who, most importantly, makes
Jewish jokes. Brooks’s movies represent the classical paradox in Jewish humor
and Jewish experience between: first, the legitimate pride that Jews have taken
in their distinctive and learned religious and ethical tradition and in the
remarkable intellectual eminence and entrepreneurial and professional
achievement of individual members of their community, and second, the
anti-Semitic abuse and denigration from hostile outsiders whose malice was
fueled by Jewish autonomy and achievement (Davies 42-43). The greatest lesson
that Brooks has to teach American Jews of today is the expansion of our
boundaries. Through his use of Jewish humor to topics which where previously
considered off-limits, he allows his viewers to cope with painful parts of
history which they may not have been able to cope with in the past. Brooks
describes his role as a comedian by saying, "for every ten Jews beating
their breasts, God designated one to be crazy and amuse the breast beaters. By
the time I was five I knew I was that one" (Friedman 171-172). He explains
that his comedy "derives from the feeling that, as a Jew and as a person,
you don’t fit the mainstream of American society. It comes from the realization
that even though you’re better and smarter, you’ll never belong" (Friedman
172). Mel Brooks’s experience is very similar to that of every American Jew, and
his comedy speaks uniquely to the American Jew. So, even Brooks’s most offensive
work is rooted deeply within both typical Jewish Humor and the modern Jewish
experience. The greatest lesson that Brooks has to teach American Jews of today
is the expansion of our boundaries. Through his use of Jewish humor to topics
which where previously considered off-limits, he allows his viewers to cope with
painful parts of history which they may not have been able to cope with in the
past. Brooks describes his role as a comedian by saying, "for every ten
Jews beating their breasts, God designated one to be crazy and amuse the breast
beaters. By the time I was five I knew I was that one" (Friedman 171-172).
He explains that his comedy "derives from the feeling that, as a Jew and as
a person, you don’t fit the mainstream of American society. It comes from the
realization that even though you’re better and smarter, you’ll never
belong" (Friedman 172). Mel Brooks’s experience is very similar to that of
every American Jew, and his comedy speaks uniquely to the American Jew. So, even
Brooks’s most offensive work is rooted deeply within both typical Jewish Humor
and the modern Jewish experience.
Altman, Sig. The Comic Image of the Jew. Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson
UP, 1971. Blazing Saddles. Dir. Mel Brooks. With Gene Wilder and Cleavon Little.
Warner Brothers, 1974. Davies, Christie. "Exploring the Thesis of theSelf-Deprecating
Jewish Sense Of Humor." Semites and Stereotypes: Characterisitics of Jewish
Humor. Eds. Avner Ziv and Anat Zajdman. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993.
29-46. Doneson, Judith E. The Holocaust in American Film. Philadelphia: Jewish
Publication Society, 1987. Friedman, Lester D. The Jewish Image in American
Film. Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press, 1987. History of the World, Part I. Dir. Mel
Brooks. With Mel Brooks and Madeline Kahn.Brooksfilms/Twentieth Century Fox,
1981. Internet Movie Database. On the World Wide Web at http://www.msstate.edu/movies.
(Used for cast listings of films) Novak, William and Moshe Waldoks, eds. The Big
Book of Jewish Humor. New York: HarperPerennial, 1990. The Producers. Dir. Mel
Brooks. With Gene Wilder and Zero Mostel. Avco Embassy, 1968. Saper, Bernard.
"Since When Is Jewish Humor Not Anti-Semitic." Semites and
Stereotypes: Characteristics of Jewish Humor. Eds. Avner Ziv and Anat Zajdman.
Westport, CT: Greewood Press, 1993. SpaceBalls. Dir. Mel Brooks. With Mel
Brooks, John Candy and Rick Moranis. MGM, 1987. Telushkin, Rabbi Joseph. Jewish
Humor: What the Best Jewish Jokes Say About the Jews. New York: William Morrow
and Co, 1992. To Be or Not To Be. Dir. Alan Johnson. With Mel Brooks and Anne
Bancroft. Brooksfilms/Twentieth Century Fox, 1983. Yacowar, Maurice. Method in
Madness: The Comic Art of Mel Brooks. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981.