The Jewsploitation of Josh Safdie

We went to see Marty Supreme the other night. It’s a good movie, maybe even a very good movie. But it made me uncomfortable. The same way Uncut Gems made me uncomfortable. Which shouldn’t be a surprise considering the DNA shared by the two films. Both were co-written and directed Josh Safdie, one half of the now disbanded Safdie Brothers duo. The films also share story elements and, more broadly, a theme: Jew as greasy anti-hero. In exactly the same way that Black directors in the 70’s embraced Black stereotypes to create Blaxploitation, Safdie appears to be doing the same for Jews.

Jewsploitation?

Both Uncut Gems and Marty Supreme are stories of self-serving, conniving New York Jewish men obsessed with sports. In Uncut Gems, Adam Sandler’s character, Howard Ratner, is a fast-talking, pushy jeweler, philanderer, and compulsive sports gambler who spends the film trying to put together as much money as he possibly can. In Marty Supreme, Timothee Chalamet’s Marty Mauser (based on the real-life Marty Reisman) is a fast-talking, pushy shoe salesman, philanderer, and obsessive table tennis aspirant who spends the film trying to put together as much money as he possibly can. Both characters are ethically repugnant strivers forever biting the hands that feed them.

I like both films for their writing, pacing, performances, off-beat casting, kicky dialogue, and directorial assurance. I hate that I left both films feeling unease and slight embarrassment about their portrayals of Jews. To be clear: Safdie is Jewish. He and his brother grew up in New York City. One could certainly make the case that the Safdie lens is trained as much on the city as it is on the ethnicities of their characters, but I think would be missing an indelible aspect of both films.

There will never be a Jew named “Timothee.”

In Uncut Gems and Marty Supreme, the characters’ Jewishness is an undiluted mess of eccentricities and stereotypes: money-hungry and neurotic, both characters jitter through their worlds with unbound energy. Neither protagonist is religious but both are inextricably, inevitably Jewish. Which seems to mirror the Safdie’s own story.

Though both brothers were bar mitzvahed, in a 2010 interview with NY Jewish Week, Benny Safdie described the brothers’ Jewish identity as “more cultural than religious,” and it is the exuberant ethnic culture of New York Jews that seems to excite both Safdies, as opposed to, say, the more introspective, almost mystical Judaism of the Coen Brothers.

If the Coen Brothers are seekers trying to make meaning of the world, the Safdie worldview is almost its opposite: men doing everything they can to avoid thought. Men whose chaotic actions are their thoughts.

My discomfort with these movies isn’t because I find the Safdie depiction of NY Jews to be particularly alien. Just the opposite. My unease stems from the fact that I grew up in New Jersey around guys exactly like that. These were the hip-hop loving Jews with the NY Knicks logo knitted into their yarmulkes. Guys who would grow up to be the kind of dentists who line their practice walls with sports memorabilia. Guys who move through the world in their full and unabashed ethnic glory. Guys who tried (always unsuccessfully) to make being Jewish look cool. Outsiders looking to noodge their way to the inside. What some Italian-Americans must experience watching Goodfellas or Mean Street I feel about Uncut Gems and Marty Supreme.

Good movies all, but did they have to be so… ethnic?

I grew up content to be Jewish but uncomfortable with whatever scrutiny my Judaism might attract. Though the Safdies were raised less than 50 miles and a dozen or so years from me, I’m guessing our experiences were wildly different. Coming from New York City, they would have been surrounded by Jews and every other ethnicity that’s washed up on our shores over the last hundred years or so.

My little New Jersey hometown only had a few Jews. My best friend was Jewish. One of our neighbors was a Jewish girl with whom I’m still good friends. There was a synagogue we never attended just down the road. We Jews all kind of knew each other, though I can’t say we hung out the way the few Black kids in my school did.

Judaism, to me, was something to keep private. Not from shame, but out of a fear of calling too much attention to one’s self. One didn’t want to be too loud or too smart or show any interest in, God forbid, money. One didn’t request a paper menorah to color while the Christian kids decorated their paper Christmas trees; how does one color a metal candleholder, anyway? (With pencil, I learned. With pencil.)

Growing up when I did, only a few decades removed from the recent horrors, I felt acutely aware that things could always turn, and when they did, they might turn quickly. Generations of new Americans of every ethnicity understood that lesson. They wouldn’t have left their own homelands if that weren’t true. As such, millions of Americans of every stripe have followed the same two-step recipe for safety: assimilate and contribute.

Nobody can accuse American Jews of not contributing. We’ve pulled more than our share. But our successes also make us targets. The charge that “Jews control the media” wouldn’t sting so much if there wasn’t an element of truth to it. We really do have an outsized presence in certain industries, the same way all ethnicities are overrepresented in certain industries. Sandler’s Howard Ratner worked in New York’s diamond district, historically overrepresented by Hassidic Jews. Chalamet’s Marty Mauser (Rat? Mouse?) is a 1950’s ping-pong player in a field which still has no famous Jews. Then again, American table tennis still has no famous players at all.

Assimilation, we thought, is our protection. When we look and act like our goyish compatriots, when we defy the stereotypes, we hope we’re buying safety. We hope we’re buying our Americanness. Uncut Gems and Marty Supreme undercut that hope with forceful portrayals of American Jews who embrace all the worst stereotypes about my people. Cheap, mean, amoral, manipulative. And I love them.

I love the nakedness of their ambitions and the extremes they go to hide their vulnerability and hurt. I love their embrace of heritage. I love their petty criminality. I love that they wear their hearts on their sleeves. I love that they never stop fighting. I love that their Judaism is fundamental, but not definitional. I hate that some people will watch those movies and come away with their shitty opinions of Jews solidified into antisemitism.

That’s not Josh Safdie’s problem any more than people’s misperceptions of Italian-Americans can be laid at the feet of Martin Scorsese. Artists make art. Sometimes that art is challenging or uncomfortable. Sometimes it’s offensive. Good art sticks to our bones. Both Uncut Gems and Marty Supreme are good art. Jewish art.