Hobart and William Smith Colleges

3 January 2013 Friedman Discusses Spielberg

Professor of Media and Society Lester Friedman was recently quoted in an article about Academy Award winning director Steven Spielberg and how his films reflect his Jewish upbringing. Spielbergs movie Lincoln was released this winter and has initiated media coverage centered upon Spielbergs faith and conjectures about Lincoln.

Its indisputable hes the most successful filmmaker in American history, but hes much more than that, Friedman said. His Jewish background is omnipresent. It cuts both ways.

The article notes Spielberg was met with numerous acts of anti-Semitism throughout his childhood, which was spent moving frequently and living in areas that were predominantly Christian.

He was concerned about hiding his Judaism, Friedman is further quoted. His early films stayed far away from it. He doesnt confront it until An American Tail, where Fievel is the name of his grandfather. He confronts it in the most crucial and important way in two films Schindlers List, in which he makes the archetypal Holocaust film, and 12 years later with Munich.'

Friedman received a Ph.D. and a masters degree from Syracuse University and a bachelors degree from Alfred University. He is the author of Citizen Spielberg and American Cinema of the 1970s and editor of Fires Were Started and Cultural Sutures: Medicine and Media. His previous teaching experience includes Syracuse University, Upstate Medical Center and Northwestern University.

The full article follows.

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The New Jersey Jewish Standard
From Schindlers List to Lincoln
How Judaism shaped Steven Spielberg
Robert Gluck December 28, 2012

Steven Spielbergs films, including his latest, Lincoln, continue to reflect his Jewish upbringing. Like most movies, the script of the legendary directors life and career begins with some adversity at first, he was ashamed of being a Jew.
Spielbergs mother, Leah Adler, was a restaurateur and concert pianist, and his father, Arnold, was an electrical engineer involved in the development of computers. Their son was born in Ohio.

According to Lester Friedman, scholar-in-residence at Hobart and William Smith Colleges and author of The Jewish Image in American Film, American Jewish Filmmakers, and Citizen Spielberg, there is more to Spielberg than meets the eye.

Its indisputable hes the most successful filmmaker in American history, but hes much more than that, Friedman said. His Jewish background is omnipresent. It cuts both ways.

Friedman said that Spielbergs parents lived in predominantly Christian areas and that Spielberg was was the subject of anti-Semitism, everything from swastikas on the windows to rolling a penny down the aisle in class and students saying go get it Jew-boy.'

He was concerned about hiding his Judaism, Friedman continued. His early films stayed far away from it. He doesnt confront it until An American Tail, where Fievel is the name of his grandfather. He confronts it in the most crucial and important way in two films Schindlers List, in which he makes the archetypal Holocaust film, and 12 years later with Munich.'

In 1994, inspired by his experience making Schindlers List, Spielberg established the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation to gather video testimonies from survivors and other witnesses to the Holocaust. While most people who gave testimony were Jews, the foundation also interviewed gay, Gypsy, and Jehovahs Witness survivors, liberators, witnesses to liberations, political prisoners, and rescuers and aid providers, among others.

Within several years, the foundations Visual History Archive held nearly 52,000 video testimonies in 32 languages, representing 56 countries; it is the largest archive of its kind in the world.

Nigel Morris, author of The Cinema of Steven Spielberg, said that some critics carelessly dismiss him as a childrens director or maker of escapist fantasies.
They resent his enormous success, mistakenly focus on what they label as manipulation or sentimentality, or confuse him with George Lucas and naively blame either director or both for the blockbuster tendency that destroyed the freedom and creativity of early 1970s Hollywood, as if that were not an economic inevitability, Morris said.

Morris agrees with Friedman that Spielberg had little desire to embrace his Jewish ethnic identity or faith until he was profoundly affected by making Schindlers List. He was in his late 40s.

Being Jewish has influenced Spielbergs craft and sensibility, Morris said. The characteristic God light, as the director has called it, is central to both Spielbergs visual style and the deeper meaning of his work, flowing from his earliest memory of being pushed in a stroller through a Cincinnati synagogue aged just six months. The candles and dazzling reflections in candelabra became entwined with the awe of larger-than-life figures when he first saw a movie in a theater, creating the quasi-religious wonder that is repeatedly associated with spectacle, and particularly film, through all his output.

Morris said that Spielberg moved often when he was a child as his father changed jobs, and he suffered from bullying and anti-Semitism. One coping strategy was to seek popularity by casting his oppressors in the movies he made outside school hours.

Spielberg was quoted as saying that being Jewish and wimpy made me part of a major minority,' Morris said. This helped the fledgling director empathize with the civil rights cause and arguably led to his much later adoption of two African American children, as well as the interest in black culture manifested seriously and respectfully in several of his films.

Morris said that Schindlers List, which coincided with the Holocausts 50th anniversary, catalyzed arguments surrounding the new Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington and resurgent neo-fascism and attempted genocide around the world. It also gave new urgency to recording a dwindling number of survivors testimony.

Spielberg partly established the context and tone, for many of the attacks that were made as much against him as against the film, Morris said. When he imperiously declared, If it takes my name to get people to see Schindlers List, so be it, he suggested the project might not have been viable without him and implied higher aspirations than mere entertainment. Certainly, a black-and-white film, more than three hours long and without major stars, seemed unlikely to appeal to youthful blockbuster audiences, 60 per cent of whom were unaware of the Holocaust. Publicity portrayed Spielberg, who, it was understood at the time, waived his profits until the movie broke even, as pursuing a mission.

According to Morris, Schindlers redemption paralleled Spielbergs transformation from shallow crowd-pleaser to serious Jewish artist.

Promotion and interviews stressed Spielbergs return to ethnic roots and newfound faith, as well as identification with Schindler, Morris said. Spielberg repeatedly spoke of his own anti-Semitic experiences, thereby identifying himself, a descendant of German Jews, with Holocaust victims. Equating seriousness, solemnity, and quality, industry names finally recognized Spielberg, bestowing Academy Awards just as media coverage was distancing him from Hollywood entertainment values.

With Lincoln Hollywood has another popular film but Spielberg has more. He has his finger on the heartbeat of a historic and still relevant American dilemma by examining President Lincolns decision of whether or not to prolong the Civil War to get the amendment abolishing slavery passed.

Perhaps Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page best answered Spielbergs (and Lincolns) question when he wrote, Democratic governance of a large, diverse republic requires compromises. You cant always get what you want, but we can work together across partisan lines to get what we need.
JNS.org