Реферат: Mel Brooks As Jewish Comedian Essay Research

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