Thanks for paying attention, and the thoughtful reply. I don't mean to tell other people what to write, but it's interesting that none of my Christian (or syncretic, or whatever) critics dealt with the ways in which Brooks misprised Jewish sources, or traded on certain Jewish stereotypes. My piece was not all, or even mostly, about him "picking a side"; it was about his dealing with Judaism as respectfully as, say, I'd try to deal with any minority tradition I was saying a lot about (queer culture, black culture, etc). I guess I understand why that's not the meat of my argument for Christians; but I was trying to explain why that column was offensive to many /Jews/, and that seems not to have been interesting to many (you included, right?). In a small way, that indifference goes to the heart of my critique of Brooks: he is doing what people do to Jews, which is use our tradition as a prop (in his case on his way to Xy, or something else; in the case of many of my Xian critics, as a way to discuss what interests them more, be it mysticism or syncretism, or whatever).
That's a fair point: it is difficult for me to fully appreciate how insulting Brooks's cavalier attitude towards Judaism must be to Jews. This has definitely been a learning experience for me, including reflecting on how my own self-righteous indignation can get in the way of understanding others.
Mark, as a Jew, I took that message from your piece and I’m a bit confused at the blowback.
To Mary Jane Eyre: I’m no longer orthodox, but I do have a grounding in Halachic and Talmudic Judaism and the metaphysics espoused bares no relationship with Christianity’s view of Godhood etc. I feel the universalist position requires a dismissal of Talmudic/Halachic Judaism to work. Which is fine. But we start to get into the troublesome waters of Jews for Jesus.
Having said all that, I haven’t thought about his stuff for decades-which is why I love your posts-and so I’m likely out of my depth.
"Good" because I thought it was intelligently scripted, sympathetically acted, stylish but not overwhelmingly stylized, engaged with present-day problems in a mostly nuanced and honest way. Not because I think its ethos is ethically praiseworthy...but its ethos may be a truth of the present, whether "we" ethically praise it or not, and the film sharply discloses this truth in keeping with its avowed descent from the Ibsenite tell-it-like-it-is realist theater. My proposed ending would have had the effect of calling the ethos more obviously into question.
Sometimes my "we" is a pedagogue's gambit I developed teaching in an art school in the period of high wokeness. I would introduce a text by doing the woke critique myself, as if "we" all obviously agreed about that, and then inviting the students to say something or anything *else* about the text, so that the easiest 2013-Tumblr-level political critique—e.g., you must never fetishize gay tragedy—wouldn't be the first thing out of their mouths.
(I also meant to note that Babygirl and Queer taken together are in accord with the male half of Simon Magnus's answer to the Tiresias question inasmuch as both have a moment where a male character asks his sex partner just to hold him. I'd call that masculonostalgia, both hetero- and homo-, for, if not love, then what "we" might call tenderness.)
I did not want to suggest that an artwork can’t be good because the underlying ethos is questionable, I just didn’t find Babygirl that captivating even on its own terms (it probably didn’t help that when I saw it, the film’s quietness was continuously spoiled by the bombastic soundtrack of some CGI fest playing next door).
I do wonder, though, if all this longing for tenderness (and/or fake brutality) on the part of the babygirls and babyboys running our corporations and our governments suggests that “we” as a society haven’t so much transcended Freud as ignored him.
Same, I heard Bob/Timothee braying through the theater wall the whole time. Maybe they imagined people quietly streaming it at home with subtitles on.
Yes, the fact that the intern kid could find no middle erotic register between degrading her and needing to be held by her—that this middle register itself is stigmatized in the figure of the sensitive husband who can't get her off, whom feminist critics here on Substack surpass the film in mocking and morally condemning—these could use Freudian attention!
I’m probably more on the side of Burton than you, but I see what you’re saying. Not wading into the Brooks debate. Lastly I I find it amusing that in inversion of our sometime custom your post today quibbles with John Pistelli while mine praises him!
Thanks for paying attention, and the thoughtful reply. I don't mean to tell other people what to write, but it's interesting that none of my Christian (or syncretic, or whatever) critics dealt with the ways in which Brooks misprised Jewish sources, or traded on certain Jewish stereotypes. My piece was not all, or even mostly, about him "picking a side"; it was about his dealing with Judaism as respectfully as, say, I'd try to deal with any minority tradition I was saying a lot about (queer culture, black culture, etc). I guess I understand why that's not the meat of my argument for Christians; but I was trying to explain why that column was offensive to many /Jews/, and that seems not to have been interesting to many (you included, right?). In a small way, that indifference goes to the heart of my critique of Brooks: he is doing what people do to Jews, which is use our tradition as a prop (in his case on his way to Xy, or something else; in the case of many of my Xian critics, as a way to discuss what interests them more, be it mysticism or syncretism, or whatever).
That's a fair point: it is difficult for me to fully appreciate how insulting Brooks's cavalier attitude towards Judaism must be to Jews. This has definitely been a learning experience for me, including reflecting on how my own self-righteous indignation can get in the way of understanding others.
Mark, as a Jew, I took that message from your piece and I’m a bit confused at the blowback.
To Mary Jane Eyre: I’m no longer orthodox, but I do have a grounding in Halachic and Talmudic Judaism and the metaphysics espoused bares no relationship with Christianity’s view of Godhood etc. I feel the universalist position requires a dismissal of Talmudic/Halachic Judaism to work. Which is fine. But we start to get into the troublesome waters of Jews for Jesus.
Having said all that, I haven’t thought about his stuff for decades-which is why I love your posts-and so I’m likely out of my depth.
"Good" because I thought it was intelligently scripted, sympathetically acted, stylish but not overwhelmingly stylized, engaged with present-day problems in a mostly nuanced and honest way. Not because I think its ethos is ethically praiseworthy...but its ethos may be a truth of the present, whether "we" ethically praise it or not, and the film sharply discloses this truth in keeping with its avowed descent from the Ibsenite tell-it-like-it-is realist theater. My proposed ending would have had the effect of calling the ethos more obviously into question.
Sometimes my "we" is a pedagogue's gambit I developed teaching in an art school in the period of high wokeness. I would introduce a text by doing the woke critique myself, as if "we" all obviously agreed about that, and then inviting the students to say something or anything *else* about the text, so that the easiest 2013-Tumblr-level political critique—e.g., you must never fetishize gay tragedy—wouldn't be the first thing out of their mouths.
(I also meant to note that Babygirl and Queer taken together are in accord with the male half of Simon Magnus's answer to the Tiresias question inasmuch as both have a moment where a male character asks his sex partner just to hold him. I'd call that masculonostalgia, both hetero- and homo-, for, if not love, then what "we" might call tenderness.)
I did not want to suggest that an artwork can’t be good because the underlying ethos is questionable, I just didn’t find Babygirl that captivating even on its own terms (it probably didn’t help that when I saw it, the film’s quietness was continuously spoiled by the bombastic soundtrack of some CGI fest playing next door).
I do wonder, though, if all this longing for tenderness (and/or fake brutality) on the part of the babygirls and babyboys running our corporations and our governments suggests that “we” as a society haven’t so much transcended Freud as ignored him.
Same, I heard Bob/Timothee braying through the theater wall the whole time. Maybe they imagined people quietly streaming it at home with subtitles on.
Yes, the fact that the intern kid could find no middle erotic register between degrading her and needing to be held by her—that this middle register itself is stigmatized in the figure of the sensitive husband who can't get her off, whom feminist critics here on Substack surpass the film in mocking and morally condemning—these could use Freudian attention!
I’m probably more on the side of Burton than you, but I see what you’re saying. Not wading into the Brooks debate. Lastly I I find it amusing that in inversion of our sometime custom your post today quibbles with John Pistelli while mine praises him!