arts & entertainment

Desperately Seeking Susan

Sontag documentary wrestles with
public icon, private enigma.

Michael Fox
Special to the Jewish News

T

he late author, essayist, filmmaker
and public intellectual Susan
Sontag insisted on defining herself
and adamantly resisted being labeled by
others.
Sontag vehemently objected to being
called a lesbian, for example, and to the
idea of classifying sexuality. As filmmaker
Nancy Kates puts it, "She was an unidenti-
fied queer person who mostly slept with
women:'
Sontag, who was born Susan Rosenblatt
and adopted her surname at the age of 13,
had an equally complicated relationship
with her Jewishness.
"She couldn't hide being Jewish, and she
wanted to be a Jewish intellectual, but she
didn't want to be labeled Jewish:' Kates
explains.
"[Virtually] everyone in her little world
was Jewish — at the Partisan Review and
the New York Review of Books — and she
lived in a world of New York intellectuals
at a time when that mattered much more
than it does now
"But for some reason:' Kates says, "that
[Jewish] label didn't resonate with her very

well except in the intellectual sense of it."
Kates' incisive, textured documentary,
Regarding Susan Sontag, premieres Dec. 8
on HBO, a few weeks before the 10th anni-
versary of its subject's death.
Her interest in whatever Sontag was
writing and thinking goes back nearly
three decades to Kates' undergraduate
years at Harvard. Yet the Boston Jewish
native, who's lived in Berkeley, Calif., for
many years, admits that she didn't grasp
the importance of Sontag's Jewishness
when she embarked on the film.
During production, though, she came
across a clip of Sontag in a 1980 documen-
tary asserting that the defining occurrence
of her pre-adolescence was seeing images
of the Holocaust in a book when she was
12. That would make it 1945.
"There are ways you could see that
[event] as the foundational moment in her
life Kates says. "Her high school quasi-
boyfriend and two of her girlfriends [later
in life] were Holocaust survivors. And she
was a teenager in the '40s. The Holocaust
was enormously important in her life in
a way that it wouldn't be for an American
Jew growing up today"
Kates deduces that Sontag's lifelong
interest in photography and war can be
traced to that seismic moment in 1945 —

Susan Sontag:
One of the 20th
century's most
provocative
thinkers.

if, she notes, the anecdote is true.
The filmmaker conceived and struc-
tured Regarding Susan Sontag to leave
as much room as possible for viewers to
arrive at their own perception of Sontag.
That has a great deal to do with Kates'
abhorrence of generalizations and over-
simplifications, but it also reflects her
view that she doesn't completely know or
understand her enigmatic subject — even
after years of research and interviews.
Kates is undecided if Sontag was in a
Jewish closet, or simply ambivalent about
her Jewish identity. Sontag's limited writ-
ings on Israel don't offer a lot of guidance.
At the time of the Yom Kippur War in
1973, Sontag said, "I am generally in favor
of the Israeli government" A few months
later, Sontag shot a documentary in Israel,
Promised Lands, which is neither rabidly
pro-Palestinian nor rabidly pro-Israeli.
But at the end of her life, she gave the

Oscar Romero memorial speech at the
Rothko Chapel in Texas supporting the
refusenik soldiers who declined to serve in
the Occupied Territories.
"So she had a sense of Jewish con-
science, I would say:' Kates surmises.
What about Jewish ethics?
"Sontag talked in [her groundbreaking
1964 essay] Notes on Camp about Jewish
moral seriousness. So there's this little
thread of Judaism in the film, or Jewish
thought, or Jewish something, and it's not
me — it's her.
"But she was not a yarmulke-wearing,
breast-beating, Shabbat-attending kind of
Jew in any way:"

❑

Regarding Susan Sontag debuts on

HBO at 9 p.m. Monday, Dec. 8, and
will be available On Demand begin-
ning Dec. 9.

Old Jews Telling Jokes

Ronelle Grier
Contributing Writer

nor necessarily Jewish (Dorry Peltyn, Fred
Buchalter and Eric Gutman are; Sandra
Birch and Greg Trzaskoma are not), but that
doesn't keep them from playing a variety of
hat is the difference between
Jewish mothers, wives, husbands, business-
a Jewish wife and a Catholic
men and assorted other characters with
wife? Why don't Jewish mothers heart, humor and authenticity, right down
drink?
to the accents.
Even if you are familiar with these classic
Encompassing 85 minutes of nonstop
nuggets of Jewish humor, the
hilarity, the show includes one-
talented cast of Old Jews Telling
or two-liners as well as longer
Jokes will make you laugh anew
skits involving multiple cast
with the fresh and entertaining
members and clever costumes
revue of Borscht Belt-style comedy now
(designed by Judith Fletcher). If you find
playing at Jewish Ensemble Theatre.
yourself laughing out loud, which you
Skillfully directed by Kayla Gordon, the
undoubtedly will, keep it brief or you might
show is written by Peter Gethers and Daniel miss the next punch line.
Okrent, based on the website and book of
Set and lighting designer Daniel C.
the same name by Sam Hoffman and Eric
Walker has created a backdrop in the like-
Spiegelman. There are a few songs and brief ness of a 1950s television set, complete
monologues about the tradition of Jewish
with oversized knobs and speakers. A large
humor; but the jokes are the main attrac-
screen switches between filmed clips of the
tion, and the actors keep them coming in
actors telling jokes, a tropical scene that
rapid-fire succession.
serves as background for several "a Jew was
The members of the cast are neither old
marooned on a desert island" routines and

W

REVIEW

56

December 4 • 2014

titles that announce the various
topics being joked about.
Because no subject is too
serious to be the object of a
Jewish joke, the subjects cover
the gamut from birth to death,
with a hilarious medley of
Cast members Sandra Birch, Dorry Peltyn, Greg
shticks about marriage, sex,
Trzaskoma,
Fred Buchalter and Eric Gutman
parenting, money, retirement,
old age and medical issues in
between.
this thoroughly enjoyable revue of Jewish
Musical director Marty Mandelbaum
humor, it is that sharing a joke or two can
and sound designer Matt Lira provide
lighten any situation, no matter how dire.
piano accompaniment and appropriate
So spend a little time with Old Jews Telling
audio effects that enhance the pace and
Jokes, and have a few laughs. What can it
continuity. Highlights include an audience
hurt?
sing-along about "spending Chanukah in
Santa Monica and Shavuos in St. Louis" and
JET's production of Old Jews
a funny routine about an ad campaign for a
Telling Jokes runs through Dec. 21
family-owned nail company featuring Jesus
at
the Aaron DeRoy Theatre in the
on and off the cross.
Jewish
Community Center in West
For those unfamiliar with terms such as
Bloomfield.
Show times and tickets:
"shlemiel" or even "oy gevalt," the program
(248)
788-2900;
www.jettheatre.org .
includes a glossary of Yiddish words.
If there is a message to be conveyed by

❑

