Israel’s Big Dick
I’m not a great fan of Adam Sandler who always seems to be doing an impersonation of Jerry Lewis, whose shtick as a juvenile retard I had enjoyed until about the age of…mm…six? I saw Sandler last time in “50 First Dates, a movie that I actually liked (it’s a less sophisticated and funnier take on “Memento”), but I do my best to avoid his films. But his new “You Don’t Mess With the Zohan” was supposed to have some sort of a political message relating to the Arab-Israeli conflict, and I’m interested in these topics, so I decided to give the guy another chance. And since my expectations from Sandler and “Zohan” had been very, very low, I wasn’t disappointed at all.
First, something about the “plot” of this film which was conceived by Robert Smigel, the guy who is responsible for “Saturday Night Live”’s “ TV Funhouse” and “The Ambiguously Gay Duo,” and Judd Apatow, who among other films, has produced “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” and “Knocked Up.” The two have never been accused of suffering from a lack of bad taste. “It’s so gross,” is the common reaction of those who watch their productions that are usually populated by oversexed teen-agers between the ages of 12 and 50 (think Bill Clinton in the Oval office) who engage in various forms of sexual activity with men, women, and other living creatures. Their exceptionally lowbrow humor is very mean and crude and consists of a lot of unfunny penis jokes and scatological references, while their politics mirrors the fantasies that are so common among the creative minds in Manhattan’s West Side and Hollywood. Imagine Larry David directing the “The Three Stooges” in a remake of “Deep Throat. You get the idea (and it’s actually worst than you imagine).
Smigel and Apatow are Jewish and that supposedly “permits” them to mock and ridicule Jews, as well as Christian, Muslims, and the rest of humanity, and to use stereotypes of Jews, especially those of Jewish women, in a way that would have led to charges of anti-Semitism if, say, Mel Gibson had done it (in the same way that seems to be okay if Chris Rock uses the “N" word). In this film, Smigel, Apatow, and Sandler decided to extend the reach of their “hate humor” beyond the East and West Coasts to the Middle East—and zoom for a change on their Israeli brothers and Arab cousins.
There was a time American-Jews were fantasizing about the Israeli soldier Ari Ben Canaan played by Paul Newman, a mythical, super-brave and very blond and Aryan looking King-David-like Sabra who protects his people against the Nazi-like Arabs and gets to seduce the blond Shiksa, Eva Marie Saint. But Ari Ben Canaan doesn’t live there—in Israel—anymore. Instead, Zohan lives here. And he is no Ari Ben Canaan. In fact, Zohan and his Arab adversary seem to be a mirror image of each other, the hero ends up marrying his enemy’s Arab sister. And most important, Zohan is not Zion’s answer to Albert Einstein but to John Holmes. He is the world’s Biggest Erection (Is Smigel projecting some personal insecurities here? Interestingly enough, in Portnoy’s Complaint Philip Roth’s character cannot sustain an erection in Israel.)
We first meet Zohan as the leader of Israeli special operations/commando unit who looks and sounds like a cross between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Howard Stern, a brutal killer of Arabs and other human beings, an owner of a very tiny brain, who is apparently blessed with a huge “endowment” (which is quite obvious to any naked eye surveying his crotch) and a well-matched libido, God’s gift to Jewish women everywhere. And perhaps to men also? That’s is at least what his parents suspect when Zohan shocks them with the admission that he is kind of tired fighting Arabs and that he plans to leave the Holy Land and move to the Diaspora in New York where he would be able to finally fulfill his dream–to become a hairdresser at the famous Paul Mitchell hair salon, where he would cut “silky smooth” hair (in fact, he carries a 1977 Paul Mitchell catalogue with him to every commando raid).“You’re faigeleh!” observes a mortified Jewish father. Well, Zohan ego is deflated because he is an ambiguously flaming heterosexual, and after the response from mom and dad, he decides to fake his own death in the hands of his archrival, the terrorist leader called the Phantom, who is played by John Turturro with a Kafiyyeh and a lot of gold teeth (who looks and sounds like a cross between John Turturro and Eminem) and Homeland Security or not, he is JFK and on his way to the Big Apple where he lands a job at a hair salon owned by a so, so cute Palestinian woman, Dalia, (Emmanuelle Chriqui) where he succeeds in attracting a huge clientele consisting mostly of New York’s ugliest female senior citizens who overrun the place with their walkers and wheelchairs, hoping that the Zohan would bang his exploding crotch against their wrinkly faces. Yep. I told you. It’s groooss. (And let’s not forget the scene when Zohan has sex with Lainie Kazan in front of her teenage son).
And the movie that started as a postmodernist/post-Zionist “Exodus” with a touch of “Munich,” continued as “Shampoo,” ends with a Middle Eastern version of “Westside Story”—but with a happy finale. As you probably guessed, Zohan and Dalia—we discover that she is the sister of the Phantom—fall in love. And through their not-very-moving romance (Zohan promises Dalia that his you-know-what would only serve her needs) they help bring peace between Israeli and Arab gangs in the Bronx. The peace-loving Middle Eastern immigrants find out that their wars were incited by a very WASPy real-estate billionaire and his gang of Rednecks (who as Zohan’s nigh goggles warn him hate: Blacks. Jews. Arabs, Moslems. Vegetarians. Whole Food. The New York Times. The Charlie Rose Show. Gays.) The despised WASP wants to turn the colorful=dirty neighborhood in the Bronx into an ugly shopping mall, but Zohan working together with the Phantom foil the plot and kill the greedy WASP and stupid Rednecks, and then everyone lives happily ever after, because people, I just want to say, like you know, can we all get along?
That’s the political message à la Sandler, Smigel, and Apatow: Middle East 101 for Morons on Crack. And I know what you are thinking? “Hey, it’s just a stupid movie. Let’s not over-intellectualize it!” But these guys do seem to take themselves a bit too seriously. “The people living in conflict in the Middle East are the same people living in one neighborhood in New York—except that while there may be rivalries in Gaza, they don’t hate each other in Brooklyn,” according to the movie’s director Dennis Dugan, lecturing journalists in a Hollywood news conference. Everybody, like, you know, just gets along. “They treat each other more as people than as rival factions,” explained Hollywood’s Son of Bernard Lewis. And “it not as crazy as it sounds,” Dugan concludes. Duh. It is! And this from Turturro/the Phantom: “Zohan is faking his death, but little does he realize that the Phantom also has his own dreams of not fighting anymore.”
Based on his experience making “Zohan,” Smigel seems to have come up with his own ideas for resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict. Bye, bye, Dr. Kissinger. Hello Dr. Phil. “One of the great things on the set—and we didn’t do this intentionally—was that we had many scenes that involved all the Arab guys and the Israeli guys in the same scene, meaning they were all called to the set together,” Smigel recalled. “Everyone would be eating lunch together. They had a lot of passionate discussions, but it was very friendly, very healthy, very open-minded. It was really cool to see—some of the guys have said to me that it’s the most they’ve every talked to an Arab or an Israeli before.” And toward the end of the shoot, Smigel heard from some of the actors that they’d grown up hating or mistrusting all Israelis or all Arabs until they came to make the film. “They actually said the shoot was a life-altering experience,” added Smigel. Yep. If only Smigel and his liberal American-Jewish buddies would replace our favorite neoconservative cabal And that is actually not such a bad idea. Unlike Wolfowitz, Smigel does have a sense of humor!
Comments
I think Zohan might be a play on words. Zohar comes to mind.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
What do you expect from the guy who gave us “The Hannukah Song?”
As for movies, I’ll be escaping the appalling heat with Mongol or the Hulk .
Click to flag this comment as abusive
I am truly shocked at what Leon Hadar’s words reveal about his mind and heart. He gives us “Shiksa” and “Redneck” (capitalized as though they are from some country or nationality), and then slaps us with “WASP” three times which is a well-known hate label for Anglo-Saxon Protestants. The diverse white American peoples have never chosen these divisive labels for themselves—what gives Hadar the power (akin to a claim to supremacy) to name the diverse white American peoples? Serious apologies are called for and without an “if” to cancel the apologies in the same breath.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Dear “William” --- no Apologies (capitalized)—with or without an “If” from Moi (capitalized). I’m not sure where they sell a Sense of Humor. But you should get one.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
William. You missed the point.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Very funny and intresting review, I don’t think I will be seeing this movie. I lived in a heavily Jewish neighborhood for many years. My kids had a lot of Jewish,
Muslim and Hindu friends. Most seemed to get along, at least at my house, when they got together.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Yet another movie I won’t be seeing.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Leon in William’s defense, maybe you’re not so funny. And maybe the Arabs who helped make the move had a lot of their funny anti-Jewish bits tossed out by the Jewish writers, producers, and director.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Jewish navel gazing on their porn industry is not why people come to Takimag. Why was this published?
Click to flag this comment as abusive
The peace-loving Middle Eastern immigrants find out that their wars were incited by a very WASPy real-estate billionaire and his gang of Rednecks...
Careful, Hollywood. WASPs and Rednecks are primarily the ones who pay taxes, get shanghai’d into wars and entertain distorted bilge - all to prop up Zohan’s crappy little country.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Are you really that Clueless Curt and William? Mr. Hadar has given us a movie review that could have been written by Kevin MacDonald.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
“felipeb” I suppose in the future they should submit posts on this blog for your approval.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
I just hope they refrained this time from giving the bad white guy a German accent.
One question: Would a review “as if written by Kevin McDonald” be a compliment or a slur?
Click to flag this comment as abusive
two points:
First, I consider myself to be an equal-opprtunity basher, which I suspect is why some people here got confused. You can certainly make fun of someone making fun of someone who deserves to be made fun of. I know. It’s a bit complicated. But, hey, I think that someone once said that a sign of intelligence is being able to hold two or more contradictory thoughts at the same time.
Secondly, and specifically the “plot” of the movie, I was trying to demonstrate how silly was the attempt to demonize the “WASPS” and the “Rednecks
and so on. In reality, there aren’t so many rednecks in NYC and probably not that many wasp real-estate types.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
The “diverse white peoples” of America? I don’t know, but I think William might have been spoofing as well. Who says that?
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Tough crowd.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
And here I had hoped that in my worst nightmares I would never have the plot of this film revealed to me… Oh well. Great review anyway.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Frankly I fail to see how one religion or belief in supreme to another for they are all machinations of mankind in an effort to rule. This is not to say that I dont believe in a higher power, for I do, only because I have experienced it. It was not of any religion that I know of, efforts to explain this have been given names.
Warring over belief systems is foolish, at best.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
For the record, I liked mr. Hader’s blog.
Cheer up :-)
Click to flag this comment as abusive
“The people living in conflict in the Middle East are the same people living in one neighborhood in New York—except that while there may be rivalries in Gaza, they don’t hate each other in Brooklyn,”
Right. That’s because in Brooklyn they live in one state with the same set of rules for everybody. To suggest this as an option, however, will get you labeled as an anti-Semite.
Israel...What a joke.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
I’ve been to three anti war films in the past year and non of them made any money or attracked large audiences. This crap grosses forty mil the first weekend. We’re doomed!
You’re certainly not going to see Sandler make a movie about the open air concentration camp (Gaza) where Israel is straving men, women and children. Wouldn’t do good at the box.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
...Well… most “antiwar” movies these days simply… Italic suck
The film industry must maintain a studied ambiguity about a Mideast policy it finds not entirely distasteful, but which it knows is profoundly unpopular with audiences. It’s a quandary faced by American media in general, including the news biz. Because of this, Hollywood has little meaningful to say about Iraq, Afghanistan, or the wars there. Since film industry ownership interests tend to support the war, at least in stealth mode, its films default to the Vietnam “antiwar” template that relentlessly portrays evil, raving American soldiers and a sinister, deceitful U.S. military system. That’s why the Iraq War films produced so far, like “Redacted”, “In the Valley of Elah”, etc., have been so dreadful, and phony - and have bombed at the box office. Americans sense the deceit behind the message; maybe they’re tired of rote demonization and phony moralizing. Maybe they’re just sick of the terrible writing and crappy direction.
And maybe they’re just tired of being lied to.
Movies today reflect the ideology of a detached Ferragamo Front, trendy “lefties” in hillside mansions and gated communities whose politics are as chic as they are fake. Audiences “feel” that.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
...Actually, they just suck. Only the imported ones Italic suck…
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Slickly-packaged mass-market lowbrow is as funny as someone vomiting a kosher meal in our faces.
Instinctively I’d always been able to spot it; but I never made the connection to its origins until recently, when I paused for a moment to make a mental list of the most notoriously vile stuff gracing our airwaves and screens.
Instant illumination.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
The author of this article, like the purposely ignorant Hollywood libtards, and too many posters assume that all is well between Jews and Muslims in America.
Evidently people just aren’t paying attention. Just last month, an Islamist was on trial for shooting up a Jewish community center in Seattle.
There have been many other similar attakcs from Orthodox JEws in a van getting shot up on the LIE, to less conspicuous cases of “Sedden Jihad syndrome”. It is not an accident that there are more hate crimes against Jews with the importation of Muslims and spread of Islam among American Blacks. Nor should it surpirse anyone that there were 6 times more hate crimes against Jews than Muslims, despite the consistent failure to the police and media to report hate crimes by Muslims.
Synagogues ans community centers have become fortified against attacks.
The Jewish communities in Paris, the Netherlands, and Sweden (at least in Malmo) are virtually under siege.
Given the Dhimmitude and violence shown to Jews by Muslims, a one state solution is suicide for Jews. It is also frankly antisemitic to call for such a violent end of the only Jewish state.
(Yes, I’m talking to you Pujete. We’ve crossed paths before. I’m RMlew at FR)
People like Sandler are useful idiots for the Islamists.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
If Abe Foxman or Dick Hofstadter did movies and had a sense of humor, this might be it. Yup, the WASPS are to blame for all the troubles in the US and the world. Once the rednecks are cleared out, all minorities will get along with Moslems in the circle of life. Gag me with a pitchfork. The melting pot is turning into a multicult stew that will burn Jews and Gentiles alike.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Smigel is a moron who should be sent to Iran to dialogue with the mullahs. Or, once Obama passes hate speech laws, he should be arrested for fomenting hatred against WASPs. Then again, it’s unlikely that he’ll be charged with hate, right? The censors would go after Rev Hagee and his army of useful idiots who bleed for creeps like Smigel.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
We’re getting tired of this endless barage of semitic crap, with “stars” like Sandler. Carrell, Sarah Jessica Parker and the rest of the tribe. Fine. They run and own the “entertainment” media. That doesn’t mean we have to tune in.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Taki:
Why would you give space to a review of this idiotic sleaze? A genuine joke is when one person says something and another person laughs. I am not laughing. Is that because I lack a sense of humor? (And nothing is more unfunny than arguing about what is funny). Or is it that Leon Hadar and the people he writes about are lacking in ordinary human integrity?
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Israel’s Big Dick
Hmmm. Interesting that over on TakiMag, you make a comment about Hillary’s package (probably a typo, but then again you do seem to be referring to her as “it” [unless “it” refers to the NYT):
The New York Times is continuing to focus our attention on the charges of sexism that Hillary Clitnon and its supporters have leveled against the media
Click to flag this comment as abusive
over at TakiMag
I mean over at The American Conservative. Duh. Stupid me.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
“Nor should it surprise anyone that there were 6 times more hate crimes against Jews than Muslims...”
I know this is a delicate topic, but how many Muslims in America have cunningly feigned atheism and then proceeded to sue the 10 Commandments out of the courthouse, prayer out of the schools, Christmas trees out of the airport, and the creche from city hall’s lawn? Not many I would think. Perhaps in time they’ll pick-up the compulsion from those other Semites - the perpetual victim tribe.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
I know this is a delicate topic, but how many Muslims in America have cunningly feigned atheism and then proceeded to sue the 10 Commandments out of the courthouse
I doubt that Jews who hate the 10 commandments are “feigning” their atheism. As the 10 commandments are part of the Torah, indeed part of the Pentateuch which even the Sadduccees believed in, I would think that any Jew who hates the 10 commandments is hardly Jewish in the religious sense.
Indeed, the most famous person fighting against prayer in schools (Madalyn Murray O’Hair) was of Presbyterian background.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
To RonL
I suppose you think that makng films like Zohan and Borat (ridculing muslims) is OK. If you really want to put a stop to racism you should stop supporting racist films.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
“I suppose you think that makng films like Zohan and Borat (ridculing muslims) is OK. If you really want to put a stop to racism you should stop supporting racist films.”
The first ridiculed Arabs and not Muslims in genral. The second, Borat, actually
made fun of Jews.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Post a Comment
By submitting this form, you give Taki's Magazine permission to publish this comment. Comments will be published at our discretion, and may be edited for clarity and length. Personal attacks, ethnic slurs, the riding of hobby horses and the beating of dead ones will be deleted as soon as they are detected by our small but alert staff. Repeat abusers of this policy will be barred from leaving comments. All comments reflect only the views of those posting them and not necessarily those of this website, its editors, or authors. For best formatting, please limit your response to one paragraph and don't hit "enter" to force line breaks.
Commenting is not available in this section entry.