Jean-Luc Godard: S and D

But how is he as a filmmaker?

the last Godard I liked a little was Notre Musique.

http://www.nzz.ch/nachrichten/kultur/aktuell/ich_werde_nicht_gern_mit_picasso_verglichen__er_malte_zu_viele_teller_1.8293071.html

^ original interview. unfortunately in german not french.

― google street jew (s1ocki), Wednesday, November 17, 2010 12:20 PM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark

this reads pretty much the same in german as it does in english, so I don't think the perceived anti-semitism is a translation to english issue.

I'm guessing the original interview was done in french (unless JLG speaks fluent german, I have no idea really), so maybe there was some mistranslation there.

There's a well-known quote from Godard where he says that, as much as he despised John Wayne politically, the moment near the end of The Searchers where Wayne lifts up Natalie Wood and says "Let's go home, Debbie" made him love Wayne. Seems like you're having more or less the same discussion on Godard himself.

The other day someone said to me, upon realizing that I was Jewish, "oh you've got nothing to worry about then, you'll do fine HERE" HERE being Hollywood I suppose. It was not Godard, just some woman I was talking to at the AFI festival.

And I'm about to graduate - how do I get my resume to be more "Jewish"?

I don't really see how that cliche is germane here since no one is really using this against his work.

They are, bacause they've made a thread about his films about this topic, and I imagine it will be the dominant topic on this thread until he dies. See also Polanski's film thread since the week he was seized.

what a lowering of the discourse it is to discuss an interview a filmmaker gave to a newspaper

Perhaps we should have a thread for "bad celebrity personalities," and "Roger Ailes slams the White House" links could go there too to save a lot of fucking time

i mean considering the amount of bullshit you spew on threads about movies you haven't even seen, the charge of dishonouring the thread topic or whatever it is you think we did here is really fucking rich dude xp

yes, what a lowering of the discourse it is to discuss two sentences in an interview nonstop for 3 days

xp

the amount of bullshit you spew on threads about movies you haven't even seen

^ILX's version of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion

actually, we were discussing several paragraphs, for about half an hour, before you barged in and insulted me using my real name for no fucking reason at all

what you "were" doing is past, what you "are" doing is probably about 500 more posts on this single issue.

I'm sorry, I thought I sufficiently googleproofed your name. And don't forget to friend me.

haha

i believe a good reason we're still talking about it is because you're also, still talking about it

okay so this is not an allegation I make often, or one that I particularly like to make, but: you have got to be pretty damn sensitive — or deliberately uncharitable in your interpretation (i.e. the person upthread going 'wah wah godard said jews can't be doctors, doesn't he know there were tons of jewish doctors in vienna' just no, shut the fuck up), or just bored and looking for a high-profile witch-hunt — to get butthurt about this.

we are not talking about a gibson- or richards-esque freakout revealing a white-hot core of hatred at the heart of a seemingly normal human being.
we are talking about a notoriously anti-hollywood dude, saying some shit in an interview about the jews who founded hollywood which, while maybe not a 100% accurate reflection of the historical truth, is also hardly an elders-of-zion-level crazy paranoid distortion of said truth.

I'm maybe even willing to defend his "ah but what does 'anti-semite' even mean???" dodge, because I think at a certain point one has a right to question what, exactly, his self-appointed prosecutors have put him on trial for, in whose name, and what they're trying to prove by it.

but I mean tbperfectlyh, I don't know what the hell kind of non-'anti-semitic' answer you can give to a question like "are the jews for diversity?" — "oh yeah, those dudes love diversity! it's cuz their rootless cosmopolitanism has deprived them of any authentic sense of cultural belonging, so now they find themselves drawn, like moths to a flame, by whatever's most appealing in all the other real cultures!" so I guess maybe I blame the interviewer.

and the stuff about blacks seems like even more of a non-issue... or is anyone here going to seriously dispute either the existence or the wrongheadedness of the "hey, look, now y'all have the same opportunities to spend money on shit that we do! everything's groovy!" ideology?

guess gukbe's on his lunch break

you know, i am the LAST person to cry "anti-semitism!" on a hair-trigger, i really resent it when other jewish people do, and i was really kind of upset by this shit, so i guess you can go ahead and call me sensitive or uncharitable if you like, but that's how i felt

look s1ocki, aside from the high-heat of our little flareups I judge you as a decent guy (testimony from rrobyn included). But there are plenty of instances of old artists saying *even more* offensive things in interviews.

And I'm not denying your right to be upset.

anyway, a couple years old:

http://www.movingimagesource.us/articles/hes-not-there-20080604

Toward the end of his book, Brody levels a direct charge of anti-Semitism against Godard. His evidence lies in a couple of comments made in moments of echt-assholery, a lifelong fondness for certain rightwing French authors, a questionable reading of certain sequences in his later films (such as the "invention of stereo" monologue from JLG/JLG), and the testimony of vacuous pop philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy. Since the '70s, Godard has explicitly identified himself as "anti-Zionist but not anti-Semitic." That's a distinction that doesn't really exist in America's mainstream political discourse, and it doesn't carry much weight for Brody either, which isn't too surprising given his apparent disinterest in radical politics and philosophy. It's true that in recent work Godard has been waging a polemic war against the word, and that he mentions Judaism in this context as a "culture of the Book" (complicating this considerably are his occasional assertions, as in his video short Meetin' WA, that he regards his own frequent use of text as imagistic rather than literary, also that one of the primary sources for his notion of image is Walter Benjamin). He also has a beef against the category of a chosen people or chosen nation—whether the term is used by Jews, Germans, or "the Americans of the North." However, it is also true that he views the Holocaust as the defining event, the central horror, of the corpse-ridden 20th century. The Histoire(s) mark it also as the moment of cinema's fall from grace, obsessively worrying at the question of how the medium could have failed to perceive it, whether a "true image" could have prevented the atrocity.

Godard's political and philosophic statements can be elusive, arrogant, profound, or silly, but they too are an attempt to find ways of speaking and showing outside the rigidities of dominant thought. They can and should be argued with, but labeling them simply anti-Semitic is hardly conducive to dialogue. It is what they call a conversation stopper.

i know lots of artists say bad and stupid shit in interviews, and i think they should be called out for too!

xxpost: okay that's fair, sry to question motives, just feels like this is really not a big deal compared to, I dunno, like a zillion other things even just within the world of 'potentially offensive things famous people say'. (but also nb I have not seen Film Socialisme, which seems to be the 'real' cause for this whole discussion, and sounds like it's maybe much more anti-semitic than any of the stuff quoted here?)

look as a fairly left-wing, anti-zionist jew myself i have to field so much persecution complex from my friends and relatives that when i genuinely get upset about something anti-semitic, having it batted away as such is really frustrating

ok, I don't mean to bat it away. I'm sorry if I did.

Having no real, emotional tether to a cultural background I obviously can't begin to understand the where the line of offensive, anti-semitism is.

The way he's phrasing these things are pretty stupid and baiting, but again, I don't see any problem with asserting that early Hollywood Jewish moguls were interested in commerce (as opposed to art). fwiw I think the fact that they were Jewish has no real relation to any of the output other than the Hays code and the deliberate attempts to 'Christianize' their output to ward off the government and anti-semites who think they're indoctrinating the nation. I don't think the fact that they were Jewish informs their desire to make money. On the flip side, I don't think the fact that they were Jewish meant they were using their films to create an America they could fit into. I don't think that makes me anti-semitic though.

http://www.tamemymind.com/blog/images2007/smiley-bangheadonwall.gif

fine, Godard is a raging anti-semite.

i'll take that over the same exact post you've been making and re-making for 24 hours

I probably just missed where you explained why it's so offensive (other than HE'S TALKING ABOUT ALL JEWS)

THAT'S WHERE IT'S OFFENSIVE

but I'm saying he isn't talking about all Jews and you're just saying he is so I guess that's an impasse

unless I'm missing something with the word 'diversity'

yeah, despite poorly-chosen words on both his and the interviewer's part it seems p.clear they're talking about a particular subset of the group "all jews"

maybe the problem is that he's talking about them "as" jews tho, rather than "as" immigrants or businessmen or early hollywood ppl or w/e? I dunno just thinkin' out loud here, still not totally sure where slocki's comin' from

well that's the point i've been making for the last 24 hours

look what bothered me at first was the whole "how can i be a misogynist, my mother's a woman!" response to the anti-semitism question. the whole "the jews were looking to access money and making deals with the mafia" thing was just icing on the cake.

I don't understand the first part of that, and aside from the wording I don't see what's so off about the second.

and really, you can pick it apart all you want to mean that godard was only referring to SOME jews, and that he just happens to call them "the jews" because it's convenient, but this just sounds like the coded language of anti-semitism to me. it is the same old shit. to me, it's dogwhistling. very few anti-semites, historically, actually sound like guys on st0rmfront boards.

I should add that I don't understand the mediterranean thing but nobody has explained it to me.

it's that sly smirky "all i'm saying is... isn't it INTERESTING how many jews are involved in banking" shit

I think you're making it out to sound more like a conspiracy theory than it is. His point is that if you mention stuff like that you get labelled as an anti-semite. Which is basically what's happening on this thread.

snowy yr a fucking retard, i wasn't even joining in the chorus of antisemitism accusations (tho u have to be rather obtuse not to detect the vein of ~polite~ cultural/poetical antisemtism befitting a franco-swiss haut-bourgeous high modernist of his generation)....rather i was showing the inadequacy of his rhetorical methods in these kinda areas where, you know, actual reality has to be considered (see also the etymology of 'antisemitism')

His point is that if you mention stuff like that you get labelled as an anti-semite. Which is basically what's happening on this thread.

― Gukbe, Wednesday, 17 November 2010 20:09 (25 minutes ago)

just like someone would get called a racist if they enumerated the white women who have been raped by black drug addicts, even if their stats are 'true'

wrt jlg, it's not an ~accusatation~ like he's going to be prosecuted, it doesn't attenuate the greatness of his work imo but it is kinda dispiriting

ya exactly - and i'm kind of shocked aerosmith doesn't "get" this - tell me who brings up "the jews"' ties to "finance" who isn't peddling something

People who are saying that anytime you say that Jews wanted to make money you get called an anti-semite?

You saw the film, didn't you slocks? Did you find it anti-semitic? (not trolling or baiting, just curious)

http://www.misterteacher.com/alphabetgeometry/obtuse%20angle.gif

It might have been obtuse but was it anti-semitic?

no, i haven't seen his new one yet

the vein of ~polite~ cultural/poetical antisemtism befitting a franco-swiss haut-bourgeous high modernist of his generation

tell me who brings up "the jews"' ties to "finance" who isn't peddling something

― google street jew (s1ocki), Wednesday, November 17, 2010 8:48 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

isnt this kindof a "the jews killed jesus" argument?

we are not talking about a gibson- or richards-esque freakout revealing a white-hot core of hatred at the heart of a seemingly normal human being.
we are talking about a notoriously anti-hollywood dude, saying some shit in an interview about the jews who founded hollywood which, while maybe not a 100% accurate reflection of the historical truth, is also hardly an elders-of-zion-level crazy paranoid distortion of said truth.

awesome benchmark brah

I'm maybe even willing to defend his "ah but what does 'anti-semite' even mean???" dodge, because I think at a certain point one has a right to question what, exactly, his self-appointed prosecutors have put him on trial for, in whose name, and what they're trying to prove by it.

he's on trial now? jesus, though, seriously, what the fuck? 'in who's name' was gibson being called an anti-semite, huh? i guess he's 'on trial' for being an anti-semite and people are 'trying to prove' he is an ant-semite in the name of... decency? idk this feels pretty basic.

but I mean tbperfectlyh, I don't know what the hell kind of non-'anti-semitic' answer you can give to a question like "are the jews for diversity?" — "oh yeah, those dudes love diversity! it's cuz their rootless cosmopolitanism has deprived them of any authentic sense of cultural belonging, so now they find themselves drawn, like moths to a flame, by whatever's most appealing in all the other real cultures!" so I guess maybe I blame the interviewer.

not a great question but im pretty sure it's possible to answer it without being anti-semitic.

and the stuff about blacks seems like even more of a non-issue... or is anyone here going to seriously dispute either the existence or the wrongheadedness of the "hey, look, now y'all have the same opportunities to spend money on shit that we do! everything's groovy!" ideology?

― undervalued aerosmith memorabilia I have appraised (bernard snowy), Wednesday, November 17, 2010 6:50 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

...

he "black guy in a watch" line that would be super-offensive if he wasn't OBVIOUSLY USING IT AS A RHETORICAL STAND-IN FOR OPPOSING VIEWS WITH WHICH HE IS ENGAGING IN DIALOGUE

ha, ha, 'engaging in dialogue', sure