Sunday, May 9, 2010

Postmodern Analysis, A Serious Man




(please refer to the following, unfortunately embedding disabled, scene:)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUTyEEiulQk

The Coen brothers (as a unit) are one of the few postmodern American filmmakers. Critic A.O. Scott states, “Their insistence on the fundamental absence of a controlling order in the universe is matched among American filmmakers only by Woody Allen.” Their 2009 film, A Serious Man, continues in this postmodern tradition.

The story’s setting is a mid-western city in 1967, where Jewish main character Larry Gobnik encounters a series of misfortunes. Larry is also a passive man who allows himself to be victimized by several of the film’s other more dominating characters. Confused and hurting, Larry, desperate find some sort of rhyme or reason to his predicament, attempts to get answers from his religion in the form of counsel with three rabbis. The first meeting, with a very young rabbi, conludes with the inexperienced rabbi giving Larry stale advice about keeping a fresh perspective and appreciating things more—like the parking lot outside the window. The middle-aged second rabbi tells a bewildering story about an orthodontist finding mystical symbols from God carved in the back of his goy patient’s teeth. When Larry asks what this means, the rabbi says we don’t know. Larry then counters with, ”Why does God make us feel the questions if he is not going to give us any answers?’ The rabbi replies, “He hasn’t told me.” Larry’s attempt to get answers from celebrated elder Rabbi Marshak, is thwarted when he refuses to see him.

Jean-Francois Lyotard, who defines “postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives” (356), would classify religion as a blanket ”metanarrative” incapable of adequately providing answers in a system that is basically a chaotic “heterogeneity of elements.” (356) .

Larry is also rendered passive, his actions influenced by his wife, his church, his kids, his doctor, his wife’s lover, the tenure board at his college, his white gun-toting neighbor, and a dissatisfied student. These represent the intimidating, unseen social lateral forces of western culture that Michel Foucault calls a “subtle, calculated technology of subjection” (564) .

The film provides no answers, only questions, with unexpected tragedies thrown in and potential doom on the horizon.

Works Cited

Foucault, Michel. “Discipline and Punish” Literary Theory: An Anthology. Ed. Julie Rivkin, Michael Ryan. Malden: Blackwell, 1998. Print.

Lyotard, Jean-Francois. “The Postmodern Condition.” Literary Theory: An Anthology. Ed. Julie Rivkin, Michael Ryan. Malden: Blackwell, 1998. Print.

Scott, A.O. “Calls to God: Always a Busy Signal” New York Times on the Web, 2 Oct. 2009. Web. 9, May 2010.

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