The Bashevis Singer exchange, part 3: ‘Singer in the film is both charming and cruel’

Asaf Galay has directed and written a number of award-winning documentaries for Israeli television. These include series on Israeli humor (In the Jewish Land, 2005); the history of Tel Aviv-Jaffa (Tel Aviv-Jaffa, 2007); the life and influence of the Zionist hero Joseph Trumpeldor (When the Lion Asked Twice, 2008); and the Israeli national poet Natan Alterman (Sentimentality Allowed, 2012). Also premiering in 2015 is a documentary film he directed and produced on how comics reflect Israeli life, entitled The Israeli Superheroes.

Shaul Betser is a well-known director of series and documentaries for the Israel Broadcasting Authority (IBA) and Israel's Channel 2. He was also the founder of Nana-NetVision's popular video website. Betser has a BFA from the department of film and television at Tel Aviv University.

This exchange focuses on Galay and Betser’s new documentary film, The Muses of Isaac Bashevis Singer. You can find a trailer here, part 1 here, and part 2 here.

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Dear Mr. Galay and Mr. Betser,

In your second response you said that the film is “about the way that Singer's ideas about translation were intertwined with his ideas about sex (and what we might call his sexism).” I’d like to elaborate a bit on the sexism issue.

The documentary presents a portrait of a quaint, ‘old-devil’ kind of man whose conduct, perhaps partly due to his charming idiosyncrasies and heavy Yiddish accent, comes out as rather harmless and even quite entertaining. The interviewees certainly don’t seem scarred, and they all treat Singer’s lewd episodes forgivingly.

An old married man using his fame and power to try to seduce dozens of his young female employees is a pretty clear case of serial sexual harassment, though, and one can’t help but wonder how many women were hurt and/or disgusted by his behaviour. Considering that several of Singer’s works feature simple-minded women who are presented as objects of desire (e.g. Shosha, The Slave, The Spinoza of Market Street, and that’s just off the top of my head), it seems that a much darker and more critical narrative could have easily been constructed.

What kind of light did you intend the film to shed on Singer’s portrayal of women, and did you ever consider making the film less forgiving?

I’d like to thank you again for the film and for doing this exchange.

Yours,

Shmuel.

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Dear Shmuel,

We'll start by talking about the type of movie we did NOT want to make. We didn't want to make a 'forgiving' film about Singer nor a 'dark and critical' one. And we were certainly determined to avoid a celebrity scandal movie that reduced a great writer to his problematic sexual history. Instead, we wanted to make a movie that was entertaining and witty but which also captured the complexity and multi-layered nature of Singer as a person and as a writer.

For that reason, we tried to avoid being overly judgmental or didactic about Singer's relationship with his women translators. We thought it more effective to let these women speak for themselves, and not to impose on them or the movie a clear moral on how their dealings with Singer should be categorized. It is up to the viewers to make up their own minds, come to their own conclusions.  

Still, the movie does not avoid the exploitative elements in Singer's relationships with his women translators. Singer in the film is both charming and cruel. We included footage from an interview in which Singer was asked whether he is a good Jew. He answered with another question: How can I be a good Jew he asked, when I am not a good man?

We liked that scene because it suggests not just Singer's self-awareness but also how slippery, truthful but hiding he could be. His personality and, what is most important to us, his writing, revolved around ambiguity, around layers. His stories were often about secrets, about a past that could be gradually revealed but could not be washed away, made easy or clean. He wrote about a destroyed, lost world but refused nostalgia.

Singer's intelligence, his refusal to be pinned down, means that we don't share your view that his writing simply depicts women as 'simple-minded objects of desire'. His women characters were far more complicated, important, and varied than that. He was certainly fascinated by sex, but his writings often feature women who are wise, rationalists, knowledgeable. Yentl is an obvious example of a woman character using intellect to try to break free from the confinements imposed upon her.

In the end, our film is not about Singer and his relationships or attitudes toward women. It is about Singer and his translators. We wanted to show that this group of often young, unknown women played an important role in some of the greatest literature of the twentieth century. As with everything else, Singer's attitude towards translators was not simple. He often avoided giving them credit but could also be remarkably generous and collaborative. He called for a 'revolution' that viewed them as artists but also created what he called a 'harem' of translators. Singer and his translators was not a relationship of equality. But together they created stories of surpassing and enduring importance, wisdom, and truth.