When I first heard about Seth Rogen’s new Pickle movie I immediately went to watch the trailer with much anticipation and excitement. A mainstream comedy about being Jewish involving Jewish food? Yes. Here for it. As soon as the trailer ended though I felt that old familiar sour taste in my mouth…the concern of thinking how unhelpful and inaccurate a portrayal of Jewish people this movie would be.
Last night I watched the film in its entirety, although the anxiety-inducing plot of everything going wrong and every character being mostly unlikeable, made me want to switch it off many times. I felt it was critical to know what Hollywood was putting out into the world because we unfortunately live in a moment where events in pop-culture have real-world implications. What we don’t need right now is a movie that paints a traditional Jewish character as someone hateful.
In movies where characters from another time or place are suddenly transported to our world the comedy usually comes from the physical predicaments they encounter (think Will Ferrell trying to ride an escalator in “Elf”). In “An American Pickle,” Rogen instead chooses to draw the humor from how much things have changed in the ethics and morality of our current society.
Herschel, preserved in pickle brine for 100 years, awakens to a world where homophobia and racism are supposedly a thing of the past (or so we say). I believe the plot is intended not to poke fun at Herschel’s antiquated views but to make us look inwardly at our own and what we pretend to uphold vs. what we actually believe. The problem is because Herschel is the stereotypical Jew in the story he is also the stereotypical villain of the story. I didn’t come away with much empathy for him and even his hate of the Cossacks who destroyed his entire community is taken as a joke.
Why did this film have to be about a Jewish character? After the initial sour taste from the Pickle movie dissolved I thought more about my own defensiveness and realized that I don’t think we need to pretend that Jewish people 100 years ago were all righteous by today’s standards, but the problem is there’s no balance. The other half of the story isn’t there (and I get it, it’s a comedy so who has the time for these things!), but Rogen’s modern day Ben character (Herschel’s great grandson) isn’t enough of a counterbalance to Herschel. Ben doesn’t seem to uphold the values of justice, kindness and equality that are the hallmarks of Jewish ethics today. If anything he’s more of the self-loathing introverted Brooklyn-nerd (perhaps a new modern-day negative Jewish stereotype?). So we’re left with only the dark half truth of an incomplete history lesson, one which I don’t think is a helpful or even accurate message in the midst of a climate of hate.
