Michael Bronski
By Michael Bronski
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Culture A Series Defies Easy Answers to Inquisition’s Questions
When Cardinal Joseph Alois Ratzinger was elected Pope on April 19, 2005, becoming Benedict XVI, his promotion elevated him from his position as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Critics of the archconservative, and highly controversial, cardinal were quick to point out that, since the CDF is the modern moniker for…
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Culture From the Yiddish Songbook to the American Canon
There is a shocking, gloriously transcendent moment that occurs nine minutes into “From Shtetl to Swing,” an hour-long documentary about the influence of Yiddish culture on American music. The program is presented October 5 as part of PBS’s “Great Performances.” Until this point in the show, we only have been told that the experience, and…
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Culture Crossing Into the Director’s Chair
Like Leo Spivak, the character he plays in “King of the Corner,” Peter Riegert is on the road, selling his wares. But unlike the troubled Spivak, who is trapped in a job he increasingly dislikes — running focus groups for home-safety systems — as he undergoes a massive midlife crisis, Riegert is traveling across the…
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News He Played the Jew, Perhaps a Little Too Well
There are many reasons to celebrate The Turner Classic Movies restoration of Edward F. Cline’s charming 1925 ethnic comedy “The Rag Man.” Not least, it offers a chance for audiences to finally watch a full-scale, feature-length performance by the famed but mostly forgotten Jewish performer Max Davidson. He was exceedingly popular early in the 20th…
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News Searching for Couches Real and Metaphoric
Furniture, vital in everyday life, hardly ever plays a large role in art. Henry James’s “The Spoils of Poynton” comes to mind, in which the characters’ inner lives are manifested in their dreadful fight over inherited furnishings, as do stories by Anzia Yezierska, in which the meager possessions of immigrant Jews on the Lower East…
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News Stiller Waters Should Run Deeper
Ben Stiller is one of the most talented performers, writers and directors working today. Which is why it’s so hard for this viewer to be presented with “Along Came Polly,” a sometimes funny but mostly unpleasant romantic comedy, the benighted love child of the comic coarseness of “There’s Something About Mary” and the sexual anxiety-producing…
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News Hammer Time
The brilliance of “The Hebrew Hammer,” an edgy, often shocking jewploitation action film, is not just that it will do anything to get laughs, but that it often doesn’t seem to know how far it is actually going. Any film that begins with the dedication “To all my Jewish brothers and sisters who have had…
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News Rewriting the Script on Reagan: Why the President Ignored AIDS
For the last two months I’ve been teaching a course titled “Plagues and Politics: The Impact of AIDS on U.S. Culture” at Dartmouth College, and have spent an enormous amount of time thinking about the AIDS pandemic. So when the political flap over the historical accuracy of “The Reagans” — the CBS miniseries on the…
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