Zohan!

(Be Advised - SPOILERS)

After our swing dance class last night, with our perky Swedish instructor Cat ("tree-pull step!"), we went to see You Don't Mess with the Zohan. I wasn't expecting much. Adam Sandler has had about one good movie and one half-funny movie (Punch Drunk Love, and Anger Managment), and a lot of dumb-ass productions, like drawn out SNL skits.

But this was not only funny in an outrageous but not heavy-handed or contrived way, it was actually very sweet. Sandler's clueless superhero Zohan, an Israeli counter terrorist agent who apparently usually works on his own because he doesn't really need anyone else (he catches bullets in his teeth and up his nose, and sticks a piranha down his pants without flinching), comes to realize that he's tired of all the fighting, and longs to go to New York to be a hair stylist. OK, funny setup which could play the macho Israeli male stereotype against the male stylist stereotype--which does get some play, but Zohan is so sincere and unaware of the stereotypes, without irony, that he comes across as rather clean and pure. When he talks with the young man whose mother takes him in, and whose mother Zohan quickly starts screwing, he sincerely tells the son how happy his mother is and how could he want anything different (apparently in Israel there's no such thing as the primal scene, i.e., walking in on your parents having sex). And he really means it, and you believe it totally. There's really not a wink-wink nod-nod in relation to Zohan. You are expected to take him at his word.

Thus what we get is something of a checking of the American ironic stance via this foreign transplant, who doesn't even understand irony and is fearless about his own sincerity. When he starts seeing hair clients, little old women from the neighborhood, and adds a little shagging at the end of his hair care, you get the sense that he really and truly appreciates these women whom American culture (and American film culture) view as hags or sexless wisdom figures. Zohan sees an inner quality of beauty and lustiness that is so obvious to him, that you start actually seeing the obviousness yourself. It's in this way that the film really tweaks some of the dehumanizing that goes on in American culture.

Not to mention what Zohan is doing with the Middle Eastern conflicts. It's essentially a pacifist and humanistic film. All of the characters (except the evil-doing mall developer and his hick-terrorist hireling) have dreams of a better life, free from conflict and inherited hatreds and divisions. The super-terrorist The Phantom (played wonderfully by John Turturo) secretly wants to sell shoes. His hatred of Israel is something given to him, and forced on him by circumstance; essentially, he wants to live a useful, joyful life doing something he loves.

Same with Zohan, the master soldier, who is tired of the constant fighting and wants to make the world "silky smooth." He also wants to serve others, not support division and dis-integration. He also wants to find his own internal integration, where he does not have to choose only one incarnation of himself, the soldier, over the lover or the servant or the artist. He is tired of only choosing a part of himself, and having his culture insist on only that part.

So in a sense, the film is upholding a cherished, and older, value of America, that you can come here and shed the Old World--the cultures of rigid relationships and inherited animosity--in favor of a life of opportunity. However, here's where the film updates this story to one of not Horatio Alger-like rising to the top, not a narcissistic climb over the bodies of your fellows, but of self-integration, the expansion of the human community to include all struggling, yearning beings. Even the hick hireling--played by Dave Mathews, in a weird and wonderful casting decision--is not killed in the end, but rather catapulted by the combined, uh, singing of The Phantom and Zohan--never done in 2000 years!--into the gay party helmed by George Takai (nee, Sulu from Star Trek). Even he is given an opportunity to face his fears through exposure to the feared community, which presents itself as both wonderfully idiosyncratic and totally human.

I am such a sucker for such films, because I so believe in and yearn for this deep healing and recognition of connectedness. And I love the archetypal nature of pop culture, how it can express in simple terms deep longing and hope. And I really love genre literature and art, in its both honoring the structure/tradition/community of life, as well as the joyous reinterpretation of that life by the artist, a conscious expression of what we all do all the time.

So, the reason why "you don't mess with the Zohan" is not actually that he's so tough and macho, it's because his essential nature is loving, and there's no way to fight that.