Hollywood, The Last Frontier and ‘One Love’

On a recent drizzly Sunday afternoon, I decided to indulge myself and do something I haven’t done since before the pandemic — go out and catch a movie. For some reason, I just hadn’t gotten around to a movie theater over the past few years, but “Bob Marley: One Love” piqued my interest. (My two cents: fairly good movie, and of course great music, but it doesn’t necessarily require big-screen viewing.)

In this age of streaming, venturing out to a see a flick seems almost like a quaint notion. With so many services (Hulu, Netflix, Prime Video, etc.), you have an almost infinite supply of entertainment options in the comfort of your living room.

Like perhaps some of you, I’ve lately been bingeing on reruns of the ‘90s comedy-drama “Northern Exposure,” now that it’s finally streaming after years of copyright hassles. As you’ll recall, “Northern Exposure” is about a young Jewish doctor from the Big Apple who finds himself trapped in the small, quirky Alaskan town of Cicely.

For the most part, this fish-out-of-water premise holds up and doesn’t feel too dated. But viewing an episode titled “Grosse Pointe, 48230,” I was reminded that certain elements just don’t work anymore.

The plot surrounds the main character Joel Fleischman traveling to the Detroit area with his love-hate interest Maggie O’Connell for a family gathering. Being a member of the tribe, Joel’s a bit of a novelty there. At one point, the family’s reverend corners him and asks about the Jewish perspective on the afterlife.

Neither a rabbi nor theologian, Joel hems and haws before explaining that Jews don’t agree on anything — “except maybe Israel.”

My, how times have changed. I think even Dr. Fleischman would be stunned with the current climate.

As I write this column, it’s only a couple days after the 2024 Academy Awards at which many celebrities wore red pins with an illustration of a hand with a black heart at its center. The pins reportedly advocate a ceasefire to Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.

But according to the Israeli government and others, the pin actually symbolizes a horrific chapter in the history of the Middle East conflict. In 2000, a pair of IDF reservists were lynched by a mob of Palestinians after accidentally entering the West Bank city of Ramallah. The bodies of Yosef Avrahami and Vadim Nurzhitz were brutally mutilated, and one Palestinian drew cheers from the crowd after appearing at a window displaying his hands dripping with blood.

Sounds like Hollywood’s leading lights need to do more homework for their humanitarian endeavors.

And then you have English-Jewish director Jonathan Glazer, whose Holocaust-era drama “The Zone of Interest” won best international feature. In his acceptance speech, Glazer compared the war in Gaza to the horrors of the Holocaust.

“Our film shows where dehumanization leads at its worst,” he said. “Right now, we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people … whether the victims of October the 7th in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza. All the victims of this dehumanization, how do — we resist?”

Back in the ‘90s, the idea that a Jew would use the international stage to condemn Israel after it had been brutally attacked, and then compare its response to the Shoah, would’ve been unfathomable. But we’re not in Alaska anymore, are we, Dr. Fleischman?

If you’ll excuse me, I’ll go back to my reruns. Reality has become too surreal for my tastes.

Sincerely,

Alan Feiler, Editor-in-Chief