My Fayht is in Your Hands

Welcome to a brand new feature for this blog!
Holly's Weekly Interactive Life Planner.

As I have entered into a weird state of walking-dead-style apathy, I have decided that I should put the responsibility for running my life into the hands of my readers. You all seem to still be alive and awake, full of helpful advice and opinions, so I am giving myself up as a ward of my audience.

Now, I should not say that I am being entirely uninterested and uncreative these days, as I have actually been thinking of my dissertation proposal, which is due in August. (Of course, it would be more useful to think seriously about my ritual studies research proposal, which is due on Wednesday, but what can I do? The heart wants what it wants, and that is also true of the imagination. I am just glad to be thinking of something, even if it is not quite timely.)

I just can’t make a final choice. This is where you come in.

So this week’s decision placed before you involves the direction of my dissertation. I want to email my advisor early this week with a general direction, so I can start putting together my second comprehensive-exam reading list ASAP. Thus, I am keeping the polls open at least until Monday, but I will be taking advice for some time after. I will keep you all updated on how the vote is going, and you may make your voice heard via comment or email. It goes without saying that I welcome comments from both friends and strangers, as this is a fully democratic process.

As to the outcome… I can’t really promise that I’ll abide directly with whatever the audience decides, as I may come out of my stupor unexpectedly this week, but, if still infected by the zombie gene, it is likely that your word goes.

To give you the layout of my dilemma, I can start by saying it stems from some indecision and prevarication on my part. If you’ll remember, last October I submitted my proposal for my grant funding and in that I proposed to do theoretical and political “critical race theory” deconstruction of Jewish portrayals in North American films about intermarriage (Jewish-Gentile romance) narratives. I was pretty excited about this, as it seemed fairly dynamic and fresh. However, I have had some doubts as to how I would execute that over the space of 300-plus pages (it seemed both broad and narrow at the same time, somehow), so I recently re-thought the plan. I then turned back to the original proposal I submitted with my PhD application: the defining tropes of Jewish characters in North American film (i.e. the Jewish mother, the Jewish subversive, the Jewish intellectual, the dangerous Jewish genius, the Jewish magician, the errant Jewish daughter, etc.).

I liked the idea of the trope work because it would let me cover a character-type per chapter, and thus give me ten little projects instead of one massive one, and, further, it would let me explore identity construction, which is a major interest for me.

However, both John and Catherine have given me some very good feedback on my desired change, and have reminded me of why I abandoned this trope project to begin with: It is the only area of Jewish-portrayals-in-film that has already been done (a lot), so is there a need for me to do it, too? Shouldn’t I do something new? The only research topic more stale would be Jewish portrayals in films on the life of Jesus, and I would never dream of barking up that dead tree, so why this one?

Thus, I have come around to a third option. I am now thinking of doing tropes of intermarriage narratives instead of the particular characters, thereby benefiting from the elements I like from the trope project, but also allowing me to move into fresher territory. So, I guess I prefer this one, but I’m still not sure it’s what I am supposed to do.

The problem here is that my advisor is pretty much OK with either approach, so it is genuinely my own passion that controls which way I go. This problem is complicated by the fact that I generally have no passion these days… so you can see where I am stymied.

Ergo, I am leaving it up to you, gentle reader. You can choose based on what you’d rather research yourself, or based on what you’d rather read. Just let me know what you think, please, as I am stumped.

Which way should Holly go?

Please choose one of the following options:

a) A chapter-by-chapter exploration of Jewish “Stock Characters,” such as Shylock, Fagin, Svengali, or Woody Allen (The Nebbish), with a organizational thread of identity construction and tropic conceptualization of the North American “Jew.” This option would be slightly different from other work done on Jewish tropes, as many past works are done chronologically, not thematically, but it isn't exactly ground breaking.

b) A unified theoretical piece asking whether Jewish-Gentile intermarriages in film are framed as interracial relationships or interfaith relationships, and what this means about the North American understanding of the “Jew” as a racial being.

c) A chapter-by-chapter exploration of different archetypal intermarriage narratives (i.e. all three of The Jazz Singer versions, Alvy Singer/Annie Hall, Groucho/Margaret Dumont, Svengali/Trilby, etc.) as each representing different motivations, problems and understandings of Jewish/Gentile intermarriage. Topics will include the American Dream as represented by marriage to a Gentile, psychological motivations, the allo-Semitic view of Jewish sexual nature, racialization of Jews, and the construction of not only Jewishness in these films, but also of Gentile-ness.

d) Holly will quit PhD and get a job at the CoffeeTime down the street, while she struggles to become a playwright and develops the obligatory drinking problem and ends up, alone and middle-aged, traveling with a Mexican circus as the sideshow geek.

My future rests with the voters! There are no butterfly ballots, no MP representation, no opinion polls to promote strategic voting. Just honest-to-goodness direct and pure democracy, people.

It’s your vote- use it!