Hi guys! Happy Groundhog Day! Hopefully winter is gone forever. Anyway…
Out of all the papers and movies we had to watch/read, Hester Street caught my attention the most. Besides the fact that the sound track was completely off, I have to say I honestly watched the whole thing. Sometimes I was completely confused as to what was going on but thats what made it so intriguing. It was obviously set in New York, but the scene was so different and the accents were so thick.
The main character Jack (I don’t remember his hebrew name) is so determined to be this ideal “yankee.” He drops his real name, shaves his beard and tortures his wife into changing into something she doesn’t want to be. While this movie also shows that conflict of identity of Jack, I think it also shows it for his wife. She struggles between being true to her own self or becoming the woman that his husband will love again. The most important scene from Hester Street that depicts this is when Jack comes home from work and believes that his wife’s real hair is a wig and tries to rip it off. Ultimately, this is the the breaking point in their relationship. I think that this is also the point in which the conflicts of identities get resolved. Each character realizes that they cannot change who they’ve been or who they have become.
Unlike Jackie from The Jazz Singer, Jack never seems to regret becoming an intolerable yankee. There are sometimes when it seems he doubts himself, but in the end he gets exactly what he wants: An American wife and no relation to the old country. Jackie, however, gets the best of both worlds. He takes over the synagogue when his father passes and gets to sing jazz on broadway. Although there are some unsettling points in the Jazz Singer, I think that the film does successfully resolve Jackie’s issues. My opinion is that when people say it isn’t resolved they’re referring to their feelings of not being happy with the way the movie did so. Just because Jackie seemingly got one of the first happiest endings in film history does not mean he didn’t resolve his issues. The final scene of the Jazz Singer is proof of the resolution. He’s there performing for hundreds of people, when just the scene before he was in the synagogue.
Oh and food for thought: If Jackie’s father was so strict why did he have such an American name such as Jackie when it was a big deal for Jack to change his name?
