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The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Making Masculinity and Unmaking Jewishness: Norman Mailer’s Voice in Wild 90 and Beyond the Law: Difference between revisions

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voice is a deliberate construction pieced together from bits of others’ voices in order to mask the adenoidal voice of his childhood.
voice is a deliberate construction pieced together from bits of others’ voices in order to mask the adenoidal voice of his childhood.


Mailer reflects briefly upon his voice in his chronicle of the October 1967 March on the Pentagon, ''The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, the Novel as History'', written in the third person with himself as its main character. Part IV of ''Armies'' begins with an apology from Mailer for bringing the story of the March on the Pentagon to a climax and then launching into a diversion about his relationship to film and the cameras following him through the melee of the march. Mailer writes of his relationship to film: “he had on screen in this first documentary a fatal taint, a last remaining speck of the one personality he found absolutely insupportable—the nice Jewish boy from Brooklyn. Something in his adenoids gave it away—he had the softness of a man early accustomed to mother-love.”{{sfn|Mailer|1968|pg=152}} For Mailer, the paradoxical experience of seeing his voice undermines the masculinities he works to materialize in his career as a writer and public intellectual, which he goes on to enumerate: “warrior, presumptive general, ex-political candidate, embattled aging enfant terrible of the literary world, wise father of six children, radical intellectual, existential philosopher, hard-working author, champion of obscenity, husband of four battling sweet wives, amiable bar drinker, and much exaggerated street fighter, party giver, hostess insulter.” As a result of feeling outed on film as a “nice Jewish boy,” “accustomed to mother love,” our presumptive general and champion of obscenity vows to “[stay] away from further documentaries of himself.”{{sfn|Mailer|1968|pg=152}}
Mailer reflects briefly upon his voice in his chronicle of the October 1967 March on the Pentagon, ''The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, the Novel as History'', written in the third person with himself as its main character. Part IV of ''Armies'' begins with an apology from Mailer for bringing the story of the March on the Pentagon to a climax and then launching into a diversion about his relationship to film and the cameras following him through the melee of the march. Mailer writes of his relationship to film: “he had on screen in this first documentary a fatal taint, a last remaining speck of the one personality he found absolutely insupportable—the nice Jewish boy from Brooklyn. Something in his adenoids gave it away—he had the softness of a man early accustomed to mother-love.”{{sfn|Mailer|1968a|pg=152}} For Mailer, the paradoxical experience of seeing his voice undermines the masculinities he works to materialize in his career as a writer and public intellectual, which he goes on to enumerate: “warrior, presumptive general, ex-political candidate, embattled aging enfant terrible of the literary world, wise father of six children, radical intellectual, existential philosopher, hard-working author, champion of obscenity, husband of four battling sweet wives, amiable bar drinker, and much exaggerated street fighter, party giver, hostess insulter.” As a result of feeling outed on film as a “nice Jewish boy,” “accustomed to mother love,” our presumptive general and champion of obscenity vows to “[stay] away from further documentaries of himself.”{{sfn|Mailer|1968a|pg=152}}


The problem of Mailer’s voice is intimately connected with both sexuality and masculinity. The adenoids, after all, are located in the nose, a stereotypical marker of Jewish otherness and degeneracy. We do not need Sander Gilman to tell us, although he does in the chapter of ''The Jew’s Body'' entitled “The Jewish Nose,” that the Jewish nose is the locus of redirected anxiety about the Jewish penis—both are body parts that develop and take shape at puberty—the latter of which is a threat to national purity through its potential to increase the Jewish population. The adenoidal voice signals a kind of impotence for Mailer, revealing him as accustomed to mother love, and functions as “the acoustic mirror in which the male subject hears all the repudiated elements of his infantile babble.”{{sfn|Silverman|1988|pg=81}} The infantile babble here, the mother tongue of the mother’s voice, is Yiddish.{{efn|Mary V. Dearborn writes that Mailer picked up Yiddish at home from his parents, “enough so that many years later, in Germany, he was able to ask for directions in this language and be understood.” {{harvtxt|Dearborn|1999|p=14}}}} Kaja Silverman writes that the voice of the mother resonates in the male subject and that “the male subject frequently ‘refines’ his ‘own’ voice by projecting onto the{{pg|184|185}}
The problem of Mailer’s voice is intimately connected with both sexuality and masculinity. The adenoids, after all, are located in the nose, a stereotypical marker of Jewish otherness and degeneracy. We do not need Sander Gilman to tell us, although he does in the chapter of ''The Jew’s Body'' entitled “The Jewish Nose,” that the Jewish nose is the locus of redirected anxiety about the Jewish penis—both are body parts that develop and take shape at puberty—the latter of which is a threat to national purity through its potential to increase the Jewish population. The adenoidal voice signals a kind of impotence for Mailer, revealing him as accustomed to mother love, and functions as “the acoustic mirror in which the male subject hears all the repudiated elements of his infantile babble.”{{sfn|Silverman|1988|pg=81}} The infantile babble here, the mother tongue of the mother’s voice, is Yiddish.{{efn|Mary V. Dearborn writes that Mailer picked up Yiddish at home from his parents, “enough so that many years later, in Germany, he was able to ask for directions in this language and be understood.” {{harvtxt|Dearborn|1999|p=14}}}} Kaja Silverman writes that the voice of the mother resonates in the male subject and that “the male subject frequently ‘refines’ his ‘own’ voice by projecting onto the{{pg|184|185}}
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mother’s voice all that is unassimilable to the paternal position.”{{sfn|Silverman|1988|pg=81}} Mailer is a case study in this relationship to the maternal voice; when Mailer first sees himself on film, he hears the adenoidal, Jewish, maternal voice within himself. Because the paternal position Mailer strives to create is distinctly not Jewish, or at least one that allies itself with Jewishness without performing it, the mother’s voice becomes unassimilable (or in his words, “unsupportable”) to his identity. Thus, while Mailer asserts that he will “[stay] away from further documentaries of himself,” he returns to film as both actor and director in order to refine his voice by expunging its maternal layers.
mother’s voice all that is unassimilable to the paternal position.”{{sfn|Silverman|1988|pg=81}} Mailer is a case study in this relationship to the maternal voice; when Mailer first sees himself on film, he hears the adenoidal, Jewish, maternal voice within himself. Because the paternal position Mailer strives to create is distinctly not Jewish, or at least one that allies itself with Jewishness without performing it, the mother’s voice becomes unassimilable (or in his words, “unsupportable”) to his identity. Thus, while Mailer asserts that he will “[stay] away from further documentaries of himself,” he returns to film as both actor and director in order to refine his voice by expunging its maternal layers.


Norman Mailer’s film career, often dismissed as vulgar and/or irrelevant, was short but intense; he directed four films, two of which were released in 1968, ''Wild 90'' and ''Beyond the Law'', one in 1970, ''Maidstone'', and, after a long break, ''Tough Guys Don’t Dance'' was released in 1987.{{efn|Mailer was also featured in several documentaries during these years, including Dick Fontaine’s ''Will the Real Norman Mailer Please Stand Up?'' (1968) and ''Norman Mailer vs. Fun City U.S.A.'' (1970); the former is a filmic companion to ''Armies'', documenting Mailer’s actions during the March on the Pentagon, and the latter produces a record of Mailer’s 1969 New York City mayoral campaign. Mailer was also documented in Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker’s ''Town Bloody Hall'', a film of the 1971 debate between Mailer and Germaine Greer about women’s liberation at Town Hall in New York City.}} Mailer’s first three films were largely influenced by John Cassavetes, although Mailer predictably argues that his mastery of what he calls “existential acting” makes him a much better filmmaker than Cassavetes.{{sfn|Mailer|2006|}} In his essay, “Some Dirt in the Talk,” Mailer defines existential acting by addressing each of the terms that comprise the phrase. He notes that existentialism and acting exist at two opposite “poles,” writing, ''“If existentialism is ultimately concerned with the attractions of the unknown, acting is one of the surviving rituals of invocation, repetition, and ceremony—of propitiation to the gods.”''{{sfn|Mailer|1972|pg=104}}{{efn|It is quite possible that Mailer is thinking in part of Kenneth Anger here, the word “invocation” invoking Anger’s ''Invocation of My Demon Brother'' (1969), as well as the ritual and ceremony of highly-stylized films like ''Kustom Kar Kommandos'' (1965) and ''Scorpio Rising'' (1964). Incidentally, in the Boulenger interview, a copy of Anger’s book ''Hollywood Babylon'' can be see on the bookshelf over Mailer’s shoulder, almost like a cartoon devil egging him on.}} His theory of existential acting, then, strives to collapse these two poles, freeing acting from repetition and ceremony, and liberating his actors (and himself) from the propitiation of the gods. Existential acting, he argues, works because in our daily lives we always pretend, lie, and act, and works by more effectively representing the chaos and “complexity of our century” than mainstream Hollywood cinema.{{sfn|Mailer|1972|pg=90,108}} Unsurprisingly, from the man who gave us the genre-bending history as novel/novel as history, the true life novel, and the novel biography,{{efn|''The Armies of the Night'', ''The Executioner’s Song'', and ''Marilyn'', respectively.}} existential acting collapses the cinema and the outside world, documentary and fiction, acting and existentialism, and masculinity and performance, the last of which Mailer explicitly connects, writing: “There is hardly a guy alive who is not an actor to the hilt—for the simplest of reasons. He cannot be tough all the time...[s]o he acts to fill the gaps.”{{sfn|Mailer|1972|pg=90-1}} Thus, armed with the theory and methodology of existential acting, Mailer returns to the cinema as a filmmaker for the same reason he considers turning away from it after his{{pg|185|186}}
Norman Mailer’s film career, often dismissed as vulgar and/or irrelevant, was short but intense; he directed four films, two of which were released in 1968, ''Wild 90'' and ''Beyond the Law'', one in 1970, ''Maidstone'', and, after a long break, ''Tough Guys Don’t Dance'' was released in 1987.{{efn|Mailer was also featured in several documentaries during these years, including Dick Fontaine’s ''Will the Real Norman Mailer Please Stand Up?'' (1968) and ''Norman Mailer vs. Fun City U.S.A.'' (1970); the former is a filmic companion to ''Armies'', documenting Mailer’s actions during the March on the Pentagon, and the latter produces a record of Mailer’s 1969 New York City mayoral campaign. Mailer was also documented in Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker’s ''Town Bloody Hall'', a film of the 1971 debate between Mailer and Germaine Greer about women’s liberation at Town Hall in New York City.}} Mailer’s first three films were largely influenced by John Cassavetes, although Mailer predictably argues that his mastery of what he calls “existential acting” makes him a much better filmmaker than Cassavetes.{{sfn|Mailer|2006|}} In his essay, “Some Dirt in the Talk,” Mailer defines existential acting by addressing each of the terms that comprise the phrase. He notes that existentialism and acting exist at two opposite “poles,” writing, ''“If existentialism is ultimately concerned with the attractions of the unknown, acting is one of the surviving rituals of invocation, repetition, and ceremony—of propitiation to the gods.”''{{sfn|Mailer|1972b|pg=104}}{{efn|It is quite possible that Mailer is thinking in part of Kenneth Anger here, the word “invocation” invoking Anger’s ''Invocation of My Demon Brother'' (1969), as well as the ritual and ceremony of highly-stylized films like ''Kustom Kar Kommandos'' (1965) and ''Scorpio Rising'' (1964). Incidentally, in the Boulenger interview, a copy of Anger’s book ''Hollywood Babylon'' can be see on the bookshelf over Mailer’s shoulder, almost like a cartoon devil egging him on.}} His theory of existential acting, then, strives to collapse these two poles, freeing acting from repetition and ceremony, and liberating his actors (and himself) from the propitiation of the gods. Existential acting, he argues, works because in our daily lives we always pretend, lie, and act, and works by more effectively representing the chaos and “complexity of our century” than mainstream Hollywood cinema.{{sfn|Mailer|1972b|pp=90,108}} Unsurprisingly, from the man who gave us the genre-bending history as novel/novel as history, the true life novel, and the novel biography,{{efn|''The Armies of the Night'', ''The Executioner’s Song'', and ''Marilyn'', respectively.}} existential acting collapses the cinema and the outside world, documentary and fiction, acting and existentialism, and masculinity and performance, the last of which Mailer explicitly connects, writing: “There is hardly a guy alive who is not an actor to the hilt—for the simplest of reasons. He cannot be tough all the time...[s]o he acts to fill the gaps.”{{sfn|Mailer|1972b|pg=90-1}} Thus, armed with the theory and methodology of existential acting, Mailer returns to the cinema as a filmmaker for the same reason he considers turning away from it after his{{pg|185|186}}


experience in the above passage: at the same time the camera exposes one’s frailties and the identities one attempts to disguise; it bolsters the masquerade of masculinity by imprinting its performance in celluloid. The same voice that undermines Mailer’s masculinity becomes his primary means of constructing it.
experience in the above passage: at the same time the camera exposes one’s frailties and the identities one attempts to disguise; it bolsters the masquerade of masculinity by imprinting its performance in celluloid. The same voice that undermines Mailer’s masculinity becomes his primary means of constructing it.
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Perhaps as a result of their tortured psyches, Mailer repeatedly turns to cops and crooks as the focus of and source of conflict in his oeuvre. For Mailer, cops are men in power who are repeatedly outwitted by clever, hypermasculine, criminals: think Stephen Rojack and Gary Gilmore, the respective heroes of ''An American Dream'' and ''The Executioner’s Song'', who commit numerous crimes in single volumes, and the Norman Mailer of ''The Armies of the Night'', arrested by U.S. Marshalls for crossing a police line at the Pentagon. There is also the Norman Mailer who stabbed his second wife, and the one who nearly lost an eye after fighting a group of hoodlums who insinuated that his dog was a “faggot.”{{sfn|Hitchens|2007|}} Mailer, as his art and life suggest, sees the tension between cops and criminals as one that is inside of everyone. In a discussion of ''Beyond the Law'' in an interview with Gilles Boulenger, Mailer reveals that the film “had a notion at the core of it that worked—which is that everybody has a cop or a criminal in them” and that, “when you put people together—one playing a cop and one playing a crook—you get the dynamism that comes from the fact that every cop in real life has a potential criminal in him and every criminal in real life, or almost every criminal in real life, has a potential cop within their soul.”{{sfn|Mailer|2006|}}
Perhaps as a result of their tortured psyches, Mailer repeatedly turns to cops and crooks as the focus of and source of conflict in his oeuvre. For Mailer, cops are men in power who are repeatedly outwitted by clever, hypermasculine, criminals: think Stephen Rojack and Gary Gilmore, the respective heroes of ''An American Dream'' and ''The Executioner’s Song'', who commit numerous crimes in single volumes, and the Norman Mailer of ''The Armies of the Night'', arrested by U.S. Marshalls for crossing a police line at the Pentagon. There is also the Norman Mailer who stabbed his second wife, and the one who nearly lost an eye after fighting a group of hoodlums who insinuated that his dog was a “faggot.”{{sfn|Hitchens|2007|}} Mailer, as his art and life suggest, sees the tension between cops and criminals as one that is inside of everyone. In a discussion of ''Beyond the Law'' in an interview with Gilles Boulenger, Mailer reveals that the film “had a notion at the core of it that worked—which is that everybody has a cop or a criminal in them” and that, “when you put people together—one playing a cop and one playing a crook—you get the dynamism that comes from the fact that every cop in real life has a potential criminal in him and every criminal in real life, or almost every criminal in real life, has a potential cop within their soul.”{{sfn|Mailer|2006|}}


Mailer sees the conflict between cops and crooks as one that inhabits the film set as well. In “A Course on Film-Making,” he describes cameramen and union grips, who “usually dress like cops off duty and are built like cops (with the same heavy meat in the shoulders, same bellies oiled in beer), which is not surprising for they are also in surveillance upon a criminal activity: people are forging emotions under bright lights… [l]ike cops they see through every fake move and hardly care.”{{sfn|Mailer|1972|p=133}} Here the crew, who are equated with cops, are set up in opposition to the actors whom they put under surveillance and, more indirectly, to the director, who for Mailer is always an outlaw resisting the tyranny of the image, striving to disrupt the conventions of polite cinema through a refusal to use a script, and insisting upon including as much verbal and auditory obscenity as humanly possible. Thus, even when Mailer plays a cop in ''Beyond the Law'', this portrayal becomes an effort similar to that of the director whose film tramples upon respectability. Mailer’s Lieutenant Pope inhabits the body of the cop in order{{pg|192|193}}
Mailer sees the conflict between cops and crooks as one that inhabits the film set as well. In “A Course on Film-Making,” he describes cameramen and union grips, who “usually dress like cops off duty and are built like cops (with the same heavy meat in the shoulders, same bellies oiled in beer), which is not surprising for they are also in surveillance upon a criminal activity: people are forging emotions under bright lights… [l]ike cops they see through every fake move and hardly care.”{{sfn|Mailer|1972a|p=133}} Here the crew, who are equated with cops, are set up in opposition to the actors whom they put under surveillance and, more indirectly, to the director, who for Mailer is always an outlaw resisting the tyranny of the image, striving to disrupt the conventions of polite cinema through a refusal to use a script, and insisting upon including as much verbal and auditory obscenity as humanly possible. Thus, even when Mailer plays a cop in ''Beyond the Law'', this portrayal becomes an effort similar to that of the director whose film tramples upon respectability. Mailer’s Lieutenant Pope inhabits the body of the cop in order{{pg|192|193}}


to mock him and to illustrate a psyche more tortured than that of the criminal.
to mock him and to illustrate a psyche more tortured than that of the criminal.
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avenger in the name of both the Jews, who showed the Arabs where to go, and the Irish who never won a war.
avenger in the name of both the Jews, who showed the Arabs where to go, and the Irish who never won a war.


In “A Course in Filmmaking,” Mailer argues that after the advent of sound, film started to mimic theater, and that the work of film should be to get away from this mimicry in order to accomplish things that can only be accomplished on film. As films that are uniquely filmic, Mailer gives the example of ''The Maltese Falcon'', but also of the Marx Brothers’ films, in which the brothers “stampeded over every line of a script and tore off in enough directions to leave concepts fluttering like ticker tape on the mysterious nature of the movie art.”{{sfn|Mailer|1972|p=129}} The Marx brothers are important ancestors in Mailer’s filmic genealogy, in part because they too are Jews who remix ethnicity on film, as Chico becomes Italian and Zeppo becomes the brothers’ WASPy foil. And like Mailer’s films, much of the chaos and anarchy that unfurls in the Marx Brothers’ films stems from sound, in the form of elaborate musical numbers, Groucho’s wordplay, Chico’s Italian accent and piano playing, Harpo’s horn-honking, and even his silence. For both the Marx Brothers and Mailer, the work of cinema is to unravel itself, to make and unmake a universe in the same space, to challenge conventions. Where the Marx brothers wreak havoc, for example, upon the university in ''Horse feathers'', and upon dictatorship in ''Duck Soup'', Mailer wreaks havoc upon language and good taste as he attempts to create the film with the most “repetitive pervasive obscenity of any film ever made” with ''Wild, 90'' and upon both his own voice and the human eardrum with the perpetual yelling of Lt. Pope in ''Beyond the Law''. Mailer even tells us, “''Wild 90'' seems close to nothing so much as the Marx Brothers doing improvisations on ''Little Caesar'' with the addition of a free run of obscenity equal to ''Naked Lunch'' or ''Why Are We in Vietnam?''”{{sfn|Mailer|1972|p=90}} It is as though Mailer sees ''Wild 90'' as an almost unimaginable supplement to the Marx Brothers’ oeuvre—a vision of what their tough Jewish contribution to cinema would look like had they ever assumed the roles of mafiosi.
In “A Course in Filmmaking,” Mailer argues that after the advent of sound, film started to mimic theater, and that the work of film should be to get away from this mimicry in order to accomplish things that can only be accomplished on film. As films that are uniquely filmic, Mailer gives the example of ''The Maltese Falcon'', but also of the Marx Brothers’ films, in which the brothers “stampeded over every line of a script and tore off in enough directions to leave concepts fluttering like ticker tape on the mysterious nature of the movie art.”{{sfn|Mailer|1972a|p=129}} The Marx brothers are important ancestors in Mailer’s filmic genealogy, in part because they too are Jews who remix ethnicity on film, as Chico becomes Italian and Zeppo becomes the brothers’ WASPy foil. And like Mailer’s films, much of the chaos and anarchy that unfurls in the Marx Brothers’ films stems from sound, in the form of elaborate musical numbers, Groucho’s wordplay, Chico’s Italian accent and piano playing, Harpo’s horn-honking, and even his silence. For both the Marx Brothers and Mailer, the work of cinema is to unravel itself, to make and unmake a universe in the same space, to challenge conventions. Where the Marx brothers wreak havoc, for example, upon the university in ''Horse feathers'', and upon dictatorship in ''Duck Soup'', Mailer wreaks havoc upon language and good taste as he attempts to create the film with the most “repetitive pervasive obscenity of any film ever made” with ''Wild, 90'' and upon both his own voice and the human eardrum with the perpetual yelling of Lt. Pope in ''Beyond the Law''. Mailer even tells us, “''Wild 90'' seems close to nothing so much as the Marx Brothers doing improvisations on ''Little Caesar'' with the addition of a free run of obscenity equal to ''Naked Lunch'' or ''Why Are We in Vietnam?''”{{sfn|Mailer|1972b|p=90}} It is as though Mailer sees ''Wild 90'' as an almost unimaginable supplement to the Marx Brothers’ oeuvre—a vision of what their tough Jewish contribution to cinema would look like had they ever assumed the roles of mafiosi.


In Mailer’s universe, the borders between Mailer and his characters are always fragile. He tells us in the Boulenger interview that in the making of ''Beyond the Law'' he would torture the actors playing the crooks, who were all friends of his, by interrogating them about things they had done in their real lives.{{efn|The best example of this existential interrogation occurs as Mailer’s Lieutenant Pope interrogates Peter Rosoff, whom Mailer asserts was a closeted homosexual, accusing him of soliciting sex in a subway men’s room. {{harvtxt|Mailer|2006}}}} In his writing and his introductory remarks included on the French DVDs of his films, Mailer repeatedly tells us that the goal of existential acting is to create a fictional documentary.{{sfn|Mailer|2006|}} Here is an ex-{{pg|195|196}}
In Mailer’s universe, the borders between Mailer and his characters are always fragile. He tells us in the Boulenger interview that in the making of ''Beyond the Law'' he would torture the actors playing the crooks, who were all friends of his, by interrogating them about things they had done in their real lives.{{efn|The best example of this existential interrogation occurs as Mailer’s Lieutenant Pope interrogates Peter Rosoff, whom Mailer asserts was a closeted homosexual, accusing him of soliciting sex in a subway men’s room. {{harvtxt|Mailer|2006}}}} In his writing and his introductory remarks included on the French DVDs of his films, Mailer repeatedly tells us that the goal of existential acting is to create a fictional documentary.{{sfn|Mailer|2006|}} Here is an ex-{{pg|195|196}}


ample, taken from his discussion of the successes and failures of ''cinéma vérité'' in “A Course on Filmmaking”: “It was as if there was a law that a person could not be himself in front of a camera unless he pretended to be someone other than himself. By that logic, ''cinéma vérité'' would work if it photographed a performer in the midst of his performance.”{{sfn|Mailer|1972|p=147}} Mailer’s films elaborate upon his ideas about existential filmmaking: it is only in the act of performing as a character (Lieutenant Pope) that the actor reveals himself (Norman Mailer). Pope/Mailer’s sarcastic comment about not respecting the Jews until they showed the Arabs their military might is a line almost directly out of Breines’ ''Tough Jews'', or vice versa, Pope/Mailer’s comment is part of the discourse surrounding the 1968 war that inspired ''Tough Jews''. Either way, with this line, Mailer introduces himself into the lineage of tough Jews but with his own spin. When Pope tells us that Lee Ray Rogers brings out the Italian in him, he speaks for Mailer as well. Because Jewish masculinity for Mailer is always borrowed from and channeled through other ethnic masculinities, Pope’s words are as good as Mailer’s saying that Rogers brings out the Jew in him, and Mailer’s (via Pope’s) tough Jew is always already fighting, whether he is pushing Arabs out of Palestine or fighting to defend his dog’s honor. Thus, much as Mailer helped to unmake cinema as he made it, Mailer makes Jewishness as he unmakes it—masculinity unravels as the film does the same, moving from real to reel.
ample, taken from his discussion of the successes and failures of ''cinéma vérité'' in “A Course on Filmmaking”: “It was as if there was a law that a person could not be himself in front of a camera unless he pretended to be someone other than himself. By that logic, ''cinéma vérité'' would work if it photographed a performer in the midst of his performance.”{{sfn|Mailer|1972a|p=147}} Mailer’s films elaborate upon his ideas about existential filmmaking: it is only in the act of performing as a character (Lieutenant Pope) that the actor reveals himself (Norman Mailer). Pope/Mailer’s sarcastic comment about not respecting the Jews until they showed the Arabs their military might is a line almost directly out of Breines’ ''Tough Jews'', or vice versa, Pope/Mailer’s comment is part of the discourse surrounding the 1968 war that inspired ''Tough Jews''. Either way, with this line, Mailer introduces himself into the lineage of tough Jews but with his own spin. When Pope tells us that Lee Ray Rogers brings out the Italian in him, he speaks for Mailer as well. Because Jewish masculinity for Mailer is always borrowed from and channeled through other ethnic masculinities, Pope’s words are as good as Mailer’s saying that Rogers brings out the Jew in him, and Mailer’s (via Pope’s) tough Jew is always already fighting, whether he is pushing Arabs out of Palestine or fighting to defend his dog’s honor. Thus, much as Mailer helped to unmake cinema as he made it, Mailer makes Jewishness as he unmakes it—masculinity unravels as the film does the same, moving from real to reel.


== Notes ==
== Notes ==
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* {{cite journal |last=Levine |first=Andrea |title=The Jewish White Negro: Norman Mailer’s Racialized Bodies.  |url= |journal=''MELUS'' |volume=28.2 |issue= |date= |pages=59-81 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Levine |first=Andrea |title=The Jewish White Negro: Norman Mailer’s Racialized Bodies.  |url= |journal=''MELUS'' |volume=28.2 |issue= |date= |pages=59-81 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Elmer |first=Clifton |date=1931 |title=''Little Caesar.'' |url= |work= |location= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Elmer |first=Clifton |date=1931 |title=''Little Caesar.'' |url= |work= |location= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1968 |title='' The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, the Novel as History'' |url= |location=New York |publisher= New American Library |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1968a |title='' The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, the Novel as History'' |url= |location=New York |publisher= New American Library |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1968 |title=''Beyond the Law'' |url= |work= |location=Supreme Mix Productions |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1|date=1968b |title=''Beyond the Law'' |url= |work= |location=Supreme Mix Productions |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Mailer |first=Norman |title=A Course in Film-Making. |url= |journal=''Existential Errands'' |volume= |issue= |date=1972 |pages=123-168 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1|title=A Course in Film-Making. |url= |journal=''Existential Errands'' |volume= |issue= |date=1972a |pages=123-168 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1991 |title=''Harlot’s Ghost.'' |url= |location= |publisher=Random House, |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1|date=1991 |title=''Harlot’s Ghost.'' |url= |location= |publisher=Random House, |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=2008 |title=In the Ring: Grappling with the Twentieth Century. |url= |magazine=''The New Yorker.'' |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Mailer |authormask=1|first=Norman |date=2008 |title=In the Ring: Grappling with the Twentieth Century. |url= |magazine=''The New Yorker.'' |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=2006 |title=Interview by Gilles Boulenger. |url= |work= |location=Cinémalta |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1|date=2006 |title=Interview by Gilles Boulenger. |url= |work= |location=Cinémalta |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Mailer |first=Norman |title=.Some Dirt in the Talk. |url= |journal=''Existential Errands.'' |volume= |issue= |date=1972 |pages=89-123 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1|title=.Some Dirt in the Talk. |url= |journal=''Existential Errands.'' |volume= |issue= |date=1972b |pages=89-123 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1959 |title=The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster. |url= |magazine=''Advertisements for Myself'' |pages=337-358 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite magazine |last=Mailer |authormask=1|first=Norman |date=1959 |title=The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster. |url= |magazine=''Advertisements for Myself'' |pages=337-358 |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date= |title=''Wild 90'' |url= |work= |location=Supreme Mix Productions |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite news |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1|date= |title=''Wild 90'' |url= |work= |location=Supreme Mix Productions |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Metz |first=Christian |date=1982 |title=''Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema'' |url= |location=Bloomington |publisher=Indiana UP |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite book |last=Metz |first=Christian |date=1982 |title=''Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema'' |url= |location=Bloomington |publisher=Indiana UP |pages= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Mewshaw |first=Michael |title=Vidal and Mailer |url= |journal=''South Central Review'' |volume=4-14 |issue= |date=2002 |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
* {{cite journal |last=Mewshaw |first=Michael |title=Vidal and Mailer |url= |journal=''South Central Review'' |volume=4-14 |issue= |date=2002 |pages= |access-date= |ref=harv }}
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