In introducing a screening of Golda
(2023) at Yale, Shiri Goren, a faculty member in the university’s Near
Eastern Languages department, told the audience that “the non-Israeli, non-Jew
Helen Mirren plays Golda Meir in the film." Strange. Normally, a presenter of a film would say, "Helen Mirren plays Golda." I contend that a squalid ideology accounts for the difference. Rather than evincing gratitude that such an excellent actress would play an ugly character (in the film, even Golda herself refers to her feet in a derogatory way), the implication obvious to everyone in the room was that an
actor can, or even worse, should only play characters of the actor’s own
background. How dare an actor play a character of a different background. Goren’s basic ignorance of the craft of acting (i.e., playing characters who are not like oneself) belies her credibility
in teaching a course called Israeli Society in Film. Did the screenings only include films whose actors were Israelis? Golda herself was Ukrainian. Goren also taught Israeli Identity and Culture, which explains why her knowledge of acting was eclipsed. To Goren, a group-identity that monopolizes a person's self-image trumps the craft of acting. I contend that underlying her false-belief or delusion concerning acting (and film, moreover) lies a much larger problem: namely, that
of the artificial monopolization of one of several group-identities that apply to a given person and can precipitate an exclusivist ideology alone one axis. Each of
us has more than one group-identity, so to allow one to envelop one’s very
identity is artificial and thus problematic. Resulting ideologies tend to be monopolistic and thus too extreme too.
The full essay is at "Golda."
