One Jew, Two Jew, Old Jew, Young Jew

Imagine your grandmother riding a dolphin. Now imagine her doing a summer-salt. Competing on the Food Network's Halloween Wars. Being a firefighter. Being TikTok famous. Performing on America's Got Talent. Murdering your grandfather because he wont take out the trash. Wait, now go back to the one before that.    

In Death Metal Grandma, Leah Galant, a young but experienced documentary producer and director, examines what drives Inge Ginsburg, a 96 year old women, to produce death metal music for stages as large as America's Got Talent. The short film is mainly comprised of (1) time in the studio displaying the creative process, (2) time outside of the studio showing Inge's unfiltered self, and (3) a pervasive narrative, overlaying them both, adding meaning to Inge's struggles and serving as an expression of Inge's perspective. 

The film suggests, and Inge admits, that at the center of her motivation is the idea of curbing the consequences of old age such as monotony and loneliness. Inge's grim albeit truthful belief is that when your'e almost a century old, "life is a lonely land" where relatives and loved ones have all died. Throughout the film the ideas of being passionate and spirited dance with those of being tired and of old age or as Inge puts it, "My spirit is willing but my flesh is tired". Frequent images of Inge applying lipstick and makeup in the mirror are symbolic of her efforts to retain her vitality, despite the exhausting she feels rudimentary physical activity. 

Although it is captivating to watch Inge fight for her goals and fight for her fading life, I believe the real lure of the film is comes from recognizing that Inge is an outlier. And just like Bill Gates, Roger Federer, and Beethoven, Inge amazes us; we ponder at the secrets that have made her so special and desperately hope that perhaps we can learn something from her so that we just might be extraordinary too. 

On a less inspirational note, Iris Zaki, a liberal Israeli from Tel Aviv, documented the perspectives of Israelis settling in the West Bank with regard to their own encroachment onto Palestinian land in her documentary Natural Born Settlers. Zaki is unabashed and unafraid to take her research to the belly of the beast where she asks simple questions to any volunteers willing to sit and chat. 

Despite it's bold and daring nature, the video was problematic and raised a few reg flags. For starters, although Zaki mostly restrained herself from verbalizing her judgement it was evident from her facial expression and line of questioning that she already held an unflattering opinion of Israelis who settle on the West Bank. She also offered blatantly judgmental claims as context to her social experiment. I don't mean to suggest that her opinions were wrong or even uninformed, however, like any seasoned student of Ms. Laura Schilly would know, reserving judgement is the first rhetorical move, and without that complex analysis is unattainable. Furthermore, the very nature of a liberal questioning a conservative on a highly disputed topic would likely cause some sort of response bias.

Another problem with the lack of context and objective facts relevant to interpretation of the testimony, is that the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict has been going on for more than 70 years, and while "spitting at Palestinians" is clearly racist, most of the testimony possesses meaning only as it fits into a larger context or would at least make more sense if a complete picture of what it's like to live as a Palestinian so close to Israeli Jews was provided. With this in consideration, it's safe to say that the average American and certainly the average American student would have difficultly identifying the messages and undertones of the Op-Doc.

I apologize that there wasn't a lot of voice in today's post; I think I'm coming down with strep. Gotta go class is starting soon!

P.S. In case you couldn't tell from the name Ginsburg, Inge is Jewish (see survived the Holocaust so you know she's legit), hence the title.