I don’t know any better system for creating community and in-group cohesion than Orthodox Judaism.
I remember from my days as a WASP, there were many more boundaries. In traditional Jewish life, there’s a tremendous sense of being together. You’re likely to pray three times a day with the same people, eat in the same kosher restaurants, go to the same Torah classes, and do business together.
This cohesion might have something to do why so many Jewish industries, such as media and finance, stay Jewish. Cohesive groups will always out-compete individualist strategies.
With a 17th Coen Brothers movie on the way this week, I return to an old question: How have the two middle-aged men gone over 30 years without the kind of public spats that are common among showbiz brothers (e.g., in rock music: the Everlys, the Davies of the Kinks, the Fogertys of Creedence, the Gallaghers of Oasis, etc etc).
An interview in the Washington Post suggests one Coen strategy is to blur their individuality:
In conversation, as in their work, sibling filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen are known for a kind of uncanny symbiosis. Their sentences run together as effortlessly as they divide the writing, directing and producing duties they have shared over the course of 17 feature films, beginning with their 1984 thriller, “Blood Simple,” and culminating in their new satire of 1950s Hollywood, “Hail, Caesar!” So it seemed reasonable to ask, as they began a recent interview on a conference call from Los Angeles, that each brother identify himself before speaking.
“This is Joel talking,” a disembodied voice says with a sigh. “But we don’t care if you misinterpret. We really don’t. It’s not an issue. You can say whoever you want is saying it.”
“You can say you’re saying it,” chimes in Ethan, amid what sounds like cackling laughter. Back to Joel: “You can make stuff up if you want. We don’t care. It’s fine.”
My guess is that the blurriness of the Coen identities is an act. These guys are masters at insinuating images and assumptions into audience minds, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they consciously strategized a long time ago that they would get more work done if they de-emphasized in public their individuality and instead strove to give off the vague impression that they are identical twins (Joel is actually 3 years older than Ethan.) Over their 30+ years of doing interviews to promote their movies, they’ve managed to make the question of their differences seem extremely boring to the outside world. As with most things involving the Coen Brothers, that’s probably not an accident.
Since the Coens showed it could be done, there have been more brother acts who make movies together. So far, there haven’t been many sister acts writing or directing movies, although they are not unknown.
COMMENTS:
* Hmm, is there a subtext here about the cohesiveness of Jews and the fractiousness of gentiles?
* I imagine that the Coen Brothers have heavy overlap in their tastes, and this is reasonably common among brothers, much less so among brother-sister pairs.
It’s not enough that some movies can appeal to both sexes. E.g., women can enjoy Star Wars, but when it comes to passionate fans, the sex ratio starts to approximate that of, say, Comp Sci majors. If you’re making movies, you’re probably a passionate fan of many films, so the sex differences are accentuated.
* Note that SJW George Clooney stars in their latest movie “Hail Caeasar!” Yet despite Clooney demanding more roles for African-Americans, strangely this film features zero African-Americans, like almost every other George Clooney movie. Heck, “The Descendants” featured all Haoles, zero real Hawaiians.
