You Don't Mess with the Zohan

I love Adam Sandler.

I love his characters for their blatant consistency. Social pressure means nothing to them-a Sandler comedic character makes no room for social decency in rationalizing his behaviour towards another individual. I also love how Sandler’s comedies give the everyday treatment to topics that our more serious artists and politicians tend to treat with an ineffective politically correct reverence.

All this is part of why I adore the film “You don’t mess with the Zohan”. He is both kind and cruel towards the Middle Eastern and Western bastions of masculinity. His character Zohan is a superb specimen of an Israeli man, known for their machismo in the USA. The Zohan’s sexuality and strength know no limits (until he falls in love, that is, which Zohan recognises as your zikpa limiting you to one woman).
A legendary Israeli counter-terrorist, Zohan is unfulfilled in his occupation, at which he excels, but for which he sees no end. He wants to be a hairdresser and make the world “silky-smooth”. (Political puns and diplomatic similes are cinematic Sandler specialties.) Real men blow things up; the traditionally feminine (and implicitly “gay”) arts are areas of smoothing things out and making them beautiful. Zohan wants to make love, not war, and he heads to New York City, carrying the social stereotypes of both the Mid East and the West with him to the Big Apple.

In NYC, we find Zohan can still not escape the expectations enforced on him by others. Jewish immigrants sell cheap stereo equipment. Women and homosexuals cut hair. White New York men fall into two categories: sexually obtuse and uncomfortable Mama’s boys or corporate raiders willing to instigate international conflict in the “old neighborhood” in order to get their hands on the real estate.

In white America, the only “real men” are the rednecks, and they are all too willing to be exploited for the purposes of the corporate elite. And all of these stupid white men are most vulnerable in their obsession with external appearances, allowing Zohan to blow up their bubbles one at a time with the clear logic of an unconcerned outside observer. Your mother likes sex (pop), not all brown people are Muslim/Israeli/Hispanic (pop), your money can’t buy me (pop), your girlfriend’s breasts are…(pop).

In “Zohan”, Americans are naïve Neanderthals when it comes to international anything. Zohan tells everyone he is “H-australian” and Tibetan. His kindly Manhattan live-in gelibte (lover), an older Jewish woman, notes that life in Haustralia must have improved now that the apartheid is over, and Zohan nervously agrees with her. (Matching the apartheid in South Africa to the division in Israel via a clueless Manhattanite is the sort of outrageous clue for which Sandler’s films are infamous.)

This American naivety, however, is part of what allows Israelis and Palestinians to live and trade peacefully in America. Just as Zohan unmasks (unmans?) ridiculous stereotypes treasured by the white American through his complete innocence of local expectations, American ignorance of international relations and general history makes any ethnic or religious hatred mishuganah, especially if it interferes with local capitalism.

With the chutzpah typical to Sandler’s comedic characters, Zohan succeeds in winning admirers and friends as he literally twists-er, pretzels, the reality of those around him to see things the way he does, at least when with him. He convinces his willing audience that he is “Scrappy Coco”, the H-australian Tibetan wannabe hairdresser, hiding his past as the Israeli equivalent of Rambo, sexier and slightly less brooding than the American version. An Israeli friend, who knows Zohan for his past but respects his wishes for the future, finds Zohan a job sweeping up hair at a “dump” salon run by a beautiful Palestinian woman.

Of course, Zohan becomes the best at what he does, determined to prove his dedication to the hairstyling industry, shampooing and sleeping his way to the top of the NY stylist synod with an a la “The Producers” concept of chivalry towards the elderly lady clientele. With a nod to other New York favourites, from “West Side Story” to “You’ve Got Mail”, Zohan falls in love with his Palestinian boss, the modern, moral but liberal Muslim lady, equally exhausted by the lack of progress found in Middle Eastern conflict. Lacking prejudice but full of pride (“No chuppie, no shtuppie”), she introduces another stepping-stone for Zohan in his very American pursuit of personal and professional fulfillment.

With typical irreverence, Sandler compares an ancient ethnic-religious war to a modern macho-measurement showdown (which territory is bigger? Mine or yours? Which has covered more ground?). He equates patriotism with lust (the Israelis and Palestinians become firm Americans as long as Mariah Carey is crooning the national anthem in a tight pink mini), and he points out that the confusion of virile endurance with political and military strength is the source of altogether too much conflict and not enough (pro-)creation.

According to some morals in the story, macho men would find far more satisfaction if they refocused their pipis on the women and less on the men. (This might be why the gay men in the film seem more content and less conflicted than their so-called “straight” counterparts.) Through reluctant terrorists on all sides, “Zohan” stresses that real men are much more concerned with mating than martyrdom. New hope for peace in the Middle East?

I like to think of Sandler as the South Park of cinema, barreling through melodrama and politically correct caution with all the concern of a SCUD missile in a china shop. No ideal or ethnic identity is sacred-everybody is as foolish and brilliant as the script permits. He reminds us that reality isn’t pretty, but he makes this reminder palatable, and he always finishes off his American exploitation of ignorance and irony with the pretty, happy, progressive ending we of the North American continent have come to expect.

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