Reviewed by:

• Mel Brooks: Disobedient Jew by Jeremy Dauber
• Brynn W. Shiovitz

It seems fitting that a biography of Mel Brooks would be published the same week that the comedian auteur released History of the World, Part II on Hulu, a sequel audiences have been anticipating for the last forty-two years. Jeremy Dauber’s survey of Mel Brooks’s career as “Disobedient Jew” is not a typical piece of academic scholarship, but instead a breezy, pun-laden yet deeply articulate bio-analysis of Brooks’s métier writ large. Utilizing a combination of primary source material, Brooksian humor, Yiddish knowledge, and in-depth analysis, Dauber demonstrates his insider status as a descendant of the old country as well as his command of popular culture, an unironically self-reflexive identity necessary to critique the unapologetically Jewish Brooks who has always relied heavily on these traits to tell his stories. Mel Brooks made having fun a requirement of his success, and Dauber has clearly done the same with this book. Mel Brooks: Disobedient Jew will prove helpful to anyone teaching a film genre course on parody/comedy or a class on Jewish film/performance. It is also a great resource for anyone taking up questions of representational politics, as Dauber addresses Brooks’s often controversial choices.

It is easy to get swept up in someone’s notoriety and think it was just good fortune that brought them there. Dauber shows, however, that Mel Brooks worked tirelessly to arrive at his fame and acclaim. Brooks lost his father as a toddler, making it understandable why he would forever crave attention—a comic’s cliché—and why the streets of Brooklyn would become so formative for him. It is on these streets that a young Brooks would learn the “art of the fast-paced, free-flow, wild man shpritz” (7). A 1930s Brooklyn vernacular was quick-witted, sassy, and predominantly Jewish, a tongue which no doubt surfaces in everything Brooks touches. Understanding this Brooklyn vernacular helps to highlight the similarities between Brooks’s comedic style and the style of his Jewish predecessors, comedians like Eddie Cantor who Brooks grew up observing and no doubt emulating.

An Amerikaner-geboyren who lived amongst other first-generation US Jews, Brooks was simultaneously shaped by the language and familiarity of his Eastern European neighbors and the more assimilated entertainers he grew up watching on the screen and stage. As Dauber writes, “the outer-borough kid dreamed of the Great White Way, which was everything Manhattan was supposed to be; sophisticated, cosmopolitan, rich, and of course, more than ever so slightly Gentile—the kind of club that probably wouldn’t have wanted him for a member” (9). Brooks was both in love with the promises of Gentile life and deftly aware of his obstacles. After a trip into Manhattan to see Cole Porter’s Anything Goes, Brooks was forever infected with the theatre bug: “On the way home…[Brooks] made up [his] mind… ‘I am going into show business, and nothing will stop me!’” (10).

These quotes set the tone for Dauber’s book: he writes passionately about the zealous Brooks, while offering keen insight into the ways that the comedian’s Jewishness impacted his career. While both the author and the auteur are aware of omnipresent antisemitism, neither presents it as an overbearing impediment to Brooks’s career. Instead, Dauber frames such resistance as grist for Brooks’s creative mill, offering the Jewish bit as an important aside but not the whole story. One gets a real sense of Brooks’s insatiable grit and willingness to speak his mind, no matter the cost, to prove something to the US.

One of Brooks’s first jobs was at Butler Lodge in the Catskills. During his off hours, he became somewhat of a performance artist, or a tummeler (someone who takes chances and risks being tummeled by his audience), as Dauber describes it. The story goes that in the summer of 1940, a young man (Brooks) dressed in an alpaca coat and a derby would walk out onto the diving board with two...

审阅者：

• 梅尔·布鲁克斯：不听话的犹太人杰里米·道伯
• 布林·W·希奥维茨

梅尔·布鲁克斯的传记与喜剧演员导演梅尔·布鲁克斯在 Hulu 上发布《世界历史第二部》的同一周出版，这似乎是再合适不过了，这是一部观众在过去四十二年里一直期待的续集。杰里米·道伯（Jeremy Dauber）对梅尔·布鲁克斯（Mel Brooks）作为“不听话的犹太人”的职业生涯的调查并不是典型的学术学术文章，而是对布鲁克斯职业生涯的轻松、双关语但深刻而清晰的生物分析。道伯结合了原始资料、布鲁克斯式幽默、意第绪语知识和深入分析，展示了他作为旧国家后裔的内部地位以及他对流行文化的掌握，这是批判所必需的一种讽刺性的自我反思身份。毫无歉意的犹太布鲁克斯一直严重依赖这些特征来讲述他的故事。梅尔·布鲁克斯（Mel Brooks）将乐趣作为他成功的必要条件，而道伯（Dauber）显然在这本书中也做到了这一点。梅尔·布鲁克斯：《不服从的犹太人》对于任何教授模仿/喜剧电影类型课程或犹太电影/表演课程的人都会有帮助。对于任何研究代表性政治问题的人来说，这也是一个很好的资源，因为道伯谈到了布鲁克斯经常有争议的选择。

人们很容易被某人的恶名所笼罩，并认为只是好运将他们带到了那里。然而，多伯表明，梅尔·布鲁克斯孜孜不倦地努力才获得了他的名气和赞誉。布鲁克斯在蹒跚学步时就失去了父亲，这就可以理解为什么他永远渴望受到关注——这是喜剧的陈词滥调——以及为什么布鲁克林的街道对他的影响如此之大。正是在这些街道上，年轻的布鲁克斯学会了“快节奏、自由流动、狂野的表演艺术”（7）。20 世纪 30 年代的布鲁克林方言机智、时髦，并且主要是犹太人，毫无疑问，这种语言在布鲁克斯接触的所有事物中都会出现。了解这种布鲁克林方言有助于突显布鲁克斯的喜剧风格与他的犹太前辈风格之间的相似之处，这些前辈是像埃迪·坎托这样的喜剧演员，布鲁克斯从小就观察并毫无疑问地效仿他们。

布鲁克斯是一位与其他第一代美国犹太人生活在一起的美国人，他同时受到东欧邻居的语言和熟悉程度以及他从小在屏幕和舞台上观看的更同化的艺人的影响。正如道伯所写，“外城区的孩子梦想着伟大的白色之路，这就是曼哈顿应该有的一切；成熟、国际化、富有，当然，比以往任何时候都更带有一点外邦人的气质——这种俱乐部可能不会邀请他成为会员”（9）。布鲁克斯既热爱外邦生活的希望，又敏锐地意识到自己的障碍。在去曼哈顿观看科尔·波特的《万事如意》之后，布鲁克斯永远感染了戏剧迷：“在回家的路上……[布鲁克斯]下定决心……‘我要进入演艺界，没有什么能阻止我！”（10）。

这些引言为道伯的书定下了基调：他热情地描写了热心的布鲁克斯，同时对这位喜剧演员的犹太身份如何影响他的职业生涯提供了敏锐的洞察。尽管作者和导演都意识到无所不在的反犹太主义，但两人都没有将其视为布鲁克斯职业生涯的巨大障碍。相反，多伯将这种抵抗视为布鲁克斯创意工厂的谷物，将犹太人的部分作为重要的旁白，但不是整个故事。人们可以真正感受到布鲁克斯永不满足的勇气和愿意不计代价地表达自己的想法，向美国证明一些东西。

布鲁克斯的第一份工作是在卡茨基尔的巴特勒旅馆。在业余时间，他在某种程度上成为了一名表演艺术家，或者正如道伯所描述的那样，他成为了一名捣蛋鬼（一个抓住机会并冒着被观众捣蛋的风险的人）。故事是这样的：1940年夏天，一个穿着羊驼毛大衣和德比帽的年轻人（布鲁克斯饰）带着两个……