By Laurie Baron
SAN DIEGO –Brian Helgeland’s 42 is an old fashioned Hollywood biopic. Spanning Jackie Robinson’s recruitment by the Brooklyn Dodgers and first year in the National League, the film presents idealized depictions of both Robinson played by Chadwick Boseman and Branch Rickey played by Harrison Ford. Ford steals the movie like Robinson stole bases with his peppery dialogue, gravelly voice and weathered visage. While he frankly admits his profit motive in tapping Robinson to break baseball’s color line, he emerges as a crusader who seeks to overcome the racism which he regrets condoning for too many years. Since Robinson had protested segregation when he encountered it in the past, Rickey mentors Robinson on how to control his temper and channel it into his performance on the field.
The movie unobtrusively contextualizes Robinson’s achievement within the immediate postwar period. African Americans returned as veterans who had vanquished Nazism overseas, only to be treated as second-class citizens in the United States. It contrasts the tolerance Robinson experienced growing up in Pasadena and at UCLA and the prejudice he faced touring the South with the Negro League’s Kansas City Monarchs, in spring training in Florida, and from fans, rivals, and teammates during his rancorous rookie year. His athleticism, modesty, and talent initially won him grudging respect and eventually universal admiration.
Helgelland briefly intimates that American prejudice in these years did not discriminate between African Americans and other ethnic and religious minorities. When Phillies manager Ben Chapman played by Alan Tudyk heaps derogatory racial epithets on Robinson, it backfires and compels him to apologize. Chapman assures Robinson that he shouldn’t take such harassment personally. After all, he called Hank Greenberg a “Kike”and Joe DiMaggio a “Wop.” Indeed, Chapman became notorious for taunting Jewish fans at Yankee Stadium by giving them the Nazi salute in 1939 and stopping a game the following season for 20 minutes to brawl with Buddy Myer, the Jewish infielder for the Washington Senators. In the film he blames a “Jew” reporter for the bad press he receives for berating Robinson.
The symbolism of Robinson’s triumph over American bigotry for American Jews has been the subject of a relatively obscure but interesting television film Snow in August (2001) based on Pete Hammill’s novel of the same name. Set in Brooklyn in 1947, an Irish boy named Michael is enthralled by his the exploits of Jackie Robinson. After witnessing the savage beating of the Jewish owner of a candy store by a gang of local toughs, Michael opts not be a squealer, to protect himself from reprisals but also to observe the IRA code of honor of never being an informer. By happenstance, he befriends a rabbi who is a survivor of the Holocaust and whose wife was killed for being a courier for the resistance. To illustrate how devastating the Shoah was, the rabbi lives in a small synagogue which has no members. Michael becomes the rabbi’s “shabbos goy” in return for Yiddish lessons. The rabbi instinctively roots for Jackie Robinson to succeed. As he confides in Michael, “When you are hated, Jackie Robinson is Catholic. When Jews are hated, Jackie Robinson is a Jew. He stands there for all of us.”
Meanwhile, Michael doesn’t have the courage to stand up for himself against the gang or to persuade his friends that the rabbi doesn’t have a treasure hidden somewhere in the synagogue. Since the Jews killed Christ and cheat Christians out of their money, they want Michael to find the treasure and reclaim it. No wonder Michael gravitates to superheroes like Captain Marvel, Jackie Robinson, and Judith from the bible to find a moral compass. When Frankie, the leader of the gang assaults Michael’s mother and the rabbi, and then threatens to kill Michael, Michael recalls the tale of the Golem the rabbi had related to him. The “treasure” concealed in a small coffin in the synagogue is the secret ritual for bringing the Golem back to life. Michael enlivens the giant fashioned from mud and drapes a Torah curtain over his broad shoulders fastening it together with a Jackie Robinson button. Resembling Mr. Clean with John Boehner’s complexion, the Golem vanquishes Frankie, heals the rabbi’s injuries, and revives the deceased members of the rabbi’s congregation, including the rabbi’s beloved wife. Michael’s parting words to Frankie are “Never Again!”
Though Snow in August stretches the imagination to encompass the Golem, the Holocaust, Jackie Robinson, and the mean streets of Brooklyn’s Irish neighborhoods in the 1940s in one story, it reminds viewers of the violence bred by stereotypes. I hope 42’s obvious but profound message drives this message home to a generation of Americans who do not remember Pharaoh, Hitler, or Ben Chapman. Just because Jackie Robinson literally changed the face of baseball or Barack Obama got elected president does not mean that irrational hatreds of the “other” cannot still be exploited by demagogues or invoked by terrorists as rationales for discrimination, exclusion, and genocide.
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Lawrence Baron recently retired from being the Nasatir Professor of Modern Jewish History at San Diego State University. He is the author of Projecting the Holocaust into the Present: The Changing Focus of Contemporary Holocaust Cinema (Rowman and Littlefield: 2005) and editor of The Modern Jewish Experience in World Cinema (Brandeis University Press: 2011). He may be contacted at lawrence.baron@sdjewishworld.com