One of the most tired observations of self satisfied middle-brows is that the French love Jerry Lewis, the implicit unsound reasoning being that this proves the French, as a people, to be as moronic as the characters Lewis played. First of all, it is a generally xenophobic assertion to say that the French love Jerry Lewis. Making any such statement of taste for an entire nationality is patently absurd. There may be more truth to say that Jerry Lewis enjoys more popularity in France than he does in America, though I don’t know personally. Recalling everybody I’ve been acquainted with who was significantly French (and yes, I can count them on one hand), not a single instance occurs to me where one of them professed a like or dislike of the work of Jerry Lewis.

So I think the rumors of France’s monolithic, insatiable lust for Jerry Lewis is a myth, or at least a tall tale. Why, then, is this cultural quirk so popular on this side of the pond? I imagine the story of the silly French who can’t get enough of Jerry Lewis is more popular in America than, say, Jerry Lewis is in France. This is a legend part of America seems to need, a tool for proliferating and confirming xenophobia without really sounding hateful. After all, one is appealing to a cultural “fact” rather than just coming out with the lurking suspicion of the French as over-anal-sexed incestuous retarded cannibals who are also rather snobbish.

What, then, is the source of the lingering distrust of France, which is all out of proportion? France caught shit for surrendering to the Nazis for longer than Germany did for, well, constituting the Nazis. Americans have an almost admirable confidence believing their stereotypes and cultural ephemera as lived knowledge. Just as even Americans who have not lived in New York City, nor in some cases even visited, seem to feel they possess intimate geographic knowledge of the five boroughs and particularly Manhattan, many Americans who have not even traveled to Europe are secure in denouncing the French as rude to tourists. The French remain, in American culture, one of the safest large groups to mock, and it was fun until the recent war politicized it.

What we have here is the good old American middle-brow inferiority complex going to work. It perceives in Europe a mystique of intellectualism, class, style and tradition that America cannot match. So, like the bothersome middle-school enthusiast, we try too hard, and resent our failure to live up to a false image of Europe that we created ourselves. France seems most emblematic of this fabled Europe and therefore makes the easiest straw man. 

A common symptom of an intellectual inferiority complex is the affectation of what is perceived to be respectable taste, and a conversely over-eager condemnation of what is assumed to be low art. For example, Robert Redford drops out of college and feels intellectually insecure. Robert Redford goes on to a directorial career marked by a succession of turgid, boring, lifelessly beautiful, conservatively perfectionist literary adaptations (affectation of a caricature of “respectability”) while, in his capacity as founder of the Sundance Institute, vocally condescending upon films bearing any reliance upon traditional genre elements or pleasures of traditional commercial entertainment (thoughtless dismissal of “low” art).

Robert Redford is a hero and poster boy for the American middle-brow, a segment of whom may even find his films too “artsy.” But it is indicative of some type of pathology when the middle-brow, represented by a majority of the American film criticism establishment, holds up such moribund non-entities as “The Legend of Bagger Vance,” “The Horse Whisperer,” and “A River Runs Through It” as quality works of art while the slapsticks of Jerry Lewis are dismissed and their French proponents sneered at.

Personally, I am not familiar enough with the films of Jerry Lewis to offer an informed criticism, which is reason enough for me to withhold valid judgment of his hypothetical popularity in France. I don’t find much to interest me in his persona, but on the other hand, if I were French, I might not be nearly as amused by my beloved Inspector Clouseau. Jerry Lewis may very well have an exoticism and xenophobic charge for French audiences that he lacks from my point of view. C’est la Vie. I don’t accept this as evidence of France being retarded as a nation.

Disturbing as well is what I can only assume to be widespread ignorance of the history of international film. Such ignorance is okay if one doesn’t venture into the realm of critical judgment, which one does if they mock the French for enjoying Jerry Lewis. It seems like asking for trouble to mock the tastes of the national critical tradition that showed America what was good about its own films. Elevating the blandly respectable and dismissing genre entertainment courts a reversion to a stagnant, pre-New Wave state of films exemplified by neo-Redfordian Oscar bait such as “The English Patient.” The same middle-brow that derides the French elected that snoozer as a superior picture to “Fargo” and heralded the coming of their patron saint Redford by honoring his first film as director, the panderingly titled “Ordinary People,” over a minor Scorsese work by the name of “Raging Bull.” A wallow in suburban malaise and a book adaptation will always seem the better art to middle brow audiences than a boxing movie or a funny crime thriller.

All of this has been a long roundabout way to explore the roots of some problems in American film criticism, a community that to a large extent has been haplessly middle-brow for years. The works that suffer are original visionary creations and wonderful works of art tainted with the genre designation. This plays out eternally in endless iterations, but I want to focus on comedy. American film critics do not understand comedy. Much of great comedy is derived from exaggeration, surrealism, absurdity, satire, and yes, mean spiritedness. Yet criticism of comedy stubbornly insists upon realism, familiarity, logic, character development, in other words aspects that contribute to decent, non-ambitious film drama, or better yet, novels. Films are not novels. Anybody hoping for films to develop more and more into resembling novels would do well to abandon the discussion here.

From time to time, I will be looking at a critically derided comedy. I will make an argument for it as a great film and explain why. I will also look at the critical reaction to the film and, while not simply bitching about the critics’ insights and labeling them wrong, will attempt to explicate what I see as flaws in the approach to the material and what these mistakes reveal about the assumptions of American film criticism. Finally, I’ll try to point out any critics whom I think “got it.” Incidentally, I’ve heard it considered that comedy may be subjected.

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posted by: Theresa

Yes, about that Jerry Lewis thing... given that Lewis really was popular with French movie audiences at a certain time, it could be noted that this appreciation went hand in hand with that of Frank Tashlin comedies, Buster Keaton, and Jacques Tati in the same slapstick tradition… only the Lewis ‘myth’ has persisted, because most Americans don’t know who the hell those other people are.  And the sneer implicit in this accusation comes from the fact that any number of paradigm shifts in American culture have occurred since the era of Lewis’ popularity, not the least significant of which is the consignment of slapstick humor to a component of the romantic comedy, a class which also includes dogs tugging at a person’s balls and Seth Green. Also, consistent shouting and wiseacre-ing has for some reason come to be thought of as “irritating”.  Add that to the fact that Lewis is retroactively derivative of much of the comedy that followed, and you’ve got a recipe for middle-brow hatred. The ideal of physical comedy today has been broadened so much that it now includes Courteney Cox, who could not, with a banana cream pie in a room full of Faberge eggs, do a fraction of the things Lewis could do with a can of Talcum powder. Mention “physical comedy” to any braintrust in line for “Fun with Dick and Jane”; ask them for an example, and eight times out of ten you’ll be treated to a protracted analysis of Cameron Diaz getting jism into her hair, which proves that the term is pretty much meaningless now. I think Cary Grant fucked it all up by being too multitalented. Now everybody’s gotta know how to look right holding a gun and executing a pratfall. This makes for a greatly reduced standard and dilutes the already-weak palette of comedy in this 30- to 40-year era. Popular wisdom: If Jesus was alive today, he’d be a bum. And if W.C. Fields was alive today, he’d be selling newspapers.