S4E16.5: A Serious Man
This week we're joined by friend of the show, co-mayor, and all three hosts of this podcast Mattie Lubchansky (thats an S1E18 joke kids) to discuss the Coen Brothers' movie about a man faced with a lot of questions and seemingly no answers.
-----
FREE PALESTINE
Hey, Devon here. In our home, we talk a lot about how insane everything feels, and agonise constantly over what can be done to best help the Palestinians trapped in Gaza facing the full brunt of genocidal violence. My partner Rebecca has put together a list of four fundraisers you can contribute to- all of them are at work on the ground doing what they can.
-Palestinian Communist Youth Union, which is doing a food and water effort, and is part of the official communist party of Palestine
https://www.gofundme.com/f/to-preserve-whats-left-of-humanity-global-solidarity
-Water is Life, a water distribution project in North Gaza affiliated with an Indigenous American organization and the Freedom Flotilla
https://www.waterislifegaza.org/
-Vegetable Distribution Fund, which secures and delivers fresh veg, affiliated with Freedom Flotilla also
https://www.instagram.com/linking/fundraiser?fundraiser_id=1102739514947848
-Thamra, which distributes herb and veg seedlings, repairs and maintains water infrastructure, and distributes food produced from replanted veg patches
https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-thamra-cultivating-resilience-in-gaza
-----
WEB DESIGN ALERT
Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind our website). If you need web design help, reach out to him here: https://www.tomallen.media/
Kill James Bond is hosted by November Kelly, Abigail Thorn, and Devon. You can find us at https://killjamesbond.com , as well as on our Bluesky and X.com the every app accounts
Comments (69)
"We're in sync! We can drive the jaeger!" might be the cutest thing Abi has ever said.
Goddamn, I didn't realize that I listened to this episode exactly a year after it had originally came out.
Your life being shitty because of a shitty God is WAY worse than your life being shitty for no reason. If there is a God, and He's chosing to fuck you over, you are categorically a victim, then you are being oppressed. But if reality is empty and meaningless? That's fine! There's no reason why it's happening, there's no all-powerful and malicious being to blame. And that means that you have SOME power to choose how to react to or change your situation. You don't have to be a victim. You're not doomed to be the slave of a bad boss who gets the final say.
I think that "Americanism" for Jews is "Zionism".
I feel like "accepting the mystery" doesn't help and just makes things worse. I'd very much prefer to know, actually! Ambiguity sucks, at least with important stuff! Idk, I'm on Abby's side here.
Upon hearing that the Rabbi is supposed to slam the door in your face the first two times you try to convert, I unthinkingly said out loud "oh it's like Fight Club" and I think maybe I should go to prison now...
1. The way Alice approaches religion always seems very in line with Judaism, so it's weird she's tried the other two major abrahamic religions but not it. 2. Disagree with Mattie, Lander #1, Mamdani #2, but I'm glad Mamdani beat Cuomo!
There is no Alice, only November.
Im not jewish, but the preview of this episode made me go and check it out from the library immediately because i was thinking "does this film want to teach me something?" and i think the answer was yes. Im not religious but im definitely one of the people seeking spiritual meaning in things-too rational (and undedicated) to attach to a faith, and too spiritual to be truly atheist. It also reminded me that, even though ive only seen one Coen brothers movie (now two), i know those guys were REALLY good at what they did. Thank you KJB team for helping me get a liiiiittle closer to finding meaning
Btw you should watch Captain Fantastic for religion season
It’s funny, because my experience with Communism has often felt like trying to be the atheist version of a “serious man”. Like sure, you could just accept that the universe is cruel and uncaring and lie down and wait for death- but if you don’t want to do that, if you want to leave the world better than you found it, build Heaven on Earth through your actions? Then you’re stuck trying to follow a DIFFERENT incomprehensible book that everyone’s arguing over. And all your authority figures are dead. But at least this time you can smoke weed about it, so… atheism FTW?
November doing the Dark Souls thing of joining a new covenant every time you find a cool new one and hoping that it doesn't fuck up the playthrough
Oh hey there was a 16.5! The RSS didn't have one between 16 and 17, I was worried. *downloads!*
Very important to know that the tornado is a reference to the ending of Job
The first time I heard of this movie was from a short film essay (idk if that term was common at the time yet though?) that basically concluded that the theme of the movie was "The main character is being punished for what his ancestors at the start of the movie did all those years ago, because God is a petty asshole". I like this analysis better, its got meat on its bones.
1:43:47, Seagulls in the background attempting to interrupting Devon’s flow
Devon is very coastal
Abi is so real for that. If the boss is an asshole he shouldn't be the boss, I think that's a fairly central tennet of worker rights.
Ron Mesbesher is a real guy, I saw a lot of ads for his law firm watching daytime TV growing up.
still manifesting First Reformed 🙏 i shouldn't have let up
While I have criticised Abigail's shallow theological takes in the past I am afraid I am joining the war on Al Pacino Theology on the side of Al Pacino Theology
Abigail, in regards to your "walk backwards into hell comment" from what I understand the Jewish people don't belive in Hell. So within this Analogy you're essentially walking backwards waiting for a Cliff that will never come. The idea is there is no devil, there is no hell, there is you and God, I'm so sorry. But this is something I've picked up not from actual research but stuff I heard off hand.
From what I understand, there is a Sheol but I don't know if people go there. Regardless, I wholeheartedly agree; if the boss is a prick we do him like the goddamn Romanovs.
9v8 b 8v 7y
Uncle boonmee who can recall his past lives for religious season
It's a great movie and a great episode you did, but I found it odd you didn't mention that the lead role is played by a sentient barge full of stool...
Sy Abelman's death scene kind of made me think that he was a dybbuk, or just some kind of not-quite-human agent of chaos. His expression seems so blank, almost like he's calmly waiting and making a conscious decision to get into a crash. Almost like, "Right, I'm bored now, time to ditch this body and move on."
Abi is not at her best here
Nah, Abi's great.
I doubt she will read this but I can empathise with Abi's comment at the end, I lost my father, had the transphobic Supreme Court judgement, had a washing machine failure and found out a crush of mine was starting a relationship with another person in a matter of days. I was in a real dark place for a while and even though none of these events were connected I felt someone was attacking me.
Loved this. Obviously very much about American Judaism and existential dread first and foremost, but I think the broader critique of America is there too, yeah. Larry's speech about actions and consequences is very reminiscent of how Americans talk about...well, everything. Deportations? "Actions have consequences." Bombing other countries 8000 miles away? "Actions have consequences." A nation of people who love 'consequences' in abstract but don't ever have to talk about Vietnam. People who think that everyone else deserves their lot but fall back on a weak "I haven't done anything" when something bad happens to them.
One thing you didn't mention is the concept of the Lamed Vavniks (referenced at Sy's funeral) - the 36 righteous people whose virtue justifies the world in the eyes of God. Notably, no-one can know who they are, not even themselves - that uncertainty seems fundamental to the concept. I do think your interpretation is a little generous to the rabbi/dybbuk-stabbing wife. I think it's significant that in a film about accepting uncertainty, certainty is represented by the act of stabbing an old man with an icepick. EDIT: Oh, also, this ep was fantastic! Really interesting discussion - subscribed for it, and I'm glad I did.
Now I'm thinking about it, it's hard not to see the parallels between this film and No Country For Old Men. Sheriff Tommy Lee Jones is very much the Larry of the film, who Doesn't Do Anything, with enormous consequence; Big Bang Theory!Two-Face could be seen as representing uncertainty, but is more a mirror to the theme of 'you have to make choices', with his final victim refusing to let him pass his own choices onto the coin. Makes me wonder how consciously No Country was on the Coens' minds when they wrote A Serious Man. (I assume the KJB patreon comment section is the perfect place to post amateur film analysis.)
I mean if one is uncertain about the litigiousness & variety of opinions. Just look at the footnotes of the Talmuds
If we transliterate scum as “סקום” (inexact since Hebrew doesn’t really have an “uh” sound), that’s 60+100+6+600, so 766. Do with that what you will
The sunbathing thing, more than not coveting your neighbor's wife, is a modernized version of David seeing Bathsheba bathe.
Today I am the person who the podcast has inadvertently called out by name, just not in the way you think. Namely because, 我は「ジプシー・デンジャー」 https://imgur.com/a/pacific-rim-cosplays-t9AvO2n
Can someone please explain to me how the Dybbuk scene figures into the story? I love listening to this episode, and I found all your analysis to be fascinating, but I expected you to return to the Dybbuk thing, and unless I missed it, you didn't. Not being particularly familiar with Judaism, I still don't get it.
I kind of saw it as a summary of the movie’s themes: the world is ambiguous and confusing and unfair, you may never really understand consequences of your actions, and you’re not going to get some perfectly legible sign from the universe to tell you whether or not your decisions are moral. And also, none of that detracts from your obligation to act on the world and try to make good decisions anyways. The dybbuk scene sets up the importance of taking action in the face of ambiguity, then Larry proceeds to spend the rest of the movie doing the opposite of that because he’s waiting for a sense of meaning or certainty that will never come. Judaism as a religion is kinda all about going, “well, we’ll never have the answer to this intractable moral question, but here’s an extensive body of literature where people debate it across different social and cultural contexts for thousands of years. Have fun trying to figure out how to engage morally with the world, there’s no reward for doing so but you gotta anyways :-)”
Building a more equitable society in the intellectual lacuni.
November debutes her Judiasm in jokes with "jewkes".
Dybbuk often arise from transgressive desire. Lust so terrible one blasphemes in soul against creation & the soul might never be reconciled with god.
"Sitting Shiva for the man who cucked you" is a level of kink no one is prepared for.
Would happily hear an episode on every Coen project. I would have bet Burn After Reading would have been the first given the podcast's original remit but I adore this one too. Hail Caesar when!?
Would No County For Old Men count as a heist?
Watching this movie sure was An Experience as someone also currently preparing for my bar mitzvah (in less than a month!! Fuck!!) I literally am listening to a recording of someone leyn my portion over and over although because Woke Judaism it’s a lovely blue-haired cantor instead of an old-school rabbi
not to go too hard into dadmode here but I really hope you are an adult convert and not a 13 year old listening to this podcast
"This movie is about how we're not even supposed to be here"- so you mean it's "No Country for Serious Men"? The discussion about doing the moral duty reminded me of a viral video I saw of a doordash driver who thought she was not getting a tip, so she left an angry note saying that people who don't tip get their food tampered with. She showed up at the front door, and the customer was holding a generous cash tip. The driver looked very ashamed and had to apologize for the nasty note she had left to an innocent woman, and also turned down the cash tip out of shame/apology. So, because of her own actions in what she thought was the response to not getting a tip, had to sacrifice the tip.
There’s such a great rhythm to how everyone delivers tasks to Larry, I’ve always loved it.
Today I learned singular: milf plural: milves!
Can confirm Mattie's comment about a guy like Sy in the the JCC locker room. I've had that very experience. Added into it, a bunch of very hair older Jewish immigrants from Russia in the steam bath or sauna using what I assume are Russian slurs for the then president of the United States, Barak Obama. Edit. Can also confirm the country club thing.
for the Coen brother stans if you haven't read Ethan Coens review of Joel Coens Macbeth you need to drop everything and do so. https://www.imightbewrong.org/p/joel-coens-the-tragedy-of-macbeth Also Judaism is not a jealous religion its just very cliqueish
The property line bit is so good. I had to help my mom and the county surveyor figure out where the property line was a couple of years ago and it was extremely ambiguous. The line was drawn several decades ago on a map that was not very detailed, and the description in the county records makes reference to a cedar tree which has long since died, leaving no possible way of unambiguously determining where the line was supposed to be.
the adults murmuring hints for the hesitant bnei mitzvah reader do the same for all readers. they have to be able to read the musical notation (and the hebrew of course) so they can be helpful at any point in the text. it’s really nice!!!! they have a cute name too—they are gabbais (rhymes with rabbis). hilarious episode. can’t believe i’ve never seen this but i’m pausing before the ending to watch it myself.
Would Shiva Baby be a good pick for religion season, or does it rely too much on Jewish culture as opposed to religion? Edit: for context, I made this comment before I got to the jazz outro 😂
Coen dialogue feels very Jewish. I will not elaborate.
Ingroup Jewks
Petition to make Abby to watch Fargo since she has never seen a Coen Brothers film.
Rushing to the comments to stand with Abigail Thorne that the devil in the Devil's advocate is correct
"the boss isn't always right, but he is the boss." What kind of communist are you? "He tells us what to do. He doesn't owe us an explanation. We owe him obedience." You wouldn't buy that line in any other context. If we're living in a cosmic horror story where every bit of suffering in all of time has been consciously arranged and inflicted by some guy for his own sick satisfaction, why would you care about his opinions? If he could have done otherwise, and knowingly didn't, then he's a monster.
welll, would you look at the time, its greatest coen brothers movie o'clock
Look up "the torah is not in heaven" for a lovely story of rabbis arguing
The oven of Akhnai is one of my all time favourites!!
It's about modern Midwestern Jewry (of which I'm a part) around when my parents were born. It just felt so real.
The thomas violence pfp triggers me bc I remember one time he made some “americans sure are cringe” thread bc his american friend hung his clothes weird or something and the top comment was like “americans are so stupid for using dryers and AC” and I’m like dude fuck you it’s like 99F outside and it rains every 5 min, if I hang my clothes outside they smell like shit as soon as theyre dry plus my car didnt have AC so I’m fucking melting but these cringe australian fucks are burger-reacting me for wanting to not die of heat stroke. The whole continent should be pushed back down into the sea
“Waah waah you do day/month weird waaah” say the word “No” with out adding eight vowels to it you boomerang cunt
Look at the parking lot.
Judaism isn't jealous, but you can't escape once you're in. Jewks is entering my lexicon now btw
been keenly awaiting this one after watching the film for the first time last week