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The Creation of the Pirate “Arr” in Cinema

‘Tis a rule of health I learned while sailing under the immortal Hawke, arrr!” Spoken by actor Robert Newton in the 1950 Disney film Treasure Island, that line is the ur-arr, the first occurrence of the infamous pirate catchphrase. In Robert Louis Stevenson’s original book, characters used the interjection ah 35 times. As in, “Ah, they was a sweet crew, they was!” The hammy actor Newton delivered his lines for Long John Silver in his Cornwall accent, adding a rolling r sound and thus creating a classic meme.

“Arrrrr,” Wired (March 2012), 58.

“aesthetic preferences are always tied up with anxieties about social status”

People still use words like “middlebrow” and “kitsch” as terms of disapprobation, even if they don’t remember the Marxist tree from which those apples long ago fell. This is because aesthetic preferences are always tied up with anxieties about social status. The connection seems virtually primordial. I can’t help judging you by the novel you’re reading on the plane or the wallpaper in your house. (You have wallpaper?). If we had no social individiousness, we would probably have no art – or, at least, we would have a very different economy of art. People like to debate he merits of what they read and see and hear, and to pretend to think ill of those who differ. It’s part of the game. The college freshman who declares herself a relativist in philosophy class by day will argue all night about whether Band X is better than Band Y.

 

People also like to feel that they know what’s correct and what isn’t, and thus belong to a privileged minority. It doesn’t matter what Webster’s Third tells me: I will always feel superior to a person who says, “I am totally disinterested in that subject” (though I will also strive to treat that individual with the dignity and respect owed to any human being). I can’t help it; it’s the way I was brought up. On the other hand, I don’t believe that the future of the republic is at stake.

Louis Menand, “Browbeaten,” The New Yorker (5 September 2011), 76.

“political scientists have mainly regarded political parties as a healthy way of counteracting the power of single-issue interest groups.”

…because parties are necessarily alliances of disparate constituencies, political scientists have mainly regarded them as a healthy way of counteracting the power of single-issue interest groups. It’s hard not to wonder about an account in which a party is captive to interest groups at some moments but not at others.

Nicholas Lemann, “Evening the Odds,” The New Yorker (23 April 2012), 73.

“All Zionists agree also that an undivided Jerusalem must remain Israel’s capital”

All Zionists agree also that an undivided Jerusalem must remain Israel’s capital. This is a matter of intense importance, not only to Israel and its supporters, but to humanity as a whole. During the nineteen years that Jordan occupied East Jerusalem, thirty-four of the thirty-five synagogues in the Jewish Quarter were contemptuously blasted into dusty rubble. Thirty-eight thousand Jewish graves on the Mount of Olives were wantonly destroyed; many tombstones were used to pave Jordanian army latrines. Even Christians residing in Israel weren’t not allowed to visit their shrines in the Old City.

Roland B. Gittelsohn, Partners in Destiny: Reform Judaism and Zionism (New York: Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1984), 10.

“…historic Judaism has been neither religion nor nationalism exclusively, but religion and nationalism organically intertwined”

In truth, historic Judaism has been neither religion nor nationalism exclusively, but religion and nationalism organically intertwined. Whoever attempts to separate them, to make the tradition appear as if it were only religion or only nationalism, will succeed in concocting an aberrant monstrosity, a caricature which won’t even resemble authentic Judaism.

Roland B. Gittelsohn, Partners in Destiny: Reform Judaism and Zionism (New York: Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1984), 2.

“Let the Jew really become familiar with this part of his heritage”

Let the Jew really become familiar with this part of his heritage. Let him, through a little effort at learning and devotion, come to know and to understand his faith, even if only in a very simple and elementary manner. He will soon realize that Judaism is a superb religious philosophy of life, a religion which is highly intelligent as well as being emotionally deeply attractive; that it is forward looking and indomitably hopeful; that it is a religion through which mankind can really seek and progressively find its salvation and happiness upon earth.

Leon I. Feuer, On Being a Jew (New York: Bloch Publishing Company, 1947), 76.

“we Jews almost defy definition. We are a unique demographic group; none of the customary sociological categories is a perfect fit for us”

We must begin by trying to define Judaism and the Jewish people, no easy task even for one who has spent a lifetime studying Jewish history. Worlds like religious and secular and nationalistic, which have clear-cut meanings in other contexts, become fuzzy and confused when applied to us. The plain fact is that we Jews almost defy definition. We are a unique demographic group; none of the customary sociological categories is a perfect fit for us.

 

We are a religious group, true, but simultaneously more than that. We share some facets of national existence, but not all of us partake of them fully. We are an ethnic entity, yet at the same time an admixture of many races. If we are to be defined with any measure of accuracy, a new term must be devised, peculiarly and uniquely for us.

Roland B. Gittelsohn, Partners in Destiny: Reform Judaism and Zionism (New York: Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1984), 1.

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“The conundrum is how to explain to your kids that Jar Jar and Watto are stereotypes without first introducing the stereotypes that you are hoping to negate…”

I managed to avoid the recent rerelease of “Episode I: The Phantom Menace” in 3-D, but only barely. Every father who loves the original “Star Wars” trilogy eventually runs into the fiasco that is Jar Jar Binks — a character capable of destroying a generation’s worth of affection with a single rustle of his oversize ears. While many have noted Jar Jar as a racist stereotype, it’s unclear exactly which stereotype he is. Is Jar Jar a Rastafarian stoner or a Stepin Fetchit or a Zuluesque savage? Or is he just a Gungan? And what about Watto, also from “The Phantom Menace”? A dark-skinned, hooknosed, greedy slaveholder, he’s an all-purpose anti-Semitic caricature. Or possibly he’s just a hovering bad guy in a fantasy world. The conundrum is how to explain to your kids that Jar Jar and Watto are stereotypes without first introducing the stereotypes that you are hoping to negate.

Stephen Marche, “Loompaland is a Complicated Place”, New York Times Magazine (17 June 2012), 61.

“To understand Zionism in anything more than a superficial sense, we need to examine its indigenous origins in Jewish tradition”

To describe Zionism purely as a modern, socio-political phenomenon makes about as much sense as to explain my career entirely in terms of events since the day I was ordained a rabbi, as if my genetic heritage, my childhood and adolescence, my undergraduate studies and extracurricular activities had nothing to do with making me what I am today.

 

Of course there have been external tendencies and trends which have helped shape the nature of Zionism, among them Emancipation, Enlightenment, massive anti-Semitism, and the burgeoning of nationalism throughout the world during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. But these have been like the winds and rains which influence the ultimate growth of a tree. Without seeds and roots, wind and rain would produce only gullies, not living organisms. To understand Zionism in anything more than a superficial sense, we need to examine its indigenous origins in Jewish tradition.

Roland B. Gittelsohn, Partners in Destiny: Reform Judaism and Zionism (New York: Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1984), 1.