The Fabelmans: Jewish Self-Image

Unlike most of Steven Spielberg’s films, The Fabelmans has a marked autobiographical tone.  The film closely mirrors Spielberg’s own childhood from the ages of 5 to 18. Key scenes in the movie are grounded in the life of his family, portraying his relationships with his parents, their marriage and subsequent divorce, the family’s relocation to Arizona and California, and his experiences with antisemitism. The heart of the film is the mental process which ultimately makes Spielberg a filmmaker. At the same time, it explores the complexities of Jewish self-image during the 1950s and 1960s.

The film opens with a scene that later seems quite telling. Sammy, the main character, is a five-year-old boy going to the cinema with his parents for the first time. He is anxious about sitting in the theater and watching the movie. When his father asks him why he is scared, Sammy responds, “The characters are gigantic…” His father tries to reassure him, explaining that they look gigantic only because they are projected on the cinema screen, but Sammy remains anxious.

The unsuspecting viewer may not realize how revealing this scene is, as it foreshadows a side of Sammy’s life that will later unfold in a fascinating way: he is acutely aware of the physical gap between himself  and the ‘gigantic’ figures he fears. Although his father assures him that the images are merely an illusion created by the projector, five-year-old Sammy already senses a reality beyond the cinema: some people around him possess a clear physical advantage over him. This early awareness of his physical vulnerability is soon intertwined with his Jewishness. When the family returns home after the movie, it becomes evident that their house, the only home of a Jewish family on the street, is not adorned with Christmas lights. Sammy’s mother asks him what he wants for Hanukkah, and he quickly answers, “Christmas lights.” For the young boy, being Jewish means not only being different from his environment but also lacking something others have—in this case, the developed aesthetics that add beauty to his Christian neighbors’ homes.

Sammy’s mother allows him to use his father’s 8mm camera, opening up a new perspective. He first recreates a violent movie scene as a way to master his fear. Later, he documents the family’s move to Arizona, accompanied by a close friend—through the lens, he uncovers his mother’s secret affair with that friend, hidden from his father. The camera also becomes his means of belonging, as classmates join his filmmaking projects, which he proudly screens at school.

When the family relocates to California, Sammy is confronted with overt antisemitism. First, we observe that he is surrounded by very tall and strong boys who are physically different from him. He tells his sisters, “It’s like we got parachuted into the land of the giant sequoia people.” At school, he faces bullying from two boys because he is Jewish. Chad is openly antisemitic and physically assaults Sammy in front of everyone. Logan, a handsome and muscular boy and a leader, embodies a more subdued form of antisemitism. Although he tells Sammy that no one likes Jews except other Jews, he still intervenes to stop Chad from beating Sammy. Spielberg’s indictment of the antisemitic environment is clear and unequivocal: Sammy lies beaten in the schoolyard, and no one steps in to help. However, a fascinating aspect of the film is Sammy’s psychological and spiritual struggle with antisemitism. Near the end of high school, he is given an opportunity to get back at his antisemitic classmates by filming a social event, “ditch day,” which is then shown at the school’s prom. The film contains some surprising elements. Chad, as expected, is portrayed unfavorably and is laughed at by his peers. Logan, by contrast, is portrayed as physically impressive—handsome and muscular. Sammy departs from strict realism, making it clear that he regards Logan with a measure of admiration, despite the fact that Logan had embarrassed and humiliated him.

Sammy’s feeling of physical inferiority to Logan can be interpreted in various ways. Firstly, the phenomenon of a victim admiring their abuser comes to mind. This is a well-known psychological defense mechanism, where victims internalize the negative image imposed on them, and view their abuser as admirable. It’s easier to handle the humiliations this way. This mechanism can easily be applied to Logan since, in certain situations, he also defended Sammy.

On another register, Sammy’s portrayal of Logan may echo the Nazi ideal of the Aryan as a superior human. The weak Jewish character looks with admiration at the non-Jewish young man, who resembles an image from a Nazi pamphlet: fair-skinned with straight facial features and a muscular body. The film highlights Logan’s athletic prowess—we see him winning a running competition, in contrast to Sammy, who struggles with sports. Although the Nazi ideal of a ‘superior human’ has long been rejected, Spielberg suggests that this image has nonetheless seeped into Jewish consciousness—and perhaps even become a part of it. Even though Sammy was born and raised after World War II, these masculine ideals have become an unavoidable point of reference. It is possible that Jews, against their conscious will, have collectively internalized the belief that they are physically inferior to other groups.

Another interpretation of this scene derives from Sammy’s evolution into a filmmaker. The artist within him perceives beauty and seeks to capture it on film. This age-old artistic inclination to depict human perfection runs as a consistent theme throughout Western art. Sammy’s admiration for Logan’s beauty is, in a way, conceptual rather than personal. The artist in him is drawn to physical beauty and wishes to display it in all its splendor. Interestingly, Logan feels hurt by his portrayal because he feels it is unrealistic. He believes he is not as handsome as Sammy portrayed him, taking it as a subtle act of revenge by the Jewish boy, meant to embarrass him: having been depicted almost as an idol, any real-life encounter with him is bound to fall short.

Sammy’s encounters with the Christian world, which often mark Jews as separate, take on another dimension when he enters a romantic relationship with Monica, a devout Christian girl. While Spielberg has stated that most events in the film are based on real-life experiences, he has not commented on the romance with Monica. The viewer watches two teenagers drawn to each other—Sammy, anxious, and Monica, giggling. Yet their relationship reveals a deeper truth about antisemitism.

Monica’s room is adorned with pictures of Jesus, whom she describes as “sexy,” alongside images of Paul McCartney, John Lennon, and Pat Boone. She is surprised that Sammy doesn’t believe in Christ and suggests that they pray together to Jesus. Once it is clear that Monica sees Jesus as an attractive and appealing man, her attraction to Sammy makes perfect sense. She admits that she likes him because she thinks he looks like how Jesus looked; like “a handsome Jewish boy, just like you [Sammy].” She then turns to an image of Jesus and says, “Jesus, I’m here with my good friend Sam, who’s Jewish. He’s a nice boy, Lord. He’s good, brave, and funny, and I like him.” Thus, Monica illustrates that being Jewish can potentially be also a source of attraction.

Alongside a physical threat, the film also portrays an attraction to the Jewish boy.  This facet of the film provides a fundamental insight into the roots of antisemitism: the shared origin of Judaism and Christianity is the source of the distorted attitude towards Jews; they are both hated and yet acknowledged as the people from whom Christ came. For Sammy’s classmates, there is almost no historical distance between the events believed to have taken place in the first century and their current reality; the Jewish boy is expected to apologize for crucifying Jesus and is also desirable because he resembles Jesus. Sammy is acutely aware of this historical misconception—he points out that he is not two thousand years old and that no one knows what Jesus looked like. Yet, he realizes that to them, he is a representative of the Jewish people. This perception can be threatening, frightening, and sometimes rewarding.

The final scene, captivating and enigmatic, relates to the beginning of the film. Sammy meets the renowned director John Ford in Hollywood. Ford asks him to describe two pictures hanging in his office. As Sammy starts to describe them, Ford abruptly interrupts, telling him he is wrong and explaining that in one picture, the horizon is at the bottom, and in the other, it is at the top. Before sending Sammy off, he offers him this piece of advice: “Now remember this! When the horizon’s at the bottom, it’s interesting. When the horizon’s at the top, it’s interesting. When the horizon’s in the middle, it’s boring as shit! Now good luck to you.” Sammy exits the office, and the camera follows him. He briefly turns around before we see him from behind, walking into the distance (perhaps a subtle nod to the final scene of Charlie Chaplin’s The Circus?). Then, the camera angle shifts, placing the horizon at the bottom of the frame instead of the center. In this final scene, Spielberg himself becomes an invisible actor in the film, adjusting the camera angle. The scene is an illustration of the importance of perspective.

If the film begins with a Jewish boy feeling threatened by the characters on the movie screen because they seem to suggest a real-world threat, then the final scene reflects Spielberg’s development as a person and an artist: he realizes the importance of perspective in understanding the world. Anything can be seen—and presented—from different angles, including the experience of a Jewish boy in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s. Sammy’s somewhat amorphic childish anxiety and his sense of deprivation gradually transform into an understanding that reality, including antisemitism, is complex and multi-faceted and can be viewed and portrayed in various ways. Dealing with antisemitism involves changing one’s perspective; it means replacing the basic and intuitive feeling of being weak and disadvantaged with a clear and sharp view of the diverse attitudes toward Jews.