Intersectionality And Racial Formations In The Fabelmans

Intersectionality and Racial Formations in The Fabelmans

Steven Spielberg’s recent film, The Fabelmans, is about a Jewish boy named Sammy growing up in the 1950s in Arizona and California. The film delves into how aspects of Sammy’s identity, like being Jewish, an artist, a son, etc. affect his life struggles throughout his formative years, through adolescence, and as he reaches adulthood. Because the film focuses on his identity as a Jewish person, an important aspect of Sammy’s personal individuality that is intertwined with others, it can be analyzed by utilizing a sociology of ethnicity framework. The Fabelmans explores the idea of how intersectionality plays a role in one’s identity and perceived privilege and how the idea of race formations

Intersectionality is explored in the film through Sammy's various identities as white and Jewish, and how these different identities play a role in his perception of his identity and privilege. Following his move from Arizona to California, Sammy’s religion is instantly evident to his Christian classmates and they quickly begin to harass him. For example, the Christian bullies refer to him as “Bagelman,” rather than Fabelman, force him to “apologize for killing Christ,” and beat him openly on school grounds because of their animosity towards Jewish people. Because of the numerous instances of discrimination Sammy faces, he realizes that he is not privileged in the same way that his Christian classmates are, and his sense of intersectionality is put into perspective. According to Crosley-Corcoran, intersectionality “recognizes that people can be privileged in some ways and definitely not privileged in others” and that there are various kinds of privileges, besides skin color, that affect the discrimination you may face (Crosley-Corcoran 2). In Sammy’s case, Crosley Corocan’s view that there are privileges besides skin color that affect the discrimination one faces is verified:

In the film, Sammy is in the locker room after volleyball practice and his Christian classmates say degrading phrases to him, like “Told you he’s a kike” and “Nobody likes Jewish people.” His classmates even hang a bagel by a string in his locker, which is antisemitic because the history behind the creation of the bagel was a response made by Jewish people to combat antisemitism in Poland (Fox). It is the volume of these microassaults, which are “conscious and intentional discriminatory actions,” that makes Sammy realize how abnormal his classmates view his culture, and how much of a minority he is in his community (Sue 3). Sammy even later remarks to his parents, in tears, “We’re the only Jews for miles and everything is awful,” displaying that Sammy not only recognizes that he has a different religion than the people around him, but that the culture and history that his Christain peers associate with his religion affects his place in society. So, because of societal forces, Sammy views his religion as an ethnicity since he registers that his lifestyle and culture, (not just solely his religion) must be abnormal to others. Sue describes this sense of abnormality in society to be an intense feeling that microassaults and other forms of microaggressions elicit on an individual, so the film, therefore, emboldens her argument and allows for a better