A LITTLE SOMETHING THAT IS "ARTY": "ZELIG"

Now, Woody Allen is a tricky one. You either love him or you hate him. You either think he is utterly pointless or one of the wittiest directors alive. I am one of the fans. From the smallest thing to the largest thing, Allen’s films are choc-full of stuff. Real stuff you can get your teeth into whether to laugh or cry and as opposed to fluff. You know what I mean. Zelig was another film I “happened across” a while back. I watched it on a rainy morning when I was cramped for time, based solely on the two premises that I was short of time and I definitely wanted fill my “movie a day” quota. Zelig was 80 minutes long, so on it went.
It is, in fact a “mocumentary”. I mean, it is shot in the style of a documentary with “archive footage” and interviews with “experts and witnesses” but it’s really a story starring Woody Allen himself and Mae West. It is the extraordinary tale of Leonard Zelig (Woody Allen) an ordinary Jewish-American citizen with a rather extraordinary ailment… He “turns into” anyone he comes into contact with. Put him near Asian Americans, he starts speaking Chinese, African-Americans, his skin actually changes color. Put him in the same room as a doctor, he’s a doctor, confront him with an iron-monger, what do you know, he’s an ironmonger. The world doesn’t know what to make of him at first. Nobody except a young and beautiful psychiatrist Eudora Fletcher (Mia Farrow)She suspects Zelig’s transformation stems from his abnormally great desire for acceptance and love. Not only that, she also suspects she can cure him. Getting her hands on him, however, is going to be a good deal harder than she first suspected…
Now, I am a pretty smart gal as they go, generally speaking. But this being Woody Allen, I am still not quite sure what EXACTLY the film was poking fun at. But you can see the type, right? I mean, maybe it isn’t even a single type it’s a quality one can attribute to our society in general today. Preferences in society for instance (marked in the film by the public’s adoration of Zelig and their subsequent hatred of him), typical consumer society, we’re so phical these days. We want one thing one moment, two moments later it’s forgotten and we already have a new favorite. We change like “chameleons” with the times and we are led by advertising (let’s face it that IS what advertising is for but still…)
And then there are people like Zelig. On a more personal level they may be afraid to be themselves for fear of rejection (and that alone speaks volumes on where we are today as a whole if individuals are afraid to be themselves) or they may, a bit like Zelig, be rather “underdeveloped” (and this has nothing to do with age) as far as character formation is concerned. Or heck, they may just have an agenda, sucking up to all and sundry, making contacts, working their way up in the world. Whatever the case, you know the type. The people pleaser. Those who are what you want them to be. Who agree with everything you say. And it’s sort of ironic, because people like that are, most often, quite popular. So it’s funny – and well placed – that Zelig becomes the phenomenon of his age at first… A society of chameleons applauding the ultimate chameleon then? Mr. Allen can’t be thinking much of society today… Oh hang on, scratch that… I think we all know the answer to that one… =)