![]() The rise of violent Trumpist populism and its attendant disenfranchisement of all but white cis-het US-born males, not to mention climate disaster and the catastrophically mismanaged pandemic, gives the lie to the notion that this is a “First World” country. As cynical and informed as I thought I was about this country, I myself experienced this disillusionment acutely over the past few years. I was surprised to realize that, ultimately, “An American Tail” is about the inevitable disillusionment that comes from holding up the United States as the promised land. And, of course, there are cats in America. We see graft and corruption, the construction of the Statue of Liberty, horrendous conditions in tenements and sweatshops. We see ethnic differences grow insignificant as class differences become more meaningful: The poor Jewish mice have more in common with other poor immigrant mice than they do with the Jewish Gussie Mousenheimer, the richest mouse in New York (voiced by the legendary Jewish comedian Madeline Kahn). We see harried and involuntary assimilation, as Fievel’s sister Yasha is renamed Tessie and Fievel starts to go by Filly. “An American Tail” does have something to say about history - not Russian but American, because the bulk of the story is about the immigrant experience in late 19th-century New York. And for all of them, America represents a land without oppression. For each of them, the cats represent the specific oppressors in their homeland. But the song is sung during the mice’s overseas voyage, in concert with other refugee mice - Italian and Irish. I remembered the song “There Are No Cats in America” as allegorical, but I thought the cats stood for the Cossacks themselves. It’s the emigration story of my own family, and the tide of history that sweeps up the Mouskewitzes. These conditions were at the heart of the mass emigration of Jews from the Russian Empire to the United States in the decades before WWI and the Russian Revolution. (Nu, when was it ever?) The assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881 sparked a wave of pogroms, as did a series of antisemitic laws passed in 1883 by his successor. 1885 was not a great time to be a Jew in Russia. The feline oppressors are an artistic touch, but the larger historical conditions are quite accurate. Accompanying the Cossacks are vicious, bloodthirsty cats, racing across the grounds to terrorize the mice. “An American Tail” isn’t set in a mouse world - the mice live in small corners of a human village, which is torched by ruthless Cossacks on horseback (the Cossacks are a diverse ethnic group native to Russia and Ukraine, and well-known for their vigorous military tradition). ![]() The cozy Hanukkah scene is interrupted by a pogrom. And Fievel’s favorite book is “The Brothers Karamousov,” a fun play on Dostoevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov.” Papa tells stories about the “Giant Mouse of Minsk” using the cadence and conventions of a Yiddish folk tale. ![]() The Mouskewitz parents evoke Tevye and Golde from “ Fiddler on the Roof”: Papa is a dreamer and his violin-playing is a crucial plot point Mama, on the other hand, is more pragmatic. In this opening, there are tender and thoughtful touches. But we’ll let it all slide, because this was, ultimately, a film released in 1980s America reflecting American Jewish life at the time. And, a Hanukkah gift exchange is really more of a 20th-century American thing than a 19th-century shtetl thing. There’s a few inaccuracies in this: Ba bushka is an American word for an Eastern European headscarf it comes from the Russian word for grandmother, or b abushka. The girl, Tanya, gets “a new babushka” and our hero, Fievel, gets his father’s cap which is far too big for his little head. Inside the family’s humble and cozy home, they’re exchanging Hanukkah gifts. 1885.” Shostka is in Ukraine today, but it was then technically part of the Russian Empire. ![]() The opening scene is a snowy night in a shtetl. Seen through the eyes of a 35-year-old Jewish woman with a PhD in Slavic literature, “An American Tail” falls squarely between “Anastasia” and “Maus. ![]() I wished I could have begun my “American Tail” re-watch with the whirr of a rewinding VHS tape but it’s 2021, not 1991. ![]()
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