The Melancholy of the Shochet

Darren Aronofsky and The Wrestler

“The Shochet” is a slaughterer of animals, whose work (“Shechita”) is deemed Kosher according to Jewish custom and law. The practice is referenced in the Torah (Deuteronomy 12:21), but the ritual was developed and passed down orally. The word “Shochet” is related to shachat (שָׁחַט), used in the Hebrew Bible to describe many important instances of slaughter. Shachat appears in the story of Abraham’s interrupted sacrifice of Isaac (Genesis 22); it is used to refer to the killing of the goat, whose blood is smeared on Joseph’s coat, so that Jacob believes his son to have perished (Genesis 37); shachat returns in the slaughtering of the Passover lambs (Exodus 12) and the atonement rituals described in Leviticus (16:1-5). Shechita proper entails killing the animal in a gratuitously slow way, cutting the throat and allowing it to bleed to death. Often this is done while the animal is hanging, terrified, upside down. In Shechita, it is forbidden to humanely stun the animal before slaughter. Its throat is cut with a “sakin,” an unpointed, fastidiously sharpened blade. Hence, there is no stabbing, which is also forbidden. Rather the throat is sliced at a precise location, known as “Hagramah.” The blade is so keen, it likely takes the animal a moment or two to recognize what has just happened. Largely unacceptable in the West, Jewish slaughter, along with Muslim Halal, persists by being exempt from laws developed in the twentieth century toward the humane treatment of animals.

Shechita becomes even more unpleasant when we recognize that the slaughtered cattle is something akin to an effigy or even voodoo doll. The fineness and stealth of the cut, as well as the slowness of the animal’s death, contains a parable or lesson. The adversary cannot be confronted directly, nor defeated swiftly, nor stunned with force. One must make fine, careful cuts and bide one’s time. “Kill them softly,” so to speak. In works featuring the destruction of a “tragic” Aryan or Gentile, we call the feigned sadness of the slaughterer toward the slaughtered the “Melancholy of the Shochet.” Such exactitude and subtlety is evident in the work of the contemporary esotericist Darren Aronofsky (b.1969), in particular his films Black Swan (2010) and The Wrestler (2008). In both, the Aryan protagonists (or “sacrifices”) suffer painful injuries and even cut themselves intentionally, unmistakable metaphors of ritual slaughter or Shechita.

In The Wrestler, Mickey Rourke plays Randy “The Ram” Robinson, a down-and-out, deeply flawed, but good-hearted former professional wrestler, whose glory days in the ring are long behind him. Randy is estranged from his daughter, whom he abandoned decades ago while he was riding high. He now mostly spends his time with lowlifes and strippers. He continues to wrestle, though on the less-than-glamorous semi-pro circuit. He sometimes stoops so low as to participate in “death matches,” employing barbed wire, broken glass, and staple guns. Randy is addicted to the roar of the crowd, however diminished it might have gotten over the years.  After suffering a heart attack and told by doctors that his next match would be his last, Randy reluctantly charts a new path. He gives up wrestling and takes a job at a deli counter in a supermarket. He also attempts to reconcile with his daughter. Randy takes the blame for their fractured family, describing himself as an “old, broken-down piece of meat.” He asks her only not to hate him. Randy also finds love, or at least companionship, in the arms of an aging stripper, “Cassidy” (Marisa Tomei), a single mom, who personal trajectory and struggles are similar to his own.

One day at work, Randy is recognized by a fan purchasing a Virginia ham. Though Randy first denies his identity in embarrassment, the customer persists, in a mixture of fascination and mockery. The climax comes when an exasperated Randy purposefully slams his hand into the meat slicer, spraying blood everywhere—the butcher becomes the butchered. He removes his hairnet, revealing his iconic blond locks, quits his job, and ransacks the supermarket. Having given up any hope of a normal life—and knowing that his daughter will never trust his promises of reform—Randy returns to the ring for “one last match.” It is a 20th-anniversary fight against his former archenemy, “The Ayatollah.” Randy’s potential love, Cassidy, desperately tries to prevent him from throwing his life away, but Randy sticks to his course: His identity is in the ring, pummeling and getting pummeled before a crowd. The crowd, indeed, will determine his fate, and no one else. In a last “swan song,” Randy climbs to the top of the ropes and prepares to execute his signature move, the “Ram Jam,” a fearless head-first dive onto his opponent. In Aronofsky’s final close-up of the wrestler, Rourke conveys regret and sadness, but also acceptance, serenity, and even joy. It is implied that he dies of a heart attack, in a coup de grâce, as he dives into and over the camera. Essentially, Randy has sacrificed his life to defeat an opponent in a fake sport. The viewer is placed in the audience of the match, witnessing the self-immolation.¹

The period in which The Wrestler was produced is significant. His opponent, the Ayatollah, is literally costumed with Iranian colors and waves a Iranian flag. He is the quintessential “heel” to Randy’s “face,” and the combination generates loud chanting of “USA!” During the George W. Bush administration, when The Wrestler was written and filmed, the “neoconsaervatives”—a group a Jewish intellectuals and their allies, who were particularly influential in the post-9/11 period—were loudly calling for military action against Iran. Doubtlessly, “The Ayatollah” is a reference to this animosity, as well as an anxiety over a declining American military class represented by Randy.² On a deeper level, “The Ram” is indicated as the sacrificial ram of Leviticus (9:4). The match pits the USA vs. Iran, which might have been America’s own swan song, as it launched itself at the chief enemy of Israel. This is not to suggest that Aronofsky necessarily held “neocon” political opinions, or at least open ones. It is to suggest that Aronofsky understood contemporary political dynamics biblically. In this way, the contemporary and ancient symbols corroborate one another.

Early in the film, while Randy is relaying stories of old injuries, Cassidy blurts out, “He was pierced for our transgressions,

He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His wounds we were healed.”

Randy: What’s that?

Cassidy: It’s from Passion of the Christ. You never seen it?

Randy shrugs no

This quote is from Isaiah 53. It is one of the more beloved examples of Jesus “fulfilling prophecies” from the Old Testament, in this case that of the “suffering servant,” both scapegoat and redeemer. The verse appears on a title card in Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ (2004), an epic film released in 2004, which was intensely popular among conservative Christians, already activated by the Iraq war and George Bush’s imminent re-election. Cassidy quotes the verse much like quoting a line from a movie. “He was pierced for our transgressions” becomes something like “Play it again, Sam!” or “Make my day!” Randy is, seemingly, oblivious to both scripture and popular culture. Aronofsky’s message here is two-fold. First, the essence of the Bible is relayed to benighted Americans through Hollywood cinema; one not need be a churchgoer to hear the Word. And Cassidy reconnects to her Catholic faith by going to the movies. Secondly, even if Randy “knows not what he does,” he plays his role in the plot nonetheless. He voluntarily becomes a sacrifice. And he is not unaware of his status: Prominently displayed on his back is an image of Jesus.³ Likely, Aronofsky chose the surname “Robinson” as a reference to a extra-biblical Catholic legend that a robin accompanied Jesus during his lugging of the cross up the hill Gogotha. A drop of Jesus’ blood gave the bird its red breast.

Back in “The Eighties”—Randy’s days in the Sun, when men were men and rock wasn’t gay—“The Ram” was a savior. This is implied in the plastic action figures, little icons of Randy in his prime, that the wrestler still stores in his trailer and broken-down van. But now, Randy recognizing the other identity of Jesus, if only on a primitive level; he is also the sacrificial lamb. It is this role that Randy ultimately imitates.

Cassidy, the stripper, parallels Mary Magdalene, and she has an ambivalent and inconsistent relationship with “the wrestler.” She recognizes Randy’s Christ-like status from scripture (or at least the movies), but then struggles with and ultimately resists entering into a relationship with Randy the man. Cassidy lovingly kisses Randy when the pair are in a bar listening to ‘80s rock, during which Randy relives, momentarily, his status as America’s savior. She also begins to become Randy’s friend and companion, though, again, with some hesitation. Nevertheless, when Randy fully commits to self-sacrifice—willing becoming the ram or goat—she turns away and abandons him, unable to accept the dual nature of the messiah as foreseen by Isaiah—savior and scapegoat.⁴

That Aronofsky creates genuine sympathy for Randy is beyond doubt, but it is the sympathy one feels for an animal whose lot in life is to be slaughtered, a cow destined to become a hamburger. There is an altogether unpleasant sense here, where an artist seeks, manipulatively, to elicit genuine sadness and demoralizing emotions from an audience, while he himself experiences something altogether different, at least at the deepest level. We trust a nearly identical phenomenon was occurring between Jewish priests and their uninitiated converts in early Christianity, where depressing emotions and fears of death were elicited. “Fear and pity,” Aristotle’s conception, might very well describe an audience’s reaction to viewing tragedy, ancient or modern. But this is not the perspective of the chthonic playwright. The extent to which an esotericist feels sadness producing the work is not unlike the manner in which an actor might feel a sort of sadness when asked to cry on cue. He might conjure up old memories for the task, but such emotion is developed in a utilitarian manner. The process of an esotericist steeling himself to the plight of the protagonist is doubtlessly part of the ritual. Every child raised on a farm experiences the same complex relationship with the livestock animals he is obliged to slaughter. He cannot be accused of hating the beasts. He more likely loves them.

1. On some level, we are also watching the self-destruction of Mickey Rourke. In this way, The Wrestler serves as a kind of meta-narrative of the actor’s travails. Rourke's personal life parallels that of Randy's: He peaked as a movie star in the 1980s, before largely giving up acting and taking up boxing. The latter lead to serious personal injuries and facial reconstruction surgery, which dramatically altered his appearance.

2.  Something similar can be said of the more overtly fascist film 300 (2006), directed by Zack Snyder, which depicts a Spartan confrontation with ancient Persia.

3.  Interestingly, the tattoo of Jesus on the wrestler's back was not added for the film but was Mickey Rourke's own. The emphasizes the equation of Randy and Rourke himself.

4.  Also of interest is the name of Cassidy's son, “Jameson,” that is, “son of James” or “son of Jacob.” This might suggest something about the paternity of the illegitimate child she is rearing.