Jews in Contemporary Visual Entertainment: Raced, Sexed, and Erased

by Carol Siegel

Overview

What are the consequences of how Jews are depicted in movies and television series? Drawing on a host of movies and television series from the 1970s to present day, Jews in Contemporary Visual Entertainment explores how the media sexualize and racialize American Jews. Race and sexuality frequently intersect in the depiction of Jewish characters in such shows as The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, UnREAL, The Expanse, and Breaking Bad, and in films such as Hester Street, Once Upon a Time in America, Casino, Radio Days, Inglourious Basterds, and Barton Fink. When they do, American sexual norms are invariably challenged or outright broken by these anti-Semitic representations of Jewishness.

Insightful and provocative, Jews in Contemporary Visual Entertainment disturbingly reveals the far-reaching influence of popular visual media in shaping how American Jews are perceived today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780253060235
Publisher:	Indiana University Press (Ips)
Publication date:	05/03/2022
Pages:	260
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.59(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Carol Siegel is Professor of English, Film, and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Washington State University Vancouver. She is the author of Sex Radical Cinema and New Millennial Sexstyles, among other monographs and collections.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Sexual Perversity and the Jewish Therapist Figure
2. Imaginary Histories of Americanized Jews in Love
3. Sex and Revenge, Rage and Bliss
4. Jews, Sex Crimes, and Holocaust Erasure on Film
5. Two Funerals and a Wedding
6. Monstrous Jewish Sexualities and Minoritarian Cinema
7. Our Erasure Is Being Televised
Conclusion
Filmography
Bibliography
Index

What People are Saying About This

Henry Bial

Provocative, wide-ranging, and disarmingly personal, Jews in Contemporary Visual Entertainment provides timely and urgent readings of Jewish characters on American screens.

Linda Mizejewski

I cannot imagine a more timely book than Carol Siegel's Jews in Contemporary Visual Entertainment. More than ever, cultural-studies scholarship urgently needs to track, evaluate, and analyze the ways popular culture represents Jews because such representations constitute commonsense knowledge and assumptions about this minority. Prof. Siegel's book is an important contribution to this effort.

Nathan Abrams

Jews in Contemporary Visual Entertainment explores the racialization and sexualization of Jews through a selection of film and television examples. In so doing, it is a contribution not only to Jewish studies, as well as film and television studies, but also a personal and political intervention to address the contemporary situation in the United States.

Thabiti Lewis

Jews in Contemporary Visual Entertainment is a book that fuses film with theories of spectatorship to decipher the impact of representations of Jewishness in popular entertainment with a broad lens. 

Editorial Reviews

"Jews in Contemporary Visual Entertainment explores the racialization and sexualization of Jews through a selection of film and television examples. In so doing, it is a contribution not only to Jewish studies, as well as film and television studies, but also a personal and political intervention to address the contemporary situation in the United States."—Nathan Abrams, Bangor University

"I cannot imagine a more timely book than Carol Siegel's Jews in Contemporary Visual Entertainment. More than ever, cultural-studies scholarship urgently needs to track, evaluate, and analyze the ways popular culture represents Jews because such representations constitute commonsense knowledge and assumptions about this minority. Prof. Siegel's book is an important contribution to this effort."—Linda Mizejewski, Ohio State University

"Provocative, wide-ranging, and disarmingly personal, Jews in Contemporary Visual Entertainment provides timely and urgent readings of Jewish characters on American screens."—Henry Bial, University of Kansas

"Jews in Contemporary Visual Entertainment is a book that fuses film with theories of spectatorship to decipher the impact of representations of Jewishness in popular entertainment with a broad lens."—Thabiti Lewis, Washington State University Vancouver

From the Publisher

Scholars of film and media will find useful connections between Siegel's case studies and broader themes in the field.

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