Abstract
As a genre, film comedy has consistently made use of Jewish performers such as Groucho Marx, Woody Allen, and Ben Stiller. Although a number of popular critics and scholars have argued that a radical shift has been taking place in the representation of the Jewish male, this chapter uses analysis of 2 Days in Paris (Julie Delpy, 2007), A Serious Man (Joel and Ethan Coen, 2009), and Greenberg (Noah Baumbach, 2010) to illustrate that a branch of comedy continues to use the stock character of “schlemiel,” albeit in more self-aware ways. By both presenting and interrogating the traits of the Jewish male type (as neurotic, passive, and effeminate), these films reflexively question cinematic stereotypes of the Jewish male that are often incorporated as though unproblematic.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Abrams, Nathan. 2011. The New Jew in Film: Exploring Jewishness and Judaism in Contemporary Cinema. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Bellow, Saul. 1964. Herzog. New York: Viking.
Bergson, Henri. 2004 [1911]. Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic. Translated from French by Cloudesley Brereton and Fred Rothwell. Whitefish, MT: Kessinger.
Brostoff, Marissa. 2010. Look Out. Tablet, March 12. Retrieved on March 4, 2017 from http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/28057/look-out.
Buchbinder, David. 2008. Enter the Schlemiel: The Emergence of Inadequate or Incompetent Masculinities in Recent Film and Television. Canadian Review of American Studies 38 (2): 227–245.
Clover, Carol J. 1993. Men, Women and Chainsaws. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Coben, Sherry. 2010. Greenberg (2010) vs. The Squid and the Whale (2005). Movie Smackdown, April 3. Retrieved on December 18, 2016 from http://www.moviesmackdown.com/2010/04/Greenberg-vs-squid-and-the-whale.html.
Dickstein, Morris. 2010. The Inner Nerd: Why Greenberg? Dissent, May 12. Retrieved on December 18, 2016 from https://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/the-inner-nerd.
Friedman, Lester D. 1982. Hollywood’s Image of the Jew. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co.
Gilman, Sander. 1995. Freud, Race, and Gender. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Hansen, Miriam. 1991. Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent Film. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Harris, Mark. 2009. Twilight of the Tummlers. New York Magazine, June 1. Retrieved on December 18, 2016 from https://www.amazon.com/York-Magazine-June-2009-Schlemiels/dp/B002C070MC.
Horn, Jordana. 2010. Noah Baumbach on Why Greenberg Isn’t as Depressing as You’d Think. Vulture, March 26. Retrieved on December 18, 2016 from http://www.vulture.com/2010/03/noah_baumbach_on_Greenberg.html.
Itzkovitz, Daniel. 2006. They All Are Jews. In “You Should See Yourself”: Jewish Identity in Postmodern American Culture, ed. Vincent Brook, 230–253. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Kalmar, Ivan. 1993. The Trotskys, Freuds and Woody Allens: Portrait of a Culture. Toronto: Viking.
King, Geoff. 2009. Indiewood, USA: Where Hollywood Meets Independent Cinema. London: I.B. Tauris.
Koven, Mikel J. 2007. “Cool Jewz”: Contemporary Jewish Identity in Popular Culture—An Introduction. Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 25 (4): 1–2.
Krieger, Rosalin. 2003. Does He Actually Say the Word Jewish?—Jewish Representations in Seinfeld. Journal for Cultural Research 7 (4): 387–404.
Mast, Gerald. 1990 [1987]. Woody Allen: The Neurotic Jew as American Clown. In Jewish Wry: Essays on Jewish Humor, ed. Sarah Blacher Cohen, 125–141. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.
Patai, Daphne. 1992. Minority Status and the Stigma of “Surplus Visibility”. Education Digest 57 (5): 35–37.
Rogin, Michael. 1998. Independence Day (BFI Modern Classics). London: BFI.
Roth, Matthue. 2009. Interview: Adam Goldberg and LANDy. My Jewish Learning, June 18. Retrieved on December 18, 2016 from http://www.myjewishlearning.com/blog/culture/interview-adam-goldberg-and-landy.
Stein, Joel. 2005. Love Your Work: Why Hot, WASPy Chicks Love Jews. Los Angeles Times, January 9. Retrieved on December 18, 2016 from http://articles.latimes.com/2005/jan/09/opinion/op-stein9.
Stratton, Jon. 2000. Coming Out Jewish: Constructing Ambivalent Identities. London and New York: Routledge.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
O’Meara, J. (2018). Neurotic and Going Nowhere: Comedy and the Contemporary Jewish American Male. In: Dibeltulo, S., Barrett, C. (eds) Rethinking Genre in Contemporary Global Cinema. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90134-3_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90134-3_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-90133-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-90134-3
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)