The Chosen Heart Wants What The Chosen Heart Wants
Jewish women (and some Jewish men) are quick to stick out an accusatory finger pronouncing the presence of a "self-loathing Jew" whenever a Jewish man latches up with a cookie-cutter Blond with blue eyes. I can't believe the only complaint I read about Curb Your Enthusiasm comes from the Jerusalem Post. I checked with my Jewish friends en route to family dinners for Yom Kippur, and they confirmed it. "Oh yeah, my superjew aunt and cousin thinks Larry is a self-loathing anti-semite." (which is actually a scene in CYE that occurs in front of a cinema when Larry whistles Wagner)
I wasn't aware there was any other configuration in Hollywood aside from the Jewish male Blonde Wasp-y girl. It seemed as if anything else would hint that the man in question - in the eyes of contemporaries whose desires had been created by Hollywood - would be deemed a failure in life. I am fond of quoting Quentin Crisp in the Naked Civil Servant whenever this topic arises:
In my lifetime she changed her name three times, calling herself first Brigitte Helm, later Greta Garbo, and finally Marlene Dietrich. I thought about her a great deal, wore her clothes, said her Sphinxlike lines, and ruled her kingdom. I came to the conclusion that beauty was not a girl, but an Aryan face seen through Semitic eyes. This was what gave her that trace and remote quality. If what the Wandering Jew (who might by now have changed his name to Fritz Lang) most longed for was unbearable pleasure indefinitely prolonged, then he had to invent for himself a woman who was both beautiful and unattainable.
You can imagine how positively delighted I was when I saw Larry David (creator of Seinfeld's many episodes where the lead is overmatched with impossibly beautiful blond/blue gals) with his real (then) wife Laurie Ellen Lennard, or even Seinfeld himself with Shoshanna Lonstein, then Jessica Sklar, all very brunette, all very Jewish girls.
So it got me thinking about what goes on in my head whenever I saw an Asian/Caucasian pair. And suddenly it became clear the sensation I was experiencing all along. I understand people fall in love with people, and we all have our preferences. Yes. But what I discovered I was really feeling was not jealousy, contempt, or betrayal. What I was feeling was the absence of an intrinsic belief in your own product. It's kind of the same thing when waiters at a restaurant see me, my sister and my mom bickering at a table. They know there's no closeness within the family, that they could insinuate condescension and get away with it.
I can't count the times when I see an Asian / White couple on the streets and the Asian gay guy/girl looks away with shame the moment he sees one of his/her own. "I'm not with him/her/them" (directed towards me and my party) was what I read from the side of their heads. I thought it was my imagination. So the few times I went to a gay bar with a non-Asian date / partner and saw Asian guys, I just warmly acknowledged them "hi guys!" when I'd walked by. Their jaws all dropped in disbelief.
The more jaded among us will say, "yeah, Larry and Jerry's decisions could be a political move to appease the elders." Still that feeling of pride, that sense of trust in the soundness of your homegrown product (not a call for anti-miscegenation homogeneity) is intoxicatingly fresh, especially when you consider these two have made a career out of pairing themselves up with blonde waspy girls in all their shows/movies/episodes.
And of course, Happy Yom Kippur. Superjews in the haus!