Too Jewish?

[eveningblue]

Something that has always interested me (and that came up in this discussion of Jewish characters played by non-Jewish seeming actors) is this notion of a tv show seeming "too Jewish" by Hollywood standards. rydra_wrong explains this phenomenon here:

Neal Gabler's An Empire Of Their Own: How The Jews Invented Hollywood argues that this is precisely why

Comments

[rydra_wong]

What does it even mean to "seem Jewish"?

Okay, a thought: is this parallel to discussion of characters who may be "coded" as gay? It seems to involve some similar issues and problems.

On one level, saying "anyone who's a nerdy academic who talks really fast and waves their hands around = Jewish!" runs the risk of invoking a bunch of stereotypes (just like "any man who talks about decorating = gay!").

Yet at the same time, there's a lack of "out" gay and Jewish characters in the media, and you have a history of tv and movies attaching traditional/stereotypical cues to a character without stating overtly that they are such-and-such ...

How do we talk about that without just reinforcing those stereotypes?

[some_stars]

Yes! This is the exact same problem I have with wanting to talk about gay-but-not-gay characters. It's a totally valid phenomenon and it totally happens, but there's such an INCREDIBLY fine line between recognizing that a character just--SEEMS gay/Jewish, and reinforcing stereotypes. I can't always explain why a character feels "coded ---" to me, and it's not really something logical that I can argue when people say "oh, well, it's not like straight/non-Jewish people are never this and that," because that's true too. But the feeling is real.

[chopchica]

I don't even know if we really can, because so much of Judaism on TV feels like we've been thrown a tiny bone, and so we snap on it and devour it and then discuss it endlessly to make it even more than it is. Even the tiniest phrase or hand gesture suddenly turns into, "there's somebody like me!"

The main problem is that when you *only* have those things, it reinforces the behavior and if media Jews want to be Jewish, they need to look and act in a certain way to even qualify. You can't be a redheaded Jew or a Jew who doesn't like to argue or anything that isn't a preset part of the list.

I think basically we're screwed either way.

[astaria51]

So, really, EXACTLY the same as "coded gay"!

[rydra_wong]

I think basically we're screwed either way.

Which may be the nature of coding, now I'm thinking about it.

You get a kind of limited visibility, but only through codes which invoke particular stereotypes, and with built-in deniability on the part of TPTB (they can avoid directly stating that a character is Jewish/gay/whatever, and also dodge charges of stereotyping or negative depictions because hey, they didn't say character X was Jewish/gay/whatever).

So it gives with one hand and takes away with the other.