Movie-Made Jews: An American Tradition
Movie-Made Jews focuses on a rich, usable American Jewish cinematic tradition. This tradition includes fiction and documentary films that make Jews through antisemitism, Holocaust indirection, and discontent with assimilation. It prominently features the unapologetic assertion of Jewishness, queerness, and alliances across race and religion. Author Helene Meyers shows that as we go to our local theater, attend a Jewish film festival, play a DVD, watch streaming videos, Jewishness becomes part of the multicultural mosaic rather than collapsing into a generic whiteness or being represented as a life apart. This engagingly-written book demonstrates that a Jewish movie is neither just a movie nor for Jews only.
 
With incisive analysis, Movie-Made Jews challenges the assumption that American Jewish cinema is a cinema of impoverishment and assimilation. While it’s a truism that Jews make movies, this book brings into focus the diverse ways movies make Jews. 
 
1138689452
Movie-Made Jews: An American Tradition
Movie-Made Jews focuses on a rich, usable American Jewish cinematic tradition. This tradition includes fiction and documentary films that make Jews through antisemitism, Holocaust indirection, and discontent with assimilation. It prominently features the unapologetic assertion of Jewishness, queerness, and alliances across race and religion. Author Helene Meyers shows that as we go to our local theater, attend a Jewish film festival, play a DVD, watch streaming videos, Jewishness becomes part of the multicultural mosaic rather than collapsing into a generic whiteness or being represented as a life apart. This engagingly-written book demonstrates that a Jewish movie is neither just a movie nor for Jews only.
 
With incisive analysis, Movie-Made Jews challenges the assumption that American Jewish cinema is a cinema of impoverishment and assimilation. While it’s a truism that Jews make movies, this book brings into focus the diverse ways movies make Jews. 
 
37.95 In Stock
Movie-Made Jews: An American Tradition

Movie-Made Jews: An American Tradition

by Helene Meyers
Movie-Made Jews: An American Tradition

Movie-Made Jews: An American Tradition

by Helene Meyers

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$37.95 
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Overview

Movie-Made Jews focuses on a rich, usable American Jewish cinematic tradition. This tradition includes fiction and documentary films that make Jews through antisemitism, Holocaust indirection, and discontent with assimilation. It prominently features the unapologetic assertion of Jewishness, queerness, and alliances across race and religion. Author Helene Meyers shows that as we go to our local theater, attend a Jewish film festival, play a DVD, watch streaming videos, Jewishness becomes part of the multicultural mosaic rather than collapsing into a generic whiteness or being represented as a life apart. This engagingly-written book demonstrates that a Jewish movie is neither just a movie nor for Jews only.
 
With incisive analysis, Movie-Made Jews challenges the assumption that American Jewish cinema is a cinema of impoverishment and assimilation. While it’s a truism that Jews make movies, this book brings into focus the diverse ways movies make Jews. 
 

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781978821880
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Publication date: 09/17/2021
Pages: 236
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

HELENE MEYERS is professor of English and McManis University Chair at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas. She is the author of Femicidal Fears: Narratives of the Female Gothic Experience, Reading Michael Chabon, and Identity Papers: Contemporary Narratives of American Jewishness.

Table of Contents

1 Introduction: Making Jews Onscreen and Off 1

2 Looking at Antisemites and Jews 18

Gentleman's Agreement (1947) 20

School Ties (1992) 23

Use Believer (1001) 28

Protocols of Zion (2005) 32

3 Looking at the Shoah from a Distance 39

The Pawnbroker (1964) 42

Enemies, A Love Story (1989) 47

Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) 50

Barton Fink (1991) und A Serious Man (2009) 54

4 Focusing on Assimilation and Its Discontents 61

The Way We Were (1973) 62

Next Stop, Greenwich Village (1976) 68

Crossing Delancey (1988) 74

Avalon (1990) and Liberty Heights (1999) 79

5 Assertively Jewish Onscreen 87

Whatever Works (1009) 88

Fading Gigolo (1013) 92

Romeo and Juliet in Yiddish (2010) 95

Keeping Up with the Steins (2006) 99

Wish I Was Here (1014) 104

6 Queering the Jewish Gaze 110

I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry (2007) and Kissing Jessica Stein (2001) 113

The Times of Harvey Milk (1984) and Milk (1008) 117

Treyf (1998) 117

Trembling Before G-d (2.001) 129

Hineini: Coming Out in a Jewish High School (2005) 133

7 Cinematic Alliances 137

Heart of Stone (2009) 140

Crime after Crime (2011) 143

Zebrahead (1991) 147

Arranged (2007) 150

David (2011) 155

8 Epilogue: Cinematic Continuity and Change through a Feminist Lens 160

93Queen (2018) 160

RBG (2018) 165

Acknowledgments 171

Filmography 173

Notes 175

Selected Bibliography 203

Index 211

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