Hollywood's chosen people : the Jewish experience in American cinema / edited by Daniel Bernardi, Murray Pomerance, and Hava Tirosh-Samuelson.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Bernardi, Daniel, 1964-

Pomerance, Murray, 1946-

Tirosh-Samuelson, Hava, 1950-

Series:

Contemporary approaches to film and media series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Jews in motion pictures.

Jews in the motion picture industry--United States.

Jews in the motion picture industry.

United States.

Physical Description:

viii, 270 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Detroit : Wayne State University Press, [2013]

Summary:

Edited by Daniel Bernardi (cinema, San Francisco State U.), Murray Pomerance (sociology, Ryerson U., CA), and Hava Tirosh-Samuelson (history and Jewish studies, Arizona State U), this is a scholarly anthology about Jewish experiences of American film. The essays are all written in intellectual styles, but range in voice from academic cultural studies analysis to informal personal essays of response. They deal with particular themes, films, filmmakers, or film stars. Almost all connect filmmaking, film viewing, and larger issues of Jewish identity and culture in America. Most deal with the experiences of Jewish audiences looking at the work of Jewish filmmakers in Hollywood, with a minority of essays looking at non-Jewish images of Jews in film, or topics in film history. The authors represent a range of perspectives, and tend to write from humanistic traditions of cultural studies rather than postmodernist traditions of critical theory. The essays point out that the Hollywood film industry was created almost entirely by Jews, many of its core creators were Jewish refugees, and social opinions about Hollywood have overlapped strongly with social opinions about American Jews. The prose is accessible to general readers, but because they reason in relationship to other academic writers on the subject, some essays will be most accessible to readers familiar with academic conversations on film history, cultural studies, or American Jewish history. Annotation ©2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Contents:

Introduction: the Hollywood question / Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, Daniel Bernardi, and Murray Pomerance

A forgotten masterpiece: Edward Sloman's His people / Lester D. Friedman

Jewish immigrant directors and their impact on Hollywood / Catherine Portuges

"A rotten bunch of vile people with no respect for anything beyond the making of money": Joseph Breen, The Hollywood Production Code, and institutionalized anti-Semitism in Hollywood / Wheeler Winston Dixon

Stardom, intermarriage, and consumption in the 1950s: the Debbie-Eddie-Liz scandal / Sumiko Higashi

Hats off to George Cukor! / William Rothman

Notes on Sontag and "Jewish moral seriousness" in American movies / Sarah Kozloff

The good German? Oskar Schindler and the movies, 1951-1993 / Peter Kramer

Representing atrocity: September 11 through the Holocaust lens / David Sterritt

David Mamet's Homicide: in or out? / Lucy Fischer

Boy-man schlemiels and super-nebishes: Adam Sandler and Ben Stiller / Vincent Brook

Who was Buddy Love?: screen performance and Jewish experience / Murray Pomerance

Assimilating Streisand: when too much is not enough / Vivian Sobchack.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 229-244) and index.

ISBN:

9780814334829

0814334822

9780814338070

0814338070

OCLC:

776032992