1:19am May 15, 2015

Let Me Entertain You

madeofpatterns:

tumblingtheology:

madeofpatterns:

tumblingtheology:

madeofpatterns:

tikkunolamorgtfo:
I was just reading an article that discussed how television shows with diverse casts are making more money (which is great!), and I thought of all the new shows being made minority families, like Blackish, Fresh of the Boat, Empire, Jane the Virgin, etc. I mentioned to my husband that I wished there could be a show about Jews, and he replied:
“Well, isn’t that show The Goldbergs about a Jewish family?”
Now, I’ve seen a few episodes of the show, and while the family’s Jewishness is certainly implied, I didn’t recall hearing anything that equated a confirmation.
So, I did what any rational, busy person with a life would do: I went online, found a website with all of the teleplays from both seasons, and did a find-in-page search for “Jew.” Guess what I discovered?
The words “Jew” and “Jewish” have not been uttered once on The Goldbergs. NOT. ONCE.
Because even on a show created by a Jewish showrunner about his own Jewish family, explicitly mentioning Jewishness is still seen as gauche. It’s all right for television characters to seem “Jewy” but not so much that there isn’t room for gentiles to project their own identities onto them. We’re behind the scenes, we’re an in-joke—a wink and a nod to a Jewish surname or some Yiddish slang—but we’re almost never actually present.
And it doesn’t seem to matter if a show has Jewish writers or a Jewish showrunner, because our oppression is so deeply ingrained that we have come to believe the things we create are not allowed to be for us. We are here to serve gentiles—to give them stories, to entertain them—and in return for that delightful privilege, we agree to pretend we do not exist (except to be the butt of jokes about ethnic stereotypes).
Tin Pan Alley, Vaudeville, Let me entertain you…it’s 2015 and nothing has changed.

And Judaism basically doesn’t exist on TV unless someone wants to make a caricature of an Orthodox Jew being unreasonable, or a Very Special Episode about Chanukah.
The Simpsons has one good episode where being Jewish matters, and even then, most of the attention is on non-Jewish characters who are trying to get a fundamentalist to be kinder to his son. (And then there’s the one about visiting Israel which is kind of good). And South Park has some decent Jewish content, but even then it has more to do with coping with being a minority culture than with the actual *content* of that culture.
I want a show where someone has a bat mitzvah, and the episode isn’t about explaining what a bat mitzvah is. I want a sukkot episode where two families get ridiculously competitive about sukkah decorations and size, with hilarious results. I want a show where a Jewish young adult is committed to finding a Jewish partner, and this is not shown as an example of objectionable intolerance. I want a show where someone struggles with whether and how to keep Shabbat when working on Saturday is expected in their field, or when the only time off they have is always on Shabbat and their kids want to do art projects together and watch movies with them. I want to see characters who struggle religiously in Jewish ways, not caricatures of what Christians think Jewish religious issues look like through the lens of Christian theology.
I want a show in which Israel exists and non-Israeli Jewish relationships to Israel are depicted, and the plot isn’t a constant referendum on Zionism. I want a show where Jews are excited to go to Jerusalem because they will get to see their sister and buy delicious things from the shuk. I want characters who know what a strange place Jerusalem is, and go to Yaffo periodically to keep from losing their minds.
I want a show where rabbis exist and are seen as people. I want a show where people learn Talmud and make references to the Talmud. I want a show where people know which parsha it is. I want to see synagogues, and I want actual character development to take place in them.
I want some characters to be Jewish mothers who are depicted as worthy of love and respect.
I want the Jewish cultures that exist in the US to exist on American television.

For what it’s worth, there was an episode of “Hey Arnold” (remember that show?!) about one of the kids, Harold Berman, having his bar mitzvah. I think the show alludes to his family’s Jewish identity in other episodes, but I mostly remember that one. He’s meeting with his rabbi and getting cold feet and not memorizing his Torah portion, and Arnold kind of helps him see that he is living up to the expectations of Jewish adulthood. What’s great about that show is that Arnold is always so sensitive and thoughtful, even regarding cultures that aren’t his own.

That’s still… within the same trope of, when Jews exist, it’s dominated by non-Jewish characters showing them the error of their ways and getting them to take a better attitude towards being Jewish. Which like, taken individually could be ok (because that is a thing that exists in the world, but as a pattern, it’s a problem.
I can’t actually think of *any* episodes of *any* show in English in which significant time is spent from the perspective of a Jew who is basically ok and better at understanding how to deal with being Jewish than his Christian friends are. (And perspectives of Jewish women are even rarer, and they’re almost invariably either shrewish Jewish mother stereotypes or girls dating a non-Jewish boy against their parents’ intolerant objections.)

All fair and important points. Sorry if I butted in to a conversation.

It’s fine! I like your contributions to conversations. If I didn’t want to talk to you I wouldn’t have reblogged it.

Have you watched Numb3rs? And not just the early seasons? They are a secular Jewish family, but in later seasons Don (the FBI agent brother) pursues developing his faith life (mainly off camera, since the show is a procedural, but is referred to at a pretty normal rate). And I mean, there’s hints he would get more connected even in the earlier seasons…
A lot of his plot arc is about him learning to accept and identify with his family and his heritage, whether it is that his father was an anti war protestor with an FBI folder, that there are parts of his extended family that never followed over from Europe and likely died in the Shoah, or him learning to accept his own need to connect on a religious level. There’s also some of him accepting his relationship with his brother.
(I also enjoy the autism jokes around both Charlie and his former mentor a lot. They aren’t mean spirited or anything! It is nice I enjoy it. Tho obviously your mileage may vary)