The Case of the Sexy Jewess

Dance, Gender and Jewish Joke-work in US Pop Culture

Inbunden, Engelska, 2018

Av Hannah Schwadron, Florida State University) Schwadron, Hannah (Assistant Professor of Dance, Assistant Professor of Dance, SCHWADRON, Schwadron

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Amidst the growing forums of kinky Jews, orthodox drag queens, and Jewish geisha girls, we findtoday's sexy Jewess in a host of reflexive plays with sexed-up self-display. A social phantasm withreal legs, she moves boldly between neo-burlesque striptease, comedy television, ballet movies, andprogressive porn to construct the 21st Century Jewish American woman through charisma andcomic craft, in-your-face antics, and offensive charm. Her image redresses longstanding stereotypesof the hag, the Jewish mother, and Jewish American princess that have demeaned the Jewishwoman as overly demanding, inappropriate, and unattractive across the 20th century, even as Jewsassimilated into the American mainstream. But why does "sexy" work to update tropes of the Jewishwoman? And how does sex link to humor in order for this update to work? Entangling questions ofsexiness to race, gender, and class, The Case of the Sexy Jewess frames an embodied joke-workgenre that is most often, but not always meant to be funny. In a contemporary period after thethrusts of assimilation and women's liberation movements, performances usher in new versions ofold scripts with ranging consequences. At the core is the recuperative performance of identitythrough impersonation, and the question of its radical or conservative potential. Appropriating,re-appropriating, and mis-appropriating identity material within and beyond their midst, Sexy Jewessartists play up the failed logic of representation by mocking identity categories altogether. They actas comic chameleons, morphing between margin and center in countless number of chargedcaricatures. Embodying ethnic and gender positions as always already on the edge while ever morein the middle, contemporary Jewish female performers extend a comic tradition in new contexts,mobilizing progressive discourses from positions of newfound race and gender privilege.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2018-01-25
Mått234 x 163 x 20 mm
Vikt505 g
FormatInbunden
SpråkEngelska
Antal sidor222
FörlagOUP USA
ISBN9780190624194
UtmärkelserWinner of the 2019 Dance Studies Association Bueno First Book Award

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Contents Acknowledgements Introduction The Case of the Sexy Jewess Repetition with a Difference and the Joke Body Expressive Confessions of a "Face Like That" All in a Look The Corporeal Turn for New Jewish Studies Identity Acts and Impersonations Jewish Joke-Work and the Doubled Female Subject The Queer Play of Self-Display Methods and Materials Notes Chapter 1 Nice Girls Gone Blue: Neo-Burlesque Nostalgia and the Downwardly Mobile Rockette Fantasies and the Menorah Horah Nice Jewish Girls Gone Bad and Ordering Chinese On Christmas Eve "Polyester Feminism" and the Stakes of Self-Display Sexy Spirit and the Do-It-Yourself Scheme Conclusion Notes Chapter 2 Hello, Gorgeous and the Historical Lens: How Funny Girls Became Sexy Fanny Brice, Barbra Streisand, and the Joke of the Jewish Swan Sophie Tucker, Betty Boop, and the Bawdy Body Blacking Up Party Albums, Postwar Ambitions, and the Jewish American Princess Sexy Jews and Leggy Moves: Bunnies, Babes, and Mermaid Maneuvers Conclusion Notes Chapter 3 Comic Glory (and Guilt): The Appropriative License of Jewish Female Comedy Sandra Bernhard and the I/You Other Race, Sex, and the Sarah Silverman Effect Broad City's Bad Girls Getting Bi In-Between Conclusion Notes Chapter 4 Black Swan, White Nose: Jewish Horror and Dance Birds By Any Other Name Synopsis and Setup: Thriller Dance and Jewish Swans All Sexed Up Facing the Jewish Female Monster Jewish Swans, Queer Contexts Lesbian Sex and Swan Sin: Thrills Fit to Forget Swan Queen Kills Herself, Saves Dance? The Funny Thing About Horror: Moving Across Genres Conclusion Notes Chapter 5 Punk Porn Princess Joanna Angel and the Rise of Jewess Raunch From the Porn Wars to Post-feminism Piggish Authority and Sexual Commodification At Home in Burning Angel and Joanna's Jewish Roots Blow Up Joanna and the Jewish Doppelgänger Heeb Magazine and the Jewish Cutting Edge The Game of Interracial Porn and Joanna's Phallic Check Mate Conclusion Notes Conclusion At the Edge and In Your Face Notes Bibliography Index

"In this fascinating, sweeping analysis of female Jewish comics from Fanny Brice to the Schlep Sisters, and popular film to punk pornography, Schwadron brilliantly considers the intersections of embodiment and movement with gender, race and sexuality. This is a groundbreaking study in which the writing is as layered, provocative, and self-reflexively ironic as the remarkable women she studies." -- Naomi Jackson, Associate Professor of Dance, Arizona StateUniversity"To be a funny, sexy Jewess as theorized by Hannah Schwadron, is to be the at the leading edge of 21st Century scholarship, as dance, identity, sexual politics and intellectual rigor meet-up on the pages of this radical, timely, and very important book." -- Douglas Rosenberg, Founding Director, The Conney Project on Jewish Arts, University of Wisconsin-Madison"Whether the subject is old-school comediennes like Fanny Brice, controversial comics like Sarah Silverman, Jewish porn and neo-burlesque stars, or the assimilated 'Jewish princesses' of Hollywood, Schwadron's deftly perceptive writing and idiosyncratic humor makes for an absolutely engaging read that adds much to the fields of Jewish studies, gender and queer studies, media studies, and performance and dance studies." -- Rebecca Rossen, author of DancingJewish: Jewish Identity in American Modern and Postmodern Dance