{"title":"Stretch Cunningham, We Hardly Knew You: Seeing Jews and “Others” through Archie Bunker’s Eyes","authors":"J. Demsky","doi":"10.13110/jewifilmnewmedi.7.1.0023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13110/jewifilmnewmedi.7.1.0023","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:All in the Family’s Archie Bunker was a mouthpiece for 1970s white working-class men. Theirs was an anxious decade. Peddling stereotypes, “othering” those unlike them, enabled this group to assert their threatened authority. Analyzed as popular media texts, the show’s many intersections with bigotry and anti-Semitism reveal unique insights into 1970s American life, especially the Jewish American experience. During the series’ decade-long run, Bunker gradually confronted and softened his prejudices. However, this was not the case among all “Archies,” a reality still visible in current times. Surveying the show’s racialist meditations against the backdrop of “tiki torchers” and Trumpism reminds viewers about the fraught nature of American identity, explaining why some Jews may elect to pass.","PeriodicalId":40351,"journal":{"name":"Jewish Film & New Media-An International Journal","volume":"1 1","pages":"23 - 47"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73245249","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Hollywood Film as Therapy: Hugo Haas, Trauma, and Survivor Guilt","authors":"Milan Hain","doi":"10.13110/jewifilmnewmedi.7.1.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13110/jewifilmnewmedi.7.1.0001","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:The article discusses the exile cinema of Czechoslovakia-born producer, director, and actor Hugo Haas (1901–1968). As a prominent Jewish artist with strong anti-Nazi convictions, Haas was forced to escape his homeland when Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia in 1939. Deeply traumatized by losing his close relatives in the Holocaust, Haas used his independent productions made in Hollywood after World War II to cope with his feelings of loss, pain, loneliness, and dispossession. The author reads selected films, disguised as run-of-the-mill genre pieces, against the filmmaker’s personal history and identifies patterns and motives suggesting that Haas’s body of work was strongly informed by his survivor guilt and trauma.","PeriodicalId":40351,"journal":{"name":"Jewish Film & New Media-An International Journal","volume":"233 1","pages":"1 - 22"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79699181","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Between Two Hills: From Hill 24 to Beaufort and the Question of the Political in Israeli Cinema","authors":"Eran Kaplan","doi":"10.13110/jewifilmnewmedi.6.2.0208","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13110/jewifilmnewmedi.6.2.0208","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:In the second half of the 1990s and the early part of the 2000s, Israeli filmmakers tended to focus on family dramas, all but eschewing the social and political themes that dominatedt Israeli cinema in the preceding two decades. Perhaps in reaction to the Rabin assassination and the terror attacks of the 1990s, which intensified during the Second Intifada, the cinematic gaze seemed to have turned from the battlefi eld to the home as the site of dramatic tension. Joseph Cedar’s Beaufort (2007), which deals with the Israeli pullout from Lebanon in 2000, followed by two other films that dealt with the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir (2008) and Shmuel Maoz’s Lebanon (2009), may have signaled Israeli filmmakers’ renewed interest in the political realm as a sphere of change. By comparing these films to early Israeli war films, namely Hill 24 Doesn’t Answer (1955), this article seeks to assess whether the new direction heralded by Beaufort does indeed indicate a turn toward the political realm or whether these films in fact continue the apolitical trend of recent Israeli cinema.","PeriodicalId":40351,"journal":{"name":"Jewish Film & New Media-An International Journal","volume":"6 1","pages":"208 - 225"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87054166","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Israeli Cinema and Politics","authors":"Yaron Peleg, Eran Kaplan","doi":"10.13110/jewifilmnewmedi.6.2.0133","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13110/jewifilmnewmedi.6.2.0133","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":40351,"journal":{"name":"Jewish Film & New Media-An International Journal","volume":"2 1","pages":"133 - 136"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89531632","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"From Binding to Crucifixion: The Political Role of Christian Motifs in Israeli Cinema","authors":"Y. Morad","doi":"10.13110/jewifilmnewmedi.6.2.0137","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13110/jewifilmnewmedi.6.2.0137","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:This essay examines the integration of the Christian narrative of sacrifice—the Crucifixion—into contemporary Israeli cinema. This story has gradually seeped into the more dominant narrative of sacrifice in Israeli culture: that of the biblical Binding of Isaac. The article draws particular attention to a significant transition in the representation of human sacrifice in Israeli political cinema dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and examines the significant political impact of this transition on the Israeli national narrative. The article questions the ways these narratives of self-sacrifice are incorporated in the films and what the Israeli cinematic perspective on the conflict gains from this use of Christian themes as a way to obtain public penance, forgiveness, and redemption.","PeriodicalId":40351,"journal":{"name":"Jewish Film & New Media-An International Journal","volume":"88 1","pages":"137 - 157"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84349859","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Law and Sedition in Israeli Films: From the Assassination of Itzhak Rabin to the Hilltop Movement","authors":"M. Simoni","doi":"10.13110/jewifilmnewmedi.6.2.0184","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13110/jewifilmnewmedi.6.2.0184","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:In this article I analyze various Israeli films and documentaries, and in particular Rabin, the Last Day (Amos Gitai, 2015), to discuss political sedition in Israel in the mid-1990s. This period is characterized most prominently by the assassination of Prime Minister Itzhak Rabin, but also by the creation of the political climate that made the assassination possible, and which ultimately helped stall the peace process. I discuss to what extent fictional films (better than documentaries) can help the historian shed light on a particular historical period when primary sources are either unavailable or only partially available, and the relationship between primary sources and historically plausible fiction. In this framework I also consider how cinema can help construct a narrative, and ultimately a collective memory, that provides an alternative to the official one.","PeriodicalId":40351,"journal":{"name":"Jewish Film & New Media-An International Journal","volume":"45 1","pages":"184 - 207"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81408490","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Personal and National History in the TV Drama Series Pillars of Smoke and The Exchange Principle","authors":"Dana Masad","doi":"10.13110/jewifilmnewmedi.6.2.0158","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13110/jewifilmnewmedi.6.2.0158","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:This article examines the television series Pillars of Smoke and The Exchange Principle as crime dramas. This generic framework is used in the article to highlight the similarities and differences that emerge from reading the two TV dramas together. Furthermore, the article reveals the unique historiographical connection between the Yom Kippur War and the Second Intifada. The article addresses the concept of defeated masculinity, and the interweaving of national and personal histories it suggests; it argues that, although Pillars of Smoke and The Exchange Principle both are centered around a male and female protagonist couple, they share a representation of male fraternity under the national and post-national conditions.","PeriodicalId":40351,"journal":{"name":"Jewish Film & New Media-An International Journal","volume":"111 6 1","pages":"158 - 183"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89399079","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"On Hoffman's Ben Hecht: Fighting Words, Moving Pictures","authors":"C. Weedman","doi":"10.13110/jewifilmnewmedi.8.1.0122","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13110/jewifilmnewmedi.8.1.0122","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":40351,"journal":{"name":"Jewish Film & New Media-An International Journal","volume":"22 1","pages":"122 - 125"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83452988","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"On Steir-Livny's Is it OK to Laugh About It?","authors":"Nikita Lobanov","doi":"10.13110/jewifilmnewmedi.8.1.0126","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13110/jewifilmnewmedi.8.1.0126","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":40351,"journal":{"name":"Jewish Film & New Media-An International Journal","volume":"52 1","pages":"126 - 128"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73133177","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Savior and the Survivor: Virtual Afterlives in New Media","authors":"J. Shandler","doi":"10.13110/jewifilmnewmedi.8.1.0023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13110/jewifilmnewmedi.8.1.0023","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:Two recent cases of new media practices, produced by Lubavitcher (Habad) Hasidim and the Shoah Foundation (University of Southern California), make provocative use of technologies to address the passing of revered figures: Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson (the seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe) and Holocaust survivors, respectively. In both instances, the deaths of these people are understood to pose daunting challenges to the continuity of their devotees' commitment to future generations. The turn to new technologies—including video, the Inter-net, interactive holography, and virtual reality—strives to simulate \"live\" contact with the deceased. These endeavors create new cultural practices that rely on the ambivalent status of their subjects as simultaneously present and absent. These new media practices have telling implications for Jewish cultures as they grapple with concerns for continuity, remembering the past, and envisioning a transformed future.","PeriodicalId":40351,"journal":{"name":"Jewish Film & New Media-An International Journal","volume":"50 1","pages":"23 - 47"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81265666","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}