The New Jew in Film: Exploring Jewishness and Judaism in Contemporary Cinema

Chapter 3. Sex

Introduction Since Jewish sexuality overlaps with the representations outlined in the previous two chapters, it has been similarly subjected to a series of selfimages and stereotypes some of which date back to antiquity. Alongside the archetypal in-group-created variations of the Jew as the schlemiel, nebbishy, neurotic, lacking, queer, impotent and sissy (what the film Being Ron Jeremy [dir. Brian Berke, 2003] refers to as ‘skinny horny needy Jews with glasses’), there is the outside-constructed and surprisingly sexually oriented Jew, who is portrayed as predatory, sleazy, sex-obsessed, repellent and repulsive. This Jew was the product of the antisemitic imagination, circulated through Christian theology, medieval anti-Jewish polemics, religious art and latterly antisemitic propaganda. In pre-modern times, for example, the Jew was ‘primitive, more fully sexual, impulsive and hyperphallic’, as well as ‘unmanly, weak, effeminate or otherwise outside the norm of properly assertive masculinity’ (Freedman 2005: 137). He was, simultaneously, a sexually predatory monster (the Jew-Devil) and a castrated effeminate (the Jew-Sissy) (Biberman 2004). In the antisemitic literature of the late nineteenth century, much of which was rooted in medieval anti-Jewish polemics, Jews were ‘either seen as debased lechers yearning for Christian girls (preferably virgins) or as men-women’ (Freedman 2005: 137). This ‘cultural contradiction was ameliorated when CHAPTER 3 Sex 68 69 the two merged into a new character type: the Jewish pervert, a figure that conjoined the will-to-power of the hyperaggressive Jewish male with sexual nonnormativity of the feminised Jewish man’ (Freedman 2005: 137). Such a figure appeared in the notorious Nazi propaganda film Jud Süss, embodied by the ‘seductive and dangerous’ Joseph Süss Oppenheimer (Ferdinand Marian) (Koepnick 2002: 62). As for the Jewess, as seen in the previous chapter, the Jewish Mother and the JAP were represented from the inside, as sexually neurotic, unattractive and frigid (Biale 1997: 207). As Prell puts it, ‘for every unerotic woman there is a Jewish man who is powerless, dominated, and unable to find sexual satisfaction with his Jewish wife or girlfriend’ (Prell 1996: 74). The JAP, in particular, is passive, sexually un-alluring, unresponsive and non-childbearing, part of the tradition of what Prell calls ‘De-eroticised Jewish women’ (1996: 74) or ‘ugly old kikes’ (Gershenson 2008: 178), both playing into the unfortunate stereotype of the undesirability of the Jewess perpetuated by Jews and non-Jews alike (Berger 1996: 102). It is suggested that ‘Nice Jewish Girls’ do not engage in sex before marriage (or afterwards, even according to Woody Allen). Yet, at the same time the Jewess was viewed from the outside as exotic, as la belle juive. Jon Stratton points out how in parallel with other ‘Othered women’, such as ‘the “oriental” woman with whom she was discursively linked’, the Jewess/la belle juive ‘tended to be constructed as highly sexed and desirable’ (2000: 56), carrying with her a very special sexual signification of magnetic eroticism. Nonetheless, all of these images and stereotypes share a history of the suppression of the representation of the female Jewish form. This chapter will explore how contemporary cinema not only recycles and reverses many of these sexual stereotypes, but also begins to introduce a spectrum of sexually defined and sexually active Jews that challenges previous binaries. What is particularly noticeable in the post-1990 period is that, unlike the past, representations of Jews as hyper-sexual predators or as beautiful Jewesses do not simply emanate from the non-Jewish outside but rather from inside, from Jews themselves. It is a sign of increased confidence that Jewish filmmakers are unafraid to touch what could be perceived as potentially troubling subject matter, including representing the Jewish body more explicitly than hitherto. As a form of pleasure – Jewissance – and as an example of reverse stereotypes, this trend encompasses both the younger generation of filmmakers, actors, actresses and screenwriters SEX THE NEW JEW IN FILM 70 I mentioned previously, and an older strata of Jewish film personnel who, in the last two decades, have come out not only as much more Jewish than hitherto but also as much more explicitly sexual. Perverts, pornographers and porn stars As a clear illustration of this change in the depiction of Jewish sexuality in contemporary cinema, even Woody Allen’s sensibility changed after 1990, becomingincreasinglyperverse,darkerandmisogynist,encapsulatedinthe words from his film Deconstructing Harry as ‘cynicism, sarcasm, nihilism and orgasm’. Sam B. Girgus detected a new ‘fascination’ with sexual...