The Case of the Sexy Jewess

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

Hannah Schwadron

First book on Jewishness, gender, and dance in relation to popular culture
Looks at Jewish female performance across a spectrum of spectacles
Argues for a post-assimilatory and post-feminist view of performance

The Case of the Sexy Jewess

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

Hannah Schwadron

Description

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

The Case of the Sexy Jewess

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

Hannah Schwadron

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 Ballet Birds By Any Other Name
Synopsis and Setup: Thriller Ballet 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 Ballet?
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

The Case of the Sexy Jewess

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

Hannah Schwadron

Author Information

Hannah Schwadron is Assistant Professor in the School of Dance at Florida State University

The Case of the Sexy Jewess

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

Hannah Schwadron

Reviews and Awards

Winner of the 2019 Dance Studies Association Bueno First Book Award

"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 State University

"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 Dancing Jewish: Jewish Identity in American Modern and Postmodern Dance