The Jews of Prime Time

Rating:
Summary: The Jews of Prime Time--fine book
Review: 'The Jews of Prime Time' is a fine analysis of Jewish characters in prime time television going all the way back to The Goldbergs in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Zurawik shows how few Jewish characters there have been, notes that between 1955 and 1972 there were virtually no such characters, and describes how many of the characters reflect stereotypes about Jews, many of them negative. Particularly interesting is his analysis of the virtually complete absence of marriages between Jews--almost every marriage involving a Jewish character since the 1970s has been an intermarriage. What's especially remarkable is that all this took place when a high proportion of network and production company writers, producers, directors, and executives were Jewish. Thus, The Jews of Prime Time shows that television was like the movies--Jews were very important as creators of the medium and played a great role in its development, but were so ambivalent about their own Jewishness, and so fearful of anti-Semitism, that their impact on the image of Jews in the U.S. may very well have been negative. And this is not just a matter of history, either. There are few positive portrayals of Jews even today, and, ironically, the entry of more Jewish women into responsible position in television may be associated more with the reinforcement of negative stereotypes about Jewish women than with undermining them.
This is a serious book, published by a university press, but that shouldn't scare anyone off. It's easy to read, the narrative carries the reader along, and it's fun reading the inside story of an aspect of television history--even if the story is depressing in some ways. I read it in a day.

Rating:
Summary: The Jews of Prime Time--fine book
Review: 'The Jews of Prime Time' is a fine analysis of Jewish characters in prime time television going all the way back to The Goldbergs in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Zurawik shows how few Jewish characters there have been, notes that between 1955 and 1972 there were virtually no such characters, and describes how many of the characters reflect stereotypes about Jews, many of them negative. Particularly interesting is his analysis of the virtually complete absence of marriages between Jews--almost every marriage involving a Jewish character since the 1970s has been an intermarriage. What's especially remarkable is that all this took place when a high proportion of network and production company writers, producers, directors, and executives were Jewish. Thus, The Jews of Prime Time shows that television was like the movies--Jews were very important as creators of the medium and played a great role in its development, but were so ambivalent about their own Jewishness, and so fearful of anti-Semitism, that their impact on the image of Jews in the U.S. may very well have been negative. And this is not just a matter of history, either. There are few positive portrayals of Jews even today, and, ironically, the entry of more Jewish women into responsible position in television may be associated more with the reinforcement of negative stereotypes about Jewish women than with undermining them.
This is a serious book, published by a university press, but that shouldn't scare anyone off. It's easy to read, the narrative carries the reader along, and it's fun reading the inside story of an aspect of television history--even if the story is depressing in some ways. I read it in a day.