Book contents
- The Cambridge History ofJewish American Literature
- The Cambridge History ofJewish American Literature
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Notes on Contributors
- Book part
- Introduction
- Part I New World Encounters
- Part II Genres: Adopting, Adapting, Reinventing
- Part III Place and Peoplehood: Redefining “Here” and “There”
- Part IV Creating Fields
- Part V New Perspectives
- 25 Jews on America’s Racial Map
- 26 Gender Poetics in Jewish American Poetry
- 27 Performance: Queerly Jewish/Jewishly Queer in the American Theater
- 28 Jewish American Comic Books and Graphic Novels
- 29 Jewish American Popular Culture
- 30 Jewish Humor in America
- 31 Since 2000
- Bibliography
- Index
29 - Jewish American Popular Culture
from Part V - New Perspectives
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 December 2015
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Book contents
- The Cambridge History ofJewish American Literature
- The Cambridge History ofJewish American Literature
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Notes on Contributors
- Book part
- Introduction
- Part I New World Encounters
- Part II Genres: Adopting, Adapting, Reinventing
- Part III Place and Peoplehood: Redefining “Here” and “There”
- Part IV Creating Fields
- Part V New Perspectives
- 25 Jews on America’s Racial Map
- 26 Gender Poetics in Jewish American Poetry
- 27 Performance: Queerly Jewish/Jewishly Queer in the American Theater
- 28 Jewish American Comic Books and Graphic Novels
- 29 Jewish American Popular Culture
- 30 Jewish Humor in America
- 31 Since 2000
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Formal subversiveness and democratic aspiration blur the lines of genre in the arts and of status in the society. They represent the best way to recognize American Jewish popular culture at its most dynamic and sublime. Even though Jews have historically dominated Broadway musicals it remains a paradox that Jewish characters and topics were rare. If the case for the defiance and rearrangement of cultural categories had to depend upon one artist, the defense could rest by citing Saul Steinberg. Steinberg's work is remarkably varied, alluding to varied styles, and yet it is immediately recognizable as uniquely his. By the dawn of the twentieth century, Americans were indeed becoming more Jewish, because the mass migration from Eastern Europe coincided with the birth of mass entertainment. Yet the glory of Jewish American popular culture could be called alchemy the mystifying process by which eagerness to please the masses could be transformed into aesthetic delight and enduring pleasure.
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- The Cambridge History of Jewish American Literature , pp. 584 - 600Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2015