29 - Jewish American Popular Culture

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.