`I carried a watermelon`: Jewish Women Writers Confront the JAP

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Rachel Eisen
Submission for HBI Prize – Graduate
Written for NEJS 161b
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“I carried a watermelon”:
Jewish Women Writers Confront the JAP Stereotype
Introduction
The “Jewish American Princess,” or “JAP,” is, by all accounts, a misogynistic
stereotype created by Jewish men. The JAP is “selfish and pampered,”1 “loud,
emotional, pushy and aggressive,”2 “manipulative,” “both sexually frigid
(withholding) and…a nymphomaniac;”3 she is “the female counterpart to the
schlemiel,”4 who “depends on men in order to adorn herself.”5 In short, she is a
horror who preys on men, taking their money and giving nothing in return. Male
writers, notably novelists Herman Wouk and Philip Roth in their respective
characters, Marjorie Morningstar and Brenda Patimkin, created the JAP in the
postwar period.6 Sandford Pinsker has called Brenda the “ur-JAP…the archetype”
after which all JAPs model themselves.7
Janice L. Booker, "The Jewish Daughter," in The Jewish American Princess and Other Myths: The Many
Faces of Self-Hatred, (New York: Shapolsky Publishers, 1991), 33.
2 Jessica Greenebaum, "Jewish Women into the Intersectionality of Race, Class, and Gender," Race,
Gender, & Class 6, no. 4 (1999): 53.
3 Evelyn Torton Beck, "From 'Kike' to JAP: How Misogyny, Anti-Semitism, and Racism Construct the
'Jewish American Princess'," in Race, Class and Gender: An Anthology, 3rd edition, ed. Margaret L.
Andersen and Patricia Hill Collins (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1998), 432-33.
4 Nathan Abrams, "The Jewess," in The New Jew in Film: Exploring Jewishness and Judaism in
Contemporary Cinema, (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2012), 49.
5 Riv-Ellen Prell, "Why Jewish Princesses Don't Sweat: Desire and Consumption in Postwar American
Jewish Culture," in People of the Body: Jews and Judaism from an Embodied Perspective, ed. Howard
Eilberg-Schwartz (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992), 336.
6 Riv-Ellen Prell, "Cinderellas Who (Almost) Never Become Princesses: Subversive Representations of
Jewish Women in Postwar Popular Novels," in Talking Back: Images of Jewish Women in American
Popular Culture, ed. Joyce Antler (Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press, 1998), 125; Beck, "From
'Kike' to 'JAP'," 435; Prell, "Why Jewish Princesses Don't Sweat," 348; Abrams, "The Jewess," 49.
7 Quoted in Barbara Frey Waxman, "Jewish American Princesses, Their Mothers, and Feminist
Pscyhology: A Rereading of Roth's 'Goodbye, Columbus'," Studies in American Jewish Literature 7, no.
1 (1988): 91.
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Rachel Eisen
Submission for HBI Prize – Graduate
Written for NEJS 161b
Page 2 of 14
What makes the JAP so misogynistic, however, is not her negative
characteristics, but rather, her two-dimensionality and her purpose as a foil for men.
According to Riv-Ellen Prell, who has studied the JAP stereotype extensively, both
Marjorie and Brenda “were conduits through which the males transacted their…
relationship” with other men.8 The JAP, then, is not her own character, but rather
merely the female version of an existing Jewish male stereotype: she cannot even
exist on her own without being defined by her relationship to a man.9
In the 1980s, however, Jewish women began countering the JAP stereotype.
After numerous incidents of “JAP-baiting” on college campuses, scholars,10 the
Jewish community,11 and journalists12 noted the dangers of the stereotype. These
rebukes followed the publication of several novels by female Jewish authors that
brought the Jewish woman to the forefront as a means of “talk[ing] back” to the men
who had previously thoroughly skewered them.13 These heroines, as well as the
Prell, "Cinderellas," 125.
Abrams, "The Jewess," 49; Roberta Mock, "Female Jewish Comedians: Grotesque Mimesis and
Trangressing Stereotypes," New Theatre Quarterly 15, no. 2 (1999): 101; Riv-Ellen Prell, "The Jewish
American Princess: Detachable Ethnicity, Gender Ambiguity and Middle-Class Anxiety," in Fighting to
Become Americans: Jews, Gender, and the Anxiety of Assimilation, (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1999),
194.
10 Gary Spencer, "An Anlysis of JAP-Baiting Humor on the College Campus," Humor 2, no. 4 (1989);
Bernard Saper, "The JAP Joke Controversy: An Excrutiating Psychosocial Analysis," ibid. 4, no. 2
(1991).
11 Mimi Alperin, "JAP Jokes: Hateful Humor," (New York: American Jewish Committee, 1988).
12 Sherry Chayat, "JAP-Baiting on the College Scene," Lilith 17 (1987); Susan Schnur, "When Is a JAP
Not a Yuppie? Blazes of Truth," ibid.; "Jewish Women Campaign against 'Princess' Jokes," New York
Times Sep. 7, 1987; Laura Shapiro, "When Is a Joke Not a Joke?," Newsweek, May 23, 1988; "Are 'JAP'
Jokes Anti-Semitic?," USA Today Magazine 117, no. 2527 (1989).
13 Prell, "Cinderellas," 124-37.
8
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Rachel Eisen
Submission for HBI Prize – Graduate
Written for NEJS 161b
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Jewish women who began taking center stage on the big screen, were fully fleshedout characters, whose JAP-like qualities hid “real tears” and “real pain.”14
As Ruth D. Johnston, Roberta Mock, and Joyce Antler have argued, female
Jewish authors use comedy and mimicry to poke fun of, and poke holes in, the
stereotypes that classify women as two-dimensional stock characters. Johnston
understands Jewish gender performance through the lens of Homi Bhabha’s concept
of mimicry; she argues women’s films’ portrayal of the JAP flips the stereotype on its
head by “explor[ing] sympathetically” the characteristics of the stereotype.15
Building on the work of various feminist scholars such as Luce Irigaray, Mock argues
much of Jewish comediennes’ work represents instances where “the ‘other’, who has
previously only been described as an object…suddenly acquires her own voice.”
When Jewish women admit they do have the JAP’s flaws, they engage the
oppositional gaze, forcing “the social body” to confront their prejudice; therefore,
Jewish women’s works serve to “counter-balance the limitations” of stereotypes.16
Similarly, Antler has argued that, “when women use humor to express and laugh at
their visions of the world, they cannot help but challenge the social structures.”17
It was in the context of feminist pushback against the JAP through comedy
and literature that Dirty Dancing (1987) was released. Clueless (1995) followed less
Patricia Erens, "Gangsters, Vampires, and J.A.P.'S: The Jew Surfaces in American Movies," Journal of
Popular Film 4, no. 3 (1975): 216.
15 Ruth D. Johnston, "Joke-Work: The Construction of Jewish Posdtmodern Identity in Contemporary
Theory and American Film," in You Should See Yourself: Jewish Identity in Postmodern American
Culture, ed. Vincent Brook (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006), 216.
16 Mock, "Female Jewish Comedians," 101-106.
17 Joyce Antler, "One Clove Away from a Pomander Ball: The Subversive Tradition of Jewish Female
Comedians," Studies in American Jewish Literature 29 (2010): 126.
14
Rachel Eisen
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Written for NEJS 161b
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than a decade later. Both films were written by Jewish women. In this paper, I will
analyze the portrayal of the two heroines and argue both films use mimetic comedy
to confront and dismantle the JAP stereotype.
The JAP in Dirty Dancing and Clueless
Dirty Dancing and Clueless present different portrayals of the JAP stereotype,
providing varied opportunities to understand the stereotype. While both focus on
teenage girls dealing with romance and their relationships with their fathers, the
two heroines are very different. Though both are marked as Jewish through their
last names and fathers’ professions rather than through explicit Jewish references,
only Baby of Dirty Dancing is marked as Jewish through her body. Baby has brown,
curly hair and a “Jewish nose,” unlike Clueless’s Cher, who has blonde, straight hair
and a decidedly not-Jewish nose. Clueless takes place contemporarily and Dirty
Dancing is set historically, in 1963. And while Baby could be seen as an anti-JAP,
Cher could just as easily be dismissed as the ultimate JAP with no redeeming
qualities. Yet an in-depth understanding of the two characters and their actions
belie such surface-level impressions.
Baby Houseman, heroine of Dirty Dancing, which was written and coproduced by Eleanor Bergstein,18 is at first glance an unlikely subject for analyzing
While Dirty Dancing was directed by a (non-Jewish) man, it is not insignificant that it was written
and co-produced by Jewish woman. Bergstein had a considerable role in the production of the movie.
In addition, Ruth D. Johnston has written that films written by women even if directed by men should
be considered women’s films due to the prominent voices these works give female characters and
viewpoints. Carlos E. Cortès, Multicultural America: A Multimedia Encyclopedia (Los Angeles: SAGE
Reference, 2013), 708; Stephanie Butnick, "Is 'Dirty Dancing' the Most Jewish Film Ever?," Tablet,
18
Rachel Eisen
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Written for NEJS 161b
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the JAP stereotype. She is not the “rich spoiled girl who…contributes nothing to
society.”19 Her sister, Lisa, is a far better candidate. When we first see Lisa, she is
staring into a mirror while in the car to Kellerman’s resort in summer 1963. Upon
arrival, Lisa immediately complains she did not bring her coral shoes, and her
mother has to remind her that she actually brought ten pairs of shoes. Baby joins
her father in chastising Lisa for her frivolity, reminding Lisa that tragedy isn’t
forgetting a pair of shoes, tragedy is “monks burning themselves in [political]
protest.” Lisa is wooed by future-doctor Robbie, who brags about saving up enough
money to buy Lisa’s favorite car. Lisa obsesses over her looks. Baby, on the other
hand, hasn’t bothered to straighten her big, curly hair or have her nose “fixed”
(classic JAP behavior20). When Baby’s father, Jake, introduces her as someone who is
going to “change the world,” Baby quips that Lisa is going to “decorate it.”
Baby literally embodies the opposite of what a JAP is. Whereas Riv-Ellen Prell
asserts that, “the JAP is personified by a passive body,”21 the plot of Dirty Dancing
revolves around Baby being active: in order to save the job of Penny, one of the
resort’s dance instructors, who has gotten pregnant and needs an illegal abortion,
Baby must learn how to dance the Mambo in Penny’s place. The main action of the
film shows Baby sweating and working hard to master a physical discipline.
Published electronically Aug. 16, 2011. http://tabletmag.com/scroll/74789/is-dirty-dancing-themost-jewish-film-ever; Johnston, "Joke-Work," 229.
19 Michele Byers, "The Pariah Princess: Agency, Representation, and Neoliberal Jewish Girlhood,"
Girlhood Studies 2, no. 2 (2009): 33.
20 Beck, "From 'Kike' to 'JAP'," 433.
21 Prell, "The Jewish American Princess," 184. See also Prell, "Cinderellas," 331.
Rachel Eisen
Submission for HBI Prize – Graduate
Written for NEJS 161b
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Yet, it is clear much of the criticism leveled against the supposed JAP could
easily be brought against Baby. For example, Baby is inextricably defined by her
relationship to Jake, not unlike the JAP, whose entire existence depends on her
father or husband.22 Though Baby may introduce herself with a voice-over that
situates her as an intellectual character, in the same breath she also claims she
“never thought she’d find a guy as a great as [her] dad.” She depends on her father’s
money to fix problems: when Penny cannot pay for her abortion, Baby asks Jake to
borrow $250. Even though she won’t tell him the reason, Jake obliges anyway and
kisses Baby on the forehead.
For all her posturing about joining the Peace Corps, it is clear Baby has never
worked a day in her life. When she first meets Johnny, the handsome male dance
instructor with whom she will eventually partner (on the dance floor and in bed),
Baby justifies her presence at the staff party by claiming she “carried a
watermelon”—as if carrying one watermelon is equal to the staff’s day-long toiling.
Throughout the film, she is shown to have no understanding of the realities of
working-class life. Baby in some sense is a passive body: despite sweating in the
dance studio, she has no idea what it means to labor for a living. Prell argues that,
“Jewish American Princesses require everything and give nothing;”23 this is exactly
what Johnny accuses Baby of when she appears unable to stand up to her father for
their relationship.
Beck, "From 'Kike' to 'JAP'," 432, 436; Abrams, "The Jewess," 34; Mock, "Female Jewish
Comedians," 101.
23 Prell, "The Jewish American Princess," 180.
22
Rachel Eisen
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Written for NEJS 161b
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Compared to Baby, Cher Horowitz, heroine of Clueless, is a blatant JAP.
Written and directed by Amy Heckerling, Clueless opens with scenes of California
opulence, and Cher’s stated belief that living in a mansion paid for by her $500-anhour-earning litigator father is “a way normal life for a teenage girl.” She shops for
designer clothes as therapy anytime something doesn’t go her way. In one scene, as
Cher is held up at gunpoint, she protests when her assailant demands she get down
on the ground, because she does not want to ruin her name-brand dress. She
accuses a classmate of wearing knock-off perfume. Her ex-step-brother, Josh, jokes
that Cher’s only sense of direction is toward the mall and berates her for not
following current events.
However, just as elements of the JAP are hidden beneath Baby’s desire to do
good, Cher’s desire to do good is hidden beneath her JAP exterior. Cher may like to
shop and be, at times, clueless, but she is not someone who “fails to care for the
needs of others.”24 In fact, a recurring theme throughout Clueless is that Cher’s
father, Mel, is in poor health due to his eating habits and Cher is constantly trying to
get him to eat better and follow his doctor’s advice. In their first encounter on
screen, Cher attempts to convince him to drink orange juice for vitamin C. Later,
when she and Josh buy Mel and his colleagues food as they work late, Cher makes
Mel—not for the first time—eat a salad rather than meat. Her caretaking is
acknowledged by Mel toward the end of the film when he specifically reminds her
that by taking care of him, Cher has demonstrated her “good-doing.”
24
Prell, "The Jewish American Princess," 181.
Rachel Eisen
Submission for HBI Prize – Graduate
Written for NEJS 161b
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Unlike Brenda Patimkin, who “doggedly resists self-analysis,”25 Cher is open
to understanding her flaws and working to correct them. When Josh accuses Cher of
being “selfish,” she is genuinely concerned she might actually be selfish. And,
importantly, toward the end of the film, Cher is willing to admit she was “wrong”
and “clueless,” a conclusion she comes to on her own, through her self-analysis. She
not only admits her flaws to herself, but also apologizes to her friend, whom she has
hurt with her cluelessness.
Discussion
Despite portraying the Jewish teen girl in different ways, both Bergstein and
Heckerling confront and dismantle the two-dimensional stereotype by suggesting
there is more to her than vanity and laziness. Whereas the JAP has no desire to
labor, Baby at least recognizes her lack of work experience. “I carried a watermelon”
is a ridiculous line and Baby knows it. When Johnny walks away after she says this,
she incredulously repeats it as if she cannot believe the words came out of her
mouth. Furthermore, at the end of the film, when Johnny is going to lose his job after
being falsely accused of theft, Baby speaks up and provides his alibi, revealing she
was with him in his room at night. By having an active, sexual body, unlike the JAP,
Baby actually does something for Johnny, even if that results in Johnny getting fired
anyway, for sleeping with a guest. Baby may not know how to labor productively,26
but she does not reject labor. The difference is subtle but suggests that rather than
25
26
Waxman, "Jewish American Princesses," 101.
Prell, "Why Jewish Princesses Don't Sweat," 349.
Rachel Eisen
Submission for HBI Prize – Graduate
Written for NEJS 161b
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having an inherent character flaw, Jewish women can turn their passivity into
activity if they are self-aware. Baby’s self-awareness and ability to subverts the idea
that Jewish always women are “lazy” or “parasites.”27
Cher’s “shallow materialism”28 is not a true portrayal of who she is. Roberta
Mock argues that, “the JAP’s actions can only occur when bankrolled by her father or
lover.”29 But Cher’s most important actions do not rely on Mel’s money. Ultimately,
Cher transforms herself by captaining her school’s collection drive in response to a
natural disaster. She takes initiative to donate items she already owns and
harnesses her popularity for good by getting her classmates involved. As she reflects
that her friends all have something they are each very good at, it becomes clear that
Cher has a talent, too—organizing and mobilizing—and that when she makes an
effort, she can make a difference by herself, without anyone else’s monetary
assistance. Cher’s ability to transform herself and act of her own accord speaks to
the activeness and depth of her character.
Baby and Cher also have complex relationships with the men—particularly
the fathers—in their lives, that go beyond the “economic;”30 Riv-Ellen Prell argues
this complex relationship is a critical feature of women’s novels in the 1970s that
similarly confronted the JAP stereotype.31 Baby wants more from her father, Jake,
than his money, as evident in her breakdown after he chastises her for assisting in
something illegal and lying to him. Unlike Brenda Patimkin, who easily chooses her
Beck, "From 'Kike' to 'JAP'," 432.
Booker, "The Jewish Daughter," 41.
29 Mock, "Female Jewish Comedians," 101.
30 Prell, "The Jewish American Princess," 189.
31 Prell, "Cinderellas," 138.
27
28
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family over Neil Klugman when he calls her out for not valuing their relationship or
her own beliefs,32 Baby is genuinely torn when Johnny accuses her of not “fighting”
for their relationship. Instead of choosing her father, she chooses both her father
and Johnny, returning to Johnny’s side but also telling Jake she loves him. Because
Brenda is merely a foil for Neil, she cannot have complex relationships with either
him or her parents. Baby can, however, because she subverts the twodimensionality of the JAP. Additionally, the simplicity of Brenda’s relationships with
men is constant. Whether with Neil or her father, Brenda always acquiesces. Baby’s
relationships with Johnny and Jake both change over the course of the movie, not
unlike her transformation from passive to active body. Once again, Baby’s character
challenges the static, flat nature of a stereotype.
Likewise, Cher’s father, Mel, is no victim, and he is unwilling to let Cher coast.
He may finance her shopping sprees, but he simultaneously gives Cher a hard time
about her grades and her plans in life. Comparing her to Josh, Mel scolds that, “at
least he knows what he wants do…I’d like to see you have a little direction,” a
criticism he later repeats. In the end, Cher goes to Mel for advice—not money. When
he reminds Cher she is the one who takes care of the household, Mel demonstrates
their relationship is not based on one-way financial transactions, but rather on
mutual care and love. The mutuality of that care is significant because it
32
Prell, "Why Jewish Princesses Don't Sweat," 349.
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Written for NEJS 161b
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demonstrates Cher is unlike the JAP, who “sucks men dry”33 by not giving anything
of herself.
Finally, and importantly, both films propose these two heroines’ JAP-ness is
performative. Judith Butler’s theory on gender performativity highly influences
Michele Byers, who suggests being a JAP is no less performative than any other
social role.34 Comedy, then, is an important medium for confronting the JAP because
it is inherently performative, that is, the comic takes on certain repeated
characteristics to create a persona. Through “comic mimesis”35 of the JAP
stereotype, the Jewish women writers of Dirty Dancing and Clueless use fictional
roles in the same way Jewish female comedians use their personas to mimic and
stare back at stereotypes that would flatten them. Even the characters themselves
are performing their JAP-ness. Baby is a different person when she is with her
family as opposed to Johnny. The film suggests she is her true self with Johnny—
underscored by his famous line, “nobody puts Baby in a corner.” If being with her
family is her untrue self, then her reliance on “daddy” and her lack of labor is just a
role she takes on. Cher names this performativity when she is choosing a “lighting
concept” and making “costume decisions” as she plans for a romantic rendezvous. In
doing so, Heckerling (through Cher) claims these aspects of the JAP—designer
clothes, snobbishness, gauche displays of wealth—are really just an act. By
suggesting that being a JAP is no more than a role to play, Dirty Dancing and Clueless
Beck, "From 'Kike' to 'JAP'," 432.
Byers, "The Pariah Princess," 38.
35 Mock, "Female Jewish Comedians," 103.
33
34
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Written for NEJS 161b
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call out the JAP stereotype as merely performance and show that underneath the
type-cast is a real, if flawed, woman.
Conclusion
In discussing “the subversive tradition of Jewish female comedians,” Joyce
Antler argues these comediennes “wanted to give [women] their dignity, rather than
render them as caricatures.” Antler elaborates that, “because expectations are that
men do the joking and women receive (or are targets of) humor, for women merely
to take the mike as comic performers upsets role norms.”36 In Dirty Dancing and
Clueless, Eleanor Bergstein and Amy Heckerling take the pen (instead of the mike) to
“upset” expectations and accepted norms.
Both Baby and Cher appear to suffer the JAP’s flaws of relying on their
fathers and not laboring productively. Neither Baby nor Cher, however, are twodimensionally flawed, unlike the original JAPs created by men. Instead, their flaws
are partnered by strengths, including real desires to do good, to labor, and to have
complex relationships with their fathers. In mimicking the stereotype while
simultaneously dismantling it, Bergstein and Heckerling suggest Jewish women can
have the characteristics of the JAP while still being fully developed characters. By
giving a strong female character like Baby the JAP’s flaws and by giving a JAP like
Cher complex strengths, Bergstein and Heckerling subvert the two-dimensionality
of the JAP stereotype.
36
Antler, "One Clove Away," 123, 126.
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Written for NEJS 161b
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Works Cited
Abrams, Nathan. "The Jewess." In The New Jew in Film: Exploring Jewishness and
Judaism in Contemporary Cinema, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University
Press, 2012. 43-67.
Alperin, Mimi. "JAP Jokes: Hateful Humor." New York: American Jewish Committee,
1988.
Antler, Joyce. "One Clove Away from a Pomander Ball: The Subversive Tradition of
Jewish Female Comedians." Studies in American Jewish Literature 29 (2010):
123-138.
"Are 'JAP' Jokes Anti-Semitic?". USA Today Magazine 117, no. 2527 (1989): 5.
Beck, Evelyn Torton. "From 'Kike' to 'JAP': How Misogyny, Anti-Semitism, and
Racism Construct the 'Jewish American Princess'." In Race, Class and Gender:
An Anthology, 3rd edition, edited by Margaret L. Andersen and Patricia Hill
Collins, Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1998.
Booker, Janice L. "The Jewish Daughter." In The Jewish American Princess and Other
Myths: The Many Faces of Self-Hatred, New York: Shapolsky Publishers, 1991.
33-45.
Butnick, Stephanie. "Is 'Dirty Dancing' the Most Jewish Film Ever?" Tablet. Published
electronically Aug. 16, 2011. http://tabletmag.com/scroll/74789/is-dirtydancing-the-most-jewish-film-ever.
Byers, Michele. "The Pariah Princess: Agency, Representation, and Neoliberal Jewish
Girlhood." Girlhood Studies 2, no. 2 (2009): 33-54.
Chayat, Sherry. "JAP-Baiting on the College Scene." Lilith 17 (1987): 6.
Cortès, Carlos E. Multicultural America: A Multimedia Encyclopedia. Los Angeles:
SAGE Reference, 2013.
Erens, Patricia. "Gangsters, Vampires, and J.A.P.'S: The Jew Surfaces in American
Movies." Journal of Popular Film 4, no. 3 (1975): 208-222.
Greenebaum, Jessica. "Jewish Women into the Intersectionality of Race, Class, and
Gender." Race, Gender, & Class 6, no. 4 (1999): 41-60.
"Jewish Women Campaign against 'Princess' Jokes." New York Times, Sep. 7, 1987.
Johnston, Ruth D. "Joke-Work: The Construction of Jewish Posdtmodern Identity in
Contemporary Theory and American Film." In You Should See Yourself: Jewish
Identity in Postmodern American Culture, edited by Vincent Brook, New
Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006. 207-229.
Mock, Roberta. "Female Jewish Comedians: Grotesque Mimesis and Trangressing
Stereotypes." New Theatre Quarterly 15, no. 2 (1999): 99-108.
Prell, Riv-Ellen. "Cinderellas Who (Almost) Never Become Princesses: Subversive
Representations of Jewish Women in Postwar Popular Novels." In Talking
Back: Images of Jewish Women in American Popular Culture, edited by Joyce
Antler, Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press, 1998.
Rachel Eisen
Submission for HBI Prize – Graduate
Written for NEJS 161b
Page 14 of 14
———. "The Jewish American Princess: Detachable Ethnicity, Gender Ambiguity
and Middle-Class Anxiety." In Fighting to Become Americans: Jews, Gender,
and the Anxiety of Assimilation, Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1999.
———. "Why Jewish Princesses Don't Sweat: Desire and Consumption in Postwar
American Jewish Culture." In People of the Body: Jews and Judaism from an
Embodied Perspective, edited by Howard Eilberg-Schwartz, Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1992.
Saper, Bernard. "The JAP Joke Controversy: An Excrutiating Psychosocial Analysis."
Humor 4, no. 2 (1991): 223-239.
Schnur, Susan. "When Is a JAP Not a Yuppie? Blazes of Truth." Lilith 17 (1987): 10.
Shapiro, Laura. "When Is a Joke Not a Joke?" Newsweek, May 23, 1988, 79.
Spencer, Gary. "An Anlysis of JAP-Baiting Humor on the College Campus." Humor 2,
no. 4 (1989): 329-348.
Waxman, Barbara Frey. "Jewish American Princesses, Their Mothers, and Feminist
Pscyhology: A Rereading of Roth's 'Goodbye, Columbus'." Studies in American
Jewish Literature 7, no. 1 (1988): 90-104.
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