Producing Representation: Re-Visiting Jewish Women in/on the American Sitcom
Abstract
This dissertation examines the depiction of young, liberal, Jewish womanhood on the American television sitcom through the subjective experiences of television production workers, the representations they produce, and the conceptual audiences they produce them for. It grapples with the contradictions behind Jewishness and gender, and questions why specific representations of identity appear in trends at certain times, while remaining absent in others. To address this, I articulate the shifting societal and industrial circumstances throughout the history of American television that have allowed for representations of ethnic, Jewish women to appear on the sitcom. I begin with a historical overview of the constructions of Jewish ethnicity from the early twentieth century onwards, highlighting the experiences of class, race, and sexuality that intersect with Jewishness to form unique subjectivities in entertainment media. I then analyze three case studies: Rhoda Morgenstern of The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-77) and Rhoda (1974-79); Fran Fine of The Nanny (1993-99); and Ilana Wexler and Abbi Abrams of Broad City (2014-19). To uncover the production contexts of these case studies, I analyze first-hand accounts from the workers who contributed to them as located in the industry’s own interpretive frameworks for promotion and self-analysis. I then connect these accounts to a textual analysis of the identified sitcoms, focusing on the decisions and mediations that take place in representing Jewishness and gender onscreen. This project acknowledges the necessarily complex nature of Jewish identity. I propose that Jewish women have come to stand in for a broadly liberal, pseudo-diverse identity on the American sitcom. Their positions on the margins of intersectional identity categories have been exploited to simultaneously appeal to liberal, youthful, urban audiences without alienating the masses in a strategic attempt to attract the widest viewership possible. I link real and conceived experiences of antisemitism to Jewish self-censorship in the television industry, while honoring the Jewish, feminist workers who pushed back. Within these case studies I find productive ambivalence: they complicate static depictions of young, Jewish womanhood, yet they are commercially included insofar as they appeal to the audiences that advertisers want to reach.