scholarly journals Formation Of The Ambiguous Heroic Archetype: Three Jewish-American Film Actors And The United States’ Film System, 1929-1948

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 200-245
Author(s):  
John Thomas McGuire
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Film Noir ◽  
Carl Jung ◽  
American Film ◽  
Film System ◽  
Jewish American ◽  
Joseph Campbell ◽  
Studio System

As Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell note, archetypes, or general ideas of human types, strongly influence societies, particularly the heroic archetype. Since the 1890s mainstream cinema has facilitated the heroic archetype for worldwide audiences. This article argues that Paul Muni (1895-1967), Edward G. Robinson (1893-1973), and John Garfield (1913-1952) became the first important Jewish-American film actors to help develop the ambiguous heroic archetype in the United States’ studio system from 1929 through 1948 in two ways: Muni’s and Robinson’s critical performances in the 1930s and 1940s, particularly in gangster and film noir films, and Garfield’s films from 1946 through 1948.

Mahjong

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annelise Heinz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
American Culture ◽  
The United States ◽  
Jewish American ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Women's Culture ◽  
History Of ◽  
American Heritage ◽  
Cultural Origins ◽  
Definition Of

Mahjong: A Chinese Game and the Making of Modern American Culture illustrates how the spaces between tiles and the moments between games have fostered distinct social cultures in the United States. When this mass-produced game crossed the Pacific it created waves of popularity over the twentieth century. Mahjong narrates the history of this game to show how it has created a variety of meanings, among them American modernity, Chinese American heritage, and Jewish American women’s culture. As it traveled from China to the United States and caught on with Hollywood starlets, high society, middle-class housewives, and immigrants alike, mahjong became a quintessentially American pastime. This book also reveals the ways in which women leveraged a game for a variety of economic and cultural purposes, including entrepreneurship, self-expression, philanthropy, and ethnic community building. One result was the forging of friendships within mahjong groups that lasted decades. This study unfolds in two parts. The first half is focused on mahjong’s history as related to consumerism, with a close examination of its economic and cultural origins. The second half explores how mahjong interwove with the experiences of racial inclusion and exclusion in the evolving definition of what it means to be American. Mahjong players, promoters, entrepreneurs, and critics tell a broad story of American modernity. The apparent contradictions of the game—as both American and foreign, modern and supposedly ancient, domestic and disruptive of domesticity—reveal the tensions that lie at the heart of modern American culture.

Dimensions of Jewish-American Identity

1973 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 891-900 ◽  
Author(s):  
Itai Zak
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Factor Analysis ◽  
Test Scores ◽  
Common Factor ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Identity ◽  
Jewish American ◽  
Cast Doubt ◽  
The Common ◽  
High Degree

The main problem posed in this study is: What are the content and structure of Jewish and American identity? The Jewish-American Identity Scale, which was adapted and refined for this study, was administered in 1971 to four samples, totaling 1006 Jewish-American college students from various parts of the United States. Initially, factor analysis was applied to the separate samples. Intersample comparisons of factor structures indicated a high degree of congruency; consequently, the samples were combined for subsequent analyses. Factor analysis of the test scores demonstrated that most of the common factor variance was appropriated by two relatively orthogonal factors. Items dealing with American identity and those dealing with Jewish identity had medium to high loadings on the two respective factors. These findings supported the hypothesis of the duality and the orthogonality of dimensions of Jewish and American identity, and cast doubt on the notion forwarded by some researchers that Jewish-American identity forms a bipolar continuum.

Anti-Americanism in Retreat: Jack Lang, Cultural Imperialism, and the Anti-Anti-Americans

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard F. Kuisel
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Mexico City ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cultural Imperialism ◽  
American Film ◽  
Film Festival ◽  
American Popular Culture ◽  
Movie Star

This chapter details the rise of anti-Americanism in France, in particular French socialist minister of culture Jack Lang's attack against American popular culture. Lang began by refusing to attend the American film festival at Deauville in September 1981; several months later he gave a notorious address denouncing American cultural imperialism at a UNESCO conference in Mexico City; and then he tried to organize a global “crusade” to combat cultural imports from the United States. Lang was a flamboyant young politician whose movie-star good looks, iconic pink jacket, dramatic initiatives, and hyperactive ways won him both admiration and ridicule. He presided over the Ministry of Culture from 1981 to 1986 and again from 1988 to 1993.

The Americanization of Mahjong

Mahjong ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 162-186
Author(s):  
Annelise Heinz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Air Force ◽  
York City ◽  
The United States ◽  
Jewish American ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Domestic Industry ◽  
Community Adaptation

During the years of depression, war, and postwar expansion, mahjong evolved in the United States and abroad, creating discrete national, regional, and community forms. In the 1940s, the wives of Air Force officers created their own version, which continued to spread across postwar bases. The most influential community adaptation by far was driven by the National Mah Jongg League. Over the ensuing decades, eventually hundreds of thousands of players, mostly but not exclusively Jewish American women, played their “National” version of the international Chinese game. The changes to the game that the League initiated were enabled by their proximity to the small factories making the tiles. The locus of mahjong manufacturing for the American market moved from China to plastic fabricating shops in New York City. As factories developed in concert with distinctive regional and community-based forms of the game, American mahjong grew into a domestic industry.

Matthew Baigell, The Implacable Urge to Defame: Cartoon Jews in the American Press, 1877–1935. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2017. 240 pp. Matthew Baigell, Social Concern and Left Politics in Jewish American Art, 1880–1940. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2015. 280 pp.

2020 ◽  
pp. 282-285
Author(s):  
Matthew Baigell
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
American Art ◽  
The United States ◽  
Jewish American ◽  
Social Concern ◽  
The Arts ◽  
American Press ◽  
Thomas Cole ◽  
Syracuse University

Matthew Baigell has accomplished the enviable achievement of juggling two distinguished careers as an art historian. He first came to prominence as a scholar of the arts of the United States, writing both on canonical painters (among them, 19th-century landscapists Thomas Cole and Albert Bierstadt) and on 20...

Tola

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allan R. Ellenberger
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Film ◽  
Gone With The Wind ◽  
Bette Davis ◽  
Anatole Litvak ◽  
Theatre Guild

On her return to the United States, Hopkins meets Russian-born director Anatole Litvak. They become close, and she stars in his first American film, The Woman I Love. Her costar Paul Muni is bothered by Hopkins’s interference, and fights ensue. Hopkins buys the former estate of John Gilbert. Warner Bros. plans to make Jezebel, a part Hopkins wants, however, she is tricked into selling her rights and the role is given to Bette Davis. Discouraged, Hopkins returns to Goldwyn and makes Woman Chases Man. Polls claim that Hopkins is the number one choice to play Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind, but David O. Selznick has other plans. Hopkins moves into her new Tower Grove home. She elopes with Anatole Litvak and appears in Wine of Choice for the Theatre Guild, but it fails to meet her standards. She is devastated at the death of her ex-husband “Billy” Parker. After the funeral, she collapses and is admitted to the hospital.

scholarly journals Gender and Ethnicity: Life Stories of Jewish-American Immigrant Women in the First Half of the Twentieth Century

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 7-34
Author(s):  
Anca-Luminiţa Iancu
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Life Stories ◽  
Immigrant Women ◽  
The United States ◽  
Jewish American ◽  
Historical Societies ◽  
American Immigrant ◽  
Autobiographical Accounts

Abstract In the first half of the twentieth century, immigrants left oral and written testimonies of their experience in the United States, many of them housed in various ethnic-American archives or published by ethnic historical societies. In 1942, the Yiddish Scientific Institute in New York City encouraged Jewish-American immigrants to share their life stories as part of a written essay contest. In 2006, several of these autobiographical accounts were translated and published by Jocelyn Cohen and Daniel Soyer in a volume entitled My Future Is in America. Thus, this essay examines the autobiographies of two Jewish-American immigrant women, Minnie Goldstein and Rose Schoenfeld, with a view to comparing how their gendered identity (as women and as members of their families) has impacted their choices and lives in their home countries and in the United States in the first part of the twentieth century.

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