Monday, November 13, 2006

You Got to Know When to Golem

The Simpson's Halloween episode this year included a sketch about the Golem of Prague. This sketch was pretty much universally panned by Jewish bloggers and institutions (like The Forward), despite the excitement that the idea generated.

Rabbi Yonah of Jewlicious said that there were "too many cliches." A view shared by basically everyone. Chaim Rubin of the Shtus blog says that it was "kinda dumb actually, but there were some funny lines." If you want a more scholarly criticism of the show, Nextbook (which is a great resource for everything) has an article comparing it to the legend, and even explains why the Simpson's golem looks the way that it does.

All in all? Yet another example of the same stereotypes of Judaism being portrayed over and over in pop culture. Is it a wonder that people often tell me that I don't seem Jewish?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

If you want more audacious Jewish stereotypes, much more ridiculous than portrayed on the Simpsons (but with a few from a surprisingly educated perspective - they take on metzitzah b'peh, however it's spelled), check out last week's episode of "Freak Show" on Comedy Central. It's Part 1 of the Season Finale, with Part 2 coming up this Thursday. Some, but not all, of the episode is up on Freak Show's site on ComedyCentral.com, but it's also replaying on the tellie. It's insane.

Jack Steiner said...

The Simpsons still rock.