How ‘The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’ fights Jewish stereotypes: Midge Maisel navigates two stereotypes of Jewish women that date back to 19th-century France

Lee, Amanda

How ‘The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’ fights Jewish stereotypes: Midge Maisel navigates two stereotypes of Jewish women that date back to 19th-century France

Publisher

The Washington Post

Lee, Amanda

Date

2019-05-06

URI

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/12/06/how-marvelous-mrs-maisel-fights-against-jewish-stereotypes/

Abstract

This article discusses the ways in which Jewish stereotypes are navigated in the popular television series, "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel." The show is set in the late 1950s to early 1960s. The upper middle-class Midge Maisel, a rather conventional wife and mother, forges a norm-shattering career as a standup comic. The author discusses the inherent contradiction between the way the character successfully overcomes conventions of class, ethnicity and gender, and the "otherness" of being Jewish that persists. The author argues that Midge Maisel represents how Jewish women thread the needle between their "exclusion from mainstream femininity..."and "their lingering efforts to inhabit their position as a religious minority, at times racialized and sexualized within a larger national identity." Click on the URI above to read the article. For a somewhat different take on "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" and Jewish stereotypes, click on the link below.

Keywords

Theater, Movies and Television, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Humor, United States

Collections

Theater, Movies and Television

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