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Chai Noon: Jews and the Cinematic Wild West

By (author) Jonathan L. Friedmann

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normal price: R 1 380.95

Price: R 1 242.95

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| book description |

Only a few Westerns contain explicitly Jewish stories or themes, and very rarely do Old West tales involve identifiably Jewish characters. Yet Jewish contributors have shaped the Westernâ€”once Hollywoodâ€™s most popular genreâ€”ever since the silent era, both onscreen and offscreen, and some filmmakers have explicitly sought to infuse the genre with a distinctly Jewish sensibility. In Chai Noon, Jonathan L. Friedmann applies some of the central questions of Jewish film studies to the Western: What makes a movie â€œJewishâ€? What counts as a â€œJewish imageâ€ on screen? What types of Jewish representation are appropriate? How much of a filmâ€™s â€œJewishnessâ€ owes to the filmmakers and how much to the viewerâ€™s interpretation? This volume joins other reconsiderations of outsider and minority representations in Westerns to offer a more nuanced view of the genre. Friedmann engages with larger themes of Jewish identity in popular film, including depictions of race, ethnicity, and foreignness. He also identifies similar concerns within the invention and creation of the imaginary West writ large in American culture. The juxtapositions prove to be both unexpected and intuitively understandable.