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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Chai Noon: Jews and the Cinematic Wild West

Chai Noon: Jews and the Cinematic Wild West

Friedmann, Jonathan L.

Hardcover

Series: Wisconsin Film Studies

JudaismFilm StudiesGeneral Sociology

ISBN10: 0299352102
ISBN13: 9780299352103
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
Published: Jun 3 2025
Pages: 264
Weight: 1.10
Height: 0.80 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.10
Language: English
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 Western--once Hollywood's most popular genre--ever since the silent era, both onscreen and offscreen, and some filmmakers have 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 Jewish? What counts as a Jewish image onscreen? What types of Jewish representation are appropriate? How much of a film's Jewishness is owed to the filmmakers and how much to the viewer'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.

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