Synopses & Reviews
American Jews have a powerful cultural narrative that seemingly speaks on their behalf. According to this narrative, Eastern European Jewish immigrants built the film industry in the first decade of this century and dominated it by the second. As opposed to determining a particularly Jewish vision of America, Steven Alan Carr argues that this way of looking at Jews in Hollywood emanates from a particularly American vision of Jews. Like the Jewish Question of the 19th century--which fretted over the full participation of Jews within public life--the Hollywood Question of the 1920s, 30s and 40s fretted over Jewish participation within the mass media. As a whole way of thinking and talking about both Jews and motion pictures, Hollywood and Anti-Semitism reveals a powerful set of assumptions concerning ethnicity, intent and media influence. Steven Alan Carr is an Assistant Professor of Communication at Indiana University-Purdue University, Fort Wayne. His work appears in Cinema Journal and other publications. This is his first book.
Review
"Hollywood and Anti-Semitism is intensely researched and sensibly weighed....results of [Carr's] inquiry are vivid, disgusting, and enlightening. But his book establishes a grimly fascinating and uncomfortably close chapter in the long history of a curse." The New Republic"Carr has written a scholarly history of anti-Semitism in Hollywood. Exhaustively researched...the book includes extensive notes and a bibliography and is an excellent resource on Hollywood's anti-Semitism. This thought-provoking book is recommended for academic libraries." Library Journal"an impressively researched and closely reasoned cultural history." LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS, March 2002"readable book for all film collections." CHOICE Nov 2001
Synopsis
Hollywood and Anti-Semitism: A Cultural History, 1880--1941 examines the role of American Jews in the entertainment industry, from the turn of the century to the outbreak of World War II. Eastern European Jewish immigrants are often credited with building a film industry during the first decade of the twentieth century that they dominated by the 1920s. In this study, Steven Carr reconceptualizes Jewish involvement in Hollywood by examining prevalent attitudes towards Jews among American audiences, revealing a powerful set of assumptions concerning ethnicity and the influence of the media.
Table of Contents
Introduction: what is the Hollywood question?; Part I. The Hollywood Question and American Anti-Semitism, 1880-1929: 1. Anti-Semitism and the American Jewish question; 2. Religion, race and morality in the Hollywood question; Part II. The Hollywood Question for a New America, 1929-1941: 3. A New Deal for the Hollywood question; 4. The Hollywood question in popular culture; 5. The politics of the Hollywood question; 6. Answering the Hollywood question; Part III. The Hollywood Question, 1941 and Beyond: 7. Popular culture answers the Hollywood question; 8. The Hollywood question in crisis, 1941; 9. The new Hollywood question.