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blackswaneuroparedux · 3 years

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Anonymous asked: I loved your fantastic account of the battle of Waterloo and how each nation came to define the rest of the century for all the European countries in different ways. However what are your thoughts about the battle itself? Did Wellington win it or did Napoleon lose it? What were the turning points that you think determined the fate of the battle?

Thank you for reading and liking my previous post on Waterloo. I did heavily lean into studying ancient classical warfare when I was studying Classics but I only got into Napoleonic warfare because of a father who was (and still remains) big Napoleonic warfare military enthusiast. Through his keen eyes as a former serving military man, I also looked at the battle as a soldier might as well putting on my academic critical thinking cap. It’s a popular parlour game not just in Sandhurst but also in the officers’ mess (where those regiments actually fought at Waterloo) and around dinner tables - in my experience anyway.

I’ve always seen such speculative and counterfactual questions as an amusing diversion. I’ve never seriously looked at the detail until I came to France and unexpectedly interacted with Napoleonic scholars as well as soldiers (the cultured and historically well read ones at least) that forced me to think more about it. I’ve always been of the ‘if the Prussians hadn’t arrived in time to save Wellington’ school; and this was always enough to get me by in any conversation.

But my vanity was stung by interacting with one of my downstairs neighbours, a high decorated retired army general, with whom I played a weekly game of chess over a glass of wine during the Covid lockdown in Paris. He didn’t spare me as he knew so much detail about the battle. But a typical failing of French thinking is to pontificate around generalities rather than specific reasons. So for him it came down to pooh-poohing the generalship of Wellington (the rain saved him) and lauding the emperor (he had haemorrhoids and thus a bad day at the office). So rain and haemorrhoids were the decisive factors in determining the outcome of the battle of Waterloo.

It was clear I had to raise my game. So I’ve been reading more when I could.

I had recently finished reading a wonderful book ‘The Longest Afternoon: The 400 Men Who Decided the Battle of Waterloo’ by the Cambridge historian Brendan Simms. The book came out in 2015 but it’s been lying on my shelf for these past few years until I actually took this slim book to read on my one of my business trips.

The idea behind this short book is so superbly useful. It places to one side the huge, cinematic panorama of history and instead concentrates on one particular farmhouse, on one particular day: 18 June 1815. History is vivified, lifts itself off the page and into the mind, when a historian of Brendan Simm’s immense stature zooms in on the details - and here the details are compelling.

For the course of one day, 400 soldiers, wet, cold, in some cases hungover, who had bivouacked for the night in an abandoned farmhouse at La Haye Sainte, near a crucially strategic crossroads, found themselves staring down the massed barrels of Napoleon’s vanguard – and held them off. On June 18, 1815, Wellington established his position and sent one battalion and part of a second to the farmhouse under the command of Major Baring. Napoléon’s initial attack was a direct assault that surrounded the house and came near to breaking Wellington’s line; but it held, and the legendary charge of two British heavy cavalry brigades drove back the French.

This is a detailed account of the defence of La Haye Sainte, a walled stone farmhouse forward of Wellington’s centre. Its defenders were the King’s German Legion, which (despite the British army’s penchant for oddball names) was genuinely German. Britain harboured many German expatriates who detested Napoléon, a number augmented in 1803 when he occupied Hanover and disbanded its army. That very year two ambitious officers recruited the first members of the King’s German Legion, which grew into a corps of some 14,000 men and served with distinction at Copenhagen, Walcheren and in Spain before its apotheosis at Waterloo.

Ordered to capture the farmhouse, Marshal Michel Ney - commanding Napoléon’s left wing - obeyed but became preoccupied with his famously unsuccessful cavalry attack. Reminded of the order two hours later, he dispatched infantry that reached the house and set it on fire. The men inside controlled the blaze and continued to fight until Ney took personal charge of a furious assault that succeeded only when the defenders ran out of ammunition and withdrew, having held out for six hours. Had they not defended it so stoutly and if the farm had fallen any sooner then Napoleon would have been able to get at Wellington’s troops before his Prussian reinforcements arrived, and in all likelihood Waterloo would have been a French victory instead; it would now be the name of a train station in Paris rather than London.

I doubt there is a definitive answer to this question which is why certain people love arguing about it because it’s so open ended in terms of cause and effect. You can pick on any episodic event and hail that as the decisive turning point. It’s one reason why we are so fortunate to have so many well researched history books on the battle of Waterloo to replenish the issues for a newer generation to argue with past generations.

If I were to go beyond the ‘if the Prussians hadn’t arrived to save Wellington’ line then I would point to ten decisive turning points which in themselves might not have changed the outcome but taken together certainly influenced the final outcome of one of the most important and iconic battles in history.

Napoleon gives Marshal Davout a desk job

6 June 1815 – All commanders need a good chief of staff to ensure that their intentions are translated into clear orders. Unfortunately for Napoleon – as what is arguably one of the most decisive battles in European history loomed – his trusted chief of staff, Marshal Berthier, was no longer available. Berthier had sworn an oath of loyalty to Louis XVIII – and then fallen to his death from a window – so the job was given to Marshal Soult.

Soult was an experienced field commander but he was certainly no Berthier. Napoleon’s two main field commanders were also far from ideal. Emmanuel Grouchy had little experience of independent command. Michel Ney’s heroic command of the French rear-guard during the retreat from Moscow led Napoleon to dub him “the bravest of the brave”, but by 1815 he was clearly burnt out.

Worse still, when on 6 June Napoleon ordered his generals to assemble with their troops on the Belgian border he chose to leave behind Louis-Nicolas Davout, his ‘Iron Marshal’, as minister of war. The emperor needed someone loyal to oversee affairs at home but the decision not to take with him the ablest general at his disposal would deprive him of the one commander who might have made a difference.

Constant Rebecque ignores orders

15 June – In June 1815 Napoleon assembled 120,000 men on the Belgian border. Opposing him were 115,000 Prussians under Field Marshal Blücher and an allied force of about 93,000 men under Wellington. Faced with such odds, Napoleon’s best chance of victory was to get his army between his two enemies and defeat one before turning on the other. On 15 June his army crossed the frontier at Charleroi and headed straight for the gap between the two allied armies.

Wellington was taken completely by surprise: “Napoleon has humbugged me” he said. Uncertain what Napoleon’s intentions were, he ordered his army to concentrate around Nivelles, over 12 miles away from the Prussian position at Ligny. This would have left the two allied armies dangerously separated but fortunately for Wellington, a staff officer in the Dutch army, Baron Constant Rebecque, understood what was actually needed. He disregarded Wellington’s order and instead sent a force to occupy the key crossroads of Quatre Bras, much nearer to the Prussians.

D’Erlon misses the show

16 June – Two battles were fought on 16 June. While Marshal Ney took on Wellington’s army as it hurriedly tried to concentrate around Quatre Bras, Napoleon led the main French force against the Prussians at Ligny. Blücher’s inexperienced Prussians were given a severe mauling but despite this they managed to fall back in relatively good order.

This was partly due to a disastrous mix-up on the part of the French. Confusion over orders saw General D’Erlon’s corps instructed to leave Ney’s army at Quatre Bras and join the fighting at Ligny only to be recalled as soon as they got there. The result was that 16,000 Frenchmen who could have intervened decisively actually took part in neither battle.

Blücher stays in touch

17 June – Wellington succeeded in beating back Ney at Quatre Bras but Blücher’s defeat left the British general with a large French army on his eastern flank. He was forced to fall back northwards towards Brussels. The Prussians were retreating as well. Normally a retreating army tries to withdraw along its lines of communication (ie the route back to its base). Had the Prussians done this they would have headed eastwards. The two allied armies would then have been even further apart and Wellington would have been overwhelmed. But instead of doing that, the Prussians retreated northwards towards Wavre. It was to be a crucial move. The two allied armies stayed in contact and on 17 June Wellington was able to fall back to the ridge at Mont St Jean, and prepare to make a stand there until Blücher’s Prussians could come to his aid.

The weather takes a hand

17 June – The night before the battle was marked by a thunderstorm of biblical proportions. Rain lashed down, turning roads into quagmires and trampled fields into seas of mud.

It was a night of tremendous rain and cloudbursts. Wellington said that even in the monsoons in India, he’d never known rain like it. To wake up cold and damp, wet and terrified, then you have this slaughter in a very small space. By evening there were over 200,000 men struggling to kill each other within four square miles.

Private Wheeler of the 51st Regiment later wrote: “The ground was too wet to lie down… the water ran in streams from the cuffs of our Jackets… We had one consolation, we knew that the enemy were in the same plight.” Wheeler was right of course – the rain would inconvenience all three armies, not least the Prussians as they struggled along narrow country lanes to link up with Wellington.

It’s often said that Napoleon delayed starting the battle in order to allow the ground to dry out but the chief cause of the delay was probably the need to allow his units, many of whom had bivouacked some distance away, to take up their allotted places. Napoleon enjoyed a considerable advantage in artillery at Waterloo but this was lessened by the fact that the mud made it difficult to move his guns around and that cannonballs, normally designed to bounce along until they hit something, or someone, often disappeared harmlessly into the soggy ground. Macdonnell closes the gates

11:30am, 18 June – On 18 June the two armies prepared to do battle. Most of Wellington’s troops were sheltered from enemy fire on the reverse slope of the Mont St Jean ridge. The position was protected by three important outposts: a group of farms to the left, the farm of La Haye Sainte in front and the farmhouse of Hougoumont to the right.

At about 11.30am the French launched their first attack – an assault on Hougoumont. This soon developed into a battle within a battle as the French threw in ever more men in a bid to capture the vital chateau. They nearly succeeded: led by a giant officer nicknamed ‘the Smasher’, a group of French soldiers worked their way round to the rear of the chateau, forced open its north gate and burst inside.

James Macdonnell, the garrison commander, acted quickly. He gathered a group of men and they heaved the gate shut again. The French inside the chateau were then hunted down and killed. Only a young drummer boy was spared. Hougoumont was to remain in allied hands all day and Wellington later commented that the entire result of the battle depended on the closing of those gates.

Ney loses his head after his cavalry founders

1.30pm – The infantry of D’Erlon’s corps finally saw action as they attacked the left wing of Wellington’s army. As they reached the crest of the ridge they were met by the infantry of Sir Thomas Picton’s division. Picton, a foul-mouthed Welshman who rode into battle in a civilian coat and round-brimmed hat, was shot dead but his men stopped the French, who were then driven back by Wellington’s cavalry.

The next major French attack was very different. Ney unleashed his cavalry in a mass frontal attack, and thousands of Napoleon’s famous cuirassiers – big men in steel breastplates riding big horses – thundered up the hill. But Wellington’s infantry stayed calm. Forming squares, they presented in all directions a hedge of bayonets that no horse could be made to charge.

Ney needed to call the cavalry off or support them with infantry but he lost his head and threw more horsemen into the fray. When he abandoned these fruitless attacks, Wellington’s line was still unbroken, two hours had been wasted, and the Prussians were arriving in force.

The Prussians arrive

4.30pm – Blücher had promised to come to Wellington’s aid, and kept his word. Napoleon had detached nearly a third of his army under Grouchy to prevent the Prussians joining up with Wellington but Grouchy failed to do this and, by mid-afternoon, the first Prussian units were in action on the battlefield.

At about 4.30pm they launched their first attack upon the key village of Plancenoit near the rear of Napoleon’s main position. This savage battle would rage for over three hours. Faced with this, Napoleon was forced to send many of his remaining reserves to shore up his position – leaving him with precious few troops to exploit any success his troops might enjoy against Wellington.

Napoleon says no, and von Zeithen turns back

6.30pm – At about 6.30pm the French captured La Haye Sainte. Posting artillery and skirmishers around the farm, they unleashed a storm of shot, shell and musketry into Wellington’s exposed centre. The regiments there suffered horrendous casualties, but Wellington’s line held – just.

Ney asked for reinforcements to press home his advantage but Napoleon refused. Instead he sent troops to recapture Plancenoit which had just fallen to the Prussians. Von Zeiten’s Prussian I Corps arrived on the scene. These much-needed reinforcements were set to join Wellington when a Prussian aide de camp rode up with an order from Blücher instructing them to head south and support his troops at Plancenoit. Von Zeiten obeyed. Realising that Von Zeiten’s troops were desperately needed on the ridge, Baron von Müffling, Wellington’s Prussian liaison officer, galloped after Von Zeiten and pleaded with him to ignore this new order and stick to the original plan. The Prussian general turned back and took his place on Wellington’s left, enabling the duke to shift troops over to reinforce his crumbling centre. The crisis had passed.

Napoleon’s last roll of the dice ends in panic

7.30pm – With Plancenoit back in French hands the stage was set for the final act in the drama. At about 7.30pm Napoleon unleashed his elite imperial guard in a last desperate bid for victory. But it was too late – they were hopelessly outnumbered and Wellington was ready for them. His own troops had been sheltering from the French fire by lying down but when the two large columns of French guardsmen reached the crest of the ridge Wellington ordered his own guards to stand up. One British guardsman describes the scene: “Whether it was (our) sudden appearance so near to them, or the tremendously heavy fire we threw into them but La Garde, who had never previously failed in an attack, suddenly stopped.”

Meanwhile Sir John Colborne of the 52nd Light Infantry wheeled his regiment round to attack the flank of the first French column while General Chasse ordered his Dutch and Belgian troops forward against the other. Soon both French columns had withered away under the deadly fire. Their defeat led to widespread panic in the French army: amid cries of “La Garde recule” (“the Guard is retreating”) it dissolved into a disorderly retreat mercilessly harried by the Prussians. “The nearest-run thing you ever saw in your life,” as Wellington described the battle, was over.

This isn’t an exhaustive list but it will do.

Waterloo was a watershed moment for Europe, and indeed the world. The end of the Napoleonic Wars heralded a peace in Europe which was not broken until the outbreak of World War One in 1914. In the century following the Battle of Waterloo an increased respect developed for the figure of the soldier. True the Battle became mythologised in the nineteenth century and is now embedded in our cultural memory as one of the great British success stories.

We still celebrate Waterloo because it was a great British victory - even if we had a little bit of help from the Prussians. It embodied the British bulldog spirit and marked the moment we finally overcame Napoleon and his empire after a decade of being at war.

The ramifications from Waterloo and the Napoleonic Wars are still felt today in contemporary European politics. I think because of this the battle continues to fascinate and to court intense discussion and disagreement.

No doubt my French neighbour the retired army general and I will continue to stubbornly argue our differing viewpoints until the wine bottle empties. But we both agree that we would enjoy having dinner with Napoleon and talk about his military campaigns. I admire Napoleon a little more having read more and for living in France. He’d be a very amusing and stimulating companion.

In many ways, he was also an enlightened and intelligent ruler. His Code Napoleon is an extremely enlightened law code. At the same time this is a man who had a very, very low threshold for boredom. I think he was addicted to war.

General Robert E. Lee, at Fredericksburg said, “It is well that war is so dreadful, otherwise we would grow too fond of it.”

Napoleon would never have agreed with that. War was his drug. There’s no evidence that Wellington enjoyed war. He said after Waterloo, and I believe him, “I pray to God that I have fought my last battle.” He spent much of the battle saying to the men, “If you survive, if you just stand there and repel the French, I’ll guarantee you a generation of peace.” He thought the point of war was peace. And he sure gave not just Britain but also an entire European continent some respite from the spilling of blood on a battlefield.

Thanks for your question.

#question #ask #waterloo #battle #battle of waterloo #napoleon #wellington #history #britain #france #prussia #austria #german #europe #military #british army #soldier

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septembersghost · 3 years

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if supernatural was more mainstream, the emmys for the past like 5 years would have been jensen ackles and four other guys

totally. i mean, you could easily say past ten years, if not more (let’s talk about that dual performance in The End, kripke’s comment about that being award-worthy was right), you could go back even further to What Is and What Should Never Be. On the Head of a Pin. there are a lot of extraordinary episodes where he turned in devastating, nuanced performances, and sometimes he gave us those in one-off motw episodes when he didn’t even have to (which is not a slight to motw episodes, i love those, and we get a lot of the best moments and character development in them because they don’t have to hinge as much on arc plot).

i defy anyone, in any show, to have put as much care, craft, and dedication into a character as we know jensen did with dean.

this isn’t to take away from actors who’ve been recognized, it’s difficult to even compare anything because spn has such a malleable form - they didn’t only have to do the heavy drama and the psychological complexity, they also had to do surrealistic hijinks and wacky comedy and fight scenes and whatever other challenge was required from episode-to-episode, which jensen just...rose to the occasion of and made look effortless.

to be fair, i 1. am biased and 2. have watched many shows, but have admittedly only seen a small portion of anything that’s been nominated (much less won) in the past decade and a half because i love trash some of it simply wasn’t for me, which is fine! spn had factors holding it back - being a genre show perhaps is the biggest, because genre shows are unfairly overlooked (catch cassie and me talking just yesterday about actors who deserved acclaim for amazing work in genre shows!). the other was the disregard for the network, unfortunately. the cw has gotten critical acclaim for certain shows over the past few years, and even then, the emmys didn’t recognize them in main categories (see: jtv and cxg, where the lead actresses both received well-deserved golden globes, and then the emmys went, “i don’t know her...”). also, the landscape of television has changed so, so much in fifteen years. if you look at the shift from broadcast network series still being nominated, to being completely shut out by cable/premium/streaming networks, that happened during the course of spn’s run. it was never a cultural phenomenon in the way that something like got or brba were (and those shows themselves have nothing in common), yet spn outlived countless other series with a comparably tiny audience. (and a predominately female audience, despite being centered on male protagonists, because of its use of archetypes and deconstruction/Romantic horror/emotional bonds/etc, and i think that’s another factor, but that will get me into the weeds of a whole other discussion where i address the fact that shows which are perceived as especially high caliber - even the ones like brba that are legitimately excellent - are more stereotypical male-driven power fantasies than spn actually ever was, and those are taken more seriously). putting aside any issues, including the finale, that was always remarkable to me, that this show grew such a loyal, devoted, diverse fanbase, and lived so long, despite metrics like ratings and budget. and a huge part of the reason it lived as long as it did was, imho, because we cared SO much about those characters, we let them into our lives, hearts, families, we truly loved them, thus they kept telling stories. idk this is devolving into another post in my head where i talk about how spn was often unironically very good and achieved its purpose in its genre better than most, but i digress...

other shows may be more lauded, but i’ve personally never seen the outpouring of emotion and love and palpable grief that i’ve seen over dean, which, at the end of all things, is thanks to jensen. he embodied him, made him come alive. we believed in him so deeply that dean transcended page and screen to become a part of us and important to us. you can’t mourn someone unless that love is real.

so maybe he doesn’t have a shelf full of the shiny trophies he definitely deserves, and the widespread recognition that i wish we could have given him, but that legacy? is impressive and stunning and emotional, and ultimately has more significance and meaning than awards ever could. it’s going to live on and be remembered.

#love how i have appreciation in my inbox over mr. jensen ackles today #always here for him deserving that #idk if you sent me the other message or if it was someone else but i'll reply to it too as soon as i can <3 #anonymous #letterbox #jensen ackles #supernatural #dean feelings

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passionate-reply · 3 years

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This time on Great Albums, I talk about an album that actually isn’t older than I am for a change! Enter the spooky, haunted forest of The Knife with me, and find out why it was Pitchfork’s Album of the Year in 2006! Full transcript after the break.

Welcome to Passionate Reply, and welcome to Great Albums! Today, I’ll be tackling an album that’s more recent than anything I’ve done on Great Albums before, but it’s still old enough to start being considered a classic: The Knife’s Silent Shout, released in 2006, and hence seeing its fifteenth birthday in 2021. Silent Shout is a bit special to me, insofar as it was an album I loved as a teenager, back when it was still pretty new, and it was probably the first album I really fell in love with that wasn’t significantly older than I was. I was quite surprised when I eventually learned just how beloved Silent Shout is among music aficionados. This album has been lauded in critical circles, recommended as a “patrician” essential, and even considered one of the greatest electronic albums of all time! So, what’s the fuss about?

Before Silent Shout, The Knife were significantly closer to a conventional electronic pop duo. Their biggest claim to fame was the track “Heartbeats,” which scored some exposure after a cover of it was featured in a TV ad.

Music: “Heartbeats”

I like to think that “Heartbeats” contains the seeds of what’s great about Silent Shout, with its grinding synth backing and vocalist Karin Dreijer’s affecting wail. But its indie-pop brightness is something distinctively absent from their follow-up. Contrary to what might’ve been expected from an up-and-coming pop act, the sibling duo hunkered down in the studio and set about making something stranger and more exotic. On the technical front, they stripped the production down to its bare essentials, using just digital rhythms and two synthesisers to achieve everything we hear on the album. Stylistically, they took their sound into moody, atmospheric territory, imbuing it with this eerie, claustrophobic ambiance. It’s the musical equivalent of Frankenstein emerging from Mary Shelley’s mind, while the dreary “Year Without a Summer” had poisoned the world around her.

Music: “Silent Shout”

The title track here is also the opener, and introduces us to the frightful world of Silent Shout without mercy. This track is dominated by a powerful contrast of sound: low, thrumming bass, and these quick, but delicate and meandering synth arpeggios, carrying a distinctively Scandinavian flair. This bewitching synthesis of musical ideas makes sense in light of the diverse influences of the two siblings who made up The Knife: Instrumentalist Olaf Dreijer was strongly influenced by dance styles like house, trance, and progressive techno, as well as ambient electronic music, whereas vocalist Karin Dreijer was interested in guitar-based popular music, as well as the distinctive folk traditions of their native Sweden. Not unlike the Pet Shop Boys, they’ve got a wide gap between their influences, but that only serves to intensify the uniqueness of their work, which strikes listeners in a way the constituent musical parts of its heritage never could. Perhaps the most significant sonic feature of the album, though, is the extreme electronic distortions of Karin Dreijer’s voice.

Music: “One Hit”

If raw and everymannish vocals make music feel more in line with our everyday reality, the shocking and monstrous ones on *Silent Shout* render it a truly otherworldly work of art. While many people are quick to decry the “fakeness” of electronically mediated vocals--despite the fact that all art is, of course, artificial--I think Silent Shout proves, more boldly than anything else, just how uniquely powerful this musical tool can be in the right hands. Once you get past the sheer sonic force of the vocals, and their peculiar, skin-crawling timbres, you’ll find that most of the lyrical subject matter is actually painfully quotidian. “One Hit,” for instance, is told from the perspective of an all-too-normal “monster”: a domestic abuser, extracting and enforcing femininity and domestic servitude through the force of violence, dealing in “one hit, one kiss.” Sex, gender, and exploitation based upon them are among the album’s most central themes, and expressed harrowingly on tracks like “Na Na Na”:

Music: “Na Na Na”

Perhaps moreso than any other track on the album, “Na Na Na” is rendered borderline incomprehensible by vocal treatment--a trait magnified by its obviously meaningless title and chorus. But “Na Na Na” does have real lyrics, which tell the story of a life mediated by reproductive anatomy, defined by the rhythm of menstruation, coming from within, and the constant fear of sexual violence from without. It’s a tale of hidden anxiety, and experiences that go unseen and unspoken despite how common they are, making the haze of inscrutability laid over them all the more poignant. It’s clear that these issues are of high importance to Karin Dreijer, who has publicly described themself as “genderqueer,” despite both members of the band being remarkably sparing with all personal details. In another of the most striking vocal performances on the album, “We Share Our Mother’s Health,” Dreijer even gets to sing a duet with themself, and embody two distinct characters at once.

Music: “We Share Our Mother’s Health”

“We Share Our Mother’s Health” can be read in the light of gender and sex dynamics, as well, particularly if you’re willing to read its twin narrators as representations of masculinity and femininity. Personally, though, I think that’s a bit too easy, and really, a bit too cisnormative. I think the album is more interesting if we embrace the fundamental uncertainty of identity, and the transgressive queerness of it all. That said, I prefer to think of “We Share Our Mother’s Health” as a piece about capitalism--the endless toiling and scrounging for more material comfort and security, and the emptiness left behind when that proves to be no pathway towards true happiness. Besides, it’s not like sexism and the class struggle don’t feed off of each other in the end. This track’s sense of cacophony, with voices nearly battling to drown each other out, shows its more strident, aggressive, and downright angry side, which it delivers as powerfully as it does those moody atmospheres.

Silent Shout is the perfect title for this album, given its emphasis on voicing internal and private laments that go unheard--and voicing them with this terrifying sense of primal scream catharsis. While I initially wasn’t overly fond of the album art, it’s grown on me a bit now that I’ve seen it blown up to a larger size. This central disc shape is certainly evocative of a record or a CD, and its industrial-looking lattice structure, with a mottled, grimey-looking texture, helps conjure the impression of machine-age ennui.

I think a lot of the enduring appeal of Silent Shout is its sense of mystery. A lot of that mystery is deliberately crafted iconoclasm, and part of the art--while promoting the album, The Knife were photographed wearing sinister, elaborate beaked “plague doctor” masks, and their live performances from this period shrouded the band in darkness to obfuscate their appearances. They’ve refused to accept awards for their music or attend award ceremonies, including one memorable incident in which they sent costumed representatives of feminist organisation Guerrilla Girls in their stead. After Silent Shout, the duo created an opera based on Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species in 2009, and released one more studio album in 2013: Shaking the Habitual.

Music: “A Tooth For an Eye”

Shaking the Habitual received mixed reviews, and so far, has proven to be the siblings’ final work together, though they remain active as musicians independently, with Karin Dreijer recording under the moniker “Fever Ray.” Part of the great myth of Silent Shout is the fact that nothing else in their discography really quite approaches its specific sound, and sharp precision of conceptual focus. It’s like the album is tailor made to stand perfectly alone, outside of context, perhaps even outside of genre.

For many of us, this great legend of lightning-in-a-bottle genius is infinitely alluring. But I’ve never really bought into it too thoroughly myself. I obviously adore Silent Shout, and I think it’s a Great Album. But, unlike many people who have showered it with praise, often claiming that they don’t enjoy “electronic music” overall, I’ve always been interested in a lot of heavy, angry, creepy synthesiser-based music, and so I never thought too much of listening to this and liking it. People praise Silent Shout for being unlike anything else, but I think it sounds like a lot of post-industrial dark wave, like Attrition or Chris & Cosey, and its themes of feminist rage feel like a strong parallel to that of more recent stars of noise music such as Pharmakon and Lingua Ignota. But that’s not to devalue what Silent Shout does achieve! I think it *is* a unique album...in the way that a bat is a unique animal. Much as bats are not the only creatures who fly, but stand out for having developed that ability despite their mammalian heritage, Silent Shout doesn’t actually take direct inspiration from the earlier music it sounds the most like. It ended up there through the aforementioned eldritch alchemy, combining trance and folk and Kate Bush to get something new. That’s still something worth celebrating! Silent Shout needn’t be a perfect enigma to be a stirring masterpiece of an album.

My overall top track on Silent Shout, which I bet will be a popular choice, is “Forest Families.” It’s equal parts bleak and strangely anthemic, defined by both the unease of adapting to a plainer and harsher existence, outside the bounds of society, as well as the release that music itself provides to so many of us as we seek comfort. Since music is so important to me, I’m a real sucker for music about the importance of music, and it feels particularly well-placed on an album that’s a cathartic listen in so many ways. That about wraps this one up; thank you for watching!

Music: “Forest Families”

#music #great albums #album review #album reviews #the knife #fever ray #silent shout

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curriebelle · 4 years

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Did you notice Knives Out playing one of the greatest marketing tricks Hollywood has ever seen?

All the trailers put Daniel Craig and his ridiculous accent front and center, with Chris Evans and Christopher Plummer as featured credits — and then the central character of Knives Out, surprise, is actually an immigrant woman of colour played by an all-but-unknown actress from Cuba*. I don’t think the film would have sold as well had it been honest about its central character. It sold itself based on its recognizable white male stars. And that was fuhking genius. Knives Out has a lot to say about race, gender, care work and immigration, but movies ABOUT those things don’t get popular unless they are brilliant. So Knives Out told us it was a campy detective film starring James Bond and Captain America, and it made a 700% return on its budget. People who never would have sat down for a movie about class discrimination sat through Knives Out.

I think it’s really fascinating to compare Knives Out with Parasite in particular, which came out the same year and is generally considered to be not only the best film of 2019, but possibly the best film of the entire decade**. I absolutely love both of these movies for what they are, and I think they’re both masterful and would happily watch them both again. The thing is that to me, Parasite is like...a medium-defining masterpiece, like an utterly perfect piece of cinema, and so it’s “better” than Knives Out in the sense that a 15/10 is better than a 10/10. They were both nominated for Best Original Screenplay and I’d have been delighted if Knives Out had won, except, you know... Parasite.

Both these movies are actually dealing with a very similar topic, which is the ever-growing class divide. Knives Out settles for a more classic yet still nuanced and pertinent depiction of the money-grubbing, backstabbing rich, while Parasite prefers to show the myopia and ignorance of the 1% and how that blindness sets the poor at each other’s throats. Unlike Knives Out, which can hide behind Kentucky fried Daniel Craig, Parasite can’t hide what it’s about: the actors are all people of colour, speaking a non-English language, and the mysterious blurbs for the film usually just say it’s about “a rich family and a poor family” to avoid spoiling the insanely brilliant plot.

Okay, so Parasite is a universally-lauded complete masterpiece while Knives Out is just an uncommonly good movie — but Knives Out’s box office gains still outstrip Parasite’s by about $40 million. Even more damningly, Knives Out made $165 million in North America while Parasite has grossed about $53 million in the same territory, with about $5 million of that coming from a post-Oscar Best Picture bump. $75 million of Parasite’s gross comes from within South Korea.

So, my point here isn’t that “North America is racist more people should see Parasite.” (Well, it’s not *just* that, because everyone should see Parasite.) My point is more complicated. So, we have two movies here with messages about class struggle. One of them was a very good movie that hid its messages through sneaky trailers, obfuscated its own diversity, sold itself as a detective romp, and made bank. The other movie is one of the best movies ever made, and even after it proved that by breaking Oscar records, by being so good that even the Academy couldn’t deny it Best Picture despite the notorious old boys’ club running the place, it still made considerably less money.

I’m not saying Parasite failed to reach its audience, because it IS a very culturally-specific movie — there’s a lot in there about language (who speaks Korean vs who speaks English and the power that reflects), history (North Korea comes into it) and even some jokes about the actors in the film that audiences outside South Korea wouldn’t get at first blush. And apparently like a fifth of South Korea saw it, so....yeah, that worked. But in order to reach beyond that, it had to be one of the best movies anyone had ever seen. Knives Out, meanwhile, was a genre movie that wasn’t afraid to lie in marketing to attract people who wouldn’t necessarily be receptive to its message. It reached the James Bond demographic despite carrying a much more socially critical message than Casino Royale. Parasite’s brilliance is something we can all learn from just by its utterly virtuosic filmmaking technique; but Knives Out’s trick is something we can all exploit just by thinking about our back-of-the-box blurbs, about how we pitch our stories, and how we hook people in. You could make a brilliant movie with diversity and social commentary — you could make Parasite (or Moonlight, or Carol). Or you could slip your diversity in, cover it with someone from the Famous White Chris Club, and reach people you wouldn’t otherwise. I really do think we need both strategies, and because I like genre fiction so much, I lean toward the latter. Going to Knives Out and seeing Ana de Armas at the middle of it was such a stunningly wonderful surprise,*** and I want that to happen to me again and again, until it’s not a surprise anymore.

Also, if you’re one of those people looking at famous people-on Twitter and just @‘ing every actor who liked Parasite with “mneh fneh you made a million on your last movie, you didn’t GET Parasite”, I hate to break it to you, but you didn’t ‘get’ Parasite either.

*okay Ana de Armas wasn’t completely unknown, she’d been in like four movies at that point — Blade Runner 2049 most notably — but tell me you would have recognized the name “Ana de Armas” in mid-2019 on sight.

** there are other contenders for this and it tends to depend on what you like in a movie. Mad Max: Fury Road, The Social Network, Moonlight — I think at that point the “best movie of the decade” comes down to what type of incredibly good movie you like best. I happen to like modern-Hitchcock black-comedy con-capers, so Parasite is my favourite... haven’t seen Mad Max yet though.

*** I went to see this film with my family, but we had to sit in different sections because the theatre was crowded. Apparently as soon as Marta showed up on screen, my mum leaned over to my sister and said “wow, she’s exactly [curriebelle’s] type....she’s gonna have such a crush on her”. She was right.

#parasite #knives out #ana de armas this is a secret marriage proposal in essay form i love u......

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daniel-vazquez · 3 years

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Comm Final

Shameless is a show which, according to Nylon Magazine, has been “has been lauded for its depiction of what it means to be lower-class in America, from the perspective of a white Midwestern family. The show has sparked conversations about race, poverty, class, queerness, sex, and addiction, and it’s easily become one of the most important shows on TV” (Ashe). The show has a large cast of characters, with Frank Gallagher as the father of 6 children, with a large supporting cast that comes in and out of the fold as needed to tell the story. There are multiple instances of the aforementioned issues that come with race, poverty, and queerness, and it is presented in a realistic yet engaging way that makes audiences root for the Gallagher family. Flood Magazine claims that “its depiction of the struggling class in Chicago is a most honest and accurate dissertation of urban abjection in popular culture. The show is not for the faint of heart. It is an unapologetic discussion of urban poverty in America—raw, honest, and dark, employing humor to offset the bleakness” (Spry). An analysis of the gender & sexuality topics that come up in Shameless is needed to appreciate not only how rare it is for this to be seen in media, but also how well it is handled in Shameless.

Shameless offers a unique look at the way that sexuality is extremely accepted from the main cast of characters and only relies on a few instances of bigotry coming into play for the storyline to take place. These instances occur mostly from religious institutions acting in hatred against the LGBTQ+ community and have the churches act as the bad guy for the show’s purpose. The fact that Showtime allows the show to have created such dialogue shows how far programming has come over the last 50 years. “At its inception, television rarely presented sexual themes […]. One theme that has been especially ignored is the portrayal of sexual issues related to gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals. Despite the lifting of some longstanding taboos over the last several decades, television programming has been called ‘compulsory heterosexual’, and depictions of the sexual issues associated with nonheterosexuals may remain relatively rare (Fisher, et al.).

The show has homosexuals in the form of Ian Gallagher and Mickey Milkovich, the sexually fluid in the case of one of Ian’s boyfriends, and eventually Debbie Gallagher, who started as a youngster in the show, developed from a curious teenager to a confident Bisexual, with many more of the supporting cast belonging to the LGBTQ+. Television came from a point where “there was not a single representation of a gay character. […] One teen drama scene, for example, showed two male characters jumping apart embarrassed after being ‘caught’ practicing dancing together (Batchelor).

What is especially refreshing from Shameless is how sexuality is only seen as a character trait that someone has but does not take over their personality. There are some episodes where the main topic might be someone’s sexuality, with Debbie, in particular, having a couple of episodes to cover her sexuality arc, but in a show, with now 11 seasons, a couple of episodes of delving into the topic does not cover the depth of these characters. An almost running gag that we see is how Mickey is a bottom despite coming off as aggressive and very manly, but he does not flaunt it but is also not embarrassed by it, he just claims to like what he likes. This concept of a top or a bottom in the LBTGQ+ community is something that I am not going to pretend to be an expert on, but how Mickey does not care what anyone thinks is something you could very easily see develop as a plot point in a show of lesser quality.

Mickey comes from a very damaged home life to the point where his father hired a prostitute for Mickey to engage in sex to set him straight, hindering Mickey’s self-acceptance of his sexuality. He pretended to be not cared about Ian because of this, even going so far as to have sex with women and even raising the child he has with the prostitute. However, Mickey develops into a person who comes out to everyone he knows at a bar he frequents for Ian, and even exchanging blows with his father to the point that police come, who end up releasing Mickey as one of the officers was gay himself. The way in which Mickey comes out is not only a great moment on its own, but the fact that he did it for Ian shows that he is much more complicated than someone who is just gay.

The realistic portrayal of Trans people is something that has been an issue in the past when it came to social media. Even if it did come up, it could often come up in a negative light. An example of this is in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, where an attractive woman has negative connotations associated with her simply because they are Trans. Even on a smaller scale, media genders certain things, such as pink, barbies, and cooking being much more feminine, and the color blue, trucks, and wrestling often being associated with manliness. The example of gendering things does not have much to do about Trans, but it still plays a role in the way gender affects much more than one would think.

In recent times, there has been an “increase in the TGD population, estimated to include up to 1% of the U.S. population, is likely due to an increase in the raw population of individuals who identify openly as TGD […] Coinciding with this rise, there has been an increase of TGD representation in media, through celebrities like Caitlyn Jenner, supporting characters in films and television, and shows and movies where TGD characters and their journeys are the central theme. While this increased representation is positive on its surface, it is by no means without flaws and TGD persons are still wildly underrepresented in the media” (Mocarski).

Gender has evolved in Shameless from something that was used as almost a one-off joke at the beginning of the show to something that goes more in-depth with an introduction of a recurring character in the case of Trevor, a boyfriend of Ian Gallagher. At first, Molly, a child that Lip Gallagher ends up helping when their mom kills herself is thought to be a girl, as they are wearing dresses and have long hair. However, it is eventually revealed that the girl turns out to have a penis, and as Molly has a small role, it is only addressed humorously by having Fiona Gallagher eventually tell Molly that they were a boy.

Around 5 seasons later, Trevor was introduced to the show and eventually became Ian’s boyfriend. Trevor’s gender played a key role in the shows’ story as Ian became more acclimated to his friends who were much savvier when it came to the LGBTQ+ world, as well as even having different sexual interactions that Ian is used to. The pair got into an argument about who would be a top and a bottom with Trevor having issues with being a bottom since he thought Ian assumed it was that case since Trevor now identifies as male. It turned out that they both just happened to top, and the pair laughed it off as it had nothing to do with gender at all. This gives hope to the future of Trans representation in the media, as Trevor goes on to become a much more developed person outside of just being Trans, but the plot points that do focus on his gender are done tastefully.

Gender and sexuality have come a long way in the real world, and the portrayal of it in Shameless is something that is not common, and on top of that, portrayed in a realistic and positive light. Having both main characters as well as those on the periphery be a part of the LGBTQ+ community doesn’t over or underemphasize the topic, and the way that the storyline takes place ensures that there are not any moments where a character is seen only as their sexuality or their gender. The beauty of the show itself is that these two topics barely scrape the surface of Shameless. There are many issues such as race, socioeconomic status, gentrification, even mass media, and cults encompassing some of the show’s storyline. Every time the show hits the mark and represents these issues in a realistic yet engaging way. As Nylon’s Stephanie Ashe says, “Shameless has taken a hyper-specific set of circumstances and found the universality of them. And they’ve managed to do it without ever mocking the subjects of their story. Treating them with the care they deserve helps us realize that they’re not so removed from our own experiences.”

Bibliography

Ashe, Stephanie. Nylon, 2017, www.nylon.com/articles/shameless-important-television-show-working-class-depiction.

Batchelor, S.A, Kitzinger, J. Burtney, E. “Representing young people's sexuality in the ‘youth’ media”, Health Education Research, Volume 19, Issue 6, December 2004, 669–676, https://doi.org/10.1093/her/cyg082

Fisher, Deborah A et al. “Gay, lesbian, and bisexual content on television: a quantitative analysis across two seasons.” Journal of homosexuality vol. 52,3-4 (2007), 167-88. doi:10.1300/J082v52n03_08

Mocarski, Richard et al. “The Rise of Transgender and Gender Diverse Representation in the Media: Impacts on the Population.” Communication, culture & critique vol. 12,3 (2019): 416-433. doi:10.1093/ccc/tcz031

Spry, Mike. “Poverty on Television: ‘Shameless’ and the American Dream.” Flood Magazine, 19 Dec. 2016, floodmagazine.com/42253/shameless-american-dream/.

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justforbooks · 4 years

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The Better Half by Sharon Moalem review – on the genetic superiority of women

Let’s hear it for the female of the species and (more guardedly) for her second X-chromosome! Female superiority in colour vision, immune response, longevity, even basic survival from birth to death are illustrated in Sharon Moalem’s The Better Half. After decades, if not centuries, of bad press for women and their vulnerable biology, this book argues that in fact “almost everything that is biologically difficult to do in life … is done better by females”.

Moalem, a Canadian-born physician, is a research geneticist who has identified two new rare genetic conditions. He has worked across the world in paediatric medicine, including clinics for HIV-infected infants and is also a biotechnology entrepreneur and bestselling author. The Better Half is his latest foray into the field of popular science, and presents a general argument for the superiority of women’s biology to men’s.

In most circumstances, a human female has two X-chromosomes, one from her father and one from her mother; a male has just one, inherited from his mother, which is paired with a Y-chromosome, inherited from his father. Moalem believes that the X-chromosome has always received a poor press, and that it is time this negative view is counteracted. He draws on swathes of medical and historical data to show that, in many instances, the superiority of women’s biology is explicitly linked to their possession of the second X-chromosome. The greater complexity of women’s biology, he claims, is the secret of their success – it is more difficult to make a female but, once made, she trumps the male in her lifelong survival skills, for instance in her hyper efficient immune system shrugging off infection and maximising the benefits of vaccination – which means that females can avoid the consequences of a wide range of life threatening events ranging from starvation and cancer to, Moalem has cautiously concluded, Covid-19.

In mainstream genetics it was long held that, despite having two X-chromosomes, female cells only made use of one: the second randomly switched off or deactivated early on in embryonic development, a process rather summarily described as an instance of “genetic redundancy”. There was some evidence that the deactivation reduced female chances of succumbing to X-linked problems, due to the availability of an undamaged back-up. It was acknowledged, for example (though rather grudgingly), that women generally escaped being colour blind. Moalem notes that when he was studying genetics there was much emphasis on the tiny Y-chromosome as “what makes a man”. He observes wryly that maybe this positivity was related to the fact that “most of the people who were speaking breathlessly about the Y had one as well”.

Now a new spin on the X-inactivation story is emerging in genetics. Via a process called “escape from X-inactivation”, it turns out that the silenced X-chromosome is not so silent after all – there are escapees which may continue to offer back-up services, for instance providing extra cellular recovery options in the face of traumatic injury. It is to the benefits offered by this flexible availability within different cells that Moalem attributes the secrets of women’s biological superiority.

Statistics going back as far as 1662 show women living longer than men, and today’s figures show that 95% of people who have reached the age of 110 and over are female. In sport, women’s success in races such as ultra-marathons offer a different perspective on what it means to be physically superior. In the spirit of Angela Saini’s book Inferior, Moalem notes that this superiority has largely been ignored by medical science. And he discusses the medical trial data whose absence is observed by Caroline Criado-Perez in Invisible Women, her exploration of how the world is designed for men. Medicine needs to stop ignoring the secrets of women’s biological successes, Moalem argues, and find ways of harnessing them to improve the survival chances of the whole of the human race.

Imagine you live in a world where most individuals can see 1m colours. But in one group of these people (let’s call them males), about 8% cannot tell the difference between colours such as red and green, and a smaller number are totally colour blind. In a second group in this population (let’s call them females), almost all can see the standard 1m colours, but some (perhaps as many as 15%) can see 100m colours. Would you excitedly rave about the amazing talent of this latter group? Or would you just describe them as “not usually colour blind”? This same group has an immune system that has a profound talent to fight off many forms of infection and reap major benefits from vaccinations – with the down side that sometimes such hyper efficiency can lead to autoimmune disorders such as multiple sclerosis. Would you celebrate the former or emphasise the latter? For years, it is the drawbacks that have been underlined.

The Better Half is an eye-opening book. In explaining why the advantages that accompany females’ greater genetic options have to date been largely ignored, Moalem points to “paradigm blindness”, and to the fact that research geneticists rarely get out in the field to notice, for example, the much greater survival rates of girls in paediatric ICUs (rates which, he discovers, have been clearly obvious to the nurses doing the frontline caring).

I take issue with one part of his chapter on “The Male Brain”, for the moment setting aside the unproven assumption that the brains of men are different from the brains of women. Moalem chooses to consider autism, and it appears as a given in his book that autism is more common in boys than girls (itself an assumption that is increasingly being challenged). Yet at the more impaired end of the autism spectrum, it is possible that there are as many girls as boys, and his suggestion that females have a different “kind” of autism doesn’t quite prove his wider argument. The X-linked disorders such as “fragile-X” or Rett syndrome receive only a passing mention – not surprisingly perhaps as they run counter to his argument about the superiority of the X-chromosome.

What about hormones? Moalem has perhaps missed a good opportunity to counter oestrogen’s frequently negative press, and to laud its potentially neuroprotective effects. The greater susceptibility of women to Alzheimer’s disease is put down by Moalem to a form of anti-inflammatory process linked to an over efficient immune system; their lesser susceptibility to Parkinson’s disease (surely a possible inclusion in the list of female genetic successes) is unexplained.

One section of the book focuses on “why women’s health is not men’s health”, and considers the failures of drug companies to test their products on females as well as males. For sure this has had detrimental consequences on, for example, the accuracy of dosage rates. But in at least one of the examples he gives, that of Ambien, body mass and blood volume are key factors in calculating dosage rates: because people vary enormously in size and shape, simply dividing test participants into males and females still risks inaccuracy. He is talking about averages, it’s true, but even so Moalem seems firmly wedded to the notion that genetic females and genetic males can be neatly categorised into two distinct types, and that the understanding of genetic sex will provide all the answers we need.

The impression given in The Better Half is that there is a lifelong free-ranging choice between X-chromosomes available to the female, her cells dancing back and forth between the best options that will help her to heal quicker after a car crash or to overcome the bacterial infection that might lead to an ulcer. There are brief and tantalising hints about the “escapees” from X-inactivation in several chapters of Moalem’s book, but it is a shame that we are never given a full, head-on account.

Yet this book is full of wonderful titbits of information – from the existence of a female prostate gland to the number of honey bee flying miles it takes to make 1lb of honey. The celebration of the genetic diversity offered by the female’s second X-chromosome is wholehearted and the examples Moalem gives are highly effective. He has written a powerful antidote to the myth of the “weaker sex”.

• The Better Half: On the Genetic Superiority of Women by Sharon Moalem is published by Allen Lane (RRP £20).

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

#JUST FOR BOOKS #The Better Half #Sharon Moalem

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bluewatsons · 4 years

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Jill Fields, "Where my dreidel at?": Representing Jewish Identity in Orange Is the New Black, 13 J Jewish Identities 1 (2020)

The Netflix original series Orange Is the New Black ranks among the most watched shows available for streaming online or on cable. In June 2016, the first episode of Season 4 drew 6.7 million views in 72 hours, making it second in viewership only to HBO's popular Game of Thrones.1 It also garnered critical acclaim, receiving a Peabody Award in addition to many Golden Globe, Emmy, and Screen Actors Guild nominations and awards.2 The series is based on a memoir by Piper Kerman, who served thirteen months in a minimum security women's prison in Danbury, Connecticut after her conviction on a drug-related offense she had committed ten years earlier. Created by Jenji Kohan, the series is a "dramedy" that mixes comedic touches with poignant stories based upon Piper's prison experiences and those of others she lived with and worked alongside while incarcerated. When the series debuted in 2013, it was lauded for its diverse female cast—in terms of racial, ethnic, and sexual identities—and for its sympathetic depiction of the plight of the primarily poor women who serve time behind bars.3 Orange Is the New Black (OITNB) clearly broke new ground in representing women who are rarely seen in mainstream cultural texts, especially in prominent roles. Kohan revealed in an NPR interview that she used the character of the blonde Piper—whose last name was changed to Chapman in the show and who labels herself a WASP in both her memoir and on screen—as a "Trojan Horse" in order to sell the series to Netflix executives, who green-lighted a project that began with Chapman as the lead, but quickly evolved in an inclusive direction by elevating women of color to co-starring status.4

Academic assessment of OITNB has celebrated aspects of the series, but also critiqued ways in which the show upholds stereotypes about women of color, lesbians, transwomen, and older women, and how it draws upon women's prison film conventions that objectify incarcerated female bodies, albeit at times self-knowingly.5 Less noted thus far by scholars is the prominent attention the show gives to its Jewish characters and themes.6 Though the series deserves praise for shining light on diverse female experiences, its treatment of Jews draws upon long-standing tropes. The show deploys, for example, the classic construction of the interfaith relationship, seen for over a century in American culture; the enduring American television tradition of covert rather than openly Jewish identity; and reliance on the conversion narrative in portraying Jewish beliefs and rituals. These mechanisms highlight, yet also displace, the depiction of Jewishness on the series and the contributions of its Jewish creator, writers, directors, and actors.

Studies of Jewish representation in American popular culture have addressed both the presence and absence of Jewish characters and narratives. Documentation of the Jewish presence in film and television has produced assessments and generated debates about whether particular portrayals draw upon or challenge antisemitic tropes, provide realistic depictions of the Jewish-American experience, or sidestep considerations of what it means to be Jewish.7 Over time, and in tandem with emerging trends in feminist analysis and cultural studies, investigations of the representation of Jews in film and television began to also consider how particular narratives construct Jewish identity, especially in regard to gender, and explore contradictions embedded in mass cultural texts that reference Jewish experiences. Though ire, fear, outrage, and appreciation continue to motivate some research and give it urgency, analysis questioning assumptions about claims to authenticity, acknowledging diversity within Jewish communities, and drawing parallels in addition to contrasts with how a range of minorities are represented both in front of and behind the camera has provided new insights and opened up new ways of thinking about larger frameworks as well as specific texts. Nonetheless, asking whether products of the culture industry such as OITNB are "good for the Jews" remains relevant even when also taking into account a range of Jewish experiences and practices, the potential instability of identity formations, and possibilities for conflicting interpretations.

Important Jewish characters in OITNB include Piper Chapman's fiancé Larry Bloom, inmate Nicky Nichols—who I assert is a crypto-Jew through Season 5—and African-American inmate Cindy Hayes, who converts to Judaism in Season 3. It is significant as well that a number of actors, writers, and directors employed by the show in addition to series creator and producer Kohan are also Jewish. In what follows, I explore relevant aspects of the source material—Kerman's memoir—with a primary focus on how the fictional characters and their stories create Jewish moments in series episodes. I also suggest ways in which the representation of Jews connects with the show's Jewish cast and crew. Moreover, the contrast between the show's groundbreaking status and its employment of practices that date back to earlier periods in the history of television reveal the persistence of problematics for including fully realized Jews and their narratives on the small screen.

Larry Bloom, Masculinity, and Jewish Betrayal

Piper's Jewish fiancé Larry Bloom appears in the first episode of Season 1 and remains in the series through Season 2.8 The real Piper's real-life Jewish fiancé (now husband), who is a successful writer with the far less iconic Jewish last name of Smith, is in Kerman's memoir supportive and loving throughout Piper's prison ordeal, as are his equally wonderful parents. Larry Bloom of the series, an aspiring writer who struggles to get a paying gig, is initially kind and defends Piper to his awful Portnoyesque parents, who try to get him to dump his shiksa girlfriend. Larry has internalized his father's view of the blonde gentile woman as exotic and uses the term himself when proposing to Piper after she is sentenced. "Why would I want a felonious former Lesbian WASP shiksa who is about to go to prison to marry me? Why? Because this underachieving, underemployed Jewboy loves her."9 Larry Smith describes meeting Piper in similar terms: "Piper was pretty by anyone's standards, but blonde, blue-eyed, Waspy girls are catnip for hairy Jewish guys like myself." He further describes "classic Piper: steely and self-contained. I grew up with a different window into the world of women, one where they are a little neurotic and a lot needy."10 This well-worn construction of Jewish women has appeared in a range of media and texts, including interfaith marriage narratives depicted in such films as The Heartbreak Kid (1972) and Along Came Polly (2004), and in the 2015 comment by then-presidential candidate Donald Trump calling Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz "crazy" and "highly neurotic."11 In OITNB, Larry further demonstrates his assimilationist impulse by preparing roasted pig for the couple's last meal together before Piper's self-surrender at Litchfield prison; their first snack in the prison visiting room is pork rinds.12

Larry is played by actor Jason Biggs, who has portrayed Jewish men in films such as American Pie (1999), though not Jewish himself.13 Soon after OITNB debuted, articles such as "Does Orange Is the New Black Have a Jewish Problem?" expressed concern about yet another iteration of Jewish masculinity as having "that tortured, brooding, nebbish quality we've come to associate with Woody Allen."14 Moreover, as other characters are humanized via flashbacks that reveal their difficult personal histories and draw viewers' sympathies, Larry's weaknesses become more apparent as the narrative unfolds and he draws viewers' disgust. A 2014 article, "A Guide to The Internet's Love of Hating Larry Bloom From 'Orange Is the New Black,'" concluded Larry was so detested he was the object of "world-class hatred."15

Larry's multiple betrayals of Piper propel his development into—or revelation as—a despised, nebbishy Judas. His first step down that path is watching episodes of Mad Men alone, after promising Piper he would wait to watch them with her after her release. To do so guilt-free, he turns over a framed photo of the two of them on his coffee table. As one critic called it, "Only a truly terrible human being would go against his loving girlfriend's wishes and watch their show without her. But turning the frame over? That's just cold-blooded."16 Larry's initial betrayal leads to more. When his only chance to get paid for writing an article requires detailing the prison experiences that Piper has shared with him in phone calls and visits, he goes ahead without her permission.17 She finds out about his New York Times "Modern Love" column from her prison counselor and, after viewers see Larry excitedly buying up copies of the newspaper, we find out that he has revealed information that endangers the tenuous relationships Piper has been building and needs to survive prison.18 In a subsequent episode, despite Piper's distress, Larry cozies up to an NPR reporter he meets at a Thanksgiving dinner, which results in a radio appearance sharing similar stories. Again, Piper only finds out about this after the fact, and listens in horror as Larry further humiliates both her and inmates she knows.19

The real Larry did write a "Modern Love" column about his relationship with an inmate, though it was published well after Piper's sentence ended, and a month before the 2010 publication of her memoir. Likely timed to promote Kerman's book prior to its release, the column most importantly does not betray her or her prison friends. Instead, Larry focuses on his devotion to Piper throughout her incarceration and the men he met who were also visiting their wives or girlfriends. The column ends with claims that his consistent visits and phone calls were not testaments to his character but instead prove how wonderful his fiancée is.20 In contrast, Netflix Larry's multiple betrayals reach their ultimate conclusion when he sleeps with Polly (Maria Dizzia), Piper's married best friend and business partner, and then dumps Piper for her. Larry and Polly even move in together and are shown enjoying their comfortable New York City lives as Larry and Piper used to do.21

Expressing dismay about how the show transformed Larry's character by drawing upon familiar tropes that denigrate Jewish men and Jews generally, and identifying differences between the two portrayals of Larry, is a fair, but ultimately narrow criticism. After all, adapting books into movies or television shows, whether fiction or non-fiction, requires alterations. The real Larry, for example, explains that translating Netflix Larry into what he calls a "schmuck" made the show more interesting.22 Another way to frame that transformation is to ask what purpose the nebbishy Judas/Jewdas performs in the OITNB narrative. I would argue that Larry's betrayal not only relieves the show from an unexciting story of a reliable boyfriend, but also displaces questions about possibly exploitative aspects of Kerman's best-seller and hit series onto the despicable and feminized Jewish man. This narrative turn burnishes the author's—and series creator Kohan's—celebratory claims to tell rather than sell the stories of incarcerated women who will not profit from their commercial dissemination.23

Kohan's OITNB cookbook, which features "Larry's Orange and Black Peppercorn Pulled Pork," is suggestive of her commercial goals and conflicted take on just how seriously the show and the discourse it has generated consider prison conditions.24 In addition, Kerman's former girlfriend, Cleary Wolters, who facilitated Kerman's criminal involvement in the drug trade, states in her memoir that she was never contacted by anyone connected with the book or the series prior to their release. In OITNB, her fictionalized character Alex Vause ends up in the same prison with Piper and their relationship is a central story line. When the Netflix series debuted, Wolters was out of prison and working and, though her employers knew the broad outlines of her criminal past, she had not shared details nor come out as gay at work when outed by the series. Wolters feared for her job security, aware of her tenuous status as an ex-felon. Within one day of the series release, the identity of the "real Alex Vause" was posted online, which caused her anxiety that former inmates might track her down. Ultimately, however, Wolters felt grateful that the success of OITNB allowed her to also share in print the sobering lessons of her criminal past and prison experiences.25 Nonetheless, the risks provoked by Wolters's inclusion in the memoir and series raise the question of exploitation, a charge against the show conceptualized as "trauma porn." Ashleigh Shackleford popularized the term in her assessment, shared by a number of African-American critics, that the show depicted "bleak narratives about the experience of people of color for the entertainment of those who have never lived those experiences."26 Such critiques provide further evidence for reading Larry's many betrayals as a displacement or hedge against similar charges directed toward Kerman or the series creators. As a long-standing trope, Jewish betrayal is easily identifiable and works to distract or absolve others of incriminating behavior.

The Jewish Inmate Problem: Levy

The treatment of a woman who, like Wolters, appears in the memoir but who has drawn less attention because she did not become an easily identifiable character in the show, provides an additional avenue for exploring Jewish identity in OITNB. Kerman's descriptions of Levy, a Jewish inmate, suggests the translation of Larry into a Judas can be indeed identified as a "Jewish problem," and one that originated in the memoir rather than the series. Consideration of the memoir is uncommon in studies of the series; Hilary Malatino's analysis is an important exception that provides a point of comparison below.27 A French Moroccan Jew, Levy is the only inmate whose behavior and demeanor Kerman derides repeatedly in her memoir. Levy is a true "other" in prison. As Kerman explains early on:

When a new person arrived their tribe—white, black, Latino, or the few and far between "others"—would … get them settled and steer them through their arrival. If you fall into that "other" category—Native American, Asian, Middle Eastern—then you got a patchwork welcome committee of … women from the dominant tribes.28

Levy thus falls outside or in between even the "other" category, but her status as a Member of the Tribe without a tribe and the impact her singularity might have had on her ability to in fact "get settled" is not considered by the otherwise compassionate Kerman. Described in the memoir as "tiny," Kerman scorns Levy for being "totally useless at electrical studies" despite "preening about her Sorbonne education."29 She is also criticized for her decision not to allow her children to come visit her because she does not "want them to see her in prison," despite Kerman noting without judgement others who "did not want their people to see them in a place like this."30 Kerman even positions Levy below guards in likeability: "'Zey have no class,'" sneered Levy. I didn't like prison guards, but she was insufferable."31 This excerpt is also an example of how Levy is singled out by Kerman, who reproduces her accent in the text to a greater degree than any other prisoner's. Levy is also ridiculed for crying more often than Kerman deems appropriate, though Kerman writes that when seeing an inmate cry after visiting hours are over, "you smiled sympathetically or touched their shoulder."32 Together, these comments justify Levy's status as:

the unifying factor in the [electrical] shop: the rest of us united against her. She was insufferable, crying daily and complaining loudly and constantly about her measly six-month sentence, asking inappropriate personal questions, trying to boss people around, and making appalling and loud statements about other prisoners' appearance and lack of education sophistication, or "class," as she put it. … Most of the time she was nervous-verging-on-hysterical, which manifested in dramatic physical symptoms; an astonishing hive-like swelling made her look like the Elephant Man, and her always sweating hands made her particularly useless for working with electricity.33

Though we do not learn the specifics regarding the cause of Levy's incarceration, Kerman mentions Levy was "whisked away to testify against her chiseler ex-boyfriend."34 However, the worst offense committed by Levy, according to Kerman, occurs after her release when she is interviewed by the Hartford Courant in September 2004, just before Martha Stewart's incarceration. Kerman reports the "Camp freaked out" that Barbara, as Levy is referred to in the newspaper article, describes the prison as a "big hotel" with "an ice machine, ironing boards," "two libraries" and "amazing food," and that she says she enjoyed not having to cook, clean, drive or buy gas. Kerman responded to the article in her memoir by "pictur[ing] Levy, swollen with hives, looking like the Elephant Man, crying every single day over her six-month sentence and sneering at anyone she thought was not 'classy.'" Though Kerman states the "reporter got many minor facts wrong," she and other inmates who "are outraged by the false claim that [they] could buy Haagen-Dazs ice cream" at the commissary blame Levy for the error. The prisoner in charge of the kitchen, Pop in the memoir and Red in the show, is upset and confused:

Piper, I just don't understand it. Why would she lie? You have the opportunity to get the truth out there about this place, and instead she makes up these lies? We have nothing here, and she makes it sound like a picnic.35

Kerman then explains to her readers that Levy lied because she "didn't want to admit to herself, let alone to the outside world, that she had been placed in a ghetto, just as ghetto as they had once had in Poland." Kerman here assumes that she understands the Jewish ghettos of World War II-era Poland better than Levy. She continues:

It was too painful … for Levy and others (especially the middle-class prisoners) to admit that they had been classed as undesirables, compelled against their will into containment, and forced into scarcity without even the dignity of chosen austerity. So instead, she said it was Club Fed.36

Kerman uses the ghetto metaphor to help her readers understand the "revolving door between our urban and rural ghettos and the formal ghetto of our prison system" in the United States and the difficulty of escaping either.37 However, Kerman, in collapsing distinctions, overlooks differences between Nazi ghettos and those she references, and also ways in which targeted communities form alliances based in shared histories of pain and oppression. Moreover, she does not consider the possibility if not probability that Levy has family members who perished, or who suffered and survived the Holocaust in France and Morocco. In a comparable critique, though one focusing on gender identity, Malatino finds Kerman "lacks a framework for understanding trans subjectivity," and uses "classic othering strategies … [that] serve to de-authenticate transfeminine gender expressions."38 Kerman similarly lacks intersectional frameworks that could account for Levy's status as both wielding middle-class privilege and experiencing her subjectivity as an isolated and vulnerable minority.

Lacking fuller consideration of Levy's multiple facets, Kerman also did not mention that Levy in the interview lauded her fellow prisoners as "classy" and defended them against charges that sexual assault was common. For Levy, "The worst part about being there was being counted. They count you like an animal." Whether intentional or not, her emphasis on this aspect of prison life being exceptionally difficult for her evokes the experiences of Jews in Nazi camps during the Holocaust, an allusion that escapes Kerman. The Courant also sympathetically reported Levy's decision not to see her children, which Levy states was the hardest part of her stay, and an effort to maintain her dignity.39

Levy indeed may have been annoying. But that alone does not explain why Kerman devotes so much attention to her. In assessing what work she performs in the narrative, I argue Levy serves several functions. First, she is a vehicle for the middle-class Kerman to distance herself from those of her own class and to legitimate her claim that she accepts her shared status with poor undesirables, which other middle-class women prisoners like Levy do not. Second, she confirms the view of Jewish women as needy and neurotic, a dominant caricature even promulgated by Kerman's real-life Jewish husband. Levy thus also is a vehicle Kerman uses to elide her possible association with reviled Jewish femininity via her relationship with a Jewish man. Third, Levy translates into Netflix Larry as they are both Judases who in self-interest betray the experiences of incarcerated women in mass media forums. Levy-Larry are categorically unable to truly understand who those women are or identify with them, unlike the transcendent Kerman. Thus Levy-Larry is the mechanism by which Kerman and by default Kohan distance themselves from assessments that they are profiting from the ordeals of women who do not have similar professional opportunities to do so.40 Moreover, the construction of the justifiably hated if not abject Jew that results from Levy's transgressive behavior and Larry's increasingly despicable acts creates more possibilities for the diverse female inmates to be viewed sympathetically by readers and viewers.

OITNB and Television's Crypto-Jews

The portrayal of Jewish identity on the television series OITNB contains further complexities, as Jewish elements beyond the Bloom stereotypes are depicted from its earliest episodes. A mechanism for simultaneously including and excluding Jews in television is the long-standing practice of the crypto-Jewish character. Leslie Fiedler first used the term in 1964 to describe the phenomenon of characters whose Jewish identity is hidden, like the original crypto-Jews, Spanish Jews forced to convert in 1492 whose Mexican and Mexican-American descendants maintained Jewish practices for centuries typically without knowing the origins of their family traditions.41 Fiedler deployed the term critically in analyzing Willy Loman in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman and other characters penned by mid-twentieth-century Jewish-American writers such as Paddy Chayefsky, Bernard Malamud, and Norman Mailer. Fielder deplored the effect of "characters who are in habit, speech, and condition typically Jewish American, but who are presented as something else—general American," as "pseudo-universalizing." As a result, "the works … lose authenticity and strength" and constitute a "failure to remember that the inhabitants of Dante's Hell or Joyce's Dublin are more universal as they are more Florentine or Irish."42

Jewish Studies media critics such as Jeffrey Shandler, David Zurawik, and Vincent Brooks found the crypto-Jew concept useful in describing television characters whose Jewish identity is ambiguous, hidden, or suppressed but hinted at through narrative gestures, personal qualities, or physical features and often by being played by a Jewish actor. These critics explain that the crypto-Jew phenomenon was born of concern largely on the part of Jewish television executives that shows that appeared "too Jewish" would not appeal to most Americans and would make them vulnerable to charges of Jewish control of the media. The practice emerged in television's "Golden Era," after the popular radio and then television show The Gold-bergs ended its twenty-six-year run in 1955. The Goldbergs depicted an observant Jewish family of modest means comprised of immigrant parents and America-born children living in New York City. Matriarch Molly Goldberg (Gertrude Berg) was a beloved mass culture icon known for her down-to-earth wisdom and endearing malapropisms. Despite its broad appeal—Berg won the first Emmy awarded for Best Actress in 1950—Jewish television moguls such as William Paley, who headed CBS, made it clear that no new shows with Jewish leading characters would be aired. This attitude has been attributed to television executives' fears that Jewish programming would bring unwanted attention and therefore problems to Jews working in the medium. Occasionally, Jewish characters appeared in Jewish-themed episodes of shows from westerns like Rawhide (1959–1965) and Bonanza (1959–1973) to procedurals such as The F.B.I (1965–1974). However, the maxim "write Yiddish, cast British" became the rule through the 1970s. It was implemented most famously in network discussions about what became The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961–1966). Created by Carl Reiner, who planned to star, the sitcom was based on his life as a television comedy writer and head of a Jewish family living in the suburbs. Innovative in depicting both its main character's home and work life, CBS agreed to put the show in the prime time schedule if Reiner, et al. would step aside for a "less ethnic" cast. The one exception in the final ensemble was supporting character Buddy Sorrel, played by Morey Amsterdam, though his Jewish identity was rarely referenced.43

In the 1970s, "write Yiddish, cast British" remained a guiding principle on network television, though popular shows such as Barney Miller (1974–1982) and Welcome Back Kotter (1975–1979) featured lead characters with familiar Jewish identifiers, such as their New York City origins and speech patterns, and who were played by Jewish actors. Nonetheless, such characters remained crypto-Jews, as story lines never referenced or confirmed their Jewish identity. Rhoda (1974–1978), a spin off from The Mary Tyler Moore Show starring the non-Jewish Valerie Harper as Mary's Jewish friend Rhoda Morgenstern, was an exception, a sitcom about a Jewish woman. Even after the late 1980s and 1990s saw the return of the Jewish female lead in The Nanny (1993–1999) and Will & Grace (1998–2006), and the Jewish leading man in dramas thirtysomething (1987–1991) and Northern Exposure (1990–1995), the crypto-Jew remained an important creature of network television. Crypto-Jews of this era include George Costanza, Kramer, and Elaine on Seinfeld (1989–1998) and Rachel Green, Monica Geller, and Ross Geller on Friends (1994–2004). In an echo of the decision to recast what became The Dick Van Dyke Show, NBC executives insisted the Seinfeld characters, who were created as Jews, not remain so. Only Jerry Seinfeld remained identifiably Jewish, which was unavoidable as his character was based on the already known Jewish comedian's real persona.44

Despite this decades-long context and an emerging self-referential and fearless Jewish sensibility in twentieth-first-century cable programming personified by Jon Stewart on The Daily Show, Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm, and Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson's Broad City, and by the Amazon series Transparent, celebrated as the "Jewiest show ever," all of which found broad audiences, Orange Is the New Black features crypto-Jews among its diverse cast.45 Jewish actors in the series in recurring roles that began in the first season include Yael Stone, Constance Shulman, Barbara Rosenblatt, and Natasha Lyonne. Constance Shulman's character Yoga Jones's potential identity as a crypto-Jew is tipped off in a visual cue. As the inmates prepare for the December holidays by decorating the prison, Jones tapes a two-dimensional dreidel decoration to the wall upside down. Whether this indicates ignorance or a sign of Jewish distress (or Jews in distress), like the meaning of flying the American flag upside down, it is significant that this moment precedes, and perhaps precipitates, the scene where Jones's back story is revealed in flashback. Though nothing in the character's background particularly suggests she is Jewish, that she becomes a Buddhist after her conviction for mistakenly shooting and killing a neighbor's child when protecting her remote marijuana crop might be, as so many American Buddhists are Jewish, they are known as "JuBus." Jones's story also evokes the television character Dharma Finkelstein of Dharma & Greg (1997–2002) whose father is a Jewish hippie and befuddled pothead.46

Drug offender Nicky Nichols is the most prominent and clearly identifiable crypto-Jew on OITNB throughout its first five seasons. Yet a case can be made as well for Yael Stone's Lorna Morello. Stone, for example, was originally considered for the part of Nicky Nichols, but instead was cast as the working-class Italian-American Lorna Morello. This cultural slippage between Italian Americans and Jewish Americans has been long noted. In 1964, for example, Leslie Fiedler cited Paddy Chayefsky's Italian American Marty as a Jewish American being "presented as something else."47 More recently, Dominique Ruggieri and Elizabeth Leebron in their research on Jewish- and Italian-American women on television conclude that ever since Mama Rosa debuted in 1950, shortly after the transition of The Goldbergs from radio to television, both Jewish- and Italian-American women have been portrayed as:

selfish, pushy, materialistic, domineering, manipulative, assertive, loud, shallow, whiny, demanding, man-hunting, weight-conscious, high-maintenance, shopping-crazed bargain hunters, possessive, controlling, unmarried, success-oriented, food-oriented, asexual, and unattractive. Physical qualities that epitomize these characters include large noses, big hair, a dark complexion and issues with their bodies. The positive characteristics linked to these ethnic portrayals include strong family orientation, loyalty, and devotion as mothers.48

In addition, several prominent Italian-American television characters, such as Dorothy Petrollo-Zbornak on The Golden Girls (1985–1992) and Marie Barone on Everybody Loves Raymond (1996–2005) were played by Jewish actors, Bea Arthur and Doris Roberts respectively. Some Jewish media journalists have gone a step further and declared the entire Barone family Jewish because the show's Jewish creator, Phil Rosenthal, infused the series with storylines based on his own family.49 Similarly, crypto-Jew Costanza from Seinfeld, who is ostensibly Italian American, is played by a Jewish actor, as are his parents. It works both ways; Italian-American actor John Turturro has played Jews in multiple films.50 Moreover, on OITNB, the connection between Nicky and Lorna is part of the narrative. In the first episode of Season 1, we are introduced to both characters along with Piper, who discovers them having sex in the shower. The amorous relationship between Nichols, who is a lesbian, and Morello, who identifies as heterosexual, continues through the fifth episode, when Morello breaks it off to save herself for her fiancé. Nonetheless, their relationship maintains an emotional and at times physical intimacy. Furthermore, Lorna later reveals her fiancé is Jewish, and decides, "If I marry him, I'll be Jewish too."51

On her own, drug offender Nicky Nichols personifies the typical television crypto-Jew. Natasha Lyonne neé Bronstein's thick, wavy long hair and New York accent are key physical markers. Nicky, an articulate, insightful, and wisecracking lesbian, was raised in Manhattan by her professional, well-to-do, divorced mother. Nicky complains about and blames her mother's absence in her life for some of the psychic distress that undergirds her addiction. Flashbacks depict their difficult relationship; however, as her back story progresses, we see Nicky is an incorrigible addict who uses her smarts and sarcasm to manipulate her mother, who eventually throws up her hands. Nicky's mother's characterization is not stable in the show and there is no evidence to suggest she is a crypto-Jew herself. For example, she is not played by a Jewish actor. Perhaps then it is Nicky's truly absent father who is Jewish. After all, her last name mirrors jokester Joey Nichols, who is Woody Allen/Alvy Singer's father's friend in Annie Hall. As Joey's cultural descendant, Nicky's comedic abilities are more fully evolved: in another marker of Jewish-American identity, she performs stand-up during the prison holiday talent show.52 Moreover, Lyonne makes her own Jewish identity clear in interviews and in the extra feature "Getting to Know the Cast" on the Season 3 DVD, where she talks about living in Israel in the 1980s, and provides the wittiest responses to many of the questions she and the other actors are asked. Nicky is also the first character to use Yiddish words in the series and the first to term a gang of white supremacist inmates as Nazis.53

In critical readings of the show, Nicky has been noted for her non-normative lesbian body, i.e., she is perceived as non-conforming to dominant standards of beauty. Such critiques either laud the show for depicting Nicky enjoying her sexuality despite not being thin and "attractive" or find fault in that the white lesbians with leading roles, Piper and her girlfriend Alex (Laura Prepon), uphold and thus perpetuate these oppressive standards.54 Furthermore Nicky's (crypto-Jewish) hair is unruly, and she does not attend fully to grooming and behavioral practices associated with femininity such as being neat, tidy, and controlled in appearance or speech. Nicky's presentation thus can be seen as conforming to the view of Jewish women as unattractive. Nonetheless, Kyra Hunting finds that:

often it is not Piper, marked by the politics of respectability who is the moral center for the group of white women but drug addict and promiscuous Nicky—whose appearance and lascivious language has rough edges but who consistently provides the most rational advice to other inmates.55

In addition, Nicky articulates incisive feminist critiques. For example, in regard to Lorna's obsession about her future marriage to her fiancé, Nicky comments on "the wedding industrial complex and society's bullshit need to infantilize grown women." Though Nicky demonstrates the benefits of her college education in such comments, she does not use her well-honed analytical skills to assert her superiority in the same manner as Piper's displays of knowledge sometimes do and for which other inmates call her out.56

Claiming Nicky as a crypto-Jew opens up further possibilities for considering her within the genealogy of "tough Jews," who defy stereotypes of Jews as weak, passive, victims or brainy yet nebbishy nerds. Scholars and commentators have deployed the term "tough Jew" to describe a range of real and representational Jewish men, from early twentieth-century Jewish-American gangsters Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel and Holocaust resistance fighters the Bielski Brothers, to the muscular Zionists and Israelis who forged a Jewish state and aim to protect the Jewish people. Nathan Abrams in The New Jew in Film extends the category to include the "tough Jewess with Attitude" seen in a number of turn-of-the-century films such as Miller's Crossing (1990), Homicide (1991), and Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005). Though Nicky engages in illegal activity, she is not a gangster in the Lansky mold, nor is she a righteous member of anti-fascist resistance. Instead, her brand of Jewish toughness is born of her defiant lesbian identity, rough street life as a junkie, and willingness to speak her mind. These attributes are essential components of her prison survival skills.57

The tough Jew is posited by Abrams as a one-half of a binary paired with the queer Jewish male. In regard to Jewish women, he explains:

the tough Jewess with Attitude not only rebels against stereo(typical) gender roles, demonstrating that she can perform the same roles and tasks as the Jew, but also questions the duality of gender in the first place, confounding both the general and Jewish binary logic.58

As Nicky is queer and tough, she confounds stereotypes about Jewish women's representation on television, and, as I discuss further below, the representation of Jewish women in OITNB. Perhaps Nicky's status as a crypto—rather than "out" Jew—is thus overdetermined because not only does she defy categorization, she is categorically defiant. However, the popular cultural presence of well-known Jews with histories of substance abuse such as Lenny Bruce, Bob Dylan, Hillel Slovak, and Amy Winehouse—and that Natasha Lyonne's own struggles as an addict inform Nicky's narrative—raises additional questions about the reluctance or apparent impossibility of presenting Nicky as Jewish.59

Like many of the inmates, Nicky is not only tough. She displays vulnerability, particularly in her relationship with her prison mother Red (Kate Mulgrew). Yet even crypto-Jew Nicky engages in a Judas betrayal by sharing with a corrupt prison guard her prison mom's secret method of getting in additional culinary supplies. He plans to use the information to smuggle in drugs. This will lead to Nicky's downfall, as she later is found with drugs in her possession and, early in Season 3, gets sent to the nearby higher security prison. The dispatching of Nicky underscores the tenuous status of the television crypto-Jew, whose identity both articulates and avoids representations of Jewishness. Crypto-Jews provide gestures of Jewish representation, however reified—such as physical features, names, personal qualities, comedic sensibilities and intellectual insights—that convey a sense of Jewishness detached from historical contexts and specific experiences. Thus, a crypto character's Jewish attributes can be assigned or withdrawn at will, evading narrative demands for continuity or follow-through. The tattoo of a cross Nicky sports on the inside of her forearm, for example, thus neither confirms nor denies her Jewish identity. Instead it speaks to the shifting construction of the crypto-Jew as both trope and pastiche.60

"Where my dreidel at?" Kosher Food and Conversion Narratives

It is telling that it is only shortly after Nicky leaves, that the first "out" Jewish inmate shows up. Or at least, the first inmate who asks for a kosher meal. It turns out she is not Jewish, but requests kosher meals to get better food. This is a real phenomenon in US prisons. According to a 2012 Forward article, just one-sixth of the 24,000 prisoners receiving kosher meals in America are Jewish.61 On OITNB, the quality of the kosher meals is quickly noticed by other inmates, particularly Cindy (Adrienne C. Moore), who is among the first to request one. By the next episode several other African-American characters whose back stories have been previously highlighted are also eating kosher. However, it is Cindy who most embraces the potential of claiming Jewish identity. When she is accused of not being Jewish, she replies, "You think you know my life? Shabbat Shalom, bitch!" And as one Jewish popular press article on the topic notes, Cindy's "quest for edible food" leads her to other Jewish references, "including 'Shanah tova and hava nagila. It is good to be chosen.'" In response to someone asking if a seat is taken, she replies, "Yeah. We're saving it for Elijah." Cindy pursues her desire to learn more about Jewish culture by checking out Fiddler on the Roof and a Woody Allen movie from the library, which is humorous yet also a self-referential gesture to the importance of popular cultural texts in disseminating information about what it means to be Jewish.62

Up to this point in the series, Cindy's character has largely served as comic relief. She is depicted as a fool and an immature petty thief who is in prison because she abused her position as a TSA officer to steal passengers' belongings at the airport.63 When a rabbi is brought into the now privatized prison to determine if prisoners requesting kosher meals are motivated by "sincerely held beliefs"—an actual legal standard employed to determine the validity of prisoners' claims to kosher meals—his interviews are relayed in a montage of inmates sharing both goofy ideas about what it means to be Jewish and some well-worn stereotypes that are played for laughs: "I think y'all are doing a wonderful job controlling the media. I mean we. We are doing a wonderful job;" and "I call my mother a lot, like every day, and, love a bargain." When asked whether she was raised Jewish, Cindy claims she was "born and bred," and recounts plot points from Annie Hall and Yentl. This strategy fails to keep her on the kosher meal list and Cindy decides to convert, ending the episode with its title question, "Where my dreidel at?"64

In the next episode we discover there actually are Jewish women inmates held at Litchfield; Cindy has sought them out to prepare for her conversion. One is Ginsberg (Jamie Denbo), who sheepishly reveals she has been convicted for money laundering when asked. This is an odd exchange not only because it is rare for a prisoner to be asked that question by another inmate, especially when they have just met, but also because Ginsberg's gesture when revealing the basis for her conviction conveys shame at having been caught both in the crime itself and in a crime that evokes the antisemitic association of Jews with money. However, that same information reassures Cindy that Ginsberg is indeed Jewish, as she was skeptical due to Gins-berg's blonde hair and blue eyes. In the commentary on the episode by its credited writer, who describes herself as an Irish Catholic, she explains that Kohan rewrote Ginsberg's monologue describing the inmate's upbringing. Ginsberg's experiences thus appear grounded in those of Kohan's herself, as when Ginsberg demonstrates she knows her Jewish chops by talking about her bat mitzvah and her Hebrew name, Shayna Malka.65

In the last episode of Season 3, Cindy, with Ginsberg and another Jewish inmate, Rhea Boyle (Yelena Shmulenson) by her side, meets with the rabbi. Rhea opens the conversation: "Why you want to go from a hated minority to a double-hated minority is beyond me," before turning to the rabbi, and vouching for Cindy by asserting, "she's for real." Cindy has chosen the Hebrew name Tovah—"which means good and it's all good now"—and explains she has traded granola bars with Ginsberg and Boyle for Hebrew lessons. The rabbi then asks, "What is this for you?" Cindy's reply, written by Kohan, is conveyed in a truly moving performance by Moore.

Honestly, I think I found my people. I was raised in a church where I was told to believe and pray. And if I was bad, I'd go to Hell. If I was good, I'd go to Heaven. And if I asked Jesus, he'd forgive me and that was that. And here y'all saying there ain't no Hell. Ain't sure about Heaven, and if you do something wrong, you got to figure it out yourself. And as far as God's concerned, it's your job to keep asking questions and to keep learning and to keep arguing. It's like a verb. You do God. … I want to learn more and I think I got to be in it to do that. … Can I be a Jew?

Cindy is ecstatic when he and both witnesses say yes, until she finds out she must also experience ritual immersion in a mikvah to make her conversion official. Ginsberg consoles her by explaining that although she is not a Jew yet, she is "Jew-ish."66

A miracle ensues for all the inmates when the guards go on strike and a construction crew accidentally rips open a hole in the fence, allowing everyone to take a dip in the lake on the other side. Most prisoners run in to enjoy their momentary freedom. Cindy finds Ginsberg, who recites the blessing as Cindy immerses her naked body in the water. Conversion complete, Gins-berg congratulates her with a "mazel tov" and Cindy is all smiles in a closeup shot depicting her deep expression of her new found source of joy. Cindy's transformation during a season in which all sorts of religious identities and meanings are explored is remarkable for her as a character and also for the way it explains the meaning of Judaism, and most importantly, the difference of Judaism, which the show affirms and upholds. Furthermore, the sensitive treatment of her conversion story creates opportunities to depict Jewish community within the prison, and allusions to Jewish community outside it. In so doing OITNB incorporates significant Jewish content that a focus on individuals, especially when occurring in fleeting moments or signaled in quips, cannot accomplish alone. I would argue the brief depiction of Jewish community on the show reveals the fissures of representing Jewishness without that larger communal context, and the potential for greater narrative depth when included.

African Americans and Jews by Choice

Cindy's conversion is credible as a personal journey that concludes the series' prison kosher food narrative, and also because it resonates with the experiences of other well- and lesser-known African-American converts—whether real or imagined—to Judaism. These "Jews by Choice" join a diverse Jewish community: a 1990 study conducted by the Council of Jewish Federations concluded that in the United States 2.4 percent of "self-identified Jews list their race as black," and "about 100,000" additional African Americans "reported having 'connections' to Judaism." In addition, African-born Jews comprise 14.6 percent of Israel's Jewish population.67 Popular entertainer and Rat Pack member Sammy Davis, Jr. was the most well-known African-American Jew for many decades following his 1960 conversion, which occurred after years of study and consultation with Reform rabbis in Los Angeles and Las Vegas. He and his Swedish fiancée, actress May Britt, "formally converted a few weeks before their wedding."68 Other well-known African-American converts include writer Julius Lester, actress Nell Carter, writer Jamaica Kincaid, and rapper Shyne. Convert Alysa Stanton became the first African-American woman rabbi in 2009. She decided to convert when in her twenties, explaining her choice in similar terms voiced by the fictional Cindy, "For me, Judaism was where I found a home." After overcoming initial hesitancy upon her hiring, she ultimately led the Congregation Bayt Shalom in Greenville, North Carolina to great acclaim.69

Fictional African-American Jews have also previously appeared on television. In an episode of the 1970s situation comedy Sanford and Son entitled "Funny, You Don't Look It," patriarch Fred Sanford (Redd Foxx) is told by a genealogist that he is a descendant of Ethiopian Jews. His initial reaction trades in stereotypes in a similar vein to Litchfield inmates' attempts to assert a legitimate claim to their kosher meals, such as articulating his new-found desire for his son to become a doctor. However, like Cindy, Fred then explores more deeply the meaning and history of Judaism and its rituals. When it turns out he was misinformed about his Jewish roots, he celebrates what he learned and appreciates his Jewish teacher's perspective that "Jews and blacks … have a lot in common," hoping that "the similarities will bring us closer together."70

Sammy Davis, Jr.'s conversion was also motivated by sentiments about connections between the two minority groups, in addition to spiritual connections he felt after a 1954 car crash in which he lost one of his eyes. He had become familiar with Jewish teachings and practices after working closely with Jewish entertainers such as Eddie Cantor, whom Davis credited for giving him his first big break. Davis particularly admired and was inspired by the Jewish people's ability to survive adversity.

These are a swinging bunch of people. I mean I've heard of persecution, but what they went through is ridiculous! … They'd get kicked out of one place, so they'd just go on to the next one and keep swinging like they wanted to, believing in themselves and in their right to have rights, asking nothing but for people to leave 'em alone and get off their backs, and having the guts to fight to get themselves a little peace.71

Despite the lengthy period during which Davis considered conversion, when accomplished it was met with some skepticism and criticism. Ribbing from his Las Vegas Jewish comedian friends was to be expected, but he was also the object of charges from some African Americans that he converted to advance his career, and escape from his blackness. Such accusations may explain his 1980 statement in Ebony that "My people are my people and my religion is my religion. My people are first. I happen to be a Black Jew. I am Black first and the religion I have chosen is Judaism."72

African Americans who become or are born as Jews challenge static notions of black and Jewish identity. Popular cultural renditions can further evoke the fluid terms that construct identities generally. African-American inmate Cindy, in OITNB, seeks and finds a spiritual home by converting to Judaism. Moreover, African-American Jews, both real and imagined, create spaces for plural Jewish identities. Yet questions remain about the benefits, costs, and consequences of such transformations, and their meanings in cultural representations.

In Lovesong, Julius Lester's 1988 memoir, he explores his path to conversion and the many dimensions of his Jewish identity. In the book's preface Lester states, "I am no longer deceived by the black face which stars at me from the mirror. I am a Jew."73 This expression of tension between his identities as black and Jewish is articulated by other African-American converts as well. Assumptions when attending services at an unfamiliar congregation that one is a curious visitor and not Jewish, and accusations from African Americans that conversion to Judaism represents a desire to escape blackness and become white, are both common experiences of black Jews by Choice. However, among other diverse Jewish populations, African-American Jews open up conceptions of what an American Jew looks like and point to limitations regarding assumptions about Jews and whiteness. In OITNB, Cindy's character also points to more flexible understandings of Jewish-American identity. Cindy's turn to gospel music after an African-American inmate's death—"I may be a Jew now, but times like this call for some Black gospel no matter what"—is a tribute to the power of that musical form and an expression of her own dual moment when she articulates both her black and Jewish identities. Asserting Jewishness as American in this case is also related to African-American cultural expression. Moreover, as Terry Shoemaker points out, Cindy shows she "is capable of being both Jewish and African American."74

OITNB's deployment of an African-American character's conversion to Judaism to convey Jewish values and depict Jewish rituals without inclusion of a fully realized recurring Jewish-American character and community underscores the problematic representation of Jewish identity in American popular culture. Though Cindy in OITNB tells the visiting rabbi in Season 3 she has "found her people" when professing to the sincerity of her quest to become a Jew, Season 4 depicts her prison experience largely as before, living among and hanging out with her African-American friends, with sparse attention to her new found faith and its meaning for her. Despite her new mezuzah, the Jewish inmates who assisted her conversion have not become a part of her life and no longer appear on the show. Moreover, Cindy's Jewish identity flattens, expressed primarily by her and other inmates in articulations of stereotypical if not antisemitic Jewish avarice. Conflicts with Alison, a newly arrived African-American inmate who is Muslim, wears a hijab, and is assigned to the bunk next to Cindy's, lightly spoof tensions between the two groups, yet mostly at Cindy's expense. In one episode, Alison hopes to trade access to her contraband cell phone for some of Cindy's commissary-purchased tampons during a prison sanitary napkin shortage. When Alison references a Biblical admonition, "If there are poor among you, do not be selfish or greedy towards them" to make her case, Cindy rejects this view as Christian. In addition to demeaning Cindy by showing her to be ignorant of the shared basis of the Abrahamic religions, which Alison understands, the one-dimensional focus on stale jokes about Jewish greed that dominate Jewish references in Season 4 prevents Cindy from articulating deeply-held Jewish values—for example in this moment of potential tzedakah—as she had during the previous season's focus on her conversion.75 Thus, the show's sympathetic portrayal of Jewish faith, values, and identity is short-lived, and its reliance upon an African-American character who converts to convey the authenticity of the Jewish experience most fully proves unstable.

Despite their limitations, a century of cultural texts from The Jazz Singer to OITNB have served as vehicles for disseminating information via mass culture about Jewish practices, values, family life, and community concerns to gentile audiences. Such exposure serves an ongoing need, as African-American actress Yvonne Orji recently demonstrated when she said, "I know what Shabbat is by watching Curb Your Enthusiasm."76 Yet the apparent impossibility for OITNB, despite its well-deserved reputation for inclusivity, to incorporate a Jewish-American inmate, or an ongoing Jewish prison community, however small, for Cindy to continue to interact with, suggests Jewish television creators and writers are still struggling with a revised, contemporary version of the "write Yiddish, cast British" mandate. One expression of that dilemma occurs early in the series when a posted list of religious services is shown to include Catholic, Wiccan and Muslim, but omits a Jewish option.77

Nicky and Cindy: New Information and Missing Connections in Season 6

Six years into the series, Nicky's crypto-Jewish identity resolves via a flashback to her fraught bat mitzvah. Her parents are divorced, squabbling, and more concerned about superficial and materialist aspects of the event than their daughter's achievement. As the second pair of Jewish parents depicted on the show, they are far worse than Larry's, who, however misguided, at least cared about their son's well-being. The bat mitzvah plays out as a teenage revenge fantasy, as Nicky strays from her prepared Torah commentary to excoriate her parents in front of the congregation. Yet the additional details provided about Nicky's self-absorbed and neglectful parents, whose behavior has been referenced previously, though not as Jews, do not further humanize Nicky nor serve to explain in a compassionate manner her drug addiction and criminal behavior because her parents, like Larry's, are one-dimensional. As one reviewer assessed the season, "Nicky Nichol's bat mitzvah is a train wreck with some good laugh lines, but it does not feel like an indispensable part of this show." Rolling Stone's Season 6 review similarly found only one of the season's flashbacks—about two other characters—"worth the bother," and did not mention Nicky's at all.78

The bat mitzvah flashback comes after Nicky, who is facing significant additional prison time in the aftermath of a prison riot, has contacted her father for legal assistance, and he comes through. Themes of Jewish betrayal become central as he urges Nicky to betray Red—again—to save herself. She does, though Red in a Stella Dallas moment of maternal self-sacrifice grants her permission to do so.79 Moreover, Cindy faces a similar high-pressure situation. She contacts her conversion rabbi for legal assistance, which he facilitates. Here too, her lawyer advises her to betray her best friend.80 Though wracked with guilt—a "Jewish thing" another inmate explains—she does.81

Though Cindy asserts the primacy of her Jewish identity in this season by using her Hebrew name when she becomes co-host of a radio show within the prison, she must do so repeatedly to her gentile friends. Other audiences apparently also need convincing; it is interesting that in the closed captions for the show, she is always referred to as Cindy, not Tovah.82 Furthermore, though there are parallels to Nicky's and Tovah's story lines, they seem to exist, like these characters themselves, in separate worlds within the prison. They appear briefly together in a prison wedding scene, where Nicky has donned a yarmulke and prayer shawl to officiate, though the couple, Piper and Alex, are not Jewish and there is no Jewish content to the ceremony. The Jewish objects, which also include a chuppah, add an exotic vibe that liven up the dreary setting, but like Nicky and Tovah, do not connect in any meaningful way with their Jewish character, identity, or values. The cross tattoo on Nicky's forearm is prominently displayed in another indication of her continuing ambivalent status post bat mitzvah flashback. In a measure of the irrelevance of the Jewish components depicted at the wedding, many reviews of the episode do not mention them at all. Thus, the Jewish elements of this season's important final episode—that includes a classic TV series ratings magnet, a wedding—provide color or comic effect, detached from ritual and cultural significance.83

Conclusion

In OITNB's final, seventh season, Nicky retreats to her crypto-Jewish identity. Despite having a loving relationship with a lesbian Egyptian inmate held for an immigration violation, a seeming set up for jokes and storylines like those created for Alison and Cindy in Season 4, there is bupkis about Nicky's Jewishness in any of this season's episodes. In regard to Cindy, the brief references to her being Jewish in Season 7 are few and far between. Though her rabbi comes through for her again in writing an employment reference letter, which secures her a job, he is mentioned only in passing, and Cindy is never depicted interacting with other Jews. These retrenchments once again point to the instability of the crypto-Jew and convert in reliably relating Jewish identity, practices, and sensibilities in television narratives. Erasure and marginalization of Jewish perspectives also appear to be facilitated by the absence of depictions of Jewish community.

Over its seven seasons, OITNB's shifting representations of Jewish identity move from the Bloom stereotypes and crypto-Jew Nicky Nichols, to the inclusion of Ashkenazi Jews in minor supporting roles that are essential in supporting the conversion of higher profile character Cindy. In Season 4, the reversion to stereotypes about Jews accompanies the return of crypto-Jew Nicky, who has been transferred back from a higher security prison. Perhaps the series' success in featuring the stories of women of color, lesbians, and transwomen, and in building a fan base for its diverse cast, created the possibility for the open exploration of what it means to be a Jew, if only temporarily. Nonetheless the instability of Jewish identity in the show may suggest tensions and uncertainties surrounding the relationship of Jewish subjectivity to those more clearly understood as marginalized. Thus it is significant that the character with the most screen time who voices the most endearing and sympathetic Jewish perspective is a convert who expresses her Jewish identity through the lens of her experience as an African American. When Nicky is revealed to be Jewish in Season 6, it makes little difference, as her Jewish identity and that of Cindy/Tovah's typically find expression only in passing verbal quips or visual jokes. These indications are underscored in Season 7, the series' last, in which the Jewish identities of these characters are rarely referenced or elided completely. Like other television shows that only explore Jewish identity in the apparently safer context of interfaith marriages and relationships, Jewish identity in OITNB is most fully realized when linked with someone who is not, at least initially, Jewish, and whose struggles as an incarcerated African-American woman have been depicted previously in the series, though no Jewish inmate's story receives similar treatment. Moreover, the troubling treatment of Levy in Kerman's memoir finds an echo in references to Jewish identity on the series that mine well-worn stereotypes without addressing the consequences, for example, of antisemitism in similar ways that the series addresses racism and homophobia. Yet importantly, Cindy converts and becomes a Jew who is accepted by the Jewish inmates who supported her religious transformation and by the rabbi who authorized it. Her conversion narrative provides opportunities for compassionate expression of Jewish values, conveys information about Jewish rituals, and challenges static notions of Jewish identity.

Though OITNB incorporates if not champions the experiences and perspectives of a range of minority groups, portrays incarcerated women sympathetically, and aims to critically depict the prison-industrial complex, and deserves praise for doing so, the significant Jewish presence on OITNB still bears consideration as simultaneous displacement through deployment of familiar stereotypes, crypto-identities, and conversion narratives. As Malatino also finds in regard to trans issues, "the show subverts certain tropes," yet also relies on "stereotypes."84 Cindy's struggles to be recognized as Tovah are emblematic and suggest that a Jewish problem—the problem of Jewish representation—remains a forceful shaper of narratives and character development on episodic television and streaming series.

Notes

Michael O'Connell, "Nielsen Says 6.7M Watched Orange Is the New Black Premiere in 3 Days," Hollywood Reporter, June 29, 2016, http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/orange-is-new-black-ratings-907390; Daniel Holloway, "TV Ratings: Orange Is the New Black Premiere Numbers Revealed by Nielsen," Variety, June 29, 2016, http://variety.com/2016/tv/ratings/tv-ratings-orange-is-the-new-black-premiere-nielsen-1201805991/, accessed December 4, 2016. OITNB is the "most-watched show" on the streaming platform according to Netflix executive Ted Sarandos. Dana Birnbaum, "'Orange Is the New Black': Jenji Kohan, Cast Talks Season 4, Diversity, Binge-Watching," Variety, January 17, 2016, http://variety.com/2016/tv/news/orange-is-thenew-black-season-4-jenji-kohan-1201681782/, cited by Sarah Artt and Anne Schwan, "Screening Women's Imprisonment: Agency and Exploitation in Orange Is the New Black," Television & New Media 17:6 (September 2016): 468.

Suzanne Enck and Megan Morrissey, "If Orange Is the New Black, I Must be Color Blind: Comic Framings of Post-Racism in the Prison-Industrial Complex," Critical Studies in Media Communication 32:5 (October 2015): 303. Piper Kerman, Orange Is the New Black (New York: Random House, 2010). See also Internet Movie Data Base, which notes over 250,00 reviews and an overall viewer rating of 8.1, www.imdb.com, accessed March 14, 2019.

Numerous articles laud the show's diverse cast, even those finding fault with how specific individuals and groups are represented. See for example, Roxanne Gay, "The Bar for TV Diversity Is Way Too Low," Salon, August 22, 2013. Gay notes, "You can't blink without someone celebrating the show's diversity," accessed March 10, 2019, https://www.salon.com/2013/08/22/the_bar_for_tv_diversity_is_way_too_low/.

“Orange Creator Jenji Kohan: Piper Was My Trojan Horse," Fresh Air, National Public Radio, August 13, 2013, accessed December 4, 2016, http://www.npr.org/2013/08/13/211639989/orange-creator-jenji-kohan-piper-was-my-trojan-horse. See also Jason Demers, "Is a Trojan Horse an Empty Signifier? The Televisual Politics of Orange Is the New Black," Canadian Review of American Studies/Revue Canadienne d'Études Américaines 47:3 (2017).

For essay collections with a range of perspectives on the series and how it represents particular groups, see Shirley A. Jackson and Laurie L. Gordy, eds., Caged Women: Incarceration, Representation and Media (New York: Routledge, 2018); April Householder and Adrienne Trier-Bieniek, eds., Feminist Perspective on Orange Is the New Black (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2016), and Television & New Media 17:6 (September 2016), special issue, ed. Sarah Artt and Anne Schwan.

Analysis of religion on the show that discuss Jewish themes include Terry Shoemaker, "Escaping Our Shitty Reality: Counterpublics, Orange Is the New Black, and Religion," Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 29.3 (Fall 2017): 217–229, and Terri Toles Patkin, "Broccoli, Love, and the Holy Toast: Cultural Depictions of Religion in Orange Is the New Black," in Shirley A. Jackson and Laurie L. Gordy, eds., Caged Women: Incarceration, Representation and Media (New York: Routledge, 2018), 227–238.

Foundational texts in Jewish television studies include Jonathan and Judith Pearl, The Chosen Image: Television's Portrayal of Jewish Themes and Characters (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 1999); Vincent Brook, Something Ain't Kosher Here: The Rise of the "Jewish" Sitcom (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2003); David Zurawik, The Jews of Prime Time (Hanover: Brandeis University Press, 2003). For a critical assessment of the field, see Michele Byers and Rosalin Krieger, "Beyond Binaries and Condemnation: Opening New Theoretical Spaces in Jewish Television Studies," Culture, Theory & Critique 46:2 (2015): 131–145. Some studies incorporate consideration of both television and film. See for example, J. Hoberman and Jeffrey Shandler, Entertaining America: Jews, Movies, and Broadcasting (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003); Paul Buhle, ed., Jews and American Popular Culture, vol. 1 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007); Joshua Louis Moss, Why Harry Met Sally: Subversive Jewishness, Anglo-Christian Power, and the Rhetoric of Modern Love (Austin: University of Texas, 2017); Michael Renov and Vincent Brook, eds., From Shtetl to Stardom: Jews and Hollywood (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2017).

OITNB, www.imdb.com

"I Wasn't Ready," OITNB season 1, episode 1, Netflix, July 11, 2013. Piper tells Larry not to inform his father about her predicament because "he already hates me."

Larry Smith, "My Life with Piper: From Big House to Small Screen: The Other True Story Behind Orange Is the New Black," Medium, July 14, 2014, accessed December 4, 2016, https://medium.com/matter/my-life-with-piper-from-big-house-to-small-screen-592b35f5af94#.t5josbg1p.

Jeremy Diamond, "Trump: DNC Chairwoman 'Crazy' 'Neurotic Woman,'" CNN, November 2, 2015, https://www.cnn.com/2015/11/02/politics/donald-trump-debbie-wasserman-schultz-crazy-neurotic-woman/index.html; Miriam Levine, "Am I That 'Crazy Neurotic' Jewish Woman Donald Trump Is Describing?" Forward, November 3, 2015, accessed December 4, 2016, http://forward.com/sisterhood/323877/the-crazy-neurotic-jewish-woman/

"I Wasn't Ready," OITNB season 1, episode 1.

13. Biggs also portrayed American Pie character Jim Levenstein in American Pie 2 (2001), American Wedding (2003), and American Reunion (2012).

Sigal Samuel, "Does Orange Is the New Black Have a Jewish Problem?" The Daily Beast, July 18, 2013, accessed December 4, 2016 http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/07/18/does-orange-is-the-new-black-have-a-jewish-problem.html.

Ashley Burns, "A Guide to the Internet's Love of Hating Larry Bloom from Orange Is the New Black," Uproxx, June 30, 2014, accessed December 4, 2016 http://uproxx.com/tv/aguide-to-the-internets-love-of-hating-larry-bloom-from-orange-is-the-new-black/3/.

Ibid. See also Kimberly Potts, "Orange Is the New Black: You're Not the Only One Who's Not on Team Larry," Yahoo TV, June 20, 2014, accessed December 15, 2016, https://www.yahoo.com/tv/orange-is-the-new-black-youre-not-the-only-one-96478890565.html.

"WAC Pack," OITNB season 1, episode 6, Netflix, July 11, 2013; "Blood Donut," OITNB season 1, episode 7, Netflix, July 11, 2013.

"Moscow Mule," OITNB season 1, episode 8, Netflix, July 11, 2013.

"F … sgiving," OITNB season 1, episode 9, Netflix, July 11, 2013; "Bora, Bora, Bora," OIT NB season 1, episode 10, Netflix, July 11, 2013; "Tall Men with Feelings," OITNB season 1, episode 11, Netflix, July 11, 2013.

Larry Smith, "A Life to Live This Side of the Bars," New York Times, March 28, 2010, accessed December 4, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/28/fashion/28Love.html. He wrote an earlier "Modern Love" column about proposing to marry Piper that did not mention her recent prison experience. Larry Smith, "Hear that Wedding March Often Enough You Fall in Step," New York Times, December 26, 2004.

"Comic Sans," OITNB season 2, episode 7, Netflix, June 6, 2014; "Take a Break from Your Values," OITNB season 2, episode 11, Netflix, June 6, 2014.

Smith, "My Life with Piper."

See for example Yasmin Nair, who states, "White women like Kerman leave prison with book contracts, while others keep moving through its doors, fodder for the expanding Prison Industrial Complex." Idem, "White Chicks Behind Bars," In These Times, July 18, 2013, accessed March 10, 2019, http://inthesetimes.com/article/15311/white_chick_behind_bars/. The term "trauma porn" emerged to signal concerns about the show's exploitative aspects. Ashleigh Shackelford, "Orange Is the New Black Is Trauma Porn Written for White People," June 20, 2016, accessed March 10, 2019, https://wearyourvoicemag.com/culture/orange-is-the-new-black-trauma-porn-written-white-people.

Jenji Kohan, Tara Hermann, Hartley Voss, and Alex Regnery, Orange Is the New Black Presents: The Cookbook (New York: Abrams Image, 2014).

Cleary Wolters, Out of Orange: A Memoir (New York: Harper Collins, 2015), 4–8, 300–303.

Shackelford, "Trauma Porn;" Keah Brown, "Season Four of Orange Is the New Black Has a Race Problem," June 30, 2016, accessed May 14, 2019, https://medium.com/the-establishment/season-four-of-orange-is-the-new-black-has-a-race-problem-159a999dc66c.

Hilary Malatino, "The Transgender Tipping Point: The Social Death of Sophia Burset," in April Householder and Adrienne Trier-Bieniek, eds., Feminist Perspective on Orange Is the New Black (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2016), 95–110.

Kerman, Orange Is the New Black, 49; see also "WAC Pack," OITNB season 1, episode 6.

Kerman, Orange Is the New Black, 90.

Ibid., 91, 111.

Ibid., 94

Ibid., 114.

Ibid., 97.

Ibid., 199.

Ibid., 200.

Ibid., 200–201.

Kerman writes: "Prison is quite literally a ghetto in the most classic sense of the world [sic], a place where the US government now puts not only the dangerous but also the inconvenient—people who are mentally ill, people who are addicts, people who are poor and uneducated and unskilled. Meanwhile the ghetto in the outside world is a prison as well, and a much more difficult one to escape from than this correctional compound. … t." Ibid.

Maltino, "Transgender Tipping Point," 101.

Lynne Tuohy, "Don't Worry Martha, It's Like a Big Hotel," Hartford Courant, September 19, 2004. There are Holocaust references in the series; for example, inmate Red refers to Anne Frank in "Blood Donut," OITNB season 1, episode 7.

See for example, Nair, "White Chicks;" Shackelford, "Trauma Porn;" Brown, "Season Four"; Cate Young, "On Orange Is the New Black and the Destruction of Black Bodies," July 14, 2016, accessed March 10, 2019, https://medium.com/the-establishment/season-four-oforange-is-the-new-black-has-a-race-problem-159a999dc66c.

For earlier use of the term, see for example, Lucien Wolf, "Crypto-Jews under the Commonwealth: A Paper Read before the Jewish Historical Society of England on Re-Settlement Day, February 4th, 1894," (London: Jewish Chronicle Office, 1894).

Leslie Fielder, "Jewish-Americans, Go Home!" in Leslie Fielder, ed., Waiting for the End: The American Literary Scene from Hemingway to Baldwin (New York: Stein and Day, 1964), 91. See also Henry Popkin, "The Vanishing Jew of Our Popular Culture: The Little Man Who Is No Longer There," Commentary, July 1952.

Jeffrey Shandler, "At Home on the Small Screen: Television's New York Jews," in J. Hoberman and Jeffrey Shandler, Entertaining America: Jews, Movies, and Broadcasting (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 244–257; Zurawik, Jews of Prime Time, passim, 51–54; Vincent Brook, Something Ain't Kosher Here: The Rise of the "Jewish" Sitcom (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2003); Pearl and Pearl, The Chosen Image, 73–4, 155.

Zurawik, Jews of Prime Time, chapters 4 and 6; Brook, Something Ain't Kosher. Also notable is the Jewish family depicted in Brooklyn Bridge, 1991–1993.

Jon Stewart debuted on The Daily Show in 1999; Curb Your Enthusiasm launched the next year. Transparent began streaming in 2014, the year after OITNB's first season. Debra Nussbaum Cohen, "How Jill Soloway Created Transparent—the Jewiest Show Ever," Forward, October 21, 2014, cited by Roberta Rosenberg, "The Importance of Jewish Ritual in the Secular, Postmodern World of Transparent, Jewish Film & New Media 5:1 (Spring 2017): 98.

"Fool Me Once," OITNB season 1, episode 12, Netflix, July 11, 2013. See for example, Emily Sigalow, American JuBu: Jews, Buddhists, and Religious Change (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019).

Fielder, "Jewish Americans," 91.

Elizabeth J. Leebron and Dominique G. Ruggieri, "How TV Portrays Jewish and Italian Women," Television Quarterly 34: 3/4 (Spring 2004): 41; Dominique G. Ruggieri and Elizabeth J. Leebron, "Situation Comedies Imitate Life: Jewish and Italian-American Women on Prime Time," The Journal of Popular Culture 43:6 (2010): 1266–1281; 1269. The article cites a 1998 study by Hadassah of portrayals of Jewish women in the media that found similar qualities.

Ellen Sandler, "Raymond Barone, Crypto-Jew?" Jewish Journal, January 24, 2002, accessed December 15, 2016, http://jewishjournal.com/culture/arts/5412/; Tom Teicholz, "The Heroes of Jewish Comedy," Jewish Journal, July 4, 2003, accessed December 15, 2016, http://jewishjournal.com/news/16/the-heroes-of-jewish-comedy/.

Turturro plays Jewish characters in such films as Mo' Better Blues (1990), Miller's Crossing (1990), Barton Fink (1991), and Quiz Show (1994). In The Truce (1997), he portrays Holocaust survivor Primo Levi. It is also worth noting that Jason Biggs is three-quarters Italian American, and Jewish actors James Caan, Henry Winkler, and Edward G. Robinson have portrayed Italian Americans (Sonny Corleone in The Godfather, The Fonz in Happy Days and Rico in Public Enemy, respectively). See Nathan Abrams, The New Jew in Film: Exploring Jewishness and Judaism in Contemporary Cinema (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2012).

"Fear and Other Smells," OITNB season 3, episode 8, Netflix, June 11, 2015.

"Can't Fix Crazy," OITNB season 1, episode 13, Netflix, July 11, 2013.

See for example, "Take a Break from Your Values," OITNB season 2, episode 11; "It Sounded Nicer in My Head," OITNB season 4, episode 7, Netflix, June 17, 2016.

Sarah Fryett, "'Chocolate and Vanilla Swirl, Swi-irl': Race and Lesbian Identity Politics," in April Kalogeropoulos Householder and Adrienne Trier-Bieniek, eds., Feminist Perspectives on Orange Is the New Black (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2016), 16.

Kyra Hunting, "All in the (Prison) Family: Genre Mixing and Queer Representation," in April Kalogeropoulos Householder and Adrienne Trier-Bieniek, eds., Feminist Perspectives on Orange Is the New Black (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2016), 120.

Sarah Gibbons, "'Can't fix crazy': Confronting Able-Mindedness," in April Kalogeropoulos Householder and Adrienne Trier-Bieniek, eds., Feminist Perspectives on Orange Is the New Black (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2016), 213.

Paul Breines, Tough Jews: Political Fantasies and the Moral Dilemma of American Jewry (New York: Basic Books, 1990); Nathan Abrams, The New Jew in Film: Exploring Jewishness and Judaism in Contemporary Cinema (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2012).

Abrams, The New Jew, 132.

Ben Stiller played Jewish writer and heroin addict Jerry Stahl in the 1998 film based on his memoir Permanent Midnight. "Fool Me Once," OITNB season 1, episode 12.

"Friends in Low Places," OITNB season 4, episode 8, Netflix, July 17, 2016.

Naomi Zeveloff, "Kosher Prisons in U.S. Spend Millions on Food for Non-Jewish Inmates," Forward, April 30, 2012, accessed December 15, 2016, https://forward.com/news/155363/not-just-jews-eat-kosher-food-in-prison/.

Linda Buchwald, "Orange Is the New Black: The Best Jewish Moments from the New Season," Jewish Telegraph Agency, June 15, 2015, accessed December 15, 2106, https://www.jta.org/2015/06/15/arts-entertainment/orange-is-the-new-black-the-best-jewish-momentsfrom-the-new-season. "Ching Chang Chong," OITNB season 3, episode 6, June 11, 2015; "Tongue-Tied," OITNB season 3, episode 7 Netflix, June 11, 2015; "Fear and Other Smells," OITNB season 3, episode 8.

"Comic Sans," OITNB season 2, episode 7.

“Where My Dreidel At?" OITNB season 3, episode 9, Netflix, June 11, 2015.

"A Tittin and a Hairin'," OITNB season 3, episode 10, Netflix, June 11, 2015.

"Trust No Bitch," OITNB season 3, episode 13, Netflix, June 11, 2015.

Nora Rubel, "Chicken Soup for the Souls of Black Folk: African American Converts to Judaism and the Negotiation of Identity," Social Compass 51:3 (2004): 335–347, accessed June 22, 2018, http://www.academia.edu/5543962/Chicken_Soup_for_the_Souls_of_Black_Folk_African_American_Converts_to_Judaism_and_the_Negotiation_of_Identity_English_Translation_.

Rebecca Davis, "'These Are a Swinging Bunch of People': Sammy Davis, Jr., Religious Conversion, and the Color of Jewish Ethnicity," American Jewish History 100:1 (January 2016): 40.

Amanda Seigel, "Celebrating African American Jews" New York Public Library Blog, February 11, 2016, accessed June 22, 2018, https://www.nypl.org/blog/2016/02/11/celebrating-african-american-jews; Dina Kraft, "Rapper Finds Order in Orthodox Judaism in Israel, New York Times, November 10, 2010, accessed June 22, 2018, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/11/arts/music/11shyne.html?pagewanted=all. Stewart Ain, "Pulpit of Col-or," The New York Jewish Week, May 20, 2009, accessed June 22, 2018, https://web.archive.org/web/20110615044723/http://www.thejewishweek.com/features/pulpit_color.

Pearl and Pearl, The Chosen Image, 82–83.

Sammy Davis, Jr., Yes I Can: The Story of Sammy Davis, Jr. (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1965), 246–247, emphasis in original, cited by Rebecca Davis, "'These Are a Swinging Bunch of People': Sammy Davis, Jr., Religious Conversion, and the Color of Jewish Ethnicity," American Jewish History 100:1 (January 2016): 36.

"Becoming a Jew Gave New Meaning to Davis' Life" Jet, June 4, 1990, 29. The entire issue was devoted to "Sammy Davis Jr., World's Greatest Entertainer, 1925–1990."

Julius Lester, Lovesong: Becoming a Jew (New York: Arcade Books, 1988), 1, cited in Adam Meyer, "Gee, You Don't Look Jewish: Julius Lester's Lovesong, an African-American Jewish-American Autobiography," Studies in American Jewish Literature 18 (1999): 41–51.

"Toast Can Never Be Bread Again," OITNB season 4, episode 13, Netflix, June 17, 2016. Shoemaker, "Escaping Our Shitty Reality," 225.

"Power Suit," OITNB season 4, episode 2, Netflix, June 17, 2016; "We'll Always Have Baltimore," OITNB season 4, episode 5, Netflix, June 17, 2016.

Sonaiya Kelley, "Yvonne Orji on Dating, Virginity and Playing Sexually Liberated Molly on 'Insecure,'" Los Angeles Times, July 28, 2017.

"The Chickening," OITNB season 1, episode 5, Netflix, July 11, 2013.

"I'm the Talking Ass," OITNB season 6, episode 4, Netflix, July 27, 2018. Kathryn VanArendonk, Orange Is the New Black Season 6 Is Aimless, But Still Compelling," July 18, 2018, accessed May 14, 2019, https://www.vulture.com/2018/07/orange-is-the-new-black-season-6-review.html; Alan Sepinwall, "Orange Is the New Black Season 6 Review: Maximum Security, Medium Payoff," Rolling Stone, July 25, 2018, accessed May 14, 2019, https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-reviews/orange-is-the-new-black-season-6-review-701476/.

"Who Knows Better Than I" OITNB season 6, episode 1; "Sh*tstorm Coming" OITNB season 6, episode 2, Netflix, July 27, 2018; "Look Out for Number One," OITNB season 6, episode 3, Netflix, July 27, 2018; "I'm the Talking Ass," OITNB season 6, episode 4.

"Who Knows Better Than I" OITNB season 6, episode 1; "Sh*tstorm Coming;" OITNB season 6, episode 2.

"Well This Took a Dark Turn," OITNB season 6, episode 11, Netflix, July 27, 2018; "Double Trouble," OITNB season 6, episode 12, Netflix, July 27, 2018.

Cindy asserts her name as Tovah in season 6 episodes, such as episode 6, "State of the Uterus;" OITNB, Netflix, July 27, 2018; episode 7, "Changing Winds," OITNB, Netflix, July 27, 2018; and episode 9, "Break the String," OITNB, Netflix, July 27, 2018.

"Be Free," OITNB Season 6, episode 13, July 27, 2018. VanArendonk, "Season 6 Is Aimless"; Alana Altman, "Alex and Piper's Wedding on Orange Is the New Black Season 6 Was A Bright Light," July 27, 2018, https://www.elitedaily.com/p/alex-pipers-wedding-onorange-is-the-new-black-season-6-was-a-bright-light-9869449; Isabella Silvers, "Here's what the Orange Is the New Black Cast Thought About That Surprise Wedding," Cosmopolitan, August 7, 2018, https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/entertainment/a22666213/orange-is-the-new-black-season-6-piper-alex-wedding/. All accessed June 7, 2019.

Maltino, "Transgender Tipping Point," 95.

#jews #jews in entertainment #cultural depictions of jews #orange is the new black #the goldbergs #television #conversion #stereotypes #religion #religion in entertainment #crypto-jews #narrative #character development

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theorynexus · 4 years

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Eighteen Posts In

We suddenly interrupt the normal stream of liveblogging to note that I briefly got in contact with bladekindEyewear again to exclaim incredulously about them returning to John’s pre-SBURB home, which caused an interesting discussion to unfold. In particular, though no actual spoilers were levied my way, these ominous snippets of news was directed at me (which I shall include my responses to):

This has left me ravenous with curiosity with regards to how exactly that punch’s force might be multiplied in that scenario. I almost regret choosing the path I did, for now I shall never discover that path of true despair; yet at the same time, I truly do not. Regardless: Do note that there is a possibility my commentary may be a bit coloured by this interaction. I don’t think it will be too terribly so, though. And now, back to the show. ...

Should it be funny that she’s putting concern for her not-quite future wife ahead of everyone else? I don’t think so. Unrelated: It is interesting to know that Jade had been planning her throwing away the mayor act before John arrived. Very interesting, indeed.

(Oh my gosh, why is this so cute?! XwX ) Staircase of Cartoon Villainy: Is his brother secretly Dirk Dastardly? It’s nice to see Dave being sincere about his feelings despite his teenagedom, though, considering how much being with Karkat affected him+his mindset. “ Everyone turns to look at you immediately, like you’re an authority. Which you kind of are. You are struck with the sudden and uncomfortable realization that you are the only adult in the yard. You’ve never felt like an adult until this moment. “ And then Dad walks in on them and has no idea what the heck is going on. The opportunity for shenanigans as a result is golden. That said: I understand why it is not followed through. Certainly, the narrative works a little bitter without that diversion. Oh, yes, and I am proud of John for finally feeling like an adult. That is nice. (Eighteen coming and going with no perceptible change is far too close to home to my own experience, by the way. It is almost painful; therefore, I shall not dwell on this fact.)

Yes. Yes we can. And we have. That was far too long ago, however, and I do not want to deal with it other than saying this: At the very least, they are stable enough such that the ones he visits with his retcanon powers can indeed continue on just after he’s left, and remain stable enough after he’s done so for him to return again. Whether this splits things off and makes another dead version or alters the prior state and/or nature of the world to have retroactively included his new appearance is somewhat immaterial other than the fact that the world seems to include a memory of pre-retcon events which can then further be traveled to still, as said before. Furthermore, the world seems to actually anticipate the retcon and retroactively requires some of them to have been brought into being in order to reach the logical state which might bring about the pre-retcon worlds in the first place. This is the entire reason why John’s return is necessary, and thus why the epilogue exists in the first place.

Wow, I was going to comment on John being dense, but it seems he actually picked up on the clues Rose and Roxy+Callie were laying out for him! I am glad. “ You start to sweat, and again the unwelcome odor of undercooked meat emanating from your body makes itself known to your nose.” This feels like it has some sort of symbolic meaning-- as if this was not quite the point of no return, but the crux upon which this side of the story turns. I appreciate the feeling conjured, here. DARN IT, WHY ISN’T THIS STRATEGY SESSION IN CHATLOGS?!?!?! It is so torturous, being relayed indirectly. T~~~T PAH. Jake gets a face full of dirt. Magnificent. It feels like foreshadowing! ;D

The way that this is worded is absolutely beautiful. I must again laud Hussie’s capacity for humorous sentence composition.

Poor us, indeed.

And would be, if I remember correctly, the only time he actually ever talked in the series, beyond after-the-fact messages and notes we could view. A shame we again get blocked from seeing that happen. Heh. Foot and a half of space between the Striders. Nice callback, even if it’s to something so soon. Interesting to think about the implications that might have for their relationship.

Wow, John. Cold. I’m surprised you of all people would think that way. It seems like you and Vriska are the two who would have the most insight into exactly why that kind of thinking is foolish (aside from Adult Rose and the Sprite^2s). It feels like just another curious manifestation of that same running theme of imperfection that’s flowing through this narrative. Most curious.

Aaand thank you for that jab at the audience, Hussie. I’m sure that’s very much appreciated. (The fatalistic complicity statement is particularly interesting, though. I’m sure that, since the fate of Paradox Space is guided in part by the wills of its inhabitants, in addition to that of Lord English, one could argue that accepting that this sacrifice is in fact required is in some way sealing all of their fates. This makes me wonder: does the belief in the “reality” or relevance of an individual instantiation of a character on the part of the audience actually effect the amount of Light they accrue/maintain within the context of the story? Something to think about.)

#Homestuck Spoilers #Homestuck Epilogue #Homestuck Liveblog #bladekindEyewear #Homestuck Analysis

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radicalmommyxx · 5 years

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The Transgender Movement and Bad Stats: A Debunking Compilation

https://medium.com/@sue.donym1984/the-transgender-movement-and-bad-stats-a-debunking-compilation-31760947b382

“It has come to our attention, that, scattered across half a dozen posts, is debunking of a variety of statistics associated with the transgender movement. We fear they may be a little buried in some very long posts. We wondered how to fix this problem. The solution is this article.

Nothing excites readers like the Medium equivalent of a television clip show, which is exactly what this is. We’ve decided to gather all those statistics together in one handy article, so you can reference it in all your online Twitter debates, as God intended.

The US Transgender Survey is a source of many statistics about transgenderism you will find in international policy debates, arguments on the internet, and cited by LGBTQI+ activist organizations. It is run by the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE).

It describes its survey to the IRS with the following:

““SURVEY: THE U.S. TRANS SURVEY IS THE NEW NAME OF THE LARGEST SURVEY EVER DEVOTED TO THE LIVES AND EXPERIENCES OF TRANSGENDER PEOPLE. THE USTS IS A SURVEY FOR ALL TRANSGENDER IDENTITIES, INCLUDING TRANSGENDER, GENDERQUEER, AND NON-BINARY PEOPLE, AND WILL BE THE LARGEST AND MOST DIVERSE TRANSGENDER SAMPLE TO DATE. THE USTS IS OUR COMMUNITY’S SURVEY: THE USTS DATA SET AND RESULTS WILL BE AVAILABLE TO COMMUNITY ADVOCATES, ORGANIZATIONS, AND RESEARCHERS FOR YEARS TO COME.” [sic]

The IRS form lets us know how much that survey cost — $318,154. So, what information about the transgender community did $318,154 give us?

We took a look at the lauded NCTE survey, the National Transgender Discrimination Survey(NTDS) which is downloadable from their website, to find out about what information it can give us.

The problem is that the survey, despite its six figure costs, contains numerous methodological flaws, rendering it’s information useless. It isn’t worth discussing what the survey actually shows us, because it is a survey where the sample was built on self-selection. It isn’t random. The survey, which was run online, had as its first question ‘have you already taken this survey before?’, and warned that taking the survey repeatedly would not increase the number of entries into a prize draw (you can view a screenshot here). That meant the survey could have been taken over and over again by the same person. It was also meant to provide US-based statistics, but had no geo-location restrictions. That’s not a valid data-set. That’s not even going to pass an undergraduate statistics course. Supposedly NCTE cleaned the data-set, but I am not sure how you can clean a survey with such flaws. It should only serve as an indicator for further research at best, not a bible or a reason to bring about legislative change. It brings into question every statistic in the survey. Other criticisms were that it tried leading participants into a particular response.

It is an issue because the survey has gone on to shape public policy and be cited by numerous other organizations. The survey, which is incredibly flawed, has been cited numerous times by other associated transgender lobby organizations — the Human Rights Campaign, the Transgender Law Center, the National LGBTQ Task Force, a litany of other lobby groups and the Democratic Party, all groups that use its statistics as crucial evidence for their argument that transgender people are the most oppressed minority in America. Despite its methodological flaws, it was published, and proudly sponsored and cited by a number of corporate and philanthropic foundations. This was also used by groups funded by these organizations as electioneering material”, and for lobbying purposes — to advance an agenda. But if the survey is flawed as it is, why not try and find better statistics? And why use bad statistics to advance an agenda? And this is not the only example of bad transgender statistics.

Bad Stats Go To Prison

The assertions of many of these groups and media outlets — that trans women are stopped more frequently by police, for example, are just simply not true or lacking in evidence. For example, in this Vox article, we are told, for example, that according to a report by Movement Advancement Project and the Center for American Progress, that ‘Police often target LGBTQ people, particularly transgender women’, and told that ‘Gay, lesbian, and bisexual people are twice as likely to be incarcerated. Rates are even worse for transgender people.’:

“According to the National Inmate Survey, in 2011- 2012, 7.9% of individuals in state and federal prisons identified as lesbian, gay, or bisexual, as did 7.1% of individuals in city and county jails. This is approximately double the percentage of all American adults who identify as LGBT, according to Gallup (3.8%).

Sixteen percent of transgender and gender non-conforming respondents to the National Transgender Discrimination Survey indicated they had spent time in jail or prison, with higher rates for transgender women (21%) and lower rates for transgender men (10%). Comparatively, about 5% of all American adults will spend time in jail or prison during their lifetimes.”

The problem is, is that’s just not true. I took at look at the report they’re citing in the article. Trans people aren’t over represented in prison: but the LGB are.

The report states roughly 7.9% of inmates in state and federal prisons were lesbian, gay or bisexual. Trans isn’t included in that statistic. That’s disproportionate compared to Gallup’s count of LGB people, which is around 3.8% of Americans.

Those statistics are from the same 2011–2012 National Inmate Survey that Vox is citing in that article. According to the same survey, 5,000 inmates identified as transgender. (this is all in state and federal prisons). The Williams Institute estimates the transgender demographic to be 0.6%-1% of the population.

The current US prison population is 2,220,300 (according to a 2013 report), which means that 0.2% of the US prisoner population consists of transgender prisoners , which is actually under-representation for their demographic. Trans people are less likely to be imprisoned. It certainly illustrates very neatly the problem with talking about ‘LGBTQI statistics’ and treating a set of very diverse groups as a monolith and erasing the LGB in the process. It is clear from the statistics provided that discrimination exists. That discrimination is towards same-sex attracted individuals — the LGB.

Including their statistics with groups that are not same-sex attracted is simply a recipe for erasing discrimination against same-sex attracted individuals. This is not just the case with prison statistics, but others too, such as homelessness statistics. The popular figure is that 40% of homeless youth are LGBT. I have seen this re-purposed into 40% of homeless youth are trans, or are queer, etcetera. The reality is very different — the 2012 Williams Institute survey that is the source of that information says, well, I’ll quote for you:

“The findings from this survey demonstrate that many LGBT youth are at high risk of homelessness, often as a result of family rejection and abuse. The analyses offer critical insights into the challenges that these young people face when they seek help during a very difficult time in their lives,” said Laura E. Durso, Williams Institute Public Policy Fellow and study co-author.

[…]

Among the key findings:

* 94% of respondents from agencies work with LGBT youth

* 30% of agency clients identified as gay or lesbian

* 9% identified as bisexual

* 1% identified as transgender”

Yet you will see this figure repeated as ‘LGBT homelessness’. Yet of that 40%, 39% were same sex attracted. 30% of homeless youth are gay or lesbian and erased from their own statistics, which have been re-purposed for the transgender movement. Those are the figures you never hear.

Of course, there’s always more bad stats to debunk. Many of the groups said that ‘trans women are six times more likely to be assaulted by police’. But that’s not a great statistic either. It appears to come from this report from the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs(NCAVP). The Arcus Foundation, notorious for funding transgender astroturf, provided ‘generous support’ and funded the survey.

Even in that report, we get this statistic:

“Of the total number of survivors, 47% identified as gay, 17% identified as lesbian, and 14% identified as heterosexual”

The vast majority of those surveyed as victims of violence were homosexuals. That heterosexual figure is heterosexuals being mistaken for homosexual and then attacked on that basis. This agrees with FBI statistics, which recorded 1,303 hate crimes based on sexual orientation, and 131 as a result of gender identity bias. That means that, according to FBI figures, 16% of single-bias hate crime incidents were from bias against sexual orientation, and 1.7% were a result of gender identity bias. (For reference, 59.5% of single-bias hate crime instances were racial in nature, and the vast majority of hate crimes are single-bias incidents). Those FBI figures come from 16,149 law enforcement agencies — which is almost certainly a very good sample. The NCAVP survey, by contrast, surveyed thirteen local member organizations for their report. It isn’t a survey of the general population, nor representative of the general population. It’s a survey of people who engaged with the NCAVP.

That means we can say that trans women who engage with the NCAVP are six times more likely to be assaulted by police. But we cannot apply that to the general population, which is what many of these groups are doing.

This is not the only statistical error that is commonly cited when relating to trans people in the justice system. For example, you may read that trans women are more likely be assaulted in a men’s prison. This comes from a 2007 California study, which used a convenience sample of transgender women in California’s prison system, and then compared that convenience sample to a sample of the general prison population, which is to put it mildly, a statistical abortion. The amount of transgender women sampled was 39, and compared to a random sample of 322 male California state prisoners. A later 2009 study on the entire transgender population of men’s state prisons in California found that trans women prisoners were more likely to be in maximum security (Level 4 Custody in California), with 32.1% of transgender prisoners in California men’s prisoners, compared to 22.8% of the general population in California. 29% of transgender prisoners were in Level 3 Custody compared to 24.1% of the general population. They were also more likely to be sex offenders — 20.5% of transgender inmates were sex offenders, compared to 14.6% of the general population. They were also more likely to be mentally ill — while 26% of California’s male prison population had been diagnosed, 71% of transgender inmates had ‘ever had a mental health problem’, and 66.9% had had a mental health problem since their incarceration. 20% of them hadn’t presented female until their most recent incarceration.

Not quite the rosy picture painted by activists, is it?

41%

Partcipate in this debate long enough, and you’ll see the repeated claims that trans people attempt or commit suicide at extremely high rates. It’s used to browbeat opposition into submission. But where does it come from?

That 41% suicide statistic comes from a report done in 2014, based on data from 2008 in the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, from the Williams Institute, part of UCLA School of Law. Here is a link to the William’s Institute report. Of course, they debunk their own statistic on the third page of the report. How convenient for me.

“While the NTDS provides a wealth of information about the experiences of transgender and gender non-conforming people, the survey instrument and methodology posed some limitations for this study. First, the NTDS questionnaire included only a single item about suicidal behavior that asked, “Have you ever attempted suicide?” with dichotomized responses of Yes/No. Researchers have found that using this question alone in surveys can inflate the percentage of affirmative responses, since some respondents may use it to communicate self-harm behavior that is not a “suicide attempt,” such as seriously considering suicide, planning for suicide, or engaging in self-harm behavior without the intent to die (Bongiovi-Garcia et al., 2009). The National Comorbity Survey, a nationally representative survey, found that probing for intent to die through in-person interviews reduced the prevalence of lifetime suicide attempts from 4.6 percent to 2.7 percent of the adult sample (Kessler et al., 1999; Nock & Kessler, 2006). Without such probes, we were unable to determine the extent to which the 41 percent of NTDS participants who reported ever attempting suicide may overestimate the actual prevalence of attempts in the sample. In addition, the analysis was limited due to a lack of follow-up questions asked of respondents who reported having attempted suicide about such things as age and transgender/gender non-conforming status at the time of the attempt.”

Oh. It’s inflated. Because it was a binary question and may include all self-harm attempts. Studies done on those binary questions have shown that it can completely inflate your results.

Oh.

Worse is yet to come though.

“ Second, the survey did not directly explore mental health status and history, which have been identified as important risk factors for both attempted and completed suicide in the general population (Lasage, Boyer, Grunberg, Vanier, Morissett et al., 1994; Suominen, Henrikssen, Suokas, Isometsa, Ostamo, et al., 1996; Harris & Barraclough, 1997; Bertolote & Fleischmann, 2002; Nock, Hwang, Sampson, & Kessler, 2010). Further, research has shown that the impact of adverse life events, such as being attacked or raped, is most severe among people with co-existing mood, anxiety and other mental disorders (Breslau, Davis, Andreski, & Peterson, METHODS AND LIMITATIONS 4 Methods — continued 1991; Kendler, Kardowski, & Presco, 1999). The lack of systematic mental health information in the NTDS data significantly limited our ability to identify the pathways to suicidal behavior among the respondents”

They don’t know why the rate is so high — so you can’t say 41% of transgender people attempt suicide because of ‘lack of acceptance’ or ‘bathroom bills or ‘Donald Trump’. Because the study didn’t ask those questions. That would be the case even if the study didn’t have major methodological problems anyway:

Third, since the NTDS utilized convenience sampling, it is unclear how representative the respondents are of the overall U.S. transgender/gender non-conforming adult population. Further, the survey’s focus on discrimination may have resulted in wider participation by persons who had suffered negative life experiences due to antitransgender bias.1 As the relationship between minority stress and mental health would suggest (Meyer, 2003), this may have contributed to a higher prevalence of negative outcomes, including lifetime suicide attempts, in the sample. These limitations should be kept in mind in interpreting the findings of our analyses.

What’s a convenience sample? How is that a methodological flaw? Simply put: the results of a survey of a convenience sample are only relevant to that particular sample. How?

Say I asked ten friends about whether they liked purple hats. As it turns out, all those friends like purple hats. I cannot then go and say ‘one-hundred per cent of people like purple hats’. I only asked my friends — maybe we all belong to the Purple Hat Club. Convenience sampling introduces too much bias for results to be meaningful outside of the sample itself.

In fact let’s have this paper in Developmental Review explain it better than I can, because you can’t use a convenience sample like that:

“Regarding its disadvantages, results that derive from convenience sampling have known generalizability only to the sample studied. Thus, any research question addressed by this strategy is limited to the sample itself. The same limitation holds true for estimates of differences between sociodemographic subgroups. As another disadvantage, convenience samples typically include small numbers of underrepresented sociodemographic subgroups (e.g., ethnic minorities) resulting in insufficient power to detect subgroup differences within a sociodemographic factor or factors. Moreover, although small in number, these underrepresented sociodemographic subgroups introduce modest amounts of variation into the sample, enough variation to produce statistical noise in the analyses but not enough variation to harness or control statistically. Indeed, the widespread use of convenience sampling may be partly responsible for the host of small and inconsistent effects that pervade developmental science, why sizes of effects often vary depending on the variables considered, and why research shows links between particular setting conditions and outcomes for some, but not other, groups”

That 41% stat is bogus. As is everything else in the 2008 National Transgender Discrimination Survey. I’ve officially debunked it. Well done me. Unfortunately, that will not stop the effects of citing its statistics for a decade even though it used a convenience sample and you can’t generalize those statistics to the broader transgender population.

Sigh.

The most disturbing thing about all of this? You can find the description of the study’s methodology on page three. It literally takes some basic curiosity and five minutes, to find out that 41% statistic is statistical noise and not representative of the transgender community. To find that out, I Googled the statistic, and the report was the first result. I then read the PDF.

That is all the effort it took to point out that this statistic is a load of crap. It didn’t stop the media citing it, or activists citing it to policymakers though.

Instead, those groups use it frequently, despite the fact it’s a statistical artifact. It’s been cited to policymakers — and its horseshit. The suicide statistic is a false number used to deceive and scare people.

Yet another scare stat — like the fake murder epidemic.

Fake News And Murder Statistics

We’re often told that there’s a transgender murder epidemic: that trans women are the most likely demographic to be murdered, and therefore the most oppressed, and so on.

I decided to verify this, and GLAAD (which is, remember, an acronym now devoid of meaning. How’s that for symbolism?) gave me the answers. How many homicides of American transgender people were there in 2016? I am sure you are waiting with bated breath for some kind of titanic, earth shattering number that will have you click ‘exit tab’, and bitch about my bullshit article on Twitter. Okay, here it is:

27.

That’s not a typo. It really is 27. The number of total murders in the US in 2016? 17,250, and disproportionately trending black and male. 27 is 0.15% of murders in the US. In terms of figures, the Williams Foundation did a survey and estimated the number of trans people at 0.6% of the US population. The US population is estimated at 325 million at time of writing, which results in a figure of 1.95 million trans people across America.

We’ll take 1.95 million Americans. If we figure how many trans people are victims of murder a year as a percentage, that figure is 0.0013%. Per capita,that’s a ratio of 1.3 trans people murdered per 100,000. The murder rate of women in the US is triple that, and of men, quadruple. Even with an extremely conservative estimate of 0.1% of the US population (or 325,000 trans people), we have a murder rate of 8.3 per 100,000. The murder rate of Chicago is twice that conservative figure at 16.02 people murdered per 100,000. In terms of gross numbers — that’s 11,535 murders of male Americans, and 3,292 murders of female Americans in 2017. 27 is small potatoes. That is not a murder epidemic — in fact it’s a murder rate per capita lower than Canada. It certainly doesn’t mean that there’s an ‘epidemic of transphobic violence’. That’s not something to campaign about — you’ve got it better than literally everyone else. Even if we use the Human Rights Campaign estimate of 750,000 trans people, which is half the 0.6% number, we get a murder rate of 2.7 per 100,000. That’s not a high murder rate. That’s lower than every other demographic in the US.

We are told, that supposedly, 1,700 trans people have been murdered worldwide over the last seven years in this article on Buzzfeed. Your eyes immediately drift to the ‘1,700’ figure, and don’t see the 7 years, do they? That’s why I bolded it. It’s fairly obvious statistical sleight of hand. If we take the 0.6% estimate of trans people in the US and apply it globally to a population of 7 billion people, we get 42 million people. 1,700 divided by seven years gives us a grand total of 242 murders a year. That amounts to 0.003 murders per capita of trans people, worldwide, every year. That’s definitely not an epidemic. In fact, that’s a global murder rate lower than every other category on earth. The murder rate per capita of unicycle-riding clowns is probably higher. To #StopTransMurders would be to eliminate the homicide for an entire group of people, which no nation has been able to accomplish. Ever.

Maybe you think 42 million trans people on this earth is too big a number. So, we’ll make the figure 5 million people. A murder rate of 242 per year of a group of 5 million people is still a per capita rate of 4.84 — roughly similar to the US overall murder rate of 4.7. And that’s with a hugely conservative number that I literally pulled out of thin air. All these figures say the same thing — there is no trans murder epidemic — and philanthropic groups and their funded organizations supporting trans rights and sympathetic media have to perform statistical sleight of hand to even make such a proposal look even the slightest bit true. For comparison, the highest murder rate in the world belongs to Honduras, which had 90.4 homicides per 100,000 in 2017. That’s a violent epidemic. To add — the majority of those 27 killed? Black prostitutes. No middle-aged white trans women were killed at all (though some did commit murders) yet they are the ones bleating about #StopTransMurders and working in activist organizations. And the sex-work and transgender lobby does not seem to care about those vulnerable prostitutes, beyond using their names and deaths as a political prop.

If you’re wondering about the gay and lesbian side of things, rather than the transgender epidemic that doesn’t exist, yet is talked about so heavily, the FBI reports in its latest Hate Crimes report state that 16.7% of hate crimes were motivated by sexual orientation. 1.7% were motivated by gender-identity bias. Of the 1,255 victims targeted by sexual orientation, 62.7% were anti-gay male, 21.6% were LGBT (mixed group), and 11.7% targeted towards lesbians. There were 131 victims of ‘gender identity-bias’, 20 of whom were simply ‘gender-non-conforming’. In terms of hate crimes (which is criminal offenses carried out motivated by bias, not necessarily violent) gay men are disproportionately over-represented among the LGBT. That’s an actual disproportionate epidemic of violence — rather than the trans murder epidemic that doesn’t exist.

When was the last time you saw that on BuzzFeed?

But this is not the only ‘transgender murder epidemic’ article on Buzzfeed. The author of that article on Buzzfeed I just linked you, Dominic Holden, wrote a feature entitled Why Are Black Transgender Women Getting Killed In Detroit that uses the same sleight of hand, saying that the murder rate has ‘doubled’ yet doesn’t give you a number. I looked into the source it cited, and the murder rate doubled from 12 murders to 24 murders. That figure comes from the National Coalition Of Anti-Violence Programs, counting between Transgender Days of Remembrance. That’s an even lower figure than the GLAAD data! And it is not just Buzzfeed doing this. A quick Google search leads to more repeating of the ‘trans murder rate is so high it’s an epidemic’ meme . In fact, I googled ‘trans murder epidemic’ and got 535,000 results from Wikipedia, to the Human Rights Campaign, to ‘America’s transgender murder epidemic: why is nothing being done?’ from a UK website called ‘Blasting News’. It even appears as the beginning of the National LGBTQ Task Force’s 2016 annual report, highlighting its #StopTransMurders campaign. But the facts and figures say there isn’t an epidemic. Rather the opposite — trans people have the world’s best murder statistics, as a group. The ‘epidemic’ is easily debunked using LGBTQI+ groups’ own statistics. The trans murder rate is a false meme worthy of inclusion in a late 90’s chain email promising you the truth about Bill Clinton and Whitewater. It’s literal fake news.

The statistics aren’t the only fake news on this matter. Journalist Andy Ngo recently wrote about the queer community faking hate crimes in Portland, including a trans woman who said they had been attacked by thugs with bats, and started a GoFundMe to support themselves, but later turned out to have fallen over while intoxicated:

“Last month, Sophia Gabrielle Stanford was at the center of a fundraising campaign. The GoFundMe page described the trans activist as a victim of a “brutal and aggressively blatant hate crime” in which assailants had beaten her unconscious with a bat in southeast Portland.

The campaign and shocking story went viral. However, the police reports raise questions about what happened that night.

In the early hours of Sunday, Feb. 10, emergency services received a call about a woman, identified as Stanford, found on a sidewalk with scrapes on her face and knuckles, claiming that she may have been assaulted. The responding officer, Edgar Mitchell, noted that Stanford smelled of alcohol.

“I asked [Officer Zachary Roe] what happened,” the report states. “Roe said the individual admitted to being intoxicated, and Roe believed the person fell and hit her head.”

Stanford either could not or would not state her name to the police. The responding officer was unable to discover Stanford’s name and claims that she made a threat: “If you don’t treat me right, my people will get you,” she said, according to the report.

The report also states that Stanford lost a pistol and bag she was carrying at the time of the alleged attack. A local resident found both items and flagged down another officer, Cuong Nguyen. When Nguyen attempted to return the gun to Stanford at nearby Emanuel Hospital, where she had been transported, she was already discharged.

The GoFundMe page stated that Stanford had suffered a “serious concussion” and would need intensive physical therapy, CT scans and counseling”

Using fake statistics only fuels things like this — GoFundMe scams and wasting police time. I don’t have time for graft. Do you?

Oh, I forgot, and fueling a fire that doesn’t need to be fueled — all this sort of thing does is promote an unnecessary moral panic.

Bad Stats Help Nobody

The thing I always ask myself when I see these sorts of things, is well, why? Why overstate, misinterpret, or flat out lie? Why not have a survey with a rigorous, objective method of data collection?

The trans movement has a data problem. It has a data problem with it’s medicine, and it has a data problem with it’s prison statistics, it’s ‘murder epidemic’, and even it’s suicide statistics. Where it doesn’t have data, it appropriates the statistics of gays and lesbians, as we see with homelessness statistics — where 40% of homeless youth being ‘LGBT’ slowly turns into ‘40% of homeless youth are trans’, despite the fact that 39% of that 40% aren’t transgender at all. Talk about gay and lesbian erasure — they don’t even get to have their own statistics any more, even when they’re not very good ones!

There are a variety of hypotheses that come to mind for me when I attempt to answer ‘why?’. One is that an actual study that wasn’t a complete mess would show statistics that the transgender movement wouldn’t like to hear, or have the public see. They could undermine their narrative and send their movement reeling. Actually, come to think about it, this is the only hypothesis I have. It certainly explains the flat out dishonesty of the transgender movement. It is not as if the transgender movement is lacking in money. Surely the over $300,000 spent on the NCTE survey could have been put to better use than an online survey and a glossy brochure.

Because if we look at the statistics we do have, the transgender movement and it’s claims are clearly undermined — and that’s a problem. Unless they’re hideously oppressed, demands to completely undermine the concept of ‘sex’ in the legal system might be sensibly ignored by policymakers. Instead, because they’re so oppressed, because the ‘statistics’ say so, the transgender movement gets a seat at the identity politics table.

It needs to stop. Now. These claims aren’t backed by hard data. They’re barely backed by any data at all. Before we make changes that could permanently sterilize children and erase gays and lesbians from their own movement, we should really have a better idea of why the transgender movement wants those things.”

I’d like to point out tumblr will not let me post this link, regardless if I use safari or google chrome to source it, but will let me post/link other links. Hmmm...as of when I’m posting this, it was posted sometime today (April 17th). I wonder if this will be removed too.

#radical feminism #radfem #terf #terfsafe #terfs interact #merf #merf safe #receipts #resources #terf safe #gender critical

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