America is changing. We are or rather we have gradually become more and more fixated on the man-child or what in Yiddish is called the schlemiel. While academics have seen this coming, journalists and cultural critics are catching up. In Eros and the Jews (1997), David Biale argued that Jewish-American comedians “neutralized” the negative connotations […]
As the crisis in the Ukraine has grown, I – like millions of other people – have become very interested in the meaning of Volodmir Zelensky’s journey to becoming the hero of the West in the drama of war. What interests me most, as a scholar of the schlemiel and a schlemiel theorist, is the […]
After learning that Jim Nabors died yesterday, a flood of impressions I held within me – from many years watching re-runs of The Andy Griffith Show – washed over me. Like many Americans, I used to come home and watch reruns of shows that had comic figures – ranging from Leave it to Beaver, Little […]
I wonder if a new trend is developing in the journalistic world in which this or that journalist calls Donald Trump or someone in his administration a schlemiel (see this article – for instance -that calls Sean Spicer a schlemiel character). Mind you – as I’ve said many times on this blog – there are […]
An important and often neglected subject of schlemiel theory is the female schlemiel who, since she hasn’t been discussed as much as the male schlemiel, needs a discourse. The already existing discourse on her has found its beginnings not in the work of Ruth Wisse or Sanford Pinsker (the two most important schlemiel theorists in […]
Ten years after Seth Rogen appeared in Judd Apatow’s Knocked Up (2007) as a stoner schlemiel, Seth Rogen has made this character into his biggest selling point. Here is a list of movies where we see the schlemiel-stoner character: Superbad (2007), Pineapple Express (2008), Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008), Funny People (2009), This […]
Many cultural critics and artists have taken to the subject of what has happened to American culture (and Western culture) in the wake of the sexual and feminist revolution of the 1960s. One of the most interesting – and recent – encounters with this topic can be found in a piece by A.O. Scott for […]
A.O. Scott’s New York Times Magazine article on the current state of American culture (as evidenced by film and TV), “The Death of Adulthood in American Culture” has been widely circulated and discussed. In the article, he laments that America is devolving and entering into a state of “perpetual adolescence.” It has yet to go through […]
Critics like A.O. Scott and Josh Eells are frustrated when it comes to Hollywood. They feel that the possibility of adulthood – which they equate with progress – is stifled by countless films that encourage “perpetual adolescence.” Scott, at the end of his essay “The Death of Adulthood in American Culture,” tells that “to get […]
While they were making Neighbors, last spring, Zac Efron and Seth Rogen stopped by the Workoholics set and did a take with them hashtagged – with an obvious wink to Rogen’s film – #cubicleneighbors. Although the show, in itself, never caught my eye, the confluence of the Workaholics cast with Rogen and Efron made […]
Schlemiel Theory 