After decades of using stereotypes to portray Jews in films as either the nerd or the neurotic, Hollywood has begun to acknowledge that Jewish characters also have sex lives, according to film curator Peter Stein. Jewish Film Festival executive director from 2003-11, Stein will present a clip-filled lecture, Sex, Jews, and Videotape, at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco on May 31 at 7 p.m. A senior programmer at the Frameline film festival for the past three years, he will include anecdotes about gay Jews. The event is 10th in the series Uninhibited: About Sex presented by the JCCSF.
In an interview with the B.A.R., Stein said he has given at least a dozen presentations about how movies depict Jews, but this is his first on sexuality. "I'm just putting the finishing touches on my talk," he said. "I hope it's going to be enjoyable and a lot of fun, and will include a little bit of scholarship." He'll illustrate his presentation with clips from a dozen films, including Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask), Eyes Wide Open, Funny Girl, The Graduate, When Harry Met Sally, and Yentl. Q&A will follow.
When it comes to depicting sex on the screen, said Stein, Hollywood moviemakers were quicker to show the sex lives of non-Jewish gay characters while Jews "stayed in the closet" sexually. "It took many decades for Jewish characters, gay or straight, to emerge from a long legacy of desexualized stereotypes, such as the nebbish scholar or the virginal 'Rose of the Ghetto' who is whisked away to the suburbs to bear children �" or to be seen as healthy sexual beings beyond the tropes of the exotic temptress or the predatory lecher." As images of lesbian and gay life became more prominent in films, the sex lives of Jews remained stereotyped: the Woody Allen schlemiel with a huge, unfulfilled libido, or the self-conscious ugly duckling girl �" think of Barbara Streisand's Fanny Brice in Funny Girl, who cracks Jewish jokes even as she's being seduced by Omar Sharif.
Jewish women, straight and lesbian, are often portrayed as asexual, Stein said. There is a touching scene in the film Kissing Jessica Stein where the lead character has to deal with "lesbian bed-death." Jessica asks her partner if it's really necessary that sex be a part of their relationship.
There is also the recurring theme of family disapproval when a Jewish man brings a non-Jewish woman home to meet his parents. "There's a scene in the film version of Portnoy's Complaint where young Portnoy, who is carrying on with a non-Jewish girlfriend, sits at the dinner table absorbing his Jewish parents' disapproving glances. You can palpably feel his desire to break free of everything traditionally Jewish simply by dating non-Jewish women."
But gay stories of characters wanting to sleep with non-Jews often have a different emphasis, said Stein. Such characters are "already defying a centuries-old taboo of homosexuality, so any struggle they have about escaping Jewish life is overshadowed by themes of homophobia."
In recent years, the stereotypical "disapproving Jewish mother" is finally evolving in movies. For example, the 1988 film Torch Song Trilogy had a scene where Harvey Fierstein tells his mother (Anne Bancroft) that he is bringing his Jewish boyfriend to his father's funeral. When the mother meets the boyfriend (Matthew Broderick), who is clearly not Jewish, "She basically says, 'Oy, you're trying to kill me twice.'"
But in the 2015 film Those People, about a young Jewish artist who has an unrequited crush on his preppy, Gentile best friend, the Jewish mother, played by Allison Mackie, is less concerned that her son is gay or that his crush is on an Upper East Side WASP than that the object of his affection is a needy narcissist who calls her son in the middle of Yom Kippur services.
Taboos depicting homosexuality are strongest in films with characters who are members of Orthodox (most observant) branches of Judaism. In the 2009 Israeli film Eyes Wide Open, a butcher finds himself attracted to a young man. "The way these two people navigate and nearly sink in very turbulent waters in a tightly closed Orthodox community" dramatizes the long-held, tragic view that to be both observant and gay is impossible.
Israeli films usually have a more "European sensibility" in showing Jewish characters with fully realized sex lives, said Stein. "They are far less prudish" than American films, in part because "when you're telling stories about a majority culture, your emphasis can be different. You have a wider range of stories and attitudes available to you." Israeli films, he said, "are very frank and comfortable" with nudity, and portray powerful men and women "not necessarily neurotic and hiding, but depicting the full spectrum of sexuality."
For example, the 2001 Israeli film A Late Marriage includes lengthy, frank sex scenes of two people approaching middle age who are having a passionate affair, "without any gauzy lenses." Israeli audiences are clearly comfortable seeing lustful sex scenes involving Jews, he said. "We can only hope that the trend spreads to the U.S."
Tickets ($27-$37) are available at jccsf.org/arts-ideas/performances/film/sex-jews-and-videotape/. Patrons are invited to 6 p.m. complimentary wine-tasting.