Gravity Fails - The Comic Jewish Shaping of Modern America

The comedic work of the children of modern Jewish immigrants overturned the prevailing languages and imageries with which an Anglocentric United States had traditionally represented and expanded itself. In 'Gravity Fails: The Comic Jewish Shaping of Modern America', James D. Bloom approaches these developments by first surveying this transformation as it affected literature, entertainment, commerce, and politics, and then offers sharply focused chapters that look at changes in sexual candor, reactions to the Holocaust, and critiques of race. Indeed, the personae discussed here pioneered unprecedented candor toward and scrutiny about sex and violence, and no other book delves as deeply or as widely among art forms, media, and levels of cultural hierarchy. Including considerations of the work of such diverse artists as Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Lenny Bruce, Gilda Radner, Philip Roth, Jerry Seinfeld, and Stephen Sondheim, Gravity Fails provides a unique, penetrating, and hilarious look at a major force in the progress of American culture. "This energetic study examines how "funny Jews" have shaped not just American entertainment but commerce, visual arts, science, sex, and history. Jewish iconoclasm and the "counterlogic of Jewish funniness" reshaped mid-century American culture, from advertising upward....To a well-tilled field Bloom contributes fresh ideas of wide-ranging insight and stimulation. Highly recommended. All collections."-Choice