Into the COLAverse – Episode 16: Samantha Pickette

[00:00:00] Intro: Welcome to Into the COLA Verse, a podcast that takes us on the unique journeys of faculty in the College of Liberal Arts at UT Austin. Join me your host, Frederick Luis Salma, as we learn of the many ways that our faculty and their cutting edge work is transforming the world today. It is my. Honor to be here with Samantha Pickett, who is a professor now.

[00:00:26] Frederick: Just joined us at UT Austin, coming from, uh, a PhD at Boston University and a BA from Harvard, having taught at Smith College. Brandeis Boston University. Welcome, Samantha.

[00:00:42] Samantha: Thanks. It’s really great to be here.

[00:00:44] Frederick: So, gosh, you have this new book that’s just dropped. I’m so excited. Peaks tv, unapologetic Women. Um, but you’ve been, um, really asking these questions and pursuing research in the area, especially of Jewish American women.

[00:01:03] Frederick: Jewishness. I know you teach courses here at UT on Jewish American literature and culture and Jewish stereotypes. . Um, how, tell what? I don’t know, Samantha. How, first of all, did you kind of find your way to this subject to media, to popular culture, to literature? Um, what is it? Was it something growing up?

[00:01:29] Frederick: Were you, was there something in the water share the journey of Samantha Picket. Um,

[00:01:37] Samantha: that’s a big question. Um, I think in terms of just my general interests in literature and popular culture, um, my. Mother is an English teacher and my, both my parents have always been really into reading and films and television, and we were very much growing up.

[00:01:59] Samantha: It was a household where there was always something on or something that we were reading or talking about. . And so the idea of, um, thinking of entertainment not just as something that you kind of passively let wash over you, but as something that you actively seek out and engage with and think about critically, um, I think is something that I, I.

[00:02:21] Samantha: Learned as a skillset from a pretty young age. Um, and in college I actually planned to be a doctor. I was pre-med and I really, really hated those classes. And I, I found myself sort of finding refuge in English and Jewish studies classes and film classes. Um, those were the classes where I felt most myself, where I.

[00:02:46] Samantha: Really kind of able to engage with the ideas and, and the, the books and the films that I ended up loving and then, you know, having passion for. And so I sort of shifted gears and I realized that it made more sense for me to stop sort of relegating those things that I was passionate about, to just side things or hobbies or, you know, elective.

[00:03:13] Samantha: and instead to really go for it. And so I started, um, focusing on English and Jewish studies, um, towards the like latter half of college. Um, and I took several classes about modern Jewish literature, um, Jews in television classes that got me thinking about. Um, Jewish identity and representation, self representation, um, what it means to use stereotypes and archetypes to communicate, um, you know, facets of identity, um, and what it means for different kinds of audiences to receive message, like these sorts of images.

[00:03:55] Samantha: And then, Um, absorb them and interpret them in different ways based on their own experiences. And so from there it just kind of made sense to keep pursuing that kind of pathway and keep thinking about those sorts of big questions. Um, Which like brought me during the PhD to these bigger patterns of Jewish female representation, the idea of being represented by others versus self representation, what it means to actually.

[00:04:27] Samantha: Carve a space for a specific Jewish female perspective within the larger umbrella of American popular culture and all of the really interesting dynamic nuanced depictions of Jewish women that come out of that. , so, mm,

[00:04:45] Frederick: really and really fascinating. And how did your parents take it when you, um, told them that you were shifting direction in your study and in your interest professionally?

[00:04:56] Samantha: I don’t think they were surprised. I think they were surprised that I waited so long. Like it, it was the sort of phone call where it was like, what took you so long? Um, so they were very supportive and, um, they, they’ve always been very supportive. I’ve been very lucky in that regard. They are my number one fans.

[00:05:15] Frederick: you know, uh, it’s funny because your journey in many ways mirrors mine. Um, you know, coming out of, uh, um, rural North California, Latino, and, uh, white or what we called like redneck and Mexican kind of environment. And then, you know, going to Berkeley, the thing I thought. The pathway was, you know, to become a doctor.

[00:05:42] Frederick: That’s what you did. That’s what the, like what was well regarded. If you got to college in my community, then you would go and like become like a doctor, right? Um, and then it was this really early. 8:00 AM comparative literature course that I took and there were like eight of us in it. And oh my God, it just, you know, that was it for me.

[00:06:02] Frederick: Right.

[00:06:03] Samantha: Well it, it’s amazing how like a single course in college can change everything. Like I, I, I took, um, in, it was the spring of my senior year Jews in the American television age. Um, And it was, I mean, it was an elective, like I took it because it sounded interesting and also like, you know, not ashamed to admit, also took it cuz it didn’t have a final.

[00:06:27] Samantha: And I was very like into not having a final, my senior spring. Um, and it ended up, it totally changed my entire. like worldview. My career path, it was like this moment where it’s just like everything, like my mind just exploded. You know? You could watch TV and actually think about it critically and think about it, you know, in terms of historical patterns and, you know, socio, socioeconomic patterns, political patterns, and you know, in conversation with all of these bigger things that are happening around it.

[00:07:01] Samantha: This idea of studying popular culture, um, as something that not only reflects where we are as a society, but also as something that has an indelible impact. Mm-hmm. on what we’re doing and what we’re thinking as a society. Like that was life changing for me.

[00:07:16] Frederick: Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . Yeah. No, it’s, it’s, um, you and I are both kind of testament to the, the importance of liberal arts education, right.

[00:07:26] Frederick: Um, definitely. And, uh, so yeah, having that possibility. What? Imagine if we didn’t have that one course. Oh my goodness. , we’d both be, I know I’d be miserable right now. Um, , um, yeah, Samantha, um, really exciting. I hear at UT u. are, you know, you’re teaching, um, in Jewish studies and also assistant director to the Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies.

[00:07:55] Frederick: Um, you teach some courses, well, intro to Jewish studies, um, literature and culture, Jewish stereotypes. Um, can you give us a kind of, uh, a little, um, kind of, I don’t know, vision, a little snapshot of, you know, your courses, what you, where you kind of want to take your students and. The kinds of students you’re, you’re getting in your classrooms.

[00:08:19] Samantha: Yeah, absolutely. Um, so with the Jewish American literature class, um, and also the Jewish stereotypes in American culture class, those two classes are very much of the like, literature, film and culture kind of bent. And so tend to get students who are in English American studies, um, you know, Jewish studies.

[00:08:41] Samantha: And those classes are a lot of fun, um, for me and I hope for them because, um, We get to really delve into like deep text analyses and close readings of, um, really important kind of masterworks of the canon. Um, and talk about, you know, the sort of historical context, talk about the archetypes that come out of them, talk about how they relate to each other.

[00:09:08] Samantha: Um, we look at people who are very much sort of rooted in the cannon and kind of recognized as you. Like capital G, great Jewish authors, but we also look at people who have maybe been a little bit overlooked. And so it’s a nice, um, mix, I think. Mm-hmm. and a really nice survey of, um, kind of the, the big ideas and key concepts and sort of trends over the course of the 20th century.

[00:09:35] Samantha: Mm-hmm. and into the 20th century, into the contemporary moment. And then

[00:09:38] Frederick: Samantha, can I ask you a quick question? Trying to jump in here. Um, so are these, are we, are we talking about, you know, Philip Roth o you know, Cynthia Oik, uh, Ude Stein. Is that kind of our canon?

[00:09:51] Samantha: Yes. And you know, people like Grace Paley and Tilly Olson, Sabel.

[00:09:56] Samantha: Mm-hmm. , Bernard Melwood. Mm-hmm. . Um, and yeah, and, and we, we go into the contemporary moment and so, you know, last. Semester in the literature class, we ended with a, um, Noah Bombach movie, the Mayor Horowitz Stories, and we also read a, um, book by Dara Horn this semester. Mm-hmm. . We’re also going into some temporary moment and we’re, um, finishing with some television.

[00:10:20] Samantha: So we’re looking at some episodes of Broad City and it’s, it’s fun because, um, it’s, I mean, they’re, they’re very clear sort of like literature courses. Mm-hmm. with a kind of English. Um, focus in terms of discipline, but, um, because there’s the sort of survey element to them, they have the nice sort of historical contextualization happening as well.

[00:10:42] Samantha: And so it gets at my American Studies nerd heart because we, we get to sort of combine both disciplines into one lovely.

[00:10:52] Frederick: Samantha, can I ask you another question? Kind of following on this, which is, you know, in right now, I’m, I’m writing for Ox Oxford, the very short introduction to Latino literature. My very good friend and colleague, Ilan Sta uh, just published the one on Jewish literature last year, I believe, um, is like, if you were to kind of take a step back and look at.

[00:11:20] Frederick: This cannon and look at Jewish literature, um, and look at the different kind of major waves through it. Um, How would you kind of blanketly characterize the tradition of Jewish literature? Or could you even, I don’t know.

[00:11:41] Samantha: Well, I’ll talk about American Jewish literature. Mm-hmm. ? Yes, I’m sorry. Yes. My specialty.

[00:11:46] Samantha: And I think that, yeah, you know, Jewish literature is different in other parts of the world, but for American Jewish literature it is. across the board, a literature of trying to figure out what it means to be Jewish and American. It’s a literature of binaries where, um, you see in the various sort of stages and historical periods in which it’s taking place, different levels of comfort.

[00:12:15] Samantha: With, um, the level of Jewishness versus the level of Americanness, um, ambivalence towards assimilation kind of feeling of loss, um, as a result of perhaps, you know, americanizing to too much of an extent. Um, you know, trying to reclaim semblances of Jewish distinctiveness and Jewish identity to try to figure out basically what it means to be a hyphenated.

[00:12:42] Samantha: Um, have a hyphenated identity and to really sort of hold two pieces of yourself at once, um, to be both and as opposed to either or. Um, but also to recognize the fact that the hyphen means that there’s always going to be a sort of maybe uncomfy dichotomy of belonging and not belonging in the larger hegemonic culture.

[00:13:09] Frederick: Wow. Beautifully articulated . Um, um, I know you do, uh, course on stereotypes as well and, um, um, I dunno if you wanted to say something, and maybe that would be a nice segue into your work on Peaks TV and in general on kind of Jewishness as reconstructed in and through the media.

[00:13:31] Samantha: Yeah, I mean with, with the course, one of the things that I really focus on is the difference between stereotypes that come from outside the Jewish community and stereotypes that are generated within the Jewish community.

[00:13:45] Samantha: So the idea of representation versus self representation. Um, and obviously a lot of stereotypes that are sort of in group stereotypes have their roots in. You know, more anti-Semitic kind of portrayals of what Jewishness is and what Jews are in larger sort of popular culture. Um, either as a result of sort of responding to or internalizing.

[00:14:12] Samantha: Um, but with, with the book, um, and with looking at contemporary portrayals of Jewish women in TV comedy, um, I’m most interested in sort. Post stereotyping where you have showrunners and creators who are less interested in, um, delving into things like the Jewish American princess or the Jewish mother, um, which are, you know, older and more pejorative and kind of of Jewish femini.

[00:14:46] Samantha: And more interested in developing new archetypes and kind of focusing on the possibilities for a more three-dimensional kind of Jewish representation. Um, one that not only subverts older stereotypes, but that also leaves more room for, um, like. Deeper depiction of cultural specificity because one of the things that I think is remarkable about this contemporary moment that hasn’t necessarily been true in decades past is in addition to having a lot more content that features Jewish women, you also have a lot more content that features, um, Jewish practice and Jewish ritual, Jewish culture, Jewish religion, um, in a way that.

[00:15:37] Samantha: I don’t think would have been, maybe not acceptable, but wouldn’t have necessarily been common on television even, you know, a decade ago. What

[00:15:51] Frederick: are the, I say I, I guess the prevailing stereotypes. Um, you know, that we see today. I, you mentioned the Jewish American Princess. Um, in other moments you, uh, in your work you talk about like the Jewish big mouth, the Jewish ugly duckling, um, the, you know, like you just mentioned, the kind of Jewish mother stereotype.

[00:16:18] Frederick: Could you just for our listeners, kind of, you know, do a. I don’t know, a quick run through may. Not so much like to educate or but may maybe just to re remind, but also. Kind of like what’s still prevalent. It’s surprise, it’s not surprising actually, but that the media today still continues to pedal these one-dimensional reconstructions of Jewishness, just as it does with Latinos and, you know, um, those that have been historically maligned or underrepresented in this.

[00:16:57] Samantha: Absolutely. And I mean, I think that one of the things that is so interesting about, you know, my work and also your work is there’s so much overlap between representation of any sort of ethnic or racial or religious other. Um, just because there are these archetypes that seem to like even. Today pigeonhole people who are perceived as different in some way, shape or form.

[00:17:21] Samantha: Um, but in terms of the sort of roots of the stereotypes I’m talking about, um, most of like what you mentioned, the, the princess, the mother, um, they are all sort of root in a very specific. Post-war mid-century moment where Jews are starting to enter or be kind of slowly welcome into the white middle class.

[00:17:49] Samantha: Um, and so you have this kind of shift where Jews. Our transitioning or white presenting Jews are transitioning from being perceived as this foreign racialized other to members of the Big three American religions, so Protestantism, Catholicism, and Judaism. Um, and so that entry into the white middle class obviously opens doors for all sorts of, you know, upward mobility in terms of economics, in terms of, you know, social status.

[00:18:20] Samantha: all of that good stuff. Um, but it also leads to an incredible amount of ambivalence over what the level of assimilation that this kind of ascent requires, um, will mean for Jewish identity and Jewish distinctiveness. And so the stereotypes of women that develop in this era are created mostly by Jewish male authors, thinkers, comedians, um, who are kind of grappling with what it means.

[00:18:50] Samantha: To be an American man, um, while still being a Jewish man and tied to this kind of historically othered community. And so the mother, the Jewish mother is, you know, she’s, she’s smothering and she’s overbearing and she’s controlling and she’s emasculating. Um, and she’s sort of a figure that reflects the fear on the part of Jewish men.

[00:19:14] Samantha: Um, that they’re going to be prevented from really entering American masculinity the way that they need to in order to be successful because they have this kind of anchor to the past holding them back. The princess is the other side of that coin. She’s materialistic and she’s. You know, really manipulative.

[00:19:34] Samantha: She’s only interested in money and being taken care of, and she kind of is the symbol of a ascent into American middle class culture that has gone too far. Um, And you know, she’s the only Jewish stereotype that also has American in her name. Um, and so she kind of represents the other side of that coin, what it means to kind of go too far into assimilation.

[00:20:00] Samantha: And she also threatens to kind of emasculate and undermine the Jewish man’s sort of journey into this new phase of American Jewish identity because she’s going to sort of. Cheapen the, the sort of level of Jewish identity that’s existing and also at the same time kind of suck the life out of him, um, by making him provide for her, um, as opposed to, you know, providing for, for himself or his community.

[00:20:29] Samantha: Um, and so those are the two kind of prevailing stereotypes of Jewish femininity. There’s lots of. You know, films and books in this era that feature stories of Jewish men kind of rejecting their mothers and also rejecting Jewish partners in favor of non-Jewish partners and sort of restarting, um, their own lives.

[00:20:51] Samantha: A lot of that has to do with the fact that Judaism is traditionally a matrilineal religion, and so it’s carried from the mother to the child and. A Jewish man who marries a non-Jewish woman, presumably like, you know, that woman will give birth to non-Jewish children. And so he’s able to kind of escape and break the cycle.

[00:21:10] Samantha: Um, and so those are sort of the prevailing stereotypes. The stereotypes of men are a little nicer and, and sort of easier to swallow. The, the main one being the Shamil, um, and the American version of the Shamil is basically like your, your Woody Allen, your Larry David, this kind of. Nerdy, but lovable guy that you root for.

[00:21:33] Samantha: And he’s a little neurotic and he’s a little sort of in his own head, but he ultimately, you know, gets the girl and sort of get, gets what he wants. He’s a lovable loser sort of type and he is also in every man. Um, and so Jewish men, uh, kind of repackaging themselves as every men, um, within an American pop culture landscape is a huge deal.

[00:21:56] Samantha: It means that you have mainstream audiences identifying with Jews and identifying like they un understanding Jews and sort of understanding that they, they are like them as opposed to different from them. The female stereotypes don’t sort of foster that same kind of level of identification.

[00:22:17] Frederick: Wow. Yeah.

[00:22:17] Frederick: Thanks for that. Um, yeah, incredible tour. Very quick tour through and significant, um, enrichment of my understanding, of our understanding of, you know, how stereotypes are. Have gelled, solidified and continue, unfortunately, to operate today. Peaks TV’s unapologetic Jewish woman. So tell me about that.

[00:22:44] Frederick: Unapologetic Jewish woman.

[00:22:47] Samantha: Yeah. Um, so I. Wrote this book. Um, well actually I first, before this book was even conceived as a project, I wrote a, um, an article about the CW series. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, um, in terms of the representation of Jewish women in the series. And it was a really fun article to write and I was fortunate enough to be working with, um, Professor at the University of Cincinnati, Jenny Kaplan, um, who, you know, was putting together this kind of, you know, edited volume of a journal.

[00:23:24] Samantha: Um, and I contributed this, you know, small sort of chapter. And from there I continued thinking about tv. I continued thinking about all of the other examples that. Exist within the past decade or so that feature, um, Jewish female characters. And it kind of got me thinking about the differences between the Jewish TV and especially Jewish female TV that’s happening now as opposed to what I grew up with, um, and what I grew up watching and what.

[00:23:55] Samantha: You know, historically before my time, um, had existed, um, Jewish women historically have not appeared on television very much. Like, but before the sort of streaming era, the number of Jewish women that appear in significant roles on television, like, you know, you can count on a couple of hands. And, um, for the most part with, you know, a few exceptions, they’re very stereotypically drawn and very.

[00:24:22] Samantha: Kind of side characters to the, you know, men in their lives. There are a few, you know, Molly Goldberg from the Goldbergs, um, Rhoda Morgan Stern from the Mary Tyler Moore show. You know, Fran Reser’s character on the nanny who are doing more interesting things, but. I mean, there’s really not a lot that you can say about Jewish women in television before, you know, the nineties.

[00:24:45] Samantha: And even in the nineties, most of what you’re getting is, you know, a variation on either the Jewish mother, the Jewish American princess, and in this kind of contemporary era that I’m looking at, um, in the past decade. There’s just such a difference and I account for it throughout the book in for a few reasons.

[00:25:06] Samantha: Um, the first of which just being industrial changes to the television industry because of streaming platforms and just the proliferation of content. Um, and also the sort of space for minority creators and women creators to actually be able to tell their own stories in a way that just did not happen during the network era.

[00:25:32] Samantha: Um, and, uh, The sort of second big thing is the idea of self-representation. So when you have somebody who’s crafting their own story as opposed to, you know, a Jewish woman’s story kind of being filtered through the lens of somebody else, you have more interiority, you have more nuance, you have more well-roundedness.

[00:25:53] Samantha: Um, and with that comes more interesting archetypes of Jewish femininity that are way more sort of inclined to give the Jewish woman voice and perspective, um, make her sympathetic even as she makes mistakes. Um, you know, sort of humanize her, normalize her. And then the third sort of thing, the kind of unapologetic thing.

[00:26:16] Samantha: Um, As with the proliferation of Jewish content, with the fact that streaming series don’t have to follow the kind of network era traditions of needing to only appeal to people in the Midwest who have never met anybody who’s not exactly like them. Um, you have. Series that actually depict Jewish life as it is, as opposed to trying to water down Jewishness to a set of like cultural stereotypes where the only way you know a character is Jewish is if they look or sound a certain way, or if you see them eat eating certain foods or if you know there’s a Christmas episode and they’re sad because they don’t celebrate c.

[00:27:01] Samantha: And so, you know, suddenly you have people celebrating Passover. You have, you know, characters dying in the family, sitting Shiva, and, and actually like, you know, those sorts of rituals being shown. Um, you have holidays that aren’t considered, you know, Not mainstream per se, but as familiar as, you know, holidays that have sort of made it into mainstream television and film.

[00:27:27] Samantha: You have those holidays suddenly being talked about, um, Hebrew and Yiddish phrases being used that wouldn’t have necessarily been, you know, recognized before. And they’re, they’re sort of an infusing of this kind of, um, Contemporary canon with more of a cultural specificity and ritual based specificity that I think reflects in an unapologetic way.

[00:27:54] Samantha: Um, more it, it, it’s more akin to how people actually live their lives. How, how the majority of American Jews, um, live their lives and actually engage with Jewishness.

[00:28:09] Frederick: Yeah, it’s funny. Um, you know, we, in my last, um, book on Latinx tv, I talk about the white oculi and the brown oculi and the kind of differences, you know, I mean, Fundamentally, like you were saying today we have more, say, quote unquote color conscious writing and color conscious casting.

[00:28:40] Frederick: Not just let’s put a brown person in front of the camera, but actually let’s put some Latinos in the writing room, you know? Um, and it makes a difference. Like you were just saying. It makes a big difference.

[00:28:52] Samantha: Yeah, it, it, it makes a huge difference and I think that it’s really great that it’s happening now.

[00:28:58] Samantha: I like, I’m seeing wonderful strides in, you know, series that are, you know, not even finished, like only a season or two in featuring characters who are Jewish but they’re not, you know, Ashkenazi. And so more kind of variation in terms of ethnic and racial background with Jewish characters. You have, um, More sort of gender and sexuality, diversity with Jewish characters.

[00:29:28] Samantha: I mean, in the Sex and the City reboot that just happened last year, there was a non-binary character who in didn’t wanna have a bar or a bat mitzvah, and so on the show they had, they, they called it a they mitzvah, but that’s actually a thing that’s happening. In the Jewish community, trans and non-binary kids are having what’s either called a bena mitzvah or a B Mitzvah, and it’s a way of having a coming of age confirmation, you know, spar bat mitzvah style ceremony without having to have the gendered language that makes people uncomfortable and like, The fact that television, because of all of the changes to sort of like the industrial patterns, but also because of people in the writer’s room who are actually like experiencing these things, living these things, knowing people who are experiencing these things, like it’s starting to show in ways that I think are really powerful and important because ultimately, What I think television has the power to do, um, is normalize things that are actually and actively happening that people need to know about and need to understand are real and normal and embraceable.

[00:30:48] Frederick: Absolutely the power of media, both, you know, in the negative sense and also the positive sense opening. Opening, you know, audiences to new ways of perceiving and thinking and feeling, right? New structures of feeling and responding to, um, you know, every. You know, the world as it is today. Right. Um, so, okay.

[00:31:15] Frederick: I’m glad you brought up the, you know, this sort of the, this wonderful, um, kind of proliferation of the kind of diversification of what it means to be Jewish in all of these beautiful complex ways you’ve published on. The Black Mitzvah and Tiffany Hadish and stand as a standup. I wondered, you know, this is something that we, you know, we are struggling with in the Latino community, the Latinx community, um, colorism.

[00:31:49] Frederick: And, you know, I wonder if your. Both in the sense of the kind of proliferation and diversification of the experiences of Jewishness also has come across, you know, that difficult question.

[00:32:07] Samantha: Yeah. And I think that’s a really great question and important question, and I, one of, one of the things that I talk about in the, um, conclusion of my book, the conclusion is, you know, titled, where Do we Go From Here?

[00:32:20] Samantha: And. One of the weaknesses of Jewish television that persists into the moment that we’re in is we are still very much in a kind of monolithic sort of conception of Jewishness as something that is white. You know, New York or East Coast based and Ashkenazi meaning based in Eastern Europe. And so that is the reality for, you know, Ashkenazi Jewry is the majority, uh, of, you know, the American Jewish population.

[00:32:56] Samantha: That is true. But there is a significant popul, there is a significant, you know, population of Jews who are American Jews, who are, who are non-white, who are non ash. who come from different backgrounds and their backgrounds aren’t necessarily reflected in either cultural perceptions of what Jewishness is or the sort of scripts that define what Jewishness is in a media kind of representational setting.

[00:33:24] Samantha: Um, and one of the things that I would like to see more of in this sort of. Seeds of which are being sewn. Now in some, you know, small examples and, and in some more niche kind of programming is the proliferation of more diverse versions of what Jewish identity can entail. Um, Tiffany Haddish. Who’s a great comedian, um, is a really great example of one person who’s kind of using her own lived experience and also her work as a way of dismantling some of those social scripts that define what Jewishness is supposed to look and act like.

[00:34:00] Samantha: Um, she is the daughter of an Eritrean Jewish refugee, and she’s a patrilineal Jew. At 40, um, had a Bat mitzvah to sort of celebrate this latent discovery of her Jewish heritage. And, you know, she, she had this comedy special called Black Mitzvah as a way of claiming like she, she used it, she says in the special to say, I’m black, I’m Jewish, and I’m a grownup now.

[00:34:27] Samantha: And, um, Her work is so interesting because there’s so many threads that you can see, um, between her comedy and like historical examples of Jewish female comedians. Like there’s so many threads between people like her and Joan Rivers. Um, and then there’s also so much in common with her work and the work of other contemporary Jewish female comedians like Ilana Glazer and um, Amy Schumer.

[00:34:56] Samantha: Abby Jacobson. Slate. And the thing that’s disappointing is, you know, Tiffany Haddish doesn’t really get talked about in conversation with other Jewish female comedians. Her Jewishness is sort of tokenized where it’s like in the white Jewish media, she sort of. Kind of made into this example of like, oh, look, it, this is something that’s different or other.

[00:35:21] Samantha: Um, and in, you know, a lot of cases too, her, her comedies kind of criticized for not being Jewish enough in a way that white Jewish comedians aren’t criticized for. Um, and so there’s a lot of. Dynamics in play that speak to work that needs to be done, I think within the Jewish community, but also within just American culture at large, where we sort of need to get to a place where we get over these really dated and really monolithic kind of, Scripts that we use to pigeonhole different groups of people so that we say, oh, well you can’t be Jewish unless you look this way and talk this way, and act this way and come from this background.

[00:36:07] Samantha: Because the, the real reality is that American Jews are an increasingly diverse group, um, younger. Subsets of American Jews are more racially diverse and ethnically diverse than ever. And you know, current estimates from the Pew Research Center, from the Jews of Color Initiative estimate that upwards of 15% of the Jewish population in the United States is not white and not Ashkenazi.

[00:36:35] Samantha: And so, you know, those people’s stories. Need to be communicated. And I think that, you know, comedy is a great way for those sorts of stories to be communicated cuz it’s such a transgressive medium. I think that television is a great way to sort of get those stories out there because it’s a medium that sort of, Dismantles our expectations, and it can help to sort of normalize these things that maybe we’re not used to as a culture.

[00:37:05] Samantha: Um, but yeah, there, there are some examples. I mean, Tiffany Haddish is a great one. Eric Andre is another comedian. He’s a Jewish, Afro Haitian, um, comedian who’s doing great work. Um, and you know, there are some black Jewish characters on television, but it’s really, again, you can, you can count them on your.

[00:37:25] Samantha: and, and so that means that there’s not enough.

[00:37:29] Frederick: Hmm. Yeah, I was thinking while you’ve were talking, um, also in the, the comics or graphic novel world and, um, Emil Ferris, who’s Latina and Jewish, and it’s interesting that. You know, when her work is discussed? Uh, my favorite thing is monsters. Um, sh it’s like an either or.

[00:37:53] Frederick: Like some people talk about the Jewish, some people talk about the Latina, but never. as this kind of beautiful intersectionality, um, in a and others talk about her queerness and it’s like, hold on. No, this, uh, as you talk about in your work, a kind of non paradigmatic Jewish identity, well, this is exactly it, right?

[00:38:13] Frederick: This kind of intersectionality. Um, Samantha, um, as we begin to wind down here, I know you’ve published on the films of Barbara Streisand and, um, you know, the Fable Man’s, Spielberg’s Biopic has been in the news a lot lately. Are you seeing, um, a shift to, in terms of. You know, the, the longer form of feature length film, um, in terms of kind of representation, Jewishness and diversification, uh, what are you finding there and well, what are you kind of watching today as a kind of way to wrap things up?

[00:38:54] Samantha: Um, that’s a really great question. Um, I think. I mean, I, I’ve, I’ve sort of been in this kind of television mindset for so long that I haven’t necessarily been thinking as, as deeply about film. But I will say with the Fable Mans that, um, I think it’s very telling that Steven Spielberg over the course of his career, wonderful career, amazing career, um, you know, other than Schindler’s List obviously has not made any films that have anything to do with Jewishness and.

[00:39:28] Samantha: Suddenly like the, the fables is here. And I, I, I think that that film, um, for me was just such a breath of fresh air and I hope a sign of more films like that to come because it was a deeply, deeply personal story rooted in his own family upbringing. Um, but it was also a story that I think every. Jewish person.

[00:39:54] Samantha: I, I think every person who, who grew up in any way, shape or form in a household that was different, be it ethnically different, racially different. I think anybody who understands what it feels like to be an other or to not belong, Can watch that film and see their own story in it. It was an incredibly powerful meditation on what it means to grow up Jewish and American.

[00:40:18] Samantha: Um, all filtered through the medium of film and filmmaking as a kind of way to separate yourself from the pain of what you’re actually experiencing. Um, So I just thought that was a really, really special film and it made me excited to see him doing things that were a little bit more Jewish. I mean, we haven’t had a Jewish film from him since 1993.

[00:40:46] Samantha: Um, and I hope that he continues down that sort of pathway and that we get, we get more films that are like that because I think it’s really special.

[00:40:55] Frederick: And of course a beautiful way for us to now kind of retroactively reread the canon of Spielberg. Right, exactly. The, the kind of struggles and how those struggles were manifest in, in a sense, a kind of white passing.

[00:41:11] Frederick: Right. Um, you know, um, Canon of Spielberg movies . Exactly. Um, no, for sure. Yeah. Real, really interesting. I know and I was really excited to read just recently cuz, and I’m gonna like slip this one in right at the last here. But I loved your piece, your kind of public facing piece, if you will, um, on, you know, how these two Jewish female characters in Fleischman is in trouble, defy these stereotypes in the pen.

[00:41:40] Frederick: Ultimate episode. Um, I mean, Yeah, it’s beautifully written and articulated kind of moment of how of, of how a narrative that seems to be business as usual flips the script. Can you just share a little bit about this with our listeners?

[00:42:01] Samantha: Oh yeah, absolutely. So Fleischman is in trouble, um, is a Hulu series that was just released around Thanksgiving and um, it was based on a 2019 novel of the same name.

[00:42:13] Samantha: And, um, it tells the story of a 40 something doctor played by Jesse Eisenberg, Toby Fleischman, who. Is divorced and his, his ex-wife, Rachel, who’s Claire, played by Claire Danes, is sort of presented as, you know, really difficult and kind of, you know, awful and sort of the cause of all of his problems she goes missing.

[00:42:36] Samantha: And the, the whole series kind of revolves around him trying to figure out what happened and also reflecting on how he got to this moment to begin with. And, um, Watching the series, it’s eight episodes and the first six episodes I sort of hate watched in the, in the sense that it was like you, you saw Rachel through this really kind of myopic lens, classic Jewish American princess, super unlikeable.

[00:43:02] Samantha: Um, and it was really doing nothing new. You know, Toby was this kind of nehi well-meaning guy. Rachel is this shrew who ruined his life and you know, ruined the lives of their children and now she’s gone missing cuz she’s so selfish, et cetera, et cetera. And then without giving too much away that the series just completely undoes all of it in the final two episodes.

[00:43:26] Samantha: And just from a structural and a narrative perspective, it was one of the most interesting. Television seasons that I have watched in a very long time because it really guides you down a path and then completely takes the path away and makes you reconsider everything that you’ve known up until that point.

[00:43:49] Samantha: And the thing about it that, You know, I appreciate just, you know, for my own sort of personal preference, is it, it, it does it all in a very sort of like realistic, organic way. It’s not something that has anything to do with the supernatural. Like it’s not something that’s fantasy driven at all. It’s just about.

[00:44:08] Samantha: Perspective and about challenging our preconceived notions of who people are and our horrible sort of human habit of wanting everything to be in a binary of good and evil or, you know, good and bad, um, of being able to read things. and an either or sort of binary and realizing that life is more complicated than that, that people are more complicated than that.

[00:44:35] Samantha: And it’s, it’s infused with this kind of, um, you know, Jewish storytelling that I, I found really powerful. And I, I think, you know, it, it’s, it’s the sort of series that since I finished it, I, I won’t shut up about it. I tell everyone, go watch it, .

[00:44:51] Frederick: Watch it and watch it to the end. Right. .

[00:44:54] Samantha: Exactly. Don’t get frustrated like I did.

[00:44:56] Samantha: Just finish it. Mm-hmm. ,

[00:44:57] Frederick: it was good. Wow. Samantha Pickett. Thank you. This has been so enriching, you’ve blown my mind. Um, opened understanding to media literature, the reconstructions of Jewishness, both progressive regressive, um, non-par. Um, I love your work. Thank you, Samantha.

[00:45:19] Samantha: Thank you so much for having me.

[00:45:20] Samantha: This was a, this was a thrill. Thanks.

[00:45:26] Outro: Into the COLA verse is produced by the University of Texas at Austin’s College of Liberal Arts Sound Engineering by the Liberal Arts Instructional Technology Services. You can find into the Colli Verse Podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher. Thanks for listening and see you next time.