Journal articles on the topic 'Jewish American girls'

I recently translated and then served as dramaturge on the English-language world premiere of Patricia Suárez's Matchmaker (Casamentera), a contemporary Argentine play about the early twentieth-century sex trade in Jewish women imported from Eastern European villages to Buenos Aires brothels. Matchmaker was published in an anthology I edited, Spectacular Bodies, Dangerous Borders: Three New Latin American Plays, along with my translation of The Girls from the 3.5 Floppies (Las chicas del tres y media floppies) by the Mexican playwright Luis Enrique Gutiérrez Ortiz Monasterio (who goes by the acronym LEGOM) and Heather McKay's translation of Passport by the Venezuelan playwright Gustavo Ott. In February 2012, Matchmaker was staged in the Thurber Theatre at The Ohio State University. The production was directed by Lesley Ferris.

Denotation – Humour – TabooThis analysis takes as its subject jokes about Poles that appeared in two US-American sitcoms: The Big Bang Theory (Teoria wielkiego podrywu) and 2 Broke Girls (Dwie spłukane dziewczyny), as well as their official Polish TV translations made for Comedy Central Polska channel. The selected examples refer to Polish traditions, history, and stereotypes about Polish people. They were divided into three categories according to their subject: a joke based on a stereotype, jokes making Poles look exotic, and jokes referring to Polish-Jewish relations, and the history of World War II. The aim here is accordingly: to characterize the original jokes, to analyze their official Polish voice-over translation, and to consider the potential differences in the reception of given fragments by the sourceculture and target-culture viewers. This paper refers to the characteristics of sitcom as a text genre and Eugene A. Nida and Charlesa R. Taber’s theory of functional equivalence.

Andrea Most's Making Americans: Jews and the Broadway Musical studies eight musicals (The Jazz Singer, Whoopee, Girl Crazy, Babes in Arms, Oklahoma!, Annie Get Your Gun, South Pacific, and The King and I) in an effort to explore "how first- and second-generation American Jewish writers, composers, and performers used the theater to fashion their own identities as Americans."Most offers imaginative and often insightful sociological readings of musical librettos, lyrics, even stage directions, but virtually ignores music. That music can sometimes elucidate or contradict an exclusively social or literary reading may be seen, for example, in Emile de Becque's immobility at the end of "Some Enchanted Evening." In other cases, when the social assimilation of Jewish characters is revealed to be a musical one as well, music can support Most's argument. The problem exemplified by writings such as Most's-the distortions and misreadings that may result from a social history that does not engage music-may be seen in the broader context of Broadway and opera scholarship. Lessons to be learned from studying the musical Show Boat and the works of Sondheim point to the need for scholars and critics to consider how the music in musicals might convey social meanings, intellectual content, and dramatic ideas beyond words, stories, and stage directions.

The two novels of this paper, Anzia Yezierska’s Bread Givers and Herman Wouk´s Marjorie Morningstar, represent sequent generations in American Jewish immigrant literature. Bread Givers (1925) is partly an autobiographical novel, the story of an American Jewish immigrant girl in conflict with her traditional role as the servile daughter of a demanding father and the growing impact of American society. Marjorie Morningstar (1955) treats basically the same theme, the clash between tradition and transition, although from the point of view of second generation immigrants. The basic fears of assimilation and loss of identity in the Jewish sense are still there. Both novels also focus on the role of women and particularly the changing role of Jewish women.

Mostly dismissed as a trivial entertainment, Frederick Kohner’s Gidget: The Little Girl with Big Ideas (1957) is in fact a telling aesthetic and cultural document. University of Vienna PhD, Jewish exile from Nazi Germany, and successful Hollywood screenwriter Kohner empathetically fictionalized his teenage daughter’s adventures with the original Malibu surf crew and in the process vividly signaled the emergence of a rebellious postwar youth culture. Just as interesting is the way Kohner’s entertaining comic drama of feminist awakening plays out through an intriguingly complex narrative voice, one blurring distinctions between its California teen daughter-protagonist-narrator and the father-author, both learned European exile and savvy Tinseltown operator. In subtly decisive ways, Kohner intervenes allusively and intertextually in the central narrative to anchor buoyant personal history in larger philosophical and political questions, in a cosmopolitan resistance to American puritanical norms, and in knowing reflection on contemporary discussions of representation and image. Gidget is a surprisingly postmodern textual space of disruption and juxtaposition that compellingly addresses its stealth core subject, a postwar America with its Western philosophical baggage and political and historical burden fumbling awkwardly forward toward new social and gender models.

In Crossing Ocean Parkway (1994), scholar and literary critic Marianna De Marco Torgovnick—now Professor of English at Duke University—traces her story as an Italian-American girl growing up in a working-class Italian neighborhood of New York City that could not satisfy her desire for learning and for upward mobility. De Marco’s personal experiences of cultural border crossings finds here specific spatial reference especially through Ocean Parkway, “a wide, tree-lined street in Brooklyn, a symbol of upward mobility, and a powerful state of mind” (p. vii). Border crossing or trespassing inform this text. De Marco moved from an Italian immigrant milieu to a sophisticated Jewish community, via her marriage, and from a minority group to a successful career in academia. There are also crossings between being a professional, a wife, a mother, and a daughter; between being an insider and an outsider; between longing to be free and the desire to belong; between safety and danger, joy and mourning, nostalgia and contempt. In representing her younger self as “outsider” to her received community, she provides a sharp analysis of the tensions within American society.

AbstractIn 2007, two high-profile musical responses to the Christian Passion narrative were written: the little match girl passion, by American composer David Lang, and Scottish composer James MacMillan's St John Passion. A devout Catholic, MacMillan's faith has influenced almost every work he has written to date, and a passion setting therefore seemed inevitable. Lang, on the other hand, has Jewish roots, and is relatively secular in his choice of extra-musical themes in his works: even when using sacred texts, he usually sets them in a secular context. Unsurprisingly, MacMillan's and Lang's contrasting approaches towards the Christian Passion resulted in fundamentally different works, yet both composers cite Bach as a key inspiration in their settings. This study examines the extent to which the influence of Bach's St Matthew Passion, in particular, is present in this pair of 21st-century passions, with regard to both their music and their theology.

“How long will the jackals continue to feed upon our live bodies?” So begins a Polish newspaper's depiction of the rapacious activities of twenty-seven alleged international traffickers on trial for transporting girls from Austrian Galicia to brothels and harems in the Middle East, Africa, and the Americas. Aft er years of veiled discussion in the Polish-language press about the mysterious disappearance of poor female workers and peasant daughters, the case erupted in the fall of 1892, with lasting implications for the way trafficking and the domestic sex trade would be understood in the Habsburg lands and the former Polish territories alike. Seventeen men and ten women—all of them Jewish—stood trial for a decades-long conspiracy to scour the Crownland in search of “human goods” and “sell them to … local public houses or transport [them] abroad.” The affair helped define the public's perception of the sex trade in Eastern Europe between the 1880s and 1930, as thousands of young women were smuggled out of the region and into sexual servitude. The trial played out in the Galician administrative capital of L'viv, a city of mixed Polish, Jewish, German, and Ukrainian population. Trial transcripts and newspaper coverage provide a rare glimpse into the secret world of commercial sex at the turn of the twentieth century. More importantly, commentary from the journalists and local citizens attending the proceedings offers a window into the way the Galician public understood the commercial sex trade, a tolerated practice that employed medical doctors, police inspectors, landlords, pimps, and procurers, alongside the prostitutes themselves. The trial attracted attention as far away as Cracow, Warsaw, and Vienna, where the Austrian parliament devoted a fiery session to its outcome and to a discussion of the “shameful outrages of the Jewish people” in the aff air. In the Galician setting, public exposure to the horrors of international prostitution networks contributed to a new and more militant direction in Polish nationalist sentiment, one that inextricably linked sexuality with ethnicity.

In July 1791, the story goes, a small voodoo gathering in Santo Domingo sparked the Haitian Revolution, the first black anti-colonial revolution in history. The glorious history of the “Republic of the black Jacobins” was often celebrated by Surrealist artists in New York and Paris in their exposé of the decadent state of colonial powers in the aftermath of the Second World War. For instance, Haiti is central to André Breton's anti-colonial manifesto, Aimé Cesaire's idea of negritude, Rudy Burckhardt's lyric film symphonies, and Zora Neale Hurston's novels on creole culture. In New York, negritude did not have quite the same revolutionary appeal as in Paris, where Josephine Baker was hailed as a Surrealist goddess of “natural” beauty and power. But the electric Haitian voodoo performances of dancer and choreographer Katherine Dunham attracted a diverse community of African-American artists, émigrés, intellectuals, and communist sympathizers in the off-limits clubs, cafés, and private parties in Harlem. In its uncontainable, carnivalesque power, open forms, and sexual energy, Haitian voodoo captured an attraction to the “primitive” that affected American intellectuals and popular culture alike. Before becoming a Hollywood star, Dunham, of mixed West African and Native American roots, traveled to Haiti to study voodoo rituals for an anthropology degree at the University of Chicago. Fusing American dance, European ballet, and voodoo movements, she became a symbol of the black diaspora. In a recent film interview, Dunham recalls how her young assistant (or “girl Friday,” in the parlance of the time) Maya Deren was fascinated by Haitian dance and would use it to steal the show in rehearsals, public performances, and glitzy parties. The daughter of Russian Jewish émigrés and Trotskyite activists, Deren was struck by the power of this syncretic dance, which blended different cultural backgrounds and formed political consciousnesses while always providing entertainment and energizing dinner parties and giving voice to invisible deities. In her experimental filmmaking, Deren infused this magnetic power of dance into cinema.

A. K. Dickinson, P. J. Lee, and P. J. Rogers. Learning History. London: Heinemann Educational Books, Ltd., 1984. Pp. x, 230. Paper, $14.00; Donald W. Whisenhunt. A Student's Introduction to History. Boston: American Press, 1984. Pp. 31. Paper, $2.95. Review by Robert A. Calvert of Texas A&M University. Ronald J. Grele. Envelopes of Sound: The Art of Oral History. Chicago: Precendent Publishing, Inc. 1985. Second Edition. Pp. xii, 283. Cloth, $20.95. Review by Marsha Frey of Kansas State University. Reginald Horsman. The Diplomacy of the New Republic, 1776-1815. Arlington Heights, Illinois: Harlan Davidson., 1985. Pp. vii, 153. Paper, $7.95. Review by William Preston Vaughn of North Texas State University. Lynn Y. Weiner. From Working Girl to Working Mother: The Female Labor Force in the United States, 1820-1980. Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1985. Pp. xii, 187. Cloth, $17.95. Review by E. Dale Odom of North Texas State University. Mary Custis Lee de Butts, ed. Growing Up in the 1850s: The Journal of Agnes Lee. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1984. Pp. xx, 151. Cloth, $11.95. Review by Clarence L. Mohr of Tulane University. Raymond A. Mohl. The New City: Urban America in the Inudstrial Age, 1860-1920. Arlington Heights, Illinois: Harlan Davidson, Inc., 1985. Pp. 242. Paper, $8.95; Melvyn Dubofsky. Industrialism and the American Worker, 1865-1920 (Second Edition). Arlington Heights, Illinois: Harlan Davidson, Inc., 1985. Pp. 167. Paper, $8.95. Review by Richard L. Means of Mountain View College. David D. Lee. Sergeant York: An American Hero. Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 1985. Pp. 162. Cloth, $18.00. Review by Richard Selcer of Mountain View College. Studs Terkel. "The Good War": An Oral History of World War Two. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984. Pp. xv, 589. Cloth, $19.95. Review by William Vance Trollinger of The School of the Ozarks. David W. Reinhard. The Republican Right Since 1945. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1983. Pp. ix, 294. Cloth, $25.00. Review by James C. Williams of Gavilan College. Christina Larner. Witchcraft and Religion: The Politics of Popular Belief. New York: Basil Blackwell, 1984. Pp. xi, 172. Cloth, $24.95. Review by K. Gird Romer of Kennesaw College. F. R. H. DuBoulay. Germany in the Later Middle Ages. New York: St. Martin's Press, Inc., 1984. Pp. xii, 260. Cloth, $30.00; Joseph Dahmus. Seven Decisive Battles of the Middle Ages. Chicago: Nelson Hall, 1984. Pp. viii, 244. Cloth, $23.95. Review by Robert H. Welborn of Clayton College. Gerald Fleming. Hitler and the Final Solution. With an Introduction by Saul Friedlaender. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984 (German, 1982). Pp. xxxvi, 219. Cloth, $15.95; Sarah Gordon. Hitler, Germans, and the "Jewish Question." Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984. Pp. xiv, 412. Cloth, $40.00; Limited Paper Edition, $14.50. Review by Thomas T. Lewis of Mount Senario College. Alan Cassels. Fascist Italy. Arlington Heights, Illinois: Harlan Davidson, Inc., 1985. Second Edition. Pp. x, 146. Paper, $8.95. Review by Lawrence S. Rines of Quincy Junior College; Additional response by Lawrence S. Rines of Quincy Junior College.

My article deals with an unusual story on the roots of a song that has left a significant imprint on the twentieth century popular music all over the world. It is the song Misirlou, created somewhere on the territory of the Ottoman Empire, probably in Asia Minor. The author of this song is unknown. It was created in the so-called rebetiko musical style, typical of the Greeks from Asia Minor, who developed that style after the World War I. The first recordings of this song were made in the 1930s by Greek musicians Tethos Demetriades and Mihalis Patrinos. In no time, there was a true proliferation of different versions of this song, in almost every possible musical genre: jazz, latino, taksym, klezmer, makam, Serbian folk, hip hop, trash metal, pop and rock?n?roll. A number of these versions are mentioned in the article. The fact that this song is considered by many nations ? Greeks, Turks, Arabs, Serbs, Jews, Americans ? as their own, demonstrates its aptitude for incredible metamorphoses. What attracted me to this song was the story on how it was appropriated into Serbian folk music by the remarkable composer and singer Dragoljub Dragan Tokovic. The song was called Lela Vranjanka [Lela, the girl from Vranje] and became a standard in the so-called ?Vranje folk music?, marvelously interpreted by the singer Stanisa Stosic. I also compare various textual versions of Misirlou, in different languages, in order to show its parallel development in verse.

Thompson, Holly. Orchards, New York: Delacorte Press, 2011. Print. Orchards is a poetic novel written by Holly Thompson. It tells the story of Kana Goldberg, an American girl, half-Jewish and half-Japanese, who is sent to spend the summer with her mother’s family in Japan working on their mikan farm. (Mikan is a type of Japanese orange.) A school-mate, Ruth, has committed suicide and Kana is a member of the group of girls who had excluded and locked horns with the girl over a boy, not realizing at the time that she suffered from bi-polar disease and that she was reaching out to the boy for support. The book is less about Kana accepting responsibility for her involvement in the confrontation with Ruth than it is about mending relationships and the process of Kana overcoming her anger and feelings of guilt. The book challenges us to set aside our own pre-conceived notions about bullying and consider the idea that everyone is vulnerable to depression, and that what gets sensationalized in the media as bullying is not always a black and white case of cruelty, but is sometimes a case of misunderstanding that escalates in dramatic fashion when emotions are mixed in. Kana’s fixation on Ruth and the pressure of a community that blames her and the other girls constitute an invisible burden that puts her at risk of the unthinkable, too. “Suicide can spread like a virus,” Kana’s grandmother warns. Kana’s ‘exile’ to a strange country turns out to be a chance to ground herself amongst her family, make peace with the presence of death in life, find confidence in who she is, and learn how to make a difference in the world of the living. Readers expecting a remorseful narrative may feel unsatisfied, but because the book reads quickly and the language is pleasurable, they may also decide to re-read it for a second impression. The reason it reads quickly is that Thompson has chosen to tell the story in a kind of free-flowing verse. Stanzas of varying lengths define sentence-like sequences, with the breaks between stanzas replacing the conventional sentence demarcators of full stops and capitalized first words. Line breaks play the role of commas, controlling the flow without impeding it. These syntactic arrangements complement the imagistic and uncluttered style of the writing, giving an inward, contemplative feel to the story. Because it is a subtle book, it would be most suitable for an older teen who is perceptive and has literary sensibilities. Recommended: 3 out of 4 starsReviewer: John HuckJohn Huck is a metadata and cataloguing librarian at the University of Alberta. He holds an undergraduate degree in English literature and maintains a special interest in the spoken word. He is also a classical musician and has sung semi-professionally for many years.

Sometimes people engage in joking talk that might be characterized as blatantly sexist.1 A judgmental label such as "sexist" does not mean the same thing to different people. I've picked instances of joking that I think most readers would judge as sexist. That is not a claim that the participants themselves orient to the talk as sexist; or if they did, that they would agree that such joking is problematic. Indeed, one purpose of undertaking such analysis is to attempt to characterize what the talk is and what it is doing for its producers in the first place. What do people accomplish in and through joking based on negative sexual stereotypes? Three examples are presented below. One involves demeaning joking about categories of women; the other two involve demeaning joking about particular individuals. 2 In all three cases, this talk provides a resource for participants to mark aspects of identity and relationship while furthering joking and laughter. The laughables and laughter provide sequential warrants for extending such talk. Furthermore, analysis will show how participants may implicate themselves more or less in offensive talk; there are minimal ways to play along just as there are ways to mark one's full cooperation in what is getting said. These issues will be taken up in the discussion of each instance and in the closing remarks. Example 1: Stan and Dave Two university students are talking on the phone. At the moment of interest, Stan is telling of his recent whereabouts. Dave takes this mention of a wedding to make a comment (line 39) that opens up a sequence of demeaning talk about women: Dave's initial assessment of the "wool" at weddings is gratuitous in that it takes one element from Stan's prior telling and uses it to sexualize the talk. Weddings are now occasions for noticing good-looking women. Stan immediately agrees with Dave's assessment3 and provides an alternative term, "coot" (line 40), thereby implicating himself fully in the demeaning talk. Their use of metaphorical language helps key a shift into a play frame (Goffman, 1974), and they sustain it with additional metaphors ("shit," "dog meat"). Stan compares girls "down here" (in the college town) to the city girls "up there" (in the big city in that state) in terms of their desirability, sexual availability, and demeanor (lines 44-54). They compare overweight girls to livestock and laugh (lines 58-66). Following Dave's laughter, Stan poses a question that takes them to another topic (lines 67-68). The sexist nature of this talk lies both in the activities done and in the terms used in doing those actions. They refer to women in colloquial, sexual, reductionistic terms, based on the objectifying male gaze. They assess women as either good-looking and a "challenge" or overweight but "easy to grease," both sets of comparisons playing on derogatory stereotypes (cold/standoffish v. easy/sluttish; thin/desirable v. overweight/undesirable). They compare women to wool, coot, shit, dog meat, and livestock. We can see these young men doing identity and relationship work through this talk. By making the blanket assertion about "wool" at weddings, Dave positions himself as worldly and knowledgeable enough to make this assessment. Stan's agreement asserts his membership in the club of discerning, heterosexual male. They claim knowledge of whether women are "easy to grease" or not. Dave positions himself as picking and choosing women for sexual partners, provided they keep themselves thin enough. They are also accomplishing relationship work. Dave is the leader who initiates the assessments. Stan is the follower who reinforces Dave's claims and laughs at Dave's jokes. "Women" serve as topical resources for these endeavors. Example 2: Dan and Jeff Two men talk on the phone, interspersing playful joking with family news and business (Apparently, Dan manages an apartment complex and Jeff does work for him). After a couple of minutes of conversation, Jeff asks Dan's Thanksgiving holiday plans and Dan replies that he and his wife will leave town and leave another person in charge of the apartments. Reference to this person moves them into blatantly sexist talk: Dan's initial reference to Dana as "one a the girls" (line 79) genders the scene4 , but he does not refer to the specific woman until following Jeff's show of interest (line 82). He identifies the "girl" by first name only in a question that calls on Jeff to confirm recognition of her. Jeff does so by providing an additional descriptor of her as having "big- wangers" (line 84)--hearable as a colloquialism for breasts. Jeff's questioning intonation invites Dan to confirm that they are talking about the same person. In this way it slips sexism in as part of the ongoing talk activity5 . It also serves to shift the talk from the topic of holiday plans to Donna and her appearance. Dan produces an unenthusiastic confirmation (line 86) and a nonsexual reference to her by a room location (lines 88-89). Jeff again assesses while shifting the referent from breasts to the whole person ("Big girl, bi:g.="). Dan seconds this assessment and links back to the previous "wangers" reference by adding that "everything's" big on her. Jeff's expressed appreciation (line 94) of Donna draws laughter from Dan but no reciprocal appreciation. Jeff again appreciates (line 98) and Dan agrees but does not share the assessment, implicitly marking it as Jeff's alone (lines 100-101). Dan then asks Jeff's holiday plans, and this moves them away from the playful talk about Donna. Like in the preceding instance, here both playfulness and sexism get keyed by an assessment employing metaphoric language that reduces a woman to a (presumably sexually attractive) body part and instantiates the objectifying male gaze. By this assessment, Jeff identifies himself as heterosexual male who notices women's possible sexual attractiveness. Unlike the previous instance, however, here a co-participant displays some resistance (Glenn, 2003, p. 150). "Wangers" poses a test of sorts for Dan: to "get it" he must recognize the colloquialism, know what constitutes "big," and show whether or not he has noticed this part of Donna's anatomy. To do so is to participate in sexist talk. Dan shows that he understands the talk and has noticed Dana's appearance; he also shows resistance to participating in the sexualized assessments of her. Nevertheless, the "wangers" talk provides a resource for pulling them into joking interaction. While joking they can display identities as heterosexual males who recognize and can talk about sexual, visual features of women. Example 3: W and T Two university students talk in a dormitory room6 . W is telling a story about Monica, who is his "little sister" via his fraternity. Such a relationship implies in part that they spend time together in non-dating, non-sexual relationship. As we pick up on the story in progress, he is telling about her coming out of her room and asking him how she looks. His reference to not starting with her "on the wrong foot" suggests that she was treating him (inappropriately) like a date. In overlap with his talk that would return to events in the story (line 34), T offers a negative assessment of Monica's looks. From there they move into joking talk about Melissa as a possible sexual partner: T packages his assessment of Monica's looks (lines 35-36) with a tag question that explicitly seeks W's agreement. W's ambiguous response marks his unwillingness to agree with the assessment. Orienting to this, T produces a subsequent version (Davidson, 1984) that begins with a more positive but also more explicitly sexual description (lines 39-40). W affiliates by assessing Monica's breasts (line 42). This line also helps key a shift into playfulness by its repetition of the three part assessment: "XXX little XXX" ("nice litt:le- bo:dy" and "cute little breasts"). 7 In a mock-Southern dialect (associated with a stereotypical "redneck" identity), T invokes and then declines the possibility of doing her violence (line 44). W affiliates in expressing sexual desire "in character" also using a mock-Southern dialect (lines 46, 48-49). He makes a sexual pun on the word "rise" (51) which T reworks (52). After lengthy shared laughter, W resumes his story (line 58). These two young men talk about Monica, not as a "little sister" (her role in W's story) but as a sexual object. They describe her body parts in demeaning terms. They invoke joking identities as sexually violent characters who might consider killing a girl if she isn't attractive enough. They get to this talk by T derailing W's story in progress and W going along with the derailment. Derailing the story also means unmasking W's character in the story as someone who is concerned that his "little sister" might be treating him as a date. Dislodging W's big brother identity brings him to acknowledge that he, like T, has turned the male gaze on Monica and can provide assessments of her body and attractiveness. It allows space for them affiliate as heterosexual males who view women and women's bodies. More specifically, they align in their (mildly) positive assessment of Melissa. Talking about Monica as a sexual object provides them a basis for joking, doing character voices, punning, and sharing laughter. Discussion These three instances share several common features. In each, Speaker A is engaged in an extended talk activity (listing events, recounting holiday plans, telling a story). Speaker B plays off of some aspect of Speaker A's talk to introduce a sexually-based assessment of a woman or women. Speaker A responds and the participants move into joking and laughter. All three instances involve "dissector" talk (Hopper, 2003, p. 149) that reduces women to supposedly desirable body parts (wool, wangers, and breasts). The sexual items B Speakers introduce are gratuitous in that they do not pursue the topic of talk on the floor but rather seize an opportunity to sexualize the talk. In the course of doing so they accomplish moving the talk away from what it was in the preceding turn. They initiate a new sequence in which response to the sexual item is relevant. At the same time, in two of the three instances the A speakers explicitly provide a basis for gendering the talk in their previous turns ("one of the girls" and "let's not start this off on the wrong foot"). Joking and laughter occur within sequential environments conducive to producing sexually demeaning talk that forwards an ecology of prejudice. Such talk provides materials for participants to display interactional intimacy. A speaker may introduce sexual references in order to move towards displays of like-mindedness. In each of the three instances, the B speaker produces an impropriety-a potentially offensive comment or term. Jefferson, Sacks, & Schegloff (1987) show the range of responses relevant to an impropriety, ranging from disaffiliation to appreciating with laughter and/or talk to escalating with a new impropriety. To disaffiliate from such an impropriety is to reject the proposed intimate relationship and impose distance. An escalation following an impropriety ratifies a mutual display of interactional intimacy. A first joke or humorous remark prompting laughter provides a sequential warrant for any speaker producing another such to extend the laughter (Glenn, 2003, Ch. 4). Laughter becomes a goal for its own sake. Thus it is no accident that such intimacy sequences routinely accompany (and get accomplished through) joking talk. A second speaker producing a next humorous or playful impropriety both forwards the laughing environment and ratifies like-mindedness. The introduction of sexual joking, whether it involves assessments, metaphorical language, or stereotyping, presents a potent interactional crossroads. By acknowledging the sexualized items the A speakers implicate themselves in this kind of talk. However, if the A Speakers disattend the sexual talk they risk being treated as naive, hypocritical, puritanical, unfriendly, or (perhaps worst of all for these individuals) not a "real" man8. For all these reasons, it is not surprising to find sexually demeaning talk occurring in environments characterized by joking, humor, and laughter. Affirming identity and pursuing relational intimacy are not in and of themselves problematic actions. Neither, of course, is joking. We can ask ourselves what alternatives exist for these men to joke, affirm masculinity, and affiliate, without demeaning women. Yet asking such questions and labeling this talk "sexist" are part of our interaction as writer and reader, not theirs. They produced their talk for and with each other, 9 and substantive critique of such talk will benefit from coming to grips with how it unfolds in situ and what it is about for the people producing it. Otherwise we risk reifying a divide between participants' and analysts' worlds that trivializes both. Notes 1. For a discussion of sexism see Hopper, 2003, 27-30. 2. That these all involve (presumably heterosexual) males talking about females is a matter of convenience sampling. It does not mean that only males engage in such talk, although it is possible that certain groups do so with greater regularity. 3. Interestingly, Stan locates his assessment in a single wedding; Dave's assessment is of weddings, generalized. 4. See analysis of this in Hopper, 2003, pp. 122-123; also see Hopper and LeBaron, 1998 characterizing how participants bring gender into talk 5. See Sacks and Schegloff (1979) regarding rules for person reference in conversation. 6. See insightful analyses of this conversation in Beach, 2000, and Hopper, 2003, p. 162. 7. For a discussion of repetition's role in triggering play, see Hopper and Glenn, 1994. 8. Sacks (1974) shows how in a teenage group therapy session dirty jokes may pose "understanding tests" for which those caught not "getting" the joke may be teased or regarded as naïve. Glenn (2003) shows how a hearer failing to get a sexual joke leads him to be a victim of laughing at. 9. Their talk may also orient to other present and future listeners; we can only speculate how knowledge of being recorded might have figured in their interactions. Works Cited Bateson, G. (1972). A theory of play and fantasy. In Steps to an ecology of mind (pp. 177-193). New York: Ballantine. Beach. W. A. (2000). Inviting collaborations in stories about a woman. Language in Society, 29, 379-407. Booker, J. L. (1991). The Jewish American Princess and other myths: The many faces of self hatred. New York: Shapolsky Publishers. Davidson, J. A. (1984). Subsequent versions of invitations, offers, requests, and proposals dealing with potential or actual rejection. In: J. M. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis (pp. 102-128). Cambridge University Press. Glenn, P. (2003). Laughter in interaction. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Goffman, E. (1974). Frame analysis; An essay on the organization of experience. New York: Harper & Row. Hopper, R. (2003). Gendering talk. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press. Hopper, R., Glenn, P. J. (1994). Repetition and play in conversation. In: B. Johnstone (Ed.), Repetition in discourse: Interdisciplinary perspectives, Vol. II (pp. 29-40). Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Hopper, R., & LeBaron , C. (1998). How gender creeps into talk. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 31, 1, 59-74. Jefferson, G., Sacks, H., & Schegloff, E. (1987). Notes on laughter in the pursuit of intimacy. In G. Button & J. R. E. Lee (Eds.), Talk and social organisation (pp. 152-205). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Sacks, H. (1974). An analysis of the course of a joke's telling in conversation. In R. Bauman and J. Sherzer (Eds.), Explorations in the ethnography of speaking (pp. 337-353). London: Cambridge University Press. Sacks, H., & Schegloff, E. A. (1979). Two preferences in the organization of reference to persons in conversation and their interaction. In G. Psathas (Ed.), Everyday language; Studies in ethnomethdology (pp. 15-21). New York: Irvington. Tannen, D. (1989). Talking voices: Repetition, dialogue and imagery in conversational discourse. Cambridge University Press. Links Transcription symbols http://www-staff.lboro.ac.uk/~ssca1/notation.htm Citation reference for this article MLA Style Glenn, Phillip. "On Sexism in Conversational Joking" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture <http://www.media-culture.org.au/0311/1-glenn-feature-sexism.html>. APA Style Glenn, P. (2003, Nov 10). On Sexism in Conversational Joking. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6, <http://www.media-culture.org.au/0311/1-glenn-feature-sexism.html>

In the HBO series The Sopranos, Tony and his friends use “prosthetic memories” to anchor their ethnic and criminal identities. Prosthetic memories were theorised by Alison Landsberg in her book Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture. She argues that prosthetic memories are memories acquired through the mass media and do not come from a person’s lived experience in any sense (Landsberg 20). In this article, I will outline how The Sopranos television show and its characters interact with prosthetic memories. Extending Christopher Kocela’s work on The Sopranos and white ethnicities, I will show how characters use prosthetic memories to define their ethnicity while the show itself knowingly plays with this to provide comedic and critical commentary about the influence of gangster stereotypes. According to Landsberg, prosthetic memories are powerful memories of historical events or narratives that an individual was not present for. They are typically formed at the "interface between a personal and historical narrative about the past at an experiential site such as a movie theatre or museum" (2). It is at such a moment that a person can suture themselves into a larger history. Consequently, these memories do not just enhance an individual’s apprehension of a historical event. Rather, they create a deeply felt personal memory of a past event through which they did not live (Landsberg 4). Prosthetic memories are largely made available through the technologies of mass culture such as film, television and experiential places like museums. Their accessibility helps to differentiate them from other cultural strategies for passing on memories to future generations. Other strategies have typically been rooted in the cultural or racial status of an individual (Landsberg 22). In addition, Landsberg asserts that the successfulness of mnemotechnic rituals like the Jewish Passover Seder is dependent on ethnicity (26). Similarly, Walter Benn Michaels concludes that these rituals can only be effective if the individual has “some prior assumption of identity between you and them and this assumption is often racial” (680). Contrastingly, the perpetuation of prosthetic memories through mass media makes them widely accessible across racial lines. According to Landsberg, they are not “naturally- ethnically, racially or biologically- one’s intended inheritance” (26). Prosthetic memories introduce the possibility that memories can be acquired by anyone. The technologies of mass culture make these memories portable and as such, challenges the assumption that memory is “in anyway essential or organically grounded or the private property of a specific ethnic or racial group” (27). In The Sopranos, most characters are third or fourth generation Italian immigrants. Much like for many ‘real’ Italian migrants, time has severed familial connections to their homeland (see Landsberg 49-55). Landsberg suggests that immigrants initially became Americanised in order to escape persecution and being labelled as “other” (51). This meant that ethnically exclusive mnemotechnic rituals were not preserved for subsequent generations of immigrants. In order to sustain an ethnic identity, immigrants (and the characters in The Sopranos) have been forced to turn to more accessible tools like prosthetic memories. Christopher Kocela’s analysis of Italian-Americanness in The Sopranos, argues that characters maintain an Italian American ethnicity while still racially identifying as white. According to Colin Webster “white ethnicity” can be best exemplified through the long tradition of European immigration to America (295). With the influx of immigrants, there was a codification of the idea that “some whites are ‘whiter’ than others” (Webster 297). European working-class immigrants struggled to be afforded the same white “privileges” and membership to the white race. Instead, they were defined as being members of “other” white ethnicities. Roediger argued that such a denial of whiteness pushed European immigrants to insist on their own whiteness by defining themselves against other ethnic minorities like African Americans (8). Between 1890 and 1945, eventual assimilation saw white ethnicities become “fully white” (Roediger 8). Webster argues that: “In this sense, whiteness is nearly always salvageable in a way that black, Mexican, Asian, and Native American ethnicity is not (sic)” (Webster 297). In a similar vein, Kocela suggests that the assimilated characters in The Sopranos benefit from their white racial status while still maintaining an Italian ethnicity. This celebration of ethnic difference by Tony and his friends can serve as a smokescreen for the silent maintenance of whiteness (Kocela 14). Kocela suggests that the show critiques these types of responses that characters have to their ethnicity, stating that "we do not learn from The Sopranos the language of ethnic sons deprived of their Italian godfathers, but the language of racial misrecognition spoken by sons whose lost white fathers were never really their own" (16).Kocela’s article provides a useful discussion about the relationship that characters in The Sopranos have with their ethnicity. This article extends this discussion by showing how prosthetic memories and characters’ understanding of mass media are a crucial element in how such ethnic identities are formed. This will lead to a discussion about how The Sopranos comments on and treats these adopted stereotypes. “What do poor Italian-immigrants have to do with you?”: How Characters Interact with Prosthetic MemoriesCharacters in The Sopranos heavily rely upon stereotypes from gangster films to perform their version of Italian Americanness. A reliance on prosthetic memories from such films leads to the manifestation of violence being intertwined with the characters’ ethnic identities. Brian Faucette has discussed the inherent link between violence and gangster films from the 1930s-60s. He claims that “it was violence that enabled the upward mobility of these figures” (76). It is almost impossible to separate violence from the gangster films referenced in The Sopranos. As such, violence becomes part of the ritualistic ways prosthetic memories are created. This is evident in the pilot episode of The Sopranos when Christopher performs his first hit (kill). In the scene, he shoots rival gang member, Emil, in the back of the head at Satriales Pork Store. Before the hit, the pair are standing close together in front of a pinboard collage of “classic” Italian movie gangsters. As they both walk away in opposite directions the camera pulls out diagonally to follow Christopher. Throughout the duration of the shot, the collage is always placed behind Christopher. Finally, when the pan stops, Christopher is positioned in the foreground, with the collage behind him to the right. The placement of the collage gives it a front row seat to the ensuing murder while serving as a kind of script for it. It is not enough for Christopher to simply kill Emil, rather it is important that it is done in the presence of his idols in order to ensure his enhanced identification with them. Moreover, for Christopher, being an Italian American gangster and violence are inseparable. He must perform acts of extreme violence in order to suture himself into a larger, stereotypical narrative, that equates Italian-Americanness with the mafia. Through Landsberg’s theory, it is possible to see the intertwined relationship between performances of Italian-Americanness and violence. To enact their version of Italian-Americanism, characters follow the script of masculine-violence inherent to gangster films. As well as tools to perform Italian American identities, prosthetic memories can be used by characters to deny their whiteness. Kocela argues that Tony can deny or affirm his whiteness, depending on the situation. According to Kocela, Tony’s economic success is intrinsically linked to his racial status as a white man (16). However, this is not a view shared by characters in the show. In the episode From Where to Eternity Dr. Melfi asks Tony how he justifies his criminal lifestyle: Tony: When America opened the floodgates and let all us Italians in, what do you think they were doing it for? ... The Carnegies and the Rockefellers, they needed worker bees and there we were. But some of us didn't want to swarm around their hive and lose who we were. We wanted to stay Italian and preserve the things that meant something to us: honor, and family, and loyalty. ... Now we weren't educated like the Americans, but we had the balls to take what we wanted. And those other fucks, the J.P. Morgans, they were crooks and killers too, but that was the business, right? The American way.Dr. Melfi: That might all be true. But what do poor Italian immigrants have to do with you and what happens every morning when you step out of bed?Kocela describes Tony’s response as a “textbook recitation of the two-family myth of Italian-American identity in which criminal activities are justified in a need to resist assimilation” (28). It is evident that for Tony, being Italian American is defined by being ethnically different. To admit that whiteness contributes to his economic success would undermine the justification he gives for his criminal lifestyle and his self-perceived status as an Italian American. Despite this, Melfi’s statement rings true. The experience of “poor Italian immigrants” does not affect Tony’s daily lifestyle. Characters in The Sopranos do not face the same oppression and discrimination as first-generation migrants (Kocela 28). After decades of assimilation, Tony and his friends turn to the narratives of discrimination and ethnic difference present in gangster films. This is exemplified through Tony’s identification with Vito Corleone from The Godfather. Vito exemplifies Tony’s notion of Italian Americanism. He was a poor immigrant that turned to criminality to protect the Italian-American community and their way of life. Vito is also connected to Italy in a way that Tony admires. When Paulie asks Tony what his favourite scene from The Godfather is he responds with: Don Ciccio’s Villa, when Vito goes back to Sicily, the crickets, the great old house. Maybe it’s because I’m going over there, ya know? Gangster films and representations of Italian-Americanness often deliberately differentiate Italian families from “regular” white people (D’Acierno 566). According to D’Acierno, gangster narratives often involve two types of Italian families, one that has been left powerless by its assimilation to American culture and another that has resisted this through organised crime (D’Acierno 567). Tony and his friends tap into these narratives in their attempt to create prosthetic memories that differentiate their ethnicity and ultimately draw attention away from the whiteness which silently benefits them.The “inauthenticity” of these prosthetic memories is probably most pronounced in the episode Commendatori when Tony, Christopher and Paulie visit Italy. The trip shatters the expectations that the characters had of their homeland and sheds light on some of their delusions about what it means to be Italian. Paulie expects to love Italy and be greeted with open arms by the locals. Unfortunately, he dislikes it all because it is too foreign for him. At the banquet, Paulie finds the authentic Italian octopus uneatable and instead orders “spaghetti and gravy.” He is also unable to use the bathrooms because he is so used to American toilets. When at a local café he tries to initiate conversation with some local men using broken Italian. Even though they hear him, the group ignores him. Despite all this Paulie, pretends that it was a great trip:Big Pussy: So how was it?Paulie: Fabulous, I felt right at home… I feel sorry for anyone who hasn’t been … especially any Italian. The prosthetic memories that defined these characters’ perceptions of Italy are based on the American media’s portrayal of Italy. Commendatori thus exposes the differences between what is “authentically Italian” and the prosthetic memories about Italy generated by American gangster films. By the end of the episode it has become clear that these “inauthentic” prosthetic memories have forged an entirely different, hybrid ethnic identity.“Louis Brasi sleeps with the fishes”: How The Sopranos Treats Prosthetic MemoriesIntertextuality is an important way through which the audience can understand how The Sopranos treats prosthetic memories. The prosthetic memories generated by characters in The Sopranos are heavily based on stereotypes of Italian Americans. Papaleo states that the Italian stereotype is “composed of overreactions: after bowing, smiling and being funny, the Italian loses control” (93). Mafia films are crucial in defining the identity of Tony and his friends, and David Pattie suggests that they are a “symbolic framework within which Tony, Paulie, Christopher and Silvio attempt to find meaning and justification for their lives” (137). In a similar way, the audience is invited to use these same films as a frame for watching The Sopranos itself. Mafia stereotypes are one of the dominant ways that depict Italian Americans on screen. According to Larke-Walsh, this has perpetuated the belief that crime and Italian-Americanness are synonymous with each other (226). The show is obsessively referential and relies on the viewer’s knowledge of these films for much of its effect. Pattie describes how such use of intertextuality can be explained: "[there are] two ways of looking at self-referential programs: one in which readings of other media texts can be contained first of all within the film or program in which they occur; and a more covert type of referential work, which relies almost exclusively on the audience’s detailed, constantly-updated cultural intelligence" (137). The Sopranos operates on both levels as references that are simultaneously textual and meta-textual. This is evident through the way the show treats The Godfather films. They are by far the most frequently mentioned ones (Golden 95). According to Chris Messenger, the central link between the two is the acknowledgement that “America itself has been totally colonised by The Godfather” (Messenger 95). The Godfather is an urtext that frames how audiences are invited to view the show. As such, The Sopranos invites the viewer to use the Godfather as a lens to uncover extra layers of meaning. For example, The Sopranos uses the misguided ways in which its characters have taken on stereotypes from The Godfather as a source of humour. The series plays on the fact that characters will allow prosthetic memories derived from gangster films to dictate their behaviour. In the pilot episode, Christopher calls “Big Pussy” Bonpensiero to help him dispose of a body. Christopher informs Pussy that it’s his plan to leave the body at a garbage stop to be discovered by the rival Czechoslovakians. Christopher hoped this would emulate the “Luca Brasi situation” from The Godfather and intimidate the Czechoslovakians. When he explains this to Pussy, they have the following exchange. Pussy: The Kolar uncle is gonna find a kid dead on one of his bins and get on our fuckin’ business… no way!Christopher: Louis Brasi sleeps with the fishes.Pussy: Luca Brasi… Luca! There are differences Christopher… okay… from the Luca Brasi situation and this. Look, the Kolar’s know a kid is dead, it hardens their position... plus now the cops are lookin’ for a fuckin’ murderer!To members of the audience who are familiar with The Godfather, it immediately becomes clear that Christopher is comically misguided. In the Godfather, Luca Brasi was murdered because he was caught trying to infiltrate a powerful rival organisation. Fish wrapped in his bullet-proof vest were then sent back to the Corleones in order to notify them that their plan had been foiled (“Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes”). The “Luca Brasi situation” was a calculated and strategic move whereas Christopher’s situation amounts to a seemingly random, unauthorised killing. This sequence in The Sopranos uses this comparison for comedic effect and plays on the stereotype that all Italian Americans are mafioso and that all mafia behaviour is interchangeable. The symbolic language of the “Luca Brasi” scene is contrasted with explicit shots of a slumped, lifeless body. These shots are a source of macabre humour. The audience is invited to laugh at the contrast between the subtle, thoughtful nature of the Luca Brasi situation and the brash violence of Christopher’s own predicament. Through this comedic situation, The Sopranos critiques Christopher’s aspiration to be a godfather-esque gangster by showing his incompetence. Christopher’s misreading of the situation is further emphasised by his mistakenly referring to Luca Brasi as “Louis”. After Pussy says: “There are differences… from the Luca Brasi situation and this”, the dialogue pauses and the scene cuts to an immediate close up of Emil’s body falling to the side. This illustrates that part of the joke is that characters are willing to allow prosthetic memories derived from gangster films to dictate their behaviour, no matter how inappropriate. Therefore, Christopher is willing to refer to a scene from the Godfather that fails to account for the context of a situation without even consulting the knowledge of Big Pussy. This leads to a larger critique of the ways in which films like The Godfather are presented as a script for all Italian Americans to follow. Nevertheless, The Sopranos still has a role in perpetuating these same stereotypes. Tomasulo has argued that "despite its use of postclassical generic, narrative aesthetic devices, and its creation by an Italian American, The Sopranos relies heavily on demeaning tropes of ethnicity, class, sexuality and gender" (206). This results in a perpetuation of negative stereotypes about working class Italian Americans that affirm old Hollywood clichés. While The Sopranos has tried to transcend this through complex characterisation, irony and universalisation, Tomasulo asserts that most audiences “take The Sopranos as straight - that is a raw unvarnished anthropology of Americans of Italian descent” (206). The origin of characters’ anti-social personalities seems to stem directly from their ethnicity and their being Italian appears to constitute an explanation for their behaviour. In his article Kocela discusses the complicated relationship that characters have with their white ethnicity. Through an application of Landsberg’s theory it is possible to understand how these ethnicities are initially formed and how they continue to circulate. In response to assimilation, characters in The Sopranos have turned to mass media to generate prosthetic memories of their ethnic heritage. These memories generally originate in classic gangster films. They are used by characters in The Sopranos to deny their whiteness and justify their criminality. The Sopranos itself comments on the complex ways that characters interpret gangster film stereotypes for both comedic and critical commentary. In the epilogue of her book, Landsberg asks: “How can we be sure the politics inspired by prosthetic memories are progressive and ethical?” Prosthetic memories generated by gangster texts are almost inherently problematic. Scholars have criticised the hyper-aggressive masculinity and regressive gender roles that are rampant throughout the genre (Larke-Walsh 226). For Tony and his friends, these problematic gender politics have helped justify their criminal lifestyle and valorised violence as part of ethnic performance. Similarly, these stereotypes are not always circulated critically and are at times perpetuated for audience enjoyment. AcknowledgmentI would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Michelle Phillipov for providing constructive feedback on earlier drafts. References“Commendatori.” The Sopranos: The Complete Second Season. Writ. David Chase. Dir. Tim Van Patten. HBO, 2000. DVD.Coppola, Francis, and Mario Puzo. The Godfather. Hollywood, CA: Paramount Home Video, 1972.“D-Girl.” The Sopranos: The Complete Second Season. Writ. Todd A. Kessler. Dir. Allen Coulter. HBO, 2000. DVD.D'Acierno, Pellegrino. “Cinema Paradiso.” The Italian American Heritage: A Companion to Literature and Arts. New York: Garland, 1999. 563-690.Faucette, Brian. "Interrogations of Masculinity: Violence and the Retro-Gangster Cycle of the 60s." Atenea 28.1 (2008): 75-85.“From Where to Eternity.” The Sopranos: The Complete Second Season. Writ. Michael Imperioli. Dir. Henry Bronchtein. HBO, 2000. DVD. Golden, Cameron. "You're Annette Bening? Dreams and Hollywood Subtext in The Sopranos." Lavery, David. Reading The Sopranos: Hit TV from H.B.O. London: I.B. Tauris, 2006. 91-103.Kocela, Christopher. "Unmade Men: The Sopranos after Whiteness." Postmodern Culture 15.2 (2005). <http://pmc.iath.virginia.edu/issue.105/15.2kocela.html>.Landsberg, Alison. Prosthetic Memories: The Transformation of American Rememberance in the Age of Mass Culture. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.Messenger, Christopher. Godfather and American Culture: How the Corleones Became Our Gang. New York: State University of New York Press, 2002.Michaels, Walter Ben. "Race into Culture: A Critical Geneology of Cultural Identity." Critical Inquiry 18.4 (1992): 655-85.Larke-Walsh, George. Screening the Mafia: Masculinity, Ethnicity and Mobsters from The Godfather to The Sopranos. Jefferson: McFarland, 2010.Papaleo, Joseph. "Ethnic Images and Ethnic Fate: The Media Image of Italian Americans." Ethnic Images in American Film and Television (1978): 44-95.Pattie, David. "Mobbed Up: The Sopranos and the Modern Gangster Film." Lavery, David. This Thing of Ours: Investigating The Sopranos. New York: Wallflower Press, 2002. 137-152.Roediger, D.R. The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class. London: Verso, 2007. Thorburn, D. "The Sopranos." In The Essential H.B.O Reader, eds. G. Edgerton and J. Jones. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2008. 61-70.Tomasulo, Frank. "The Guinea as Tragic Hero: The Complex Representation of Italian Americans." In The Essential Sopranos Reader, eds. David Lavery, Douglas Howard, and Paul Levinson. Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 2011. 196-207.“The Sopranos.” The Sopranos: The Complete First Season. Writ. David Chase. Dir. David Chase. HBO, 1999. DVD. “Walk like a Man.” The Sopranos: The Complete Sixth Season. Writ. Terence Winter. Dir. Terence Winter. HBO, 2007. DVD. Webster, Colin. "Marginalized White Ethnicity, Race and Crime." Theoretical Criminology 12 (2008): 293-312.

Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties. —John Milton (1608-1674) Introduction The publication of 12 cartoons depicting images of Prophet Mohammed [Peace Be Upon Him] first in Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten on 30 September 2005, and later reprinted in European media and two New Zealand newspapers, sparked protests around the Muslim world. The Australian newspapers – with the exception of The Courier-Mail, which published one cartoon – refrained from reprinting the cartoons, acknowledging that depictions of the Prophet are regarded as “blasphemous by Muslims”. How is this apparent act of restraint to be assessed? Edward Said, in his book Covering Islam has acknowledged that there have been many Muslim provocations and troubling incidents by Islamic countries such as Iran, Libya, Sudan, and others in the 1980s. However, he contends that the use of the label “Islam” by non-Muslim commentators, either to explain or indiscriminately condemn “Islam”, ends up becoming a form of attack, which in turn provokes more hostility (xv-xvi). This article examines how two Australian newspapers – The Australian and The West Australian – handled the debate on the Prophet Muhammad cartoons and considers whether in the name of “free speech” it ended in “a form of attack” on Australian Muslims. It also considers the media’s treatment of Muslim Australians’ “free speech” on previous occasions. This article is drawn from the oral testimonies of Muslims of diverse ethnic background. Since 1998, as part of PhD and post-doctoral research on Muslims in Australia, the author conducted 130 face-to-face, in-depth, taped interviews of Muslims, aged 18-90, both male and female. While speaking about their settlement experience, several interviewees made unsolicited remarks about Western/Australian media, all of them making the point that Muslims were being demonised. Australian Muslims Many of Australia’s 281,578 Muslims — 1.5 per cent of the total population (Australian Bureau of Statistics) — believe that as a result of media bias, they are vilified in society as “terrorists”, and discriminated in the workplace (Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission; Dreher 13; Kabir 266-277). The ABS figures support their claim of discrimination in the workplace; in 1996 the unemployment rate for Muslim Australians was 25 per cent, compared to 9 per cent for the national total. In 2001, it was reduced to 18.5 per cent, compared to 6.8 per cent for the national total, but the ratio of underprivileged positions in the labour market remained almost three times higher than for the wider community. Instead of reflecting on Muslims’ labour market issues or highlighting the social issues confronting Muslims since 9/11, some Australian media, in the name of “free speech”, reinforce negative perceptions of Muslims through images, cartoons and headlines. In 2004, one Muslim informant offered their perceptions of Australian media: I think the Australian media are quite prejudiced, and they only do show one side of the story, which is quite pro-Bush, pro-Howard, pro-war. Probably the least prejudiced media would be ABC or SBS, but the most pro-Jewish, pro-America, would be Channel Seven, Channel Nine, Channel Ten. They only ever show things from one side of the story. This article considers the validity of the Muslim interviewee’s perception that Australian media representation is one-sided. On 26 October 2005, under the headline: “Draw a Cartoon about Mohammed and You Must Die”, The Australian warned its readers: ISLAM is no laughing matter. Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, is being protected by security guards and several cartoonists have gone into hiding after the newspaper published a series of 12 cartoons about the prophet Mohammed. According to Islam, it is blasphemous to make images of the prophet. Muslim fundamentalists have threatened to bomb the paper’s offices and kill the cartoonists (17). Militant Muslims The most provocative cartoons appearing in the Danish media are probably those showing a Muhammad-like figure wearing a turban shaped as a bomb with a burning fuse coming out of it, or a queue of smoking suicide bombers on a cloud with an Islamic cleric saying, “Stop stop we have run out of virgins”. Another showed a blindfolded Muslim man with two veiled Muslim women standing behind him. These messages appeared to be concerned with Islam’s repression of women (Jyllands-Posten), and possibly with the American channel CBS airing an interview in August 2001 of a Palestinian Hamas activist, Muhammad Abu Wardeh, who recruited terrorists for suicide bombings in Israel. Abu Wardeh was quoted as saying: “I described to him [the suicide bomber] how God would compensate the martyr for sacrificing his life for his land. If you become a martyr, God will give you 70 virgins, 70 wives and everlasting happiness” (The Guardian). Perhaps to serve their goals, the militants have re-interpreted the verses of the Holy Quran (Sura 44:51-54; 55:56) where it is said that Muslims who perform good deeds will be blessed by the huris or “pure being” (Ali 1290-1291; 1404). However, since 9/11, it is also clear that the Muslim militant groups such as the Al-Qaeda have become the “new enemy” of the West. They have used religion to justify the terrorist acts and suicide bombings that have impacted on Western interests in New York, Washington, Bali, Madrid amongst other places. But it should be noted that there are Muslim critics, such as Pakistani-born writer, Irshad Manji, Bangladeshi-born writer Taslima Nasreen and Somalian-born Dutch parliamentarian Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who have been constant critics of Muslim men’s oppression of women and have urged reformation. However, their extremist fellow believers threatened them with a death sentence for their “free speech” (Chadwick). The non-Muslim Dutch film director, Theo van Gogh, also a critic of Islam and a supporter of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, advocated a reduction in immigration into Holland, especially by Muslims. Both van Gogh and Hirsi Ali – who co-scripted and co-produced the film Submission – received death threats from Muslim extremists because the film exhibited the verses of the Quran across the chest, stomach and thighs of an almost naked girl, and featured four women in see-through robes showing their breasts, with texts from the Quran daubed on their bodies, talking about the abuse they had suffered under Islam (Anon 25). Whereas there may be some justification for the claim made in the film, that some Muslim men interpret the Quran to oppress women (Doogue and Kirkwood 220), the writing of the Quranic verses on almost-naked women is surely offensive to all Muslims because the Quran teaches Muslim women to dress modestly (Sura 24: 30-31; Ali 873). On 4 November 2004, The West Australian reported that the Dutch director Theo van Gogh was murdered by a 26-year-old Dutch-Moroccan Muslim on 2 November 2004 (27). Hirsi Ali, the co-producer of the film was forced to go into hiding after van Gogh’s murder. In the face of a growing clamour from both the Dutch Muslims and the secular communities to silence her, Ayaan Hirsi Ali resigned from the Dutch Parliament in May 2006 and decided to re-settle in Washington (Jardine 2006). It should be noted that militant Muslims form a tiny but forceful minority of the 1.4 billion Muslims worldwide. The Muslim majority are moderate and peaceful (Doogue and Kirkwood 79-80). Some Muslim scholars argue that there is specific instruction in the Quran for people to apply their knowledge and arrive at whatever interpretation is of greatest benefit to the community. It may be that stricter practitioners would not agree with the moderate interpretation of the Quran and vice versa (Doogue and Kirkwood 232). Therefore, when the Western media makes a mockery of the Muslim religion or their Prophet in the name of “free speech”, or generalises all Muslims for the acts of a few through headlines or cartoons, it impacts on the Muslims residing in the West. Prophet Muhammad’s Cartoons With the above-mentioned publication of Prophet Muhammad’s cartoons in Denmark, Islamic critics charged that the cartoons were a deliberate provocation and insult to their religion, designed to incite hatred and polarise people of different faiths. In February 2006, regrettably, violent reactions took place in the Middle East, Europe and in Asia. Danish embassies were attacked and, in some instances, were set on fire. The demonstrators chanted, “With our blood and souls we defend you, O Prophet of God!”. Some replaced the Danish flag with a green one printed with the first pillar of Islam (Kalima): “There is no god but God and Mohammed is the messenger of God”. Some considered the cartoons “an unforgivable insult” that merited punishment by death (The Age). A debate on “free speech” soon emerged in newspapers throughout the world. On 7 February 2006 the editorial in The West Australian, “World Has Had Enough of Muslim Fanatics”, stated that the newspaper would not publish cartoons of Mohammad that have drawn protests from Muslims around the world. The newspaper acknowledged that depictions of the prophet are regarded as “blasphemous by Muslims” (18). However, the editorial was juxtaposed with another article “Can Liberty Survive a Clash of Cultures?”, with an image of bearded men wearing Muslim head coverings, holding Arabic placards and chanting slogans, implying the violent nature of Islam. And in the letters page of this newspaper, published on the same day, appeared the following headlines (20): Another Excuse for Muslims to Threaten Us Islam Attacked Cartoon Rage: Greatest Threat to World Peace We’re Living in Dangerous Times Why Treat Embassies with Contempt? Muslim Religion Is Not So Soft Civilised World Is Threatened The West Australian is a state-based newspaper that tends to side with the conservative Liberal party, and is designed to appeal to the “man in the street”. The West Australian did not republish the Prophet Muhammad cartoon, but for 8 days from 7 to 15 February 2006 the letters to the editor and opinion columns consistently criticised Islam and upheld “superior” Western secular values. During this period, the newspaper did publish a few letters that condemned the Danish cartoonist, including the author’s letter, which also condemned the Muslims’ attack on the embassies. But the overall message was that Western secular values were superior to Islamic values. In other words, the newspaper adopted a jingoistic posture and asserted the cultural superiority of mainstream Australians. The Danish cartoons also sparked a debate on “free speech” in Australia’s leading newspaper, The Australian, which is a national newspaper that also tends to reflect the values of the ruling national government – also the conservative Liberal party. And it followed a similar pattern of debate as The West Australian. On 14 February 2006, The Australian (13) published a reader’s criticism of The Australian for not republishing the cartoons. The author questioned whether the Muslims deserved any tolerance because their Holy Book teaches intolerance. The Koran [Quran] (22:19) says: Garments of fire have been prepared for the unbelievers. Scalding water shall be poured upon their heads, melting their skins and that which is in their bellies. Perhaps this reader did not find the three cartoons published in The Australian a few days earlier to be ‘offensive’ to the Australian Muslims. In the first, on 6 February 2006, the cartoonist Bill Leak showed that his head was chopped off by some masked people (8), implying that Muslim militants, such as the Hamas, would commit such a brutal act. The Palestinian Hamas group often appear in masks before the media. In this context, it is important to note that Israel is an ally of Australia and the United States, whereas the Hamas is Israel’s enemy whose political ideology goes against Israel’s national interest. On 25 January 2006, the Hamas won a landslide victory in the Palestine elections but Israel refused to recognise this government because Hamas has not abandoned its militant ideology (Page 13). The cartoon, therefore, probably means that the cartoonist or perhaps The Australian has taken sides on behalf of Australia’s ally Israel. In the second cartoon, on 7 February 2006, Bill Leak sketched an Arab raising his sword over a school boy who was drawing in a classroom. The caption read, “One more line and I’ll chop your hand off!” (12). And in the third, on 10 February 2006, Bill Leak sketched Mr Mohammed’s shadow holding a sword with the caption: “The unacceptable face of fanaticism”. A reporter asked: “And so, Mr Mohammed, what do you have to say about the current crisis?” to which Mr Mohammed replied, “I refuse to be drawn on the subject” (16). The cartoonist also thought that the Danish cartoons should have been republished in the Australian newspapers (Insight). Cartoons are supposed to reflect the theme of the day. Therefore, Bill Leak’s cartoons were certainly topical. But his cartoons reveal that his or The Australian’s “freedom of expression” has been one-sided, all depicting Islam as representing violence. For example, after the Bali bombing on 21 November 2002, Leak sketched two fully veiled women, one carrying explosives under her veil and asking the other, “Does my bomb look big in this”? The cartoonist’s immediate response to criticism of the cartoon in a television programme was, “inevitably, when you look at a cartoon such as that one, the first thing you’ve got to do is remember that as a daily editorial cartoonist, you’re commenting first and foremost on the events of the day. They’re very ephemeral things”. He added, “It was…drawn about three years ago after a spate of suicide bombing attacks in Israel” (Insight). Earlier events also suggested that that The Australian resolutely supports Australia’s ally, Israel. On 13-14 November 2004 Bill Leak caricatured the recently deceased Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in The Weekend Australian (18). In the cartoon, God appeared to be displeased with him and would not allow him to enter paradise. Arafat was shown with explosives strapped to his body and threatening God by saying, “A cloud to myself or the whole place goes up….”. On the other hand, on 6 January 2006 the same cartoonist sympathetically portrayed ailing Israeli leader Ariel Sharon as a decent man wearing a black suit, with God willing to accept him (10); and the next day Sharon was portrayed as “a Man of Peace” (12). Politics and Religion Thus, the anecdotal evidence so far reveals that in the name of “freedom of expression”, or “free speech” The West Australian and The Australian newspapers have taken sides – either glorifying their “superior” Western culture or taking sides on behalf of its allies. On the other hand, these print media would not tolerate the “free speech” of a Muslim leader who spoke against their ally or another religious group. From the 1980s until recently, some print media, particularly The Australian, have been critical of the Egyptian-born Muslim spiritual leader Imam Taj el din al-Hilali for his “free speech”. In 1988 the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils bestowed the title of Mufti to Imam al- Hilali, and al-Hilali was elevated to a position of national religious leadership. Al-Hilali became a controversial figure after 1988 when he gave a speech to the Muslim students at Sydney University and accused Jews of trying to control the world through “sex, then sexual perversion, then the promotion of espionage, treason and economic hoarding” (Hewett 7). The Imam started being identified as a “Muslim chief” in the news headlines once he directly criticised American foreign policy during the 1990-91 Gulf crisis. The Imam interpreted US intervention in Kuwait as a “political dictatorship” that was exploiting the Gulf crisis because it was seen as a threat to its oil supply (Hewett 7). After the Bali bombings in 2002, the Howard government distributed information on terrorism through the “Alert and Alarmed” kit as part of its campaign of public awareness. The first casualty of the “Be alert, but not alarmed” campaign was the Imam al-Hilali. On 6 January 2003, police saw a tube of plastic protruding from a passenger door window and suspected that al-Hilali might have been carrying a gun when they pulled him over for traffic infringements. Sheikh al-Hilali was charged with resisting arrest and assaulting police (Morris 1, 4). On 8 January 2003 The Australian reminded its readers “Arrest Adds to Mufti’s Mystery” (9). The same issue of The Australian portrayed the Sheikh being stripped of his clothes by two policemen. The letter page also contained some unsympathetic opinions under the headline: “Mufti Deserved No Special Treatment” (10). In January 2004, al-Hilali was again brought under the spotlight. The Australian media alleged that al-Hilali praised the suicide bombers at a Mosque in Lebanon and said that the destruction of the World Trade Center was “God’s work against oppressors” (Guillatt 24). Without further investigation, The Australian again reported his alleged inflammatory comments. Under the headline, “Muslim Leader’s Jihad Call”, it condemned al-Hilali and accused him of strongly endorsing “terrorist groups Hezbollah and Hamas, during his visit to Lebanon”. Federal Labor Member of Parliament Michael Danby said, “Hilali’s presence in Australia is a mistake. He and his associates must give authorities an assurance he will not assist future homicide attacks” (Chulov 1, 5). Later investigations by Sydney’s Good Weekend Magazine and SBS Television found that al-Hilali’s speech had been mistranslated (Guillatt 24). However, the selected print media that had been very critical of the Sheikh did not highlight the mistranslation. On the other hand, the Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell has been critical of Islam and is also opposed to Australia’s involvement in the Iraq war in 2003, but the print media appeared to ignore his “free speech” (Dateline). In November 2004, Dr Pell said that secular liberal democracy was empty and selfish, and Islam was emerging as an alternative world view that attracted the alienated (Zwartz 3). In May 2006, Dr Pell said that he tried to reconcile claims that Islam was a faith of peace with those that suggested the Quran legitimised the killings of non-Muslims but: In my own reading of the Koran [Quran], I began to note down invocations to violence. There are so many of them, however, that I abandoned this exercise after 50 or 60 or 70 pages (Morris). Muslim leaders regarded Dr Pell’s anti-Islam statement as “inflammatory” (Morris). However, both the newspapers, The Australian and The West Australian remained uncritical of Dr Pell’s “free speech” against Islam. Conclusion Edward Said believed that media images are informed by official definitions of Islam that serve the interests of government and business. The success of the images is not in their accuracy but in the power of the people who produce them, the triumph of which is hardly challenged. “Labels have survived many experiences and have been capable of adapting to new events, information and realities” (9). In this paper the author accepts that, in the Australian context, militant Muslims are the “enemy of the West”. However, they are also the enemy of most moderate Australian Muslims. When some selected media take sides on behalf of the hegemony, or Australia’s “allies”, and offend moderate Australian Muslims, the media’s claim of “free speech” or “freedom of expression” remains highly questionable. Muslim interviewees in this study have noted a systemic bias in some Australian media, but they are not alone in detecting this bias (see the “Abu Who?” segment of Media Watch on ABC TV, 31 July 2006). To address this concern, Australian Muslim leaders need to play an active role in monitoring the media. This might take the form of a watchdog body within the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils. If the media bias is found to be persistent, the AFIC might then recommend legislative intervention or application of existing anti-discrimination policies; alternatively, AFIC could seek sanctions from within the Australian journalistic community. One way or another this practice should be stopped. References Ali, Abdullah Yusuf. The Holy Quran: Text, Translation and Commentary. New Revised Ed. Maryland, USA: Amana Corporation, 1989. Anonymous. “Dutch Courage in Aftermath of Film-Maker’s Slaying.” The Weekend Australian 6-7 Nov. 2004. 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Submission. “Film Clip from Short Submission.” Submission. 11 June 2006. http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2655656?htv=12> The Age. “Embassies Torched over Cartoons.” 5 Feb. 2006. http://www.theage.com.au>. The Guardian. “Virgins? What Virgins?” 12 Jan. 2002. 4 June 2006 http://www.guardian.co.uk/>. Zwartz, Barney. “Islam Could Be New Communism, Pell Tells US Audience.” Sydney Morning Herald 12 Nov. 2004. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Kabir, Nahid. "Depiction of Muslims in Selected Australian Media: Free Speech or Taking Sides." M/C Journal 9.4 (2006). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0609/1-kabir.php>. APA Style Kabir, N. (Sep. 2006) "Depiction of Muslims in Selected Australian Media: Free Speech or Taking Sides," M/C Journal, 9(4). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0609/1-kabir.php>.