New Jews by David L. Reznik

Author:David L. Reznik [Reznik, David L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781315636221
Google: rn9VAQAACAAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2012-01-15T05:05:19+00:00

Lisa Kramer (Debra Messing) in Along Came Polly (Universal, 2004)

WORKING-CLASS “PAMPERED PRINCESSES”

Even American Jewish female characters from relatively modest backgrounds are portrayed as stereotypical “pampered princesses.” One example is Confessions of a Shopaholic’s (Touchstone, 2009) Rebecca Bloomwood (Isla Fisher), who is shown in the film’s opening scene as a young girl dreaming of being able to afford designer shoes while her voice-over describes a family financial situation that precluded such purchases. In fact, Rebecca’s parents, who make an appearance later in the film, are humble in their appearance, dressed in rather pedestrian clothing and speaking in a working-class vernacular. If anything, however, such monetary limitations seem to have only encouraged Rebecca’s obsessive materialism (noted in the film’s title), for as a young adult, she displays nothing but “pampered princess” traits. Wearing outrageously colorful and showy dresses and armed with “If I Were a Rich Girl” (a “pampered princess” remake of a song from Fiddler on the Roof) as her cell-phone ringtone, Carrie Bradshaw–wannabe Rebecca spends every day shopping at department stores and boutiques, constantly rationalizing her compulsive need to purchase objects of self-adornment through a myriad of ridiculously stereotypical “pampered princess” voice-overs. In one, she associates the romantic feeling of “warm butter sliding down toast in your heart” with how she feels when she sees a store. Later she is even more explicit in blurring the line between her relations with humans and objects, claiming that “a man can never treat you like a store” (which can also be interpreted to reveal a stereotypical aversion to sex on Rebecca’s behalf) and describing “the joy you feel when it’s just you and what you’ve bought” as incomparable. Obviously, commodity fetishism like this has serious consequences for a “pampered princess” like Rebecca who is not paternally spoiled with wealth. Specifically, she has amassed credit-card debt to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars (ironically, in the flashback opening scene of the film, Rebecca describes the awe she felt as a young girl seeing women pay for their purchases with a “magic card,” only to find herself completely over her head with twelve of them as a young adult!). Indeed, much of the film’s narrative focuses on Rebecca’s struggles to free herself from this debt despite her inability to withstand the addictive nature of her shopaholism. In several scenes, she shirks personal and occupational responsibilities (a running joke throughout the film is that Rebecca works as a writer for Successful Saving magazine) to attend “multi-designer sample sales” and the like since, in her own words, “the world gets better” when she shops. Despite resorting to all sorts of childish antics to hide from her creditors, including using her friends and lying to her boss/love interest, Rebecca is, in stereotypical fashion, saved from having to pay too dearly for her mistakes by her coddling parents, who pay off her debt by selling the RV in which they have invested their life savings. The message for audiences, then, is that American Jewish “pampered princesses”

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.