Fetishizing the Holocaust: comedy and transatlantic connections in Howard Jacobson's 'Kalooki Nights'

The British Jewish novelist Howard Jacobson has, from the start of his career, found himself saddled with the unenviable label of 'the English Philip Roth'. For many years, Jacobson bristled at the Roth comparisons, offering the alternative label 'the Jewish Jane Austen' and insisting that he had not read Roth at all, though more recently he has put on record his admiration for Roth's comic masterpiece, Sabbath's Theater.If Jacobson's early work was certainly imbued with a Rothian Jewish humour, its cultural reference points were almost invariably English. In contrast, Kalooki Nights is saturated with allusions to American culture, in particular Jewish American culture. This article traces some of the ways in which Kalooki Nights explores and exploits these transatlantic connections in a comic novel that both participates in and satirizes what will be called here the fetishization of the Holocaust. It is concluded that Kalooki Nights is Jacobson's audacious attempt to produce a piece of Holocaust literature that exploits the tension between the desire of some Jews of his generation to know all the 'gory details', and the necessity of recognizing that their own historical situation prevents them from ever doing so. The result is to make people laugh not at the events of the Holocaust itself but at the attempt to fetishize them.

You know how I know you're gay? : masculinity and homophobia in mainstream comedy

You Know How I Know You're Gay?: Masculinity and Homophobia in Contemporary Mainstream Comedy is a three-part senior scholars project that consists of a critical analysis of homophobic humor in contemporary mainstream comedy, an original feature-length comedy script entitled Don 't Be that Freshman, and a DVD of selected scenes from Don't Be that Freshman. The critical analysis first establishes the existence of homophobic humor in mainstream comedy and then links this homophobia to masculine anxiety, applying the ideas set forth in Michael Kimmel's essay, "Masculinity as Homophobia," to contemporary, mainstream, homosocial comedies. The paper goes on to examine audience reactions to this homophobic humor, focusing on audience members who enjoy these movies, yet consider themselves to be accepting of homosexuality and against homophobia. I discuss ways of resistance and the importance of opposing homophobic humor, and finally, I look at comedy as a potentially transgressive medium that could be used to fight homophobia and social inequality. The critical analysis, therefore, leads into Don't Be that Freshman, a film that uses progressive humor to oppose homophobia and expose the potential dangers and pitfalls of conforming to social constructions of gender. Don't Be that Freshman is a film about three pairs of college roommates in their first semester at college who become each other's first friends on campus. It is a character-driven comedy that attempts to normalize non-heterosexual sexual orientation and gender non-conformity, to advocate a type of living that does not conform to problematic social constructions and cultural ideologies, and at the same time to appeal to a mainstream audience. The film version is twenty-five minutes long and consists of ten scenes from the script.

Lost Youth : successfully introduced by Jennie Goldstein in Max Gabel's comedy drama "Ferlorene Yugend" at Gabel's Theatre New York City

words and music by David Meyerowitz. [Arr. by Jack Kammen]

Rule a wife and have a wife : a comedy

by Beaumont and Fletcher. Adapted for theatrical representation, as performed at the Theatres-Royal Drury-Lane and Covent-Garden. Regulated from the prompt-books, by permission of the managers

X. Riu, Dionysism and Comedy, Greek Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches, Series Editor: G. Nagy, Harvard University, Rowman and Litkefield Publishers, Inc. Maryland, 1999, vii+294 pp.

Fil: Zecchin de Fasano, Graciela Cristina. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación; Argentina.