| This dissertation argues that the figure of the Yenta in American media is a twentieth-century invention which serves a distinctive role in mediating cultural, technological, and industrial transitions. Rather than challenging dismissive stereotypes, the work argues for greater recognition of a Jewish female archetype in popular discourses around emergent technologies and social change. Historical case studies illustrate how the meddlesome Yenta of popular media connects conflicting identities and associations, particularly with respect to intersections of race, sex, and class. This role serves hegemonic cultural developments by performing familiar routines that help audiences navigate ruptures in US social history and naturalize new media technologies. At the same time, certain inassimilable excesses of Jewish female protagonists also challenge social norms and undermine cultural order.;Chapter I introduces literal examples of popular "Yenta" caricature, alongside foundational cultural theories for analyzing the archetype of the talkative Jewish-American woman who mediates social connections in mass media. Chapter II explores the racial construction of the Jewish mother in The Jazz Singer (Crosland, 1927) against blackface minstrelsy, Mammy stereotypes, and the White Negress performed by Sophie Tucker, to understand how Yenta's hybrid identity facilitated the arrival of synchronized sound and industrial consolidation in early Hollywood cinema. Chapter III demonstrates how midcentury domestic ideologies around Cold War TV positioned Gertrude Berg's beloved broadcast impersonation of Molly Goldberg against the radioactive Jewish homemaker, Ethel Rosenberg, to discipline the medium's intrusion into the suburban home. Chapter IV returns to Hollywood Cinema after its decline in the politically turbulent later 1960s through the 1970s, analyzing Barbra Streisand's mediating roles in nostalgic post-Classical musicals. Chapter V concludes with contemporary media examples from Bette Midler, Joan Rivers, and cooking internet Bubbes which highlight the multiplying effects of emergent consumer technologies on discourses of identity and subjectivity central to feminist media theories. |
