Talk:Jewface

Potential for an article

BrianSmithson points out at Talk:Blackface that The Village Voice has an article (by Michangelo Matos) on American vaudeville songs about stereotyped Jews. I've heard Jody Rosen of Slate do an excellent talk on the topic at Experience Music Project's 2005 Pop Conference; only the abstract is online though: Abstract of "'Yankee Doodle Abie': Tin Pan Alley Sings 'Hebrew'". Amazingly (as Rosen demonstrated in that talk) "God Bless America" musically quotes/plagiarizes "When Mose With His Nose Leads the Band".

Most of these songs, by the way, were written by Jews, including Irving Berlin. I believe "Jewface" is Rosen's term, referencing "blackface".

Among the more interesting remarks in Rosen's talk was that many of these songs, which could easily be read as antisemitic (and were widely so read at the time), are so thick with Yiddicisms that they were obviously intended for a mainly Ashkenazi Jewish audience, because who else would have been able to understand them? - Jmabel | Talk 01:43, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Just a quick note: "Jewface" gets at least a respectable number of hits at Google Books and Google Scholar. The Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project has 22 public-domain examples. I'd investigate further, but I've got my hands full with minstrel show and coon song. — BrianSmithson 09:04, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure turn-of-the century novelty songs based on stereotypes about Jews would be too encyclopedically distinct from those about Irish or Germans or Italians. Perhaps we should have a general article on Vaudeville ethnic humor.--Pharos 16:59, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

We could certainly have an article tying these together, and then redirect this there; the particular term "Jewface" seems to have some recent currency, though. - Jmabel | Talk 00:18, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Proposed Deletion

A Google search on this term brings up several mentions of an album of Jewish minstrel songs, along with a smattering of anti-Jewish websites. I can't find a mention of this term being discussed as the article defines it, aside from the single reference in the article which even then only uses it in the title (and hyphenates the term at that). The original poster also delves into some highly contentious waters by misrepresenting that reference--using the term 'white', when the reference discusses 'non-Jews'. That aside, the article gives no indication that the term meets the guidelines set in WP:NEO. Steamroller Assault (talk) 05:16, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Declined speedy

A search brought up usage of the term "Jewface" as a slur, so this isn't entirely something that was created by the author. (See this book and this link to see what I'm talking about.) However I don't entirely see where this expands on Stereotypes_of_Jews#Physical_features, so I'm redirecting this there instead. I have no problem with someone userfying this and improving it, but you would need to show how this specific term and not the practice of stereotyping Jewish people has been covered in reliable sources. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 08:51, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Note

 Administrator note: Above discussions restored from previous iterations of this article. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 02:00, 6 May 2022 (UTC)