Feminists In Focus

January 25, 2011 by Judy Gerstel

Feminists in Focus:"Barney's Version" and the Men We Know

“Barney’s Version,” the screen adaptation of Mordecai Richler’s novel, is as much an archeological artifact as it is a film.

This is what it was like for us, Jewish women who grew came of age early in the second half of the last century.

We knew men like Barney (Paul Giamatti) and his irascible, incorrigible father (Dustin Hoffman).

We dated them.  We married them. And, like two of Barney’s wives, we divorced them.

But it’s not just the character of Barney or the Jewish men in the movie that revive the era for us.

It’s the way Jewish women are portrayed and stereotyped.  (more…)