The Lilith Blog

February 19, 2018 by Sara Fredman

Is Midge Maisel a Bad Mom? A Feminist Query.

In a recent essay, Rebecca Solnit recalls a Q&A section of a talk she once gave on Virginia Woolf during which the main preoccupation of her audience was the question of whether or not Woolf should have had children. She describes her frustration, writing that “After all, many people have children; only one made To the Lighthouse and The Waves, and we were discussing Woolf because of the books, not the babies.” 

I thought of that anecdote recently while reading a blog post criticizing the Golden Globe-winning show The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel for its depiction of the titular character’s approach to motherhood. [SPOILERS AHEAD.] The show follows Miriam “Midge” Maisel as her aspiring stand-up comedian husband unceremoniously leaves her, and as she comes to the realization that she’s actually the one in the relationship with the talent for comedy. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is reminiscent of that other mid-century period piece, Mad Men, not just because of the fashion and social mores, but because of a deliberately delayed reveal. Just as we only find out that Don Draper is married with children at the end of the first episode, we spend most of the first episode of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel watching Midge and her husband cavorting downtown and returning to their Upper West Side classic six late at night; we only find out that they have children two-thirds of the way through. This is a harbinger of things to come because it turns out that Midge’s parents, who live in the same apartment building, frequently watch the children, often overnight. This enables Midge to, as blogger Jordana Horn points out, “have very, very little to do with her children.” That the children are mostly out of sight bothers Horn because “Midge’s happiness and sense of self seem to derive almost entirely from her escape from the expected roles of a 1950s housewife and mother.”

Because I am a nerd medievalist, Horn’s perplexity that a show about a woman who is a mother does not focus on her motherhood reminds me of modern reception of what many consider to be the first autobiography in the English language, The Book of Margery Kempe.

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June 4, 1996 by admin

Who’s Jewish on “Friends”

So, nu? Which “Friend” do you think is Jewish? My unscientific, all-ages sampling of the huge audience for “Friends” uniformly responded this way: “Well, Ross Geller (David Schwimmer) is definitely Jewish, so that would make his sister Monica (Courtney Cox) Jewish.” Then what about Rachel Green (Jennifer Aniston), Monica’s best friend from a Long Island childhood and Ross’s long-sought objet d’amour? Uniform confusion was the response. This isn’t just a stab at Jewish geography or tribal conspiracy theory. If both Ross and Rachel are Jewish (and, more importantly, perceived as Jewish), for as long as their TV relationship lasts they will, therefore, be the first young, sizzling Jewish couple on television. An impressive first, let alone on such a popular sitcom, where the demographics include the impressionable 12-15 set.

Like so many other Jewish sitcom writers, creators David Crane and Marta Kauffman, buddies from their Brandeis days, backpedal from having their characters perceived as too Jewish. Crane was recently quoted in the Boston newspaper The Phoenix as rationalizing the confused perceptions, “In our minds, the back story is that Ross is half-Jewish because Elliott Gould (as Ross’s father) is, and Christina Pickles (as Ross’s mother) sure isn’t. So he and Monica are half-Jewish. And I suppose Rachel is Jewish, though that’s not an aspect we’ve done much with. Now her mom’s Maria Thomas. We’ll see who we end up casting as her dad, and that will give us a better clue.” Ron Leibman was cast as her dad. Dr. Leonard Green, seeming to clarify that Rachel too is “half-Jewish,” though, like the Geller siblings, she yearns to celebrate a traditional family Christmas. The ambiguous entrails of the show can be further picked apart for contrary indications: wasn’t that a mezuzah at Ross’s parents’ front door? Virtually half of all TV watchers in the country are glued to NBC watching “Friends” every Thursday night. Could it be something other than Monica and Rachel’s possibly non-Jewish mothers that keeps viewers from perceiving them as Jewish women? Are these women too thin, too sexy, and too struggling in their nondescript professions to be considered Jewish? Quick, how many actresses playing Jewish women can you name who’ve posed nude on the cover of Rolling Stone as Aniston did?

At a time when more and more women writers/producers–particularly Jewish women—are getting a chance to show how successful they can be, we are barely creeping closer to breaching the last taboo on television—an appealing Jewish couple who are more than just “Friends.”  

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