ABSTRACT
A third American Jewish character stereotype that emerged from analysis of more than fifty post-2000 movies in the United States is a relatively predictable one given the popularity of this antisemitic caricature in late-20th-century conventional wisdom and popular parlance: the “pampered princess,” or young, nonmaternal American Jewish female who is racialized as whining, materialistic, small-minded, averse to sex, and obsessed with shopping. Despite the disproportionate number of males in this book's study sample, and the comparatively short history of the “pampered princess” cinematic stereotype, there is a significant number of American Jewish characters racialized in this manner. At the same time, given the increasing diversity of age and gender in 21st-century filmic representations of the “meddling matriarch” and “neurotic nebbish” stereotypes discussed in Chapters 3 and 4, it is not surprising to see that the “pampered princess” stereotype appears to have expanded as well to include young boys and male bachelors.
