Mission Statement - EXCITING

This dissertation examines the surface liberalism of Hollywood in regards to Jewish-Gentile intermarriage. First, I cover several films that do exhibit a liberal ethos illustrating the ongoing commitment to tolerance by the Jewish-Americans; I then advance a theory that films in the past 40 years have increasingly questioned the earlier notions of assimilation/acculturation-by-intermarriage put forth in traditional Hollywood cinema. I interpret this contemporary trend as an increase of communitarian ideals in Hollywood film. I explain this, first, according to film history that suggests that ethnic voice has been more pronounced since the 1960s, but also, more particular to the Jewish-American community, that it has come after the Jews have had several successful generations and no longer feel the need to assimilate, but, rather, wishes to recapture the feelings of tradition and community that liberalism has eroded in them since their Americanization, and to reassert the Jewish identity that was never truly lost, despite the feelings of some that the Jews are no longer a significant minority but have joined the mainstream. This work is also put into the context of the history of intermarriage of Jews with gentiles in America.