Circumcised Cinema: Representing Jewishness on Film through Circumcision

Abstract:

The chapter investigates a selection of issues dealing with the images and representation of circumcision in modern cinematography, analysing a comprehensive although by no means exhaustive range of films interpreting the visual and contextual meaning of circumcision in the chosen films through various organizing categories which have been chosen because they accurately convey the values by which Jewish male circumcision has been represented, namely, suffering and victimhood, sexual potency, foreskin envy, feminization, impotence and castration, Jewish (men)struation, danger, and cutting and eating.