Funny Professors, Serious Lessons: An Analysis of the Image of Jews as Academics in Film

Higher education has been the subject of films for over a century. Its representations have shaped how the public understands the role of education, and they still inform contemporary North American culture’s misgivings and biases against the intellectual and academic world. The device of humor has been key in shaping a portrait of the professor as a self-centered, out of touch, pretentious, and vaguely amoral creature. These negative academic types often happen to be Jewish characters. We asked: how frequently and in what way are Jewish professors portrayed on screen? How does their portrayal challenge or reinforce the audience’s perception and prejudices about Jews, intellectuals, and education in America? To answer these questions, this article examines the figure of the Jewish professor in US cinema through a close reading of three exemplary works: A Serious Man (2009), The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996), and Stranger than Fiction (2006). We argue that through stereotypes and antisemitic tropes, American culture has recast the Jew’s love of books and education as laughable (through humor) and negative (because it is associated with Jewishness), while simultaneously reinforcing the public’s distrust in education and intellectualism in general