Prof Mandy Merck
Charlotte York is the über-WASP character in Sex and the City, longing for a suitable marriage to an Ivy-educated investment banker. But in the first season of the TV series she has wild sex with an orthodox Jew, and in series six she falls for Harry Goldenblatt, who is reluctant to marry out. Although Harry dumps her, Charlotte continues to go to synagogue, meets his mother, and gives up Christmas. When the two get back together she cooks Harry potato kugel and matzo-ball soup and then realizes that he intends to eat it in front of the baseball game: ‘I gave up Christ for you,’ she complains. ‘You can’t give up the Mets?’ In this talk Mandy Merck will discuss stereotypes and Jewish humour in the American sitcom.
Mandy Merck is Professor of Media Arts at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her latest book, co-edited with Stella Sandford, is Further Adventures of the Dialectic of Sex.
24 March 2011, 7pm at The Wiener Library
