Meryl Bazaman

The Immigrant and Cultural Narrative Origins of Sheila Broflovski:
How Immigrant and Cultural Narratives Create and Perpetuate the Jewish Mother Stereotype

“We’ve got to blame Canada, we’ve got to make a fuss! Before someone thinks of blaming us!”
--Sheila Broflovski, South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut, 1999. Film

Blame-filled, imposing, and vocally assertive, South Park’s Sheila Broflovski of TV's South Park is one of the many embodiments of the Jewish-American mother stereotype. That stereotype that is defined by Martha A Ravits accordingly: “She is a virtual grab bag of contradictory vices: she is aggressive, parochial, ignorant, smothering, crass, selfish but also self-martyring” (8). Yet, why would such a stereotypical “grab bag” still be considered worth replicating? Perhaps it is because the origin of the stereotypical Jewish-American mother Sheila Broflovski is simultaneously Jewish-American cultural narrative, part of the Immigrant Narrative, and a cohesive aspect of a greater global identity.

Yet, before I delve into her global identity, how can Sheila Broflovski, as Jewish-American mother stereotype, be understood in the Immigrant and Jewish-American cultural narrative contexts? Contextually, both narratives are responses to assimilation (Objective 2c). For in order to cope with the dominant culture’s reactions to their presence and simultaneously maintain their own distinctive ethnic identity, Jewish-American immigrant and cultural narratives employed humor “that, if offered to outsiders [the dominant culture, my addition], was largely in stereotypes, or if directed inward to the Jewish community, satirized the group’s class and subgroup tensions [concerning degrees of assimilation, my addition]” (Greene, 149). From Abraham Cahan’s final depiction of Jewish mother Gitl’s newly acquired ex-husband-defying hat in “Yekl: A Tale of the New York Ghetto” to Sheila Broflovski’s overtly defiant declarations in South Park, the Jewish-American mother becomes the recognizable other that unifies the cultural and immigrant in their struggle with assimilation. Acceptance of her marked presence bridges the gap between the immigrant’s culture and the assimilative demands of immigration encouraged by the dominant culture.

Furthermore, in addition to providing Jewish-Americans and the dominant culture with a psychological coping mechanism in the form of an intentionally ambiguous stereotype that reconciles both Jewish-American cultural narrative and the Immigrant Narrative, Jewish-American mother stereotypes also provide an acceptable outlet for voicing anxieties concerning the changing family roles for Jewish-American second and third generation immigrants. In his joke-themed essay, “The Rabbi Trickster,” Ed Cray asserts candidly: “To the five million or so second and third generation Jews in the United States who are seeking some sort of accommodation to the pluralistic society, these jokes offer a sense of social identification” (333). Removed from security of the traditional extended family, jokes, whether about rabbis or Jewish-American mothers, help Jewish-Americans accommodate to the demands of the nuclear family (Objective 6). Removed from parents, grandparents, uncles, and aunts, the stereotypical Jewish-American mother becomes the confused embodiment of the many, mirroring the frustration and confusion of real world Jewish-American mothers. Like Sheila Broflovski, she must be forceful and heavily involved in her community because she is attempting to exude the ways and wisdom of many Jewish forbears. As a humorous, comedic stereotype, the Jewish-American mother offers a shared cultural personification that soothes anxieties resulting from the familial transition and solidifies a sense of Jewish-American identity. Her presence gives second and third generation Jewish-Americans a sense of continuity with the first-immigrant generation and solidifies all generations with her presence as social identifier.

However, with the advent of an emerging global identity, it is quite possible that the Jewish-American mother stereotype is not limited to the Immigrant Narrative and Jewish-American cultural narrative, but possibly a stereotype that personifies a particular material personality that is cross-cultural (Objective 7). While discussing the stereotype in his book How to be a Jewish Mother, author Dan Greenberg concludes with finality: “I would meet Korean guys, Japanese guys, certainly Italians, who said, You’re talking about my mother” (Battaglio, 9). What we can derive then from Greenberg’s statement is the possibility of that the Jewish-American mother has a hint of truth in it, and that hint of truth is globally universal. Although his portrayal is an imaginative distortion of his own Jewish-American mother and her own cultural-immigrant narrative, Greenberg’s portrayal hints at the possibility that the Jewish-American mother stereotype remains relevant because she is still relevant to those with other cultural and immigrant narratives, even to those who live outside the United States. That is, Sheila Broflovski continues to thrive because she is also the “tiger mom” and personifications of numerous other mothers from around the world that push their children to the brink of madness with their rage, vanity, and bluntness.

Still, despite her cross-cultural connectivity and globalized presence, Sheila Broflovski resides in the American town of South Park. When one hears her voice, the instinctive associations made about her by Jewish-Americans, dominant culture Americans, and other ethnic/racial groups within and outside of America is that she first and foremost is Jewish-American. Her presence is recognizable because of the willful perpetuation of her stereotype by both Jewish-Americans and the dominant culture. Yet, while she personifies the overtly negative facets of this Jewish-American mother stereotype, her existence has its origins in a character type that has been employed as a sense-making tool for Jewish-American immigrants as they determined their own terms for their assimilation, helped second and third generations understand new world family dynamics, and finally contributes to a global dialogue about motherhood. That is Sheila Broflovski, in all her imperfect, vice-ridden glory, is one of a long line of Jewish-American mother stereotypes that employ the Immigrant Narrative and Jewish-American cultural narrative, as well as allude to a globalized universal type of mother.

Works Cited

Battaglio, Stephen. “When the Jewish Mother was an Icon.” Commentary 130.3 (2010): 48-54. Print.

Cray, Ed. “The Rabbi Trickster.” American Folklore Society 77.306 (1964): 331-345. Web.

            http://klwww.jstor.org/stable/537381

Greene, Victor. Rev. of “Ethnic Comedy in American Culture Let There be Laughter! Jewish Humor in America.” American Quarterly 51.1(1999): 144-159. Web

http://www.jstor.org/stable/30041636

Ravits, Martha A. “The Jewish Mother: Comedy and Controversy in American Popular Culture.” Jewish American Literature 25.1(2000): 3-31. Web.

            http://www.jstor.org/stable/468149

White, Craig. LITR 5731 American Immigrant Literature Syllabus Course Objectives.

            http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/LITR/5731im