13 ms·

so then what's Rosie? The mammy southern bell stereotype. What? Have you ever watched The Jetsons? Rosie is a stereotype but it's the Jewish New Yorker, not th

• willcipriano 4y ago
  I always saw Rosie as a stalwart of the working class. She's the audience surrogate. The grounded character that brings things back to earth.
  • mbg721 4y ago
    The working-class everyman in that era of TV comedy often happens to be a Jewish New-Yorker; I think it's a holdover from the influence of vaudeville.
    • throwaway0a5e 4y ago
      Eventually these things take on a life of their own as the "industry standard" If you need an average Joe character for your content and aren't interested in making a statement with the character or expending a lot of effort rolling your own just to be different you just use the Jewish New-Yorker. Easy, done, on to the next thing.
• kristopolous 4y ago
  Everything's a composite. Unless there's a writers room book on it (and I don't think there is), anything else is speculation. In the context of comedy, to be specific, she seemed to be a composite of the Maxwell car and Rochester from the Jack Benny Show mixed with the 1950s sitcom Beulah. The sarcastic Yiddish Brooklynite is a generalized trait that got put on a bunch of characters (Ethel Mertz, the honeymooners, bugs bunny, Frank Nelson, the mother-in-law etc) Maybe there's a definitive interview in some trade magazine somewhere. It's not as immediately direct as "The Flintstones is The Honeymooners"
  • smogcutter 4y ago
    Fwiw, in English using “Yiddish” to refer to a person or group rather than the language is not the preferred nomenclature, dude.
    • causi 4y ago
      It's not uncommon to use "Yiddish" to refer to things that have a Jewish, especially Jewish-American, feel or aesthetic without necessarily saying they are ethnically or religiously Jewish.
      • smogcutter 4y ago
        I disagree strongly, in particular I have almost never heard the word used outside the Jewish-American community, but perhaps our experiences here differ.
    • kristopolous 4y ago
      That's the specifics of my intentions. The character traits are working class, Eastern European 1st or 2nd gen immigrant, Brooklyn and early 20th century mostly because that's where it came from during Vaudeville. What's notably absent there is "Jewish" because that actually has nothing to do with this character (although it's often included). The character is sarcastic, antagonizing, nosy, noisy, and arrogant. They want to be first but they're always last. Petty, self-important, unable to keep a secret and just a bit insufferable, they invite themselves over, make hasty and absurd judgments, and take center stage. A lot of classic characters are a stone's throw away from that. Take Millie Helper from the Dick Van Dyke show, the 1949-56 Goldbergs, Rhoda, even Maude from Harold where Maude is a brilliant hack of the character, Ethyl Mertz, Gladys Kravitz, Max Bialystock or Gilbert Gottfried who made his career playing this character. Rodney Dangerfield mostly assumed this character for his standup. They all rotate around some character gravity well with a couple things knocked around and provide a similar character dynamic for the story. You can see it in say Danny Devito's character in Twins, Edgar Bergen's dummies from Vaudeville, and borrowed selectively by the Marx Brothers and the Three Stooges. Married with Children is another brilliant execution because the archetype is draped over multiple characters in various configurations. You can find earlier versions of the characters in Vaudeville acts like Smith and Dale or Gilbert Gottfried's predecessor Jimmy Durante which is arguably where the cultural mannerisms got linked in. You can see it in some of the characters of Out of the Inkwell cartoons by Fleischer and Fleischer (creator of Betty Boop) Call it whatever you want but it's not strictly Jewish and there's plenty of Jewish comedians that do not do that character such as Jon Stewart, Peter Sellers, Seth Rogan, Jack Black, Louis CK or Sascha Baron Cohen and any character can fit that archetype such as the parrot in Aladdin or Bugs Bunny. It's adjacent but distinct. Anyways I wasn't conflating the two