Untitled - Memorial University of Newfoundland

further. Here is another person I spoke with at the Toronto Festival:
Ruby: I don't watch television. so it's only by chance, 'cause someone told
me that I reminded them of'The Nanny,' that I know about The
Nanny'.
Mikel: You don't look a thing like Fran Drescher.
Ruby: No. it's my accent. rm from New York. So [did watch 'The Nanny'
(Ruby, personal interView. 9705).
Although stereotypical, this New York accented fonn ofJudea-English is marked as
Jewish only through the complicit coding based on Q priori knowledge ofthe code. It is
an agreed upon shonhand for American Iewish culture. Even ifknowledge ofthis code is
available to those outside ofthe culture. based on proliferation ofthe code through the
mass media, its clear and intentional communication is in jeopardy without knowledge of
the originating cultural context. This misreading ofthe coded discourse may be, in part.
how stereotypes become disseminated as reality.
Stereotyping though can also be considered a form ofimplicit encoding: Radner
and Lanser referred to "indirection" as a code which women's culture frequently applies
in to order for their "feminist messages" 10 be communicated (Radner and Lanser: 16).
The authors cited the use of metaphor within women's culture as a means ofdiscussing
forbidden subject areas (Radner and Lanser. 16). Within Jewish cullure, ifwe see
esoterically produced stereotypes as metaphoric. the stereotype then functions as
indirection for the Iewish discourse encoded deeply within a film like Crossing Delancey.
It is easy to dismiss Mrs. Mandelbaum as a crude stereotype of the Jewish matron;
however she is the mouthpi«e for traditional Yiddishkeyt. a cultural aesthetic which feels
like an anomaly in modem New York.
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