PJ Grisar is a Forward culture reporter. He can be reached at grisar@forward.com and @pjgrisar on Twitter.
PJ Grisar
By PJ Grisar
-
Culture Gal Gadot’s Cleopatra casting has people mad for the wrong reasons
With the announcement that Gal Gadot is slated to play Egyptian monarch and doomed snake handler Cleopatra, the Israeli star has earned her crown as the queen of internet controversies. It’s been nearly seven full months since Gadot released the “Imagine” video, so she was due for another social media dustup. The news broke yesterday…
-
Culture Pence’s debate fly has a Talmudic ancestor
Yesterday during the 2020 Vice Presidential Debate, a fly breached a plexiglass barrier amid a miasma of droplets and planted itself firmly on Vice President Mike Pence’s head for two full minutes as he nattered on about law enforcement. Surely you noticed, have seen the memes, the analysis and the instant Twitter account — but…
-
Culture Long live Zayde Wisdom, the NHL’s new most Yiddishkeit player
A lot of our zaydes are right-wingers. Many are wise. But not like this. On Wednesday, Philadelphia’s hockey team, the Flyers, drafted a young man with the improbably old and Jewish name of Zayde Wisdom in their second round picks. It’s the second bit of good news this week for the 18-year-old Toronto native, who…
-
Culture Did the Trump White House really echo ‘Triumph of the Will’?
In film theory, there’s something called the Kuleshov Effect, which teaches that juxtaposing images in sequence can suggest completely different reads of a shot. The typical example is an image of a blank-faced man placed alongside an image of a baby in a casket, a pairing that makes viewers interpret the man’s expression as sad…
-
Culture In cancelling ‘GLOW,’ Netflix deals a body blow to representation
Without meaning to, “GLOW,” the Netflix dramedy set in the hairspray-hazed world of women’s pro-wrestling, had one of the most gutting finales in TV history. Warning: spoilers follow. At the end of the show’s third season, Ruth Wilder (Alison Brie) runs to catch her flight home for Christmas after a months-long residence in Las Vegas….
-
Culture Mandy Patinkin and Kathryn Grody will scare you into voting
Mandy Patinkin and Kathryn Grody continue to be quarantine’s favorite Jewish parents — at least on Twitter. When they’re not being quizzed about internet slang by their son, playing trivia games or singing snatches of commercial jingles, they’re demonstrating how to phone bank all from their home in Arizona. My glorious AF wife Kathryn helped…
-
Culture Is Philip Roth the male Joan Didion? Asking for TikTok
On Thursday the Swedish Academy will determine its newest Nobel Laureate in Literature. Until today, that precise conversation — had several years ago — was probably the last time anyone was comparing Joan Didion and Philip Roth’s literary legacies. Enter a new, viral TikTok where a young woman has claimed, “Philip Roth is Joan Didion…
-
Culture From humorist to hubris — the rise and fall of Jerry Seinfeld
The first gratuitous name-drop in Jerry Seinfeld’s “Is This Anything?” shows up on page 253. A luxury car reference follows soon after. The name-drop (“I had breakfast with Colin Quinn”) and the car reference (“We chose one of the greatest convertibles of all time, the ‘89 Porsche 911 Speedster, and did the trip”) tease Seinfeld’s…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Film & TV Bonhoeffer biopic tells of a pastor turned would-be Hitler assassin — but is the story true?
- 2
Culture At 95, Shaindel Schreiber is still dispensing babka and advice on the Lower East Side
- 3
Opinion As a Jewish biblical scholar in Houston, I’m enraged that Texas is adopting this biblically illiterate new curriculum
- 4
Fast Forward Trump has vilified George Soros. He just picked the Jewish billionaire’s protege for Treasury Secretary.
In Case You Missed It
-
News With a roster of promising athletes, Vienna’s 115-year-old Hakoah Sports Club has found new life
-
News Israel reached a ceasefire in Lebanon. Why does Gaza seem so hard?
-
Culture Barbra Streisand recorded here — and so did Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder, John Lennon and, uh, The Village People
-
Fast Forward Lee Zeldin, Trump’s pick to helm EPA, says he received bomb threat with ‘pro-Palestinian themed message’
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
