by Allison Kanter (’25)
Abstract:
Clueless (1995) adapts the Jane Austen novel Emma, transposing its characters and basic plot from Regency-era England to the Beverly Hills in the mid 1990s. Although much has been written about the film’s usage of the Valley Girl stereotype and its adaptation of Regency social norms to a high school popularity hierarchy, the lead character is also transformed in one other notable way: she is Jewish. While this identity is never explicitly stated, the filmmakers consistently code their heroine as Jewish by engaging in the popular stereotype of the Jewish American Princess. By transforming Emma Woodhouse into Cher Horowitz, Clueless is able to use the stereotype of the Jewish American Princess to highlight themes of sexism and hierarchical struggles in the original novel, while deepening the story by adding themes of antisemitism and assimilation that have defined the American experience of young Jewish girls.. This identity is not just a curiosity of adaptation, nor a meaningless nod of diversity, but is vital to any thorough reading of the film and its complex engagement with hierarchy and social power in a modern American landscape.
In 2013, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks gave a Yom Kippur sermon about the Jewish values at the heart of Jane Austen’s Emma. As the titular Emma reflects on her choices and decides to change, Sacks argues she is engaging in the Jewish practice of teshuvah, which he defines as “the determination to change”.1 Although Emma Woodhouse was an Anglican member of the English gentry, something about her story points to Jewish values. Amy Heckerling, director of the Emma adaptation Clueless (1995), apparently thought similarly. Clueless has been hailed by critics and academics alike for its unusually accurate portrayal of teenage culture and vernacular associated in the San Fernando Valley in the 1990s with a population colloquially referred to as “Valley Girls”. Heroine Cher Horowitz, portrayed by Alicia Silverstone, is commonly taken as the exemplar of the Valley Girl with her brightly accented slang, designer clothes, and popularity. Like Emma, she is rich, beautiful, socially powerful, and more than a little naïve. However, Cher differs from Emma Woodhouse in one extremely important way: she is Jewish.
Although it is never explicitly stated in the plot, Clueless‘s protagonist is coded as Jewish throughout the film. Cher Horowitz does not play only with the Valley Girl stereotype, but also with that of the Jewish American Princess, another classic archetype of late 20th-century teenage girlhood. This identity label separates her from normative American femininity, representing her place outside of the hegemonic Christian culture, and brings into further focus a key thread in the original Austenian work: navigating a dominant power exercised from an ultimately subordinated position. Emma Woodhouse may be a perfect English woman — beautiful, able-bodied, Christian, rich, noble, and respected — but she also is still a woman. Although she exercises great power in Highbury, she is mostly able to exercise this power from a subordinated position within the feminine spheres of matchmaking, party-throwing, and generally running a household. In interactions with men of her rank, her power is much more limited. Remaking this character in the stereotype of the Jewish American Princess allows Clueless to highlight the potential fragility of this position by adding another axis of subordination along the lines of ethno-religion, while maintaining the complex interrelations of class privilege in a way which not only adds new themes to this story, but ultimately enriches a viewer’s subsequent interaction with the original text.
First, a brief history of the term “Jewish American Princess”. Its origins trace to Jewish literature published in the years after World War II. As Jewish immigrants were able to reach some relative economic mobility in the New World, archetypes of Jewish characters appeared in the works of prominent Jewish authors such as Herman Wouk and Phillip Roth. Among such stock stereotypes as the overbearing Jewish mother, a new generation of young middle-class Jewish girls began to emerge. These girls were “materialistic, self-entitled, and spoiled”.2 Eventually, the group received more characteristics, and a name: the “Jewish American Princess”, commonly abbreviated as “JAP”.3 This stereotype spread from literature into cinema, comedy routines, journalism, and even into real-life discourse among and aimed at actual Jewish girls. The JAP has come to be fairly well-defined, both in personality and physical characteristics. First, the JAP is “sexually frigid”.4 She “is indifferent to sex and she is often disinclined to perform fellatio”.5 However, the JAP not only refuses to engage in sexual acts pleasurable to her male partner, she also utilizes her sexuality in order to gain power and leverage in the relationship. Even when the JAP does participate in sex, she can be criticized because “her motives are not approved of”, offering sex only as a tool to get her way with her partner.
The JAP is not only sexually manipulative, but generally categorized as an “assertive bitch”.6 She cares only for her own interests and desires, and is willing to manipulate or emasculate any men she comes in contact with.7 This manipulation is an aspect of the JAP’s selfishness, her willingness to “manipulat[e] the world around her as needed to achieve her own selfish goals”.9 Rounding out the personality of this stereotype, the JAP is “an excessive consumer”. Not only does the JAP spend large amounts of (her father’s) money on expensive products and clothes, she “feel[s] the need to show it off”.10 These designer clothes and expensive fashion routines comprise the physical uniform of the JAP. The JAP conspicuously displays these brands as a “symbol of [her] affluence, popularity, and coolness“.11 She also straightens her hair if curly, sometimes dyes it blonde if naturally brunette, and even gets a nose job to slim her prominent nose, all of which serve to hide her stereotypical Jewish features and allow her to conform to “gentile images of beauty”, whether consciously or not.12
All of these characteristics of the JAP have been filtered not only through misogynistic fantasies of their male Jewish counterparts, but also through antisemitic stereotypes as old as the Bible. The JAP continues to project the specter of the Jew as money-obsessed, power-hungry, and deviously manipulative. This stereotype also emerged at the perfect time to fit into the traditional antisemitic cycle of raising suspicions toward Jews as soon as they are able to gain success and accumulate wealth. In addition, this stereotype serves xenophobic and racist purposes of antisemitism to label Jews as eternally othered, ensuring that even if they reach white American middle-class affluence, they are mocked and ridiculed for deigning to indulge in middle-class consumption due to their outsider status.13
The JAP is specifically ostracized along intersectional identity lines as both Jewish and a woman. Not only is she power-hungry, but she is utilizing her power against the natural authority of a man, either through the financial manipulations of her father or the sexual manipulations of her partners. Jewish feminist thinkers began to organize in the late 1980s in order to address these intersectional concerns. With these contexts, Jewish feminists began to deconstruct the JAP stereotype and speak out against its spread, arguing that the “JAP picks up on the combined negative attitudes toward Jews and women…that Jewish women have become the targets of the prejudice that was once directed at all Jews”.14 By the early 1990s, thanks to this Jewish feminist discourse as well as the emergence of the debate around “political correctness”, the Jewish American Princess had all but disappeared from public and academic discourse.15 However, by the late 1990s, this reprieve had already ended, with a “growing number of movies, TV show concepts, novels, and print articles […] addressing, or including the JAP”.16 In fact, just a few years later, the academic discourse would flip to examining possibilities of reclaiming the JAP label as positive, by choosing to “valu[e] the traits that the slur identifies as the very traits that they should be ashamed of.”17 The JAP’s “bitchy” attitude could become confidence and independence, her “selfishness” into bold ambition. It is in the middle of this transition that Clueless, released right in the middle of the decade in 1995, emerged.
Clueless does not explicitly play with the stereotype of the Jewish American Princess, preferring to align itself with the related stereotype of the “Valley Girl”. Director Amy Heckerling even went so far as to make her own lexicon of “Valspeak”, the particular slang of the Valley Girl, which has remained cited by linguists years later.18, 19 The Valley Girl was created in the 1970s to make fun of teenage girls in the San Fernando Valley area, and later comingmoving to be associated with nearby Beverly Hills by the late 1980s. Despite its geographical distance from the East Coast-aligned JAP, the two stereotypes are very similar. Like the JAP, the Valley Girl is defined by her consumerism, her main habitat being the mall, where she can spend her “dDaddy’s” money on various clothing and expensive items, as well as sharing the JAP’s proclivity for blonde hair and the nose job. Although the Valley Girl is less explicitly associated with Judaism, by virtue of her geography she serves the same purpose of legitimizing antisemitic tropes. The San Fernando Valley, and specifically Encino, the Valley Girl’s first home, was also “L.A’s largest suburban Jewish community”.20 Over the 1980s and 1990s, as Jews started to rise above middle class into upper middle or upper class, they moved out of the urban center of Los Angeles, and westside neighborhoods like Beverly Hills became “some of the fastest growing Jewish communities in Los Angeles”.21 It was in response to this demographic shift that Clueless and other media moved its Valley Girl haven from Encino to Beverly Hills. Despite the lack of explicit association, the JAP and Valley Girl were always linked. In fact, as early as 1982, in a Los Angeles Times article covering a competition for the “Ultimate Valley Girl”, those in attendance struggled to define Valley Girl without using the term JAP in their definitions.22
It is thus worth specifically considering whether Clueless‘s protagonist Cher Horowitz falls into this intersection between the JAP and the Valley Girl. Cher’s Jewishness is never explicitly stated. Rather, as Erin Faigin, a lecturer of Jewish life in the San Fernando Valley at University of Wisconsin-Madison writes, “Cher’s Jewishness is established through subtext, through hints.”23 Her last name, Horowitz, is one of the oldest Ashkenazi Jewish surnames in Poland. Secondly, her father, Mel Horowitz (Dan Hedaya), is a successful lawyer, a profession commonly associated with Jewish identity, especially in the Los Angeles area. Hedaya himself is also Jewish, as are Alicia Silverstone and Paul Rudd, the actor who portrays Cher’s stepbrother-turned-boyfriend Josh. Although the identity of an actor does not always correspond one-to-one with the identity of a character, three out of three in this family unit being portrayed by Jewish bodies certainly adds some meaningful Jewish connotation. Finally, if all of this evidence seems too circumstantial, in several shots of the film there is a visible mezuzah — a small box containing a scroll with certain verses from the Torah in order to identify a Jewish household — on the doorway of the Horowitz home.
Beyond just being a Jewish character, Cher clearly fits the stereotype of the Jewish American Princess straight down the line. First, Cher notably displays the over-consumerist tendencies of the Jewish American Princess, bragging to the audience about the “loqued-out Jeep Daddy got me” with its “4-wheel drive, dual side airbags, and a monster sound system!”24 Despite her pride in this fantastically expensive purchase, she also drives carelessly, running into curbs and speeding wildly, showcasing the JAP’s disregard for the value of money. In addition, her computerized closet is stuffed with designer clothes, which Cher spends most of the film flaunting, defending the appropriateness of a skimpy dress to her father with the excuse: “It’s Calvin Klein!”25 Cher also exhibits the sexual disinterest of the JAP, with her friends Dionne (Stacey Dash) and Tai (Brittany Murphy) constantly poking fun at her virgin status. Cher brushes these comments off, noting with JAP-typical pickiness, “You see how picky I am about my shoes, and they only go on my feet.”26 In terms of appearance, Silverstone’s straight blonde hair and blue eyes may seem to undermine a stereotypically Jewish image, but in fact perfectly mimic the assimilationist desires of the JAP to fit into Gentile beauty standards. Finally, Cher contains the ambitious or even manipulative qualities of the JAP in her ability to “negotiate” her grades consistently to avoid failing her classes, solely through her powers of persuasion.
This positionality as a Jewish American Princess separates Cher from her literary inspiration Emma Woodhouse mainly through this necessity of work to maintaining social position. Unlike the Horowitz’s, the Woodhouse family earned their class position and wealth through their gentry bloodline. Mel Horowitz’s goyische27 counterpart Mr. Woodhouse does not need to work, and actually is incapable of work due to his constant illnesses. Despite this, “the Woodhouses have long held a high place in the consideration of [Highbury]”.28 Their position in society is stable thanks to their pedigree and land, rather than having to work to maintain their class and status. Further, because Mr. Woodhouse does not actually work, rather than having to support him as the breadwinner as Cher does to her father, Emma is able to dictate the needs of their estate and their social outings with complete autonomy. Although she defers to him in matters of his health worries, never having been to the sea and humoring his dinners of gruel at the age of 21, Emma largely has autonomy in how her activities and leisure time are spent. Cher similarly holds social power in her household, planning a garden party, but her father maintains much stricter authority over her, as they are both aware that the money that funds her lifestyle and upholds her power is earned directly by his labor. The only equals, and in fact, superior, in rank is Mr. Knightley, whose Donwell Abbey is the only estate in Highbury larger than the Woodhouses’. He uses this authority, both as a man and as her senior in status, to reprimand Emma at many points, being the only citizen of Highbury willing to recognize any faults in Emma. However, even this matter is no real obstacle to Emma in the end. Her happy conclusion is not only marrying Mr. Knightley, and thus assuming all the rights and privileges of his richer estate as well as her own, but even triumphing over Mr. Knightley in convincing him to live at her estate with her father. Thus, the only threat to Emma’s economic superiority has been incorporated and vanquished, leaving her status and power unquestioned.
Cher Horowitz’s mapping onto the label of the Jewish American Princess not only contributes to her particular flavor of cool, but defines the specific fragility of her position within her high school power hierarchy. Although Cher’s class position cannot be denied, her family’s Jewish identity means “that her father has risen to a position of authority within WASP society on account of professionally acquired wealth rather than ancestry”.29 After all, the Horowitz’s family wealth is directly tied to her father’s profession as a lawyer, to his actual labor which earns their class position, labor which he must continue to expend in order to keep their class status, which could not be earned based on bloodline or accumulated wealth, due to the immigrant status of Jewish origins in the United States. Similar to her father, Cher must work to earn and maintain her own class position within the limited setting of the high school. With all this importance of the Anglican Church in the original text, the decision to make Cher Jewish is not only convenient for modern American legibility, but also actively changes the social landscape that Clueless and Cher must operate within. Without Christian values embedded within her family and partner to justify her moral upbringing and respectability, Cher must navigate a very different set of social devices in order to maintain her status at the top of her own social hierarchy. Although Emma’s misstep with the Bates’ was cruel and looked down upon, she herself remained the most beloved and popular girl in all of Highbury with no real serious rivals. Her reputation may take a hit, but throughout the novel, Emma’s position of social power is never truly at stake. Emma is jealous of Jane Fairfax’s constant praise and real talent, but there is never true competition between the girls due to the extreme imbalance of wealth between the two girls and Jane’s own lack of interest in praise and notoriety.
Meanwhile, Cher’s position as the most popular girl in her high school is much more fragile. Her main rival, Amber (Elisa Donavan), is an actual threat, constantly angling for Cher’s position as queen bee of their popular crowd. Cher can, at first, limit these attacks by pointing out Amber’s “designer imposter perfume”, using the tools of the JAP in her knowledge of genuine designer labels to maintain her authority over other girls.30 The fact that this effort is necessary, however, shows the constant risk the JAP is exposed to in her position near the top of the social hierarchy. In addition to this work of argument and knowledge of designer clothes, the JAP must maintain her social power through the “work” of dating and flirting with boys. Ultimately, the JAP is reliant on boys, as “being desired by the boys” is what “helps to establish the JAP’s social power over other girls”.31 This would seem to be undermined by the JAP’s sexual disinterest, as we can see when Tai and Dionne ridicule Cher’s status as a virgin, while emphasizing their own sexual experience to showcase their superiority.32 Just as the JAP must assimilate in appearance to the Gentile world in order to achieve her status, so must she attempt to assimilate in her sexual values to gain status in the patriarchal order. Cher’s main attempt to use attention from men in order to safeguard her popularity is in her pursuit of Christian (Justin Walker). Beyond the security of his maleness, Christian’s very name as an object shows the assimilatory desires of Cher’s pursuit in gaining a specifically goyische man. She is calculated in her approach, “design[ing] a lighting concept, and costume decisions” for the occasion.33 Her desperation to have sex with this boy comes not only from a desire to cement her own popularity, but also to complete a metaphorical integration of Judaism into American whiteness, by finally overcoming the last hurdle of her ethnoreligious otherness. In their preparations for the date with Christian, Dionne even says while applying Cher’s makeup that she is “trying to make you as white as [she] can, Cher!”34 However, all these efforts are for naught: Christian is gay. For all of the work and care that Cher can put into assimilating into whiteness, it is impossible to overcome her foreignness, showing in her inability to recognize Christian’s homosexuality which was obvious to her friends.35 There was never going to be any way for Cher to win over Christian; his rejection was written in the stars from the start. This failure being not a rejection but an impossibility of attraction ultimately serves as a metaphor for the impossibility of the JAP to seamlessly integrate into the hegemonic power system of the Western world, and reach the heights of true WASP belonging. Instead, Cher must accept her limits, and move onto pursuing her ex-stepbrother Josh, whom she admits is “not even cute in the conventional way”.36 This “unconventional” attractiveness points to his own outsider status as a fellow Jew, allowing Cher to solve her romantic troubles in the way many JAPs must: marrying within the tribe, not only within religion but within her own family unit. However, even in this Cher must put in extra effort — in catching the bouquet at the end of the film, cementing her and Josh’s future marriage and thus her acceptance in heterosexual WASP culture, she must earn the bouquet only after a physical fight with other girls and rivals.
Emma Woodhouse, meanwhile, is so secure in her own position as a member of the gentry that she is not only is exempt from the work required of the Horowitz clan to maintain her economic status, but also is exempt from work required to gain romantic attention from men, or even the necessity of that attention in the first place. Emma is quite adamant in her wish to never marry, as she “believe[s] few married women are half as much mistress of their husband’s house as [she is] of Hartfield”.37 Unlike Cher, Emma does not need a man in order to gain power, as she already commands more power over her own household and community than an average married woman in Highbury could expect. Instead, Emma is free to aim most of her romantic attentions at fellow women. Emma’s relationship with Harriet especially has been noted for its homoerotic nature, as Emma first becomes interested “on account of her beauty”, which she notes is “of a sort which Emma particularly admired”.38 Emma not only is enjoying Harriet’s beauty in a decidedly homosocial way, but actively enjoys a dynamic in their friendship that “places Emma in the position of socially and financially empowered masculinity in the traditional heterosexual relationship structure”.39 She is Harriet’s superior in class and rank, and takes on the role of educating Harriet, of preparing her to enter into society, taking a dominant and thus masculine power role in their relations. Emma is not only able to maintain this sense of masculine dominance in her relations with fellow women, but also in her final resting place in a heterosexual marriage with Mr. Knightley. Unlike a traditional marriage, which would have Emma leave her father’s estate to live as mistress of Donwell Abbey, Mr. Knightley instead moves into Hartfield with Emma and Mr. Woodhouse. While the Jewish American Princess needs a man’s approval to legitimate her power over women, Emma’s “focus on and sexual attraction to women results in a power transfer between women, without the mediation of a man or the hegemony he represents.”40 Although they are both subject to the patriarchy, Emma’s insider status within the Anglican English gentry class allows her freedom to resist the patriarchal system in a limited way, while still maintaining much of her own power within that system. Cher also enjoys limited power over other girls in her high school society, but due to the compounding effects of antisemitism and misogyny, must be much more careful in navigating patriarchal concerns than Emma.
Not only must the JAP secure her power over other girls through being desired by certain boys, she is always subordinate to them, as her status is always “second […] to the most popular boys.”41 Cher not only must work to attract these boys, but she exists in a specifically subordinated relationship to her male counterparts, notably in her interactions with Elton (Jeremy Sisto). One of the most popular boys, Elton holds enough power over Cher to be able to force himself on her in his car with virtual impunity, where Cher is unable to physically resist, and then to abandon Cher in an unfamiliar parking lot. In the corresponding scene in the novel, where the bumbling Mr. Elton proposes marriage to Emma while they are alone in a carriage and Emma refuses, there is no physical assault, nor abandonment — just supreme awkwardness. Unlike Emma, who is able to manipulate both men and women around her with ease, Cher’s power is absolutely useless when she is subordinated to patriarchal concerns. Emma, who holds class superiority over Mr. Elton, who neither has as much money as Emma nor was he born into the gentry, was protected by her status from any wrongdoing, as although Mr. Elton holds some power as a man, he ultimately is expected to defer to Emma. This is a direct contrast to Cher’s doubly-subordinated status as a Jewish woman, which means her power entirely relies on her ability to charm the men in her life, and ultimately leaves her more vulnerable to acts of patriarchal violence. Despite Cher also belonging to the upper class in terms of wealth, this privilege does not protect her against assaults from men.
This patriarchal oppression does not only extend to the boys at her class level in her high school society, as immediately subsequent to this sexual assault, Cher is robbed at gunpoint by a male gunman. Although there is a class divide between the two, with Cher clearly being of upper class in a lower class neighborhood, that status ultimately does nothing to protect her against further violence. This gunman steals her symbols of consumerism, her purse and phone, before forcing her to ruin her expensive coat. Utilizing the tools in her JAP armory, Cher attempts to prevent this last indignity by pointing out her coat is “an Alaia […] it’s like a totally important designer”.42 However, unlike with female rivals like Amber, where designer labels are the source of her social power, outside of her class, this argument is useless, and Cher is forced to ruin her designer label, the very symbol of her power. The JAP label is not only a stereotype that ridicules young girls, but it is a conduit to justify real antisemitic and misogynistic violence.
By labeling Cher as naïve, selfish, and materialistic — all complaints against the JAP — the film is able to play these moments of danger as funny, but they showcase how the minimization of Jewish girls through the stereotype of the JAP leaves them open to violence and oppression. The real limits of Cher’s predicament are shown when she is unable to talk her way out of failing a driver’s test. The instructor specifically admonishes her, “What are you doing? You can’t take up both lanes! Move into the right lane.”43 Although this scene is meant to underscore Cher’s ditziness, we can also see how this moment represents a literal limiting of mobility in American society. Cher may own the symbol of upper class American success in her beloved Jeep, but she is limited in how she can use this power. The JAP may look from the outside like a girl with everything, but her materialism cannot help her break the restraints on her ambitions. In fact, when Tai attempts to take Cher’s power from her, she justifies this with the insult that Cher is “a virgin who can’t drive.”44 Remembering that for the JAP, sexual power is a key path to social power in which Cher has thus far been unsuccessful, this statement cements the association between Cher’s lack of approval from men and her lack of mobility. It almost reads as though Cher’s virginity is the reason she could not pass this driver’s test, and in a way it was, since she was distracted worrying about her relationship with Christian. Unlike Emma, Cher is very much subordinate in her relationships with men, and always will be reliant on them for power due to her doubly oppressed status as a Jewish woman.
Ultimately, transforming Emma Woodhouse into a Jewish American Princess adds higher stakes to Jane Austen’s original story of transformation and reflection. While Emma Woodhouse must heal her naivete and selfishness in order to become a better person, Cher Horowitz must overcome these traits in order to reduce her legibility as a Jewish American Princess, and assimilate as fully as possible into American society. Although Emma receives admonishments from her future beau Mr. Knightley, she is never truly at risk of losing her position of power in Highbury thanks to her family lineage. Cher must put in the work of penance and transformation in order to gain her own happy ending with her ex-stepbrother Josh. This leaves her in a heterosexual relationship and metaphorical marriage, but ultimately unable to reach the heights of a Gentile belonging. She has learned to navigate the treacherous path of antisemitism and misogyny that threatens her entrance into the upper class, but still cannot escape the stereotype that limits her options. Her happy ending is limited to an endogamous relationship with a fellow Jewish character, or “member of the tribe”. Cher has accepted her place within American society as upper class, but always other. As a Jewish American Princess, Cher may command her kingdom, but she cannot step outside of it.
Endnotes
1Sacks [FULL CITATION]
2Brock, 17
3Although the abbreviation “JAP” bears resemblance to the anti-Japanese slur “Jap”, the two terms are largely seen to have independently arisen, the former being more common in Jewish communities of the East Coast and the latter emerging during a wave of anti-Japanese sentiment on the West Coast during and after World War II. However, it is worth noting that since they both emerged around the same time, this homonymic similarity may have emphasized the racial aspects of the JAP stereotype, implicitly labeling these Jewish girls as non-white, traitorous, and (paradoxically) un-American.
4Brock, 14
5Dundes, 461
6Brock, 14
7Brock,15
8Baum, 237
9Brock, 15
10Brock, 93
11Brock, 86
12Brock, 89
13Brock, 25
14Schwalb, 11
15Brock, 29
16Brock, 29
17Brock, 30
18Nycum
19Richards
20Belzer, 183
21Faigin, 80
22Jane Rosenberg, 6
23Faigin, 64
24Clueless, 0:02:14
25Clueless, 0:52:17
26Clueless, 0:47:03
27Means Gentile, or non-Jewish, in Yiddish
28Austen, 106
29Wald, 61
30Clueless, 0:49:50
31Brock, 108
32Clueless, 0:46:02
33Clueless, 1:01:34
34Clueless, 1:01:55
35Clueless, 1:05:50
36Clueless, 1:18:21
37Austen, 68
38Austen, 18
39Potter, 191
40Potter, 200
41Brock, 108
42Clueless, 0:42:35
43Clueless, 1:12:24
44Clueless, 1:17:01
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Bio:
Allison Kanter, who received her BA in Political Science from the University of Chicago in 2023, is a student in the 2024–2025 MAPH cohort focusing on literary theory. She is particularly interested in the relationship between American film and television and the formation of national identity, and is currently working on a thesis regarding Mad Men’s relationship to the empty narratives of the Korean War.