TITLE

SYNOPSIS

According to Jim

(ABC) Family comedy: Jim (Jim Belushi) is married to Cheryl (Courtney Thorne-Smith), and has three children including Kyle (Connor or Garret Sullivan). Cheryl's sister Dana (Kimberley Williams) is a successful model.

Cheryl tells Dana, “OK, you were right about not having Kyle circumcised.”

Later, on the phone, she says, “No, Mother, it’s too late now at this age.”

She listens to her mother’s response and says, “That’s Dad’s generation!”

This is a step forward: circumcision is condemned as a bygone thing.

Adam-12

One of the earlier episodes, before Jim's son was born.

Jim said that he had painted a room for the boy.
Pete asked how he knew it was going to be a boy.
Jim said boys run in his family.
Pete bet him 5 bucks it would be a girl.

Jim: Can you make it $15?

Pete: Why 15?

Jim: Because that is how much more the doctor charges for a boy.

Implying that all boys are circumcised.

All In The Family

Episodes 86-9 "The Bunkers and Inflation" first broadcast September 14 - October 5, 1974)

Edith (Jean Stapleton) brings home a cake with "Happy Bar Mitzvah, Irving" written on it, and asks (something like) "What's a Bar Mitzvah?"
Archie replies: "They give that to a kid before he gets circumscribed" (laugh track)
Later, another family member asks who Irving is.
Archie replies: "Some Jewish kid who's still hurtin'." (laugh track).

Official summary: 131. JOEY'S BAPTISM, first broadcast Monday, February 23, 1976 After Mike and Gloria refuse to have their son baptized, Archie stubbornly steals away to a church to douse the infant himself.

Archie Bunker (Carroll O'Connor)'s daughter and son-in-law, Gloria (Sally Struthers) and Mike Stivic (Rob Reiner), don't want their son Joey to be baptised, so Archie sneaks off with the baby to church to get him baptised. When the priest refuses, Archie confronts Mike and Gloria and says that this ceremony, unlike his circumcision, won't make him cry.

He's perfectly right, of course, but since Archie Bunker is the arch-bigot, we're supposed to disagree with him. The fansite allinthefamilysit.com gives Mike's religion as atheist and Gloria's as none, so it's unclear why Joey had a circumcision ceremony.

Al Shatat (Syria)

First aired on Hizbullah's Al-Manar TV during Ramadan 2003,then on two Iranian channels during Ramadan 2004. and on Al-Mamnou' TV, Jordan, Ramadan 2005.

Jews in a Romanian ghetto are praying for a congregation member who has died.

This is intended to be satire, even though Syrians (90% Muslim) care as much about circumcision as Jews. It is a wonder that no-one thought of circumcising the corpse.

Season 4 Episode 10 Family Affair, around 17:00 minutes.

Stan tells how he was scared of "uncircumcised" penises, so he spent time in a locker room to desensitize himself to them.

A mixed message: validating dislike of foreskins (posthephobia), but at least suggesting it is curable, and should be cured.

Season 4 Episode 14 Bar Mitzvah Shuffle, after 18:00 minutes

They go to court and Roger makes a joke in which he assumes the court case is about a boy wanting his foreskin cut off.

Confusing Brit Milah and Bar Mitzvah is a comedy standard.

season 6 episode 11 around 4:00 minutes

A friend of Steve's makes an excuse to not socialize by saying that he needs to get his circumcision touched up.

This deliberately transparent lie implies that "circumcision is problem-free".

The line appears intended to convey Thredson's complete control over the lives of the inmates.

Angel

(WB) Episode 54: "Dad"

Everybody is standing around Angel (David Boreanaz), holding his newborn son.

Even better to have said "I think that answers your question."

Aqua Teen Hungerforce

"Der Inflatable Fuhrer" Original Airdate, May 25 2009
Animated series on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim following the increasingly absurd adventures of three fast food characters: Frylock, Master Shake, and Meatwad.

Frylock has been conducting experiments at the behest of a mysterious German called Raydolph, who turns out to be a balloon version of Adolf Hitler (voiced by Bill Hader). Frylock has been designing a deadly airborne virus, compressing it with helium and pumping it into balloons to be passed out at children's birthday parties.

After this discussion, Frylock sees who he is actually working for and decides he can not fully go through with Raydolph's plan. Master Shake accompanies Frylock to the park where the drop-off is to take place.

All that can be said about this mess is that it reinforces the myth that circumcision is uniquely associated with Judaism.

Archer

Animated sitcom. Official summary: At ISIS (!), an international spy agency, global crises are merely opportunities for its highly trained employees to confuse, undermine, betray and royally screw each other. At the center of it all is suave master spy Sterling Archer, whose less-than-masculine code name is "Duchess." Archer works with his domineering mother Malory, who also is his boss.
Episode: "Diversity Hire" Original Airdate - January 21, 2010

A new black Jewish field officer named Conway Stern makes a splash at ISIS, however Archer (voiced by H. Jon Benjamin) and Lana (voiced by Aisha Tyler) suspect there may be something all too perfect about their new diversity hire.

They have dodged the fallacy of "Only Jews circumcise" but not that of "All Jews circumcise."

Arrested Development

NEWSWEEK, Nov. 3, 2003, season preview
Dysfunction Junction
In Fox's new sitcom, Bluths are stranger than fiction
By Marc Peyser
The Bluths have a little trouble holding down jobs. Buster has studied cartography and Native American tribal rituals, but thinks he can't find work in those fields because he's prone to panic attacks. Tobias has lost his medical license after giving CPR to someone who didn't need it. Lindsay is in the caring profession, too. She's spearheading an anti-circumcision group called HOOP: Hands Off Our Penises.[What do you bet the writers wanted to call it HOOD, Hands Off Our D*cks? - a much better name.] [Lindsay raises money for a variety of causes, some contradicting each other.] Gob used to do magic tricks ("Illusions!" he insists. "A trick is what a whore does for money"), but he got kicked out of the magicians' union after he hid his father in a disappearing cabinet when the police came to arrest him on fraud charges. And then there's Michael. He's so disgusted with his family that he's made the only sensible Bluth decision ever: he's never going to speak to these people again.

At the beginning of the show, as characters are being introduced:

Flashback to the fundraiser. A banner in the background says "HOOP - Hands Off Our Penises".

Flash forward to the present.

In the closing scene:

Comments to askfox@foxinc.com.

It is a step forward - of a kind - that Intactivism gets this much attention. In the Fox executives' minds, to be against circumcision is closely associated with being disfunctional. A moment's thought would have told them that it is people who support, advocate and practise the cutting off of parts of genitals, who aren't minding their own business and who merit being sent up as disfunctional.

Asylum (UK)

British comedy series set in a mental hospital inhabited by comedians.

Unlike an American show, questions circumcision and assumes familiarity with the intact appearance.

Being Erica

Canada CBC Season 2, Episode 7 "The Unkindest Cut"

Erica Strange (Erin Karpluk) is the daughter of Gary (John Boylan), a rabbi/mohel (as usual, the show blurs the two) separated from her mother Barb (Kathleen Laskey). She agrees to be the Sandek (who holds the baby as he is circumcised) at a family bris, but only to support Gary, whom she has just told that Barb has a new partner.

(2'15") She demonstrates what circumcision entails to her gentile partner Ethan (Tyron Leitso), using a biscotto in a paper bag, saying (3'03") "I don't know why I'm the only one who thinks that circumcising a baby is brutal, violent and wrong."

At the crucial moment of the bris she faints, and the circumcision is held up till she recovers. Invited to continue, she makes the excuse that she might faint again, and the baby's mother holds him. Baby is circumcised. We see Erica's distress as he cries (but does not shriek), and he is later seen as if sleeping peacefully.

Afterward, Erica admits to Gary that she only agreed in order to support him but (8'00") that "the idea of circumcising a baby - it's awful. ... I mean you're cutting a baby, without anaesthetic, for no reason. ... I don't get it." Her honesty brings them closer.

Remarkably in a comedy(/drama/fantasy), circumcision is neither trivialised nor defended, except momentarily by Ethan (2'20" "So, it's two seconds. Who cares?")

Bethenny Getting Married

"Reality" show. Season 1, Episode "Lost Footage", VDI10 Aired on Bravo TV on Thursday, 12 August 2010. Bethenny Frankel - now Bethenny Frankel Hoppy - is a smart, funny woman who appears to be extremely open to learning new things.

Bethenny is having lunch with her good friends Jake (gay) and Lauren. Both Lauren and Bethenny are far along in pregnancy; Lauren knows she's having a boy, but Bethenny prefers not to know.

The conversation turns to birthing and birth classes.

Lauren quickly changes the subject.

This conversation does not seem to be over. Jake is either about to disclose that he is intact, or has encountered many who were.

Sam is at the bar mitzvah of a friend's son. She is asked to speak:

A very mixed message as to what male genital cutting entails

The Big Bang Theory

Season 1: Episode 09: The Cooper-Hofstadter Polarization, broadcast March 17, 2008

The stereotypical geeks have hooked up the electrical appliances in the apartment of two of them to the Internet.

Sheldon Cooper's attractive twin sister Missy is introduced. Sheldon's friends Rajesh Koothrappali (Kunal Nayyar) and Howard Wolowitz (Simon Helberg) vie for her attention, sitting on either side of her. Rajesh is on an experimental anti-anxiety medication, which enables him to overcome his inability to talk to women, but it also creates exaggerated side-effects.

Penny escorts Missy out. Howard, Rajesh and Leonard fight over Missy while Sheldon is ordering pizza. Leonard asks to speak to Sheldon in private. They leave.

At the end of the episode, one at at time, the three guys cross the hall to Penny's apartment where Missy is staying. Leonard asks her out, and she coldly rejects him. Howard asks her out, and she coldly rejects him. When Rajesh knocks on the door, his medication has worn off and he can hardly speak, but Penny calls Missy, who says "Well hi, cutie pie, I was hoping you'd show up." (He whimpers and walks away.)

While the first exchange is calculated to imply that circumcision trumps pyjamas, it is progress that Rajesh's foreskin didn't deter Missy's interest - may even have piqued it. video of the full episode

Howard gets a paper cut:

This is progress: "Circumcision is painful."

Season 4 Episode 1, The Robotic Manipulation, first broadcast September 23, 2010

Howard decides to use a robot arm as a masturbation aid, but it gets stuck grasping his penis while he's in bed. He calls Raj and Leonard to help remove it.

"No saws! One circumcision was enough" implies circumcision is a bad thing, but the constant focus on Howard as stereotypical Jew and his circumcision reinforces that "all/only Jews are circumcised".

"Should we get him circumcised? People say it's barbaric but if we don't it looks like a Pig in a Blanket."

In the scene prior to this, Raj sang an orginal song to his girlfriend, Emily, whose reaction was rather tepid. Raj and Howard are discussing the lyrics, and Raj backs off from his earlier support for the song. This starts a quarrel.

"Rachel Bernstein " is presumably Jewish ("Only/All Jewish women prefer cut men") It is much more likely that Howard's explanation is correct than that Raj's is. Genital cutting is a token for Raj's weakness of will, that he will undergo it for sexual favours.

Season11, "The Neonatal Nomenclature", broadcast March 1, 2018

Implying that being intact is a bad thing and only Jews are cut.

The Big C

Laura Linney plays Cathy Jamison, a 40-something wife and mother in Minneapolis who has been diagnosed with terminal melanoma, unknown to her family.
Season 1, Episode 1.4 "Playing the Cancer Car" [sic - about a new car]

Cathy's homeless brother Sean (John Benjamin Hickey) is at her house with a toothache. Her shiftless teenage son Adam (Gabriel Basso) has agreed to help remove Sean's tooth, but using pliers, makes it worse.

Sean jumps up out of his chair on the porch, cursing and writhing in pain, as Adam looks on helplessly.

Sean: Oh, I bet your parents loved to have you circumcised. Now I wish I had done it myself!

One conventional message: "All men are circumcised" and one rare one: "Infant circumcision is painful". It also suggests that Cathy and Paul took pre-emptive satisfaction in having their infant son circumcised knowing that he would grow up to be exasperating and self-absorbed. Circumcision is portrayed as a sort of pre-revenge.

Big Love

Series about a polygamist family
Series 1, episode 10

The family gathers around waiting for one of the wives, Wanda (Melora Walters) to give birth.

She does, off screen, and there is a sudden close up of the newborn boy, clearly circumcised, described by beaming relatives as 'perfect'.

One of a number of shows in which a baby is anomalously circumcised. (The Latter Day Saints do not officially support religious circumcision, but turn a blind eye to the "medical" variety.)

Two penises are shown talking in a changing room, one cut, one intact. The intact one speaks but can not be understood till he pulls his foreskin back.

Billable Hours

Season 1, episode 3: "The Jewish Holiday" first broadcast April 30, 2006
IMDb summary: The agnostic but half-Jewish Sam Caponelli (Fab Filippo) begins wearing a yarmulke to work to cover his bald spot. But when he starts taking time off for esoteric Jewish holidays, Clark Claxton III (Brandon Firla) becomes annoyed. The ultra-WASPy Clark starts a Jewish conversion class at the firm so that he and his gentile colleagues may also avail themselves of Jewish holidays. For Sam, this means war.

The office men's room. [Sam?] is joined at the urinal by Clark and then their boss.

Clark does not get circumcised. The meme that "All Jews are circumcised" is reinforced.

Blackish

Black-ish (stylized as blackish) is an American sitcom starring Anthony Anderson and Tracee Ellis Ross, that debuted on ABC during the 2014–15 television season. The single-camera comedy centers on an upper-middle-class African-American family. ABC TV Series Blackish, Season 1 episode 19 A party guest - fearing the impending adult games might involve getting naked - confides to a buddy that he "had a botched circumcision a few years ago."

Blunt Talk

Cringe-comedy: A British newscaster, Walter Blunt (Patrick Stewart), moves to Los Angeles with his alcoholic manservant and the baggage of several failed marriages to host a sanctimonious talk show. Season 1, Episode 1."I Seem to Be Running Out of Dreams for Myself"

Blunt, drunk, has picked up a hooker, Gisele (Trace Lysette), who tells him she is a transsexual.

The use of "intact" here is superfluous and unusual.

Episode 6 "Goodnight My Someone": Walter tries to patch things up with his estranged son when he returns to Los Angeles for a boxing match.

Blunt and his son Rafe (Daniel Stewart, Patrick's real-life son) are standing at a urinal on either side of a UN genital mutilation expert, Emanuel Kendall (C. S. Lee). whom Blunt is about to interview. Blunt introduces them and Kendall awkwardly reaches over to shake Rafe's unwilling hand. Later, on Blunt's talk show, Kendall gives figures for  female genital mutilation, and mentions  that while culturally normal, male circumcision is thought by many to be mutilation also. Blunt says he never thought much of it but - perhaps it was vanity - he had both his sons cut to match himself. (Rafe, in the control room, reacts to this news.) Kendall says to the TV audience that Blunt is absolutely NOT circumcised, admitting he peeked earlier (as we saw).  Blunt  gets angry and has to cut to a commercial break.  His senior assistant Rosalie (Jacki Weaver) assures him that when she encountered it 20 years earlier , it was very red, enthusiastic, and definitely intact.

Blunt looks at a textbook with pictures of an intact and a cut penis (the intact one looking bizarrely like a surgically restored foreskin) and bemoans his own long-standing ignorance. His faithful valet Harry (Adrian Scarborough) assures him that we all make mistakes and it's never too late to learn, and he will tell him if he knows of him making any similar mistake.

At a dinner Walter gives his staff to celebrate Rafe's return, Rafe refers bitterly to Blunt's adopted son Bertie (Aidan Clark) as "your genitally mutilated son number two", before having sex with Blunt's staffer Celia (Dolly Wells), and letting slip that the boxing match next evening has been fixed. His job is to lose.

Before the match Celie tells Rosalie that Rafe's penis was "not all that red". Walter so encourages Rafe that he fails to take a fall in the prescribed round and (as well as losing gambling-addict Celia a large sum), he has to flee the town. Before he leaves, Blunt offers to have himself circumcised so they'll be the same. Rafe ignores the suggestion, but calls him "Dad" as requested, implying some reconciliation.

The sequence is based on an incident in Stewart's real life, arising from the fact that he did not know he was intact. (The reverse mistake is much more common.) These scenes are notable in finally letting someone call male genital cutting "mutilation", (and because they signal that a man might be mistaken about his own status). 

Bob Patterson

Episode 3: "Naked Bob"
Offical summary: Bob surprises his family and co-workers when he accepts an offer to pose nude for a book which features famous power players. But when he discovers that the photographer is a beautiful French woman, a sexually traumatic secret from Bob's adolescence rears its ugly head, which leads him to take some drastic measures that could place his masculinity in jeopardy.

Jason Alexander (George in "Seinfeld") plays an executive, the founder of a successful seminar/training company that bears his name.

To overcome his body self-image issues, he reluctantly agrees to be photographed naked by a famous French female photographer. The theme she chooses is Moses coming down from the mountain to address his people.

Just before the shoot begins, a dozen intimidatingly gorgeous young men in towels walk into the room, drop their towels to the floor, and stand facing Alexander, who's about one meter up on a stage. Just as he is instructed to drop his towel, too, he finds an excuse not to have to go through with it:

"We can't do the shoot... looking down at all these young men, it's obvious that many of them are not, um, exactly, um... Hebrews. So this can't be Moses and the Israelites!"

This is even more far-fetched than the plot implies:

• Not a problem: It is much easier for an intact actor (e.g. Diego Luna, Graham Chapman) to simulate being circumcised than for a circumcised one to simulate being intact, but either is perfectly feasible in the illusory world of show business.
• According to the Bible, neither Moses (in Egyptian care by his eighth day) nor the young Israelites in the wilderness were circumcised.
• Does anyone seriously imagine that - outside gay erotica - any serious photographer in the US is going to show a lot of PENISES?

This is a breakthrough. Intactness (almost) wins. Cutting is still called "snipping" and the advantages of the foreskin are dismissed. The success of such lawsuits is, unfortunately, still in the future.

Californication

Sitcom about Hank Moody (David Duchovny) a novelist with writer's block and personal demons. In Season four #1, first broadcast January 9, 2011

Hank is just out of jail on bond after being arrested for assault. His friend Charlie Runkle (Evan Handler) tells him he is now a celebrity.

Moody takes it for granted that "uncircumcised" is a fault like "bent" and "thin", and Runkle (a Jew who swears "Jesus Christ!"?) by the indignation of his denial, accepts that assessment.

Caroline in the City

Del pretends to be Jewish in order to marry a Jewish woman, arranges to have himself secretly circumcised. (It is discussed indirectly, in terms of "turtleneck sweaters".) When he is dozy with anaesthetic, she tells him she is marrying a gentile. He tries to stop the operation but blathers about a "turtleneck", is not understood and wheeled away. Del is circumcised.

Casualty (UK)

(BBC) Set in the Accident & Emergency department of a hospital in the ficticious city of Holby (Bristol)
Series 2, episode 11 (sometimes numbered episode 26), "Hooked", written by Billy Hamon, first transmitted 21 November 1987

A young mother brings her son into A&E. He is about 6 or 7 years old. After a visit to the loo, he had done his zipper up too quickly and caught his foreskin in it. The mother had been unable to free it.

The decision is made to circumcise the boy. The mother is horrified at the prospect but Nurse Megan Roach tells her that there is nothing to worry about as there are millions of circumcised men in the world. The boy is circumcised.

There are millions of amputees, too. The idea of sacrificing the foreskin rather than the zipper is perfectly ridiculous, though it happens far too often.

A would-be soap-box preacher goes to the hospital with a problem that turns out to be a tight foreskin. Having retracting it, he is unable to get it forward again. Charge Nurse Charlie Fairhead takes a look and says something like "Yes, the old man has his scarf on a bit tight tonight, doesn't he?!". The immediate problem is solved but the decision is made for the man to be circumcised, presumably to prevent a re-occurance. He is admitted to the observation ward overnight and seems surprisingly pleased at the prospect. A nurse goes to his bed and says "I'll give you something for the discomfort, to help you sleep, and we'll have you circumcised in the morning.". The man replies something like "Good. Then at last I can start my ministry." The man is circumcised.

Whatever religion he plans to preach, there are few that require surgical, rather than ritual, circumcision. Still there's nowt so queer as folk.

A prisoner asks another "Which is better, a cavalier or a roundhead?" and the reply refers to circumcision

Later, the same man asks a doctor, "Which can piss further, a cavalier or a roundhead?" The doctor says, "The flap of skin on the end of the penis makes no difference to the functioning of the waterworks, no difference at all."

This seems to be a euphemism for the corresponding erroneous claim about sexual functioning.

Cheers

Frasier and Lilith invite everyone in the bar to the circumcision of their son. The men are squeamish and don't want to go. Frasier kidnaps his own son from home, saying "I won't let them hurt you!" and hides him in the bar's office. Lilith brings the guests and the mohel to the bar and demands to talk to Frasier. Eventually they emerge with the baby. Frasier again says, "Don't hurt my baby!" explaining he just had to say it one more time. Lilith explains that they considered an out-of-sight hospital circumcision but decided it was better for the baby to be surrounded by his loved ones. (Despite Frasier's outbursts, the option of leaving the baby alone is not mentioned.) Baby is circumcised (off-camera). Sam comforts the slightly fussing baby saying "It'll be OK, baby." Frasier comes out carrying Lillith, saying,"It'll be OK, baby."

Chicago Hope

"Boys Will Be Girls"
First broadcast on CBS, Feb. 3, 2000
John Heath directed, script by Linda McGibney.

Dr. Jack McNeil (Mark Harmon) is surprised to discover that his teenage "female" patient had been born a boy. At birth, a doctor performing a routine circumcision made an error [cutting off the boy's penis] and advised the parents to let the child live life as a girl. Dr. McNeil, Dr. Jeremy Hanlon (Lauren Holly) and Stuart Brickman (Alan Rosenberg) team up and go to court to help the boy win his right to restorative surgery.

The fact that the circumcision was unnecessary is not discussed

This story is based on the true story of "John/Joan/John" (Bruce/Brenda/David Reimer of Winnipeg), whose circumcision, while not routine, was also demonstrably unnecessary (his twin brother was not circumcised, and the same "problem" cleared up by itself).

Children's Hospital

Adult Swim, first broadcast August 18, 2011

An episode about a man demanding they restore his foreskin. He is presented as freakish.

Circumcized [sic] Cinema

Si TV (USA cable/satellite network)

Mexican films are edited to 30 minutes and dubbed and edited into a new English-language comedy. The presenter sometimes introduces himself as 'your uncircumcised host'.

In this case "circumcised" implies "reduced in size" and the edited versions are ridiculous, so the overall message of the name could be taken as anti-circumcision.

Comedy Inc.
(Australia)

Reinforcing the myth that only Jews circumcise - although that is moving closer to the truth in Australia.

Season 5, Episode 4, "Cooperative Polygraphy" - January 16, 2014

Britta (Gillian Jacobs) confesses to being high at the baptism of Shirley's son. Shirley (Yvette Nicole Brown) becomes upset and asks Britta how she could do such a thing.

Treats infant male genital cutting as entertainment. Admits that it has a risk.

Season 3, Episode 10, Southern Accents, first broadcast May 1, 2012

Jules Cobb (Courteney Cox) urges her neighbor Andy Torres (Ian Gomez) to run for mayor of their town of Gulf Haven, Florida to facilitate her permit for a beach wedding. Andy's wife, Ellie (Christa Miller), strongly opposes the idea. Late in the episode she agrees to support his candidacy:

Circumcision appears to be listed among "things it would be irrational/impractical to ban" - but it's a step forward that it's put forward and not shot down. Many people dislike pierced ears on babies, so putting them after circumcision makes it hard to argue that circumcision is trivial.

Season 1, Episode 16, "Zach Mitzvah", first broadcast February 27, 2014

Zach (James Wolk) has been asked to step in as the MC at a client's son's Bar Mitzvah. Simon (Robin Williams), Sydney (Sarah Michelle Gellar), and Lauren (Amanda Setton) are trying to convince him to do it. Zach is reluctant because he dated a lot of girls from the tight-knit Jewish neighborhood and he's afraid of running into them.

The slap at intactness is both gratuitous and meaningless. Simon's reaction may be intended to suggest he has never seen one, but Lauren's description suggests she (i.e. the scriptwriters) haven't either.

Tattoos are actually forbidden in Judaism:

- 613 Mitzvos according to Sefer Hamitzvos of Rambam

The Critic

Animated series about film critic Jay Sherman (voiced by Jon Lovitz).

One of the terrible films he reviews is "Rabbi P.I." starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as a Chicago cop who goes undercover as a Hasidic rabbi. His character stands nervously holding a scalpel over a baby boy in a bassinet while a villainous man in the background says...

Villain: Alright, if you are a real rabbi, circumcise this child.

(Arnold turns and throws the scalpel at the villain. Villain falls over dead.)

Arnold: "Hava nagila, baby."

The usual confusion of a rabbi with a mohel, but baby is not circumcised and told "Let us rejoice" in Hebrew.

Crossing Jordan

NBC

Subtext: circumcision is insignificant, useful for cheap laughs, and foreskins are valuable - except to their original owners. The last exchange tacitly admits that the foreskin is erogenous.

Season 3 episode 6, Sid's Big Day, first broadcast March 21, 2016

Dale "Cuckoo" Ashbrick (Andy Samberg) is an eccentric American hippie who goes missing after Season 1. His long-lost son Dale Jr (Taylor Lautner) appears in Season 2.  

Ken Thompson (Greg Davies) and his wife Lorna (Helen Baxendale) have an unplanned baby, Sidney, a brother to Dale Sr's wife. While Ken is distracted by the fear that his mother  has cancer, Dale Jr  organises a baby-naming ceremony in which Sidney is cut. Ken is furious.

Genital cutting is treated as a joke, tempered by Ken's outrage.

Cybil?

Man is circumcised by mistake. Big Joke. (No mention of suing!)

Dawson's Creek

The Deep End

Liam Priory (Australian Ben Lawson), an Australian-born Cambridge law graduate, attends the bris of a client's son in an LA mansion with a female partner of the firm. This is shown as a routine business event and probably good for client relationships. The partner places a white yarmulke on Priory's head. We only hear a brief cry from a baby, and the entire crowd, including the law partner, shouts "Mazel tov!" automatically, as if this were a frequent event.

Liam Priory (Ben Lawson) is startled by his partner's enthusiasm for circumcision

A sexy, wealthy, young Israeli potential client is introduced to him, still wearing the yamulke. She thinks he's Jewish and makes a couple of punning references showing she's hot for Priory:

He meets her for lunch to discuss the business pitch. He can't bring himself to admit he's not Jewish, but says he likes bacon. Later he brings a contract to the client's apartment and she starts to get frisky with him. She slips her hand into his trousers and stops cold.

In the next scene, back at the firm, Priory is discussing with his two female associates how he probably lost the business because the potential client "discovered" he wasn't telling the truth. One innocently asks what he means and the other says, "It's because he's not circumcised!" - thereby revealing that she has had sex with Priory. He doesn't seem self-conscious at all, but just beams. (It's no big deal for an Australian not to be circumcised. Misleading the client is more important.)

The storyline, and the woman, assume that all Jews are circumcised, but both stop short of "the foreskin is disgusting." It will be good for US audiences to learn that a personable man like Priory (and perhaps Lawson) need not be circumcised.

Desperate Housewives

Susan (Teri Hatcher) is on a disasterous blind date with a man called Jim. After Jim tells several lame or offensive jokes at a restaurant, the two accidentally butt heads and are taken to the emergency room where they are treated by Dr. Ron. Jim asks Dr. Ron, 'What is the correct medical term for the circumcision of a rabbit? A Hare Cut.' Jim laughs at his own joke, but Susan and the doctor look shocked and disgusted.

In the context of the show, the joke is lame and not funny. but used to underline that Jim is a fool.

Thanks to NORM-UK

Teenager Danielle has given birth to a baby boy, Benjamin, and her mother Bree Van De Camp (Marcia Cross), a practising Catholic, and stepfather Orson Hodge (Kyle MacLachlan) are bringing him up as their own. In the previous episode, Bree held the newborn in her arms and declared he was perfect in every way.

The dinner.

Over dinner with the neighbors...

The quarrel.

Bree tries to have the baby circumcised in the hospital, but Orson has sent a letter to doctors and hospitals in three states threatening action if they do it.

The bris

Bree slips out of the house to attend the bris of Debbie Gottleib's son. After a lame joke by the mohel ("Why does the Torah compel us to wait eight days to circumcise? Because on average it takes that long to get a good caterer!"), the baby is circumcised (between scenes). We can hear the baby crying as Bree approaches the mohel and chirpily asks him whether he would mind "doing a bris" for her baby, too, since she has him with her. On the quiet, maybe in the den. The mohel says, "As we've just heard, there is no such thing as a quiet bris."

He says a bris is a covenant to raise a boy Jewish. Bree lies and says she is Jewish. The mohel says, "Bree Hodge? That doesn't sound like a very Jewish name" Bree says "Nee Rabinowitz." (It is Mason.) When the Mohel still demurs, Bree uses stereotypes that might have been lifted from "Fiddler on the Roof" to convince him. She swears to bring him up "as Jewish as I am." Benjamin is circumcised.

Bree brings the baby home.

She comes home and casually mentions to Orson that they ran a few errands and she had the baby circumcised. Orson is very angry that his wishes were ignored. Bree says it's only a little foreskin and he'll never miss it. She insists that because the baby is biologically related to her (she is the grandmother, he is the step-grandfather) she has more of a right to decide things like this. Orson is furious at being so discounted as father.

She drops a disposable napkin, open, into a garbage pail. There is no blood.

When she says "Your baby wants you to hold him" Orson is mollified. It was all about him.

This episode amply illustrates, but probably does not illuminate, the desperate need of some some people to circumcise. Bree lies (about her religion) and betrays her husband just as his mother did. In the real world, their marriage would not survive, but here - ? It is progress that baby Benjamin's future pleasure can be even considered, and tradition and conformity discounted, but in the end, it is the (step-)parents' feelings that triumph.

Dexter

Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall), a covert serial killer governed by a strict moral code, works for the Miami Metro Police Department as a blood spatter analyst. The tension between him and Sergeant James Doakes (Erik King), who suspects he is up to something, is an ongoing plot motif.

The reference to a nephew's bris is apparently intended to be a humorous example of an unlikely event. The dialogue is confangled by the fact that an uncle is unlikely to have inviting rights to a bris, a gentile may have a Jewish nephew, and the Yiddish origin of the usage of "already".

Dexter is at a crime scene with Vince Mazuka (C. S. Lee), Debra Morgan (Jennifer Carpenter) and Joey Quinn (Desmond Harrington). A woman has been discovered in a bathtub with her blood staining the water.

It only ever seems to be "too much information" when someone reveals that he is "uncircumcised". (Nobody ever gratuitously mentions that he is circumcised.) The underlying message is that "uncircumcised" = "unclean".

Dharma and Greg

Hippie Dharma wants a pagan mudhole baptism ceremony for their adopted baby, conservative Greg wants a church ceremony. The comedy focuses on the four-way disagreement among their parents. Neither Dharma nor Greg nor their mothers want him circumcised.

Dharma favours leaving him intact to decide for himself when he's old enough, but Kitty dismisses this, saying (correctly) that he'll never decide for himself to get "snipped down there" (a good reason for leaving him intact, not for circumcising). They "compromise" with a minister, a rabbi and a shaman.

We see most of the ceremony, and afterward Dharma and Greg show the video to Donna, the baby's birth mother, who wants him back. Dharma says "This is the Jewish part of the ceremony, where we had him circumcised." Donna does not react to this news about her son in any way, merely asking, "Who's that passing out?"

The Drew Carey Show

Mr Wick (Craig Ferguson) is ashamed to strip because he is embarrased about "not getting 'snip-snip' down there".

Craig Ferguson

It is taken for granted that a man should be ashamed to have all of his penis.

If Mr Wick, like Craig Ferguson, was born in Glasgow, there is no way he would be ashamed of being intact, like virtually all his peers. The real Drew Carey is also reportedly intact.

Drew is in a coma. He begins floating on a cloud towards heaven. There he meets his future nephew, Gus, a baby floating on a cloud down to earth to be born .

Drew and Gus talk, Drew complaining about the world and about Mimi, Gus's mother. This scares Gus so he doesn't want to go. Drew offers to take his place for a few days to show him that the world isn't such a bad place.

Mimi has the baby. The nurse says, "Congratulations, it's a boy!" The "baby" is Drew wrapped up in a blanket. (To everyone in the scene, he looks like a real baby and they call him Gus.) The nurse hands the baby to Mimi, and almost immediately asks, "Do you want to have your son circumcised?"

Mimi and her husband, Steve, both nod and Mimi says, "Yeah, I heard it was more sanitary." The nurse quickly takes "Gus"/Drew away. He yells "No!" and other comments, but no one can understand him because to them he sounds like a baby. Offstage, Gus/"Drew" is circumcised.

Mimi and Steve arrive home from the hospital and "Gus"/Drew is moaning quietly. Mimi wonders what is wrong with him. He says something like "Well you just chopped off half my penis," but again, to Mimi it is just baby-talk.

While this seems to have an intactivist theme, the laugh-track is set off whenever "Gus"/Drew speaks against circumcision.

The Drinky Crow Show

Surreal adult animated series about the drunken adventures of Drinky Crow and Uncle Gabby, an Irish monkey. They are 19th century sailors, at war with French alligators.
Ep 104: "Whale Show", broadcast November 30, 2008.

Drinky Crow awakens on the beach after a night of heavy drinking to discover that he has shot his own brain out of his head.

Interesting that ritually circumcising is listed among terrible things.

Early Edition

[Back-story: every day, Gary gets a copy of tomorrow's newspaper, so he can in effect see the future.]

Episode 33: "A bris is just a bris"

Chuck is attending the bris of his nephew. All the family is there and one is filming the service. Gary bursts into the synagogue, because the headline of his newspaper said

EastEnders (UK)

Vanessa Gold and her daughter Jodie arrived in Albert Square in the episode of June 7, 2010. Vanessa is divorced from Jodie's father, Harry. Max Branning and Darren Brown (none too bright, comic relief) live together with Max's youngest daughter Abi. Max owns a used car yard in Albert Square and Darren works for him as a salesman. Max is having a casual relationship with Vanessa.

Friday, July 23, 2010

After a meal at Max's house, Jodie and Darren kiss and she leaves the room to get a condom. When she returns, Darren has stripped to his underwear. She smiles, but when he drops his boxer shorts she screams hysterically and runs out of the house. Darren is confused and upset.

Monday July 26, 2010

Darren is standing in the kitchen with his trousers and boxer shorts down, facing Max. Max is partially covering his face, trying not to look.

Darren and Jodie are arguing.

Next scene...

Tuesday, July 27 2010

Max quesions Darren about using his laptop. He finds Darren has visited a site called doctorsontheweb.co.uk.

Thursday, July 29, 1010

Max and his brother Jack are outside the pub, when they see Darren walking by.

Max, Jack, Darren and some of the residents on the Square are playing rounders when Jodie turns up. She sits on the footpath with Darren.

Later.

Friday July 30 2010

Darren and Jodie are sitting in the cafe. Jodie is showing Darren a list.

Max and Darren are working in the car yard office

Darren and Jodie are in the park. Jodie rubs suntan lotion on to Darren's legs and reaches near his crotch. Darren tells her to stop and rolls on to his stomach. He makes excuses and leaves. At home, he checks to make sure no one is in the house, takes a piece of paper from his pocket and makes a phonecall. He has his eyes closed.

Monday August 2, 2010

Max and Darren are in the kitchen. Max has a cucumber in one hand and a knife in the other, the blade near the top of the cucumber.

Max and Darren are working in the car lot office. Darren is reading his letter again. Max swipes it out of his hand

Monday August 16 2010

Max and Darren are working in the car yard office. Darren is drinking tea and staring into space. Max sits down at his desk.

Darren and Jodie are in the pub.

The pub.

Later. Darren is drinking orange juice.

Max and Darren are walking to Max's car

The hospital. Max and Darren are waiting outside the urology department. A nurse helps a man down the stairs; he is holding his right hand near his crotch. Another man takes over and helps him stumble away. In the background, a nurse calls to a small boy to leave his mother and follow her.

The square: Max opens the car door for Darren. Darren gets out of the car, groaning and panting.

Thursday August 19, 2010

Outside Max's house, Harry throws Vanessa out of his car. They argue. Max and Darren come out. Harry says to Darren "Brought your dad [Max] this time, to protect you?" Darren says to Harry that it's not him, it's Max that Vanessa has been seeing. Harry drives away. Jodie is seen looking from a distance.

Friday August 20 2010

Carol and her daughter Bianca are in their living room watching television

Darren, Max, Vanessa and Abi are in Max's living room

Since circumcision is rare in the UK, this theme is unusual. Clear messages are that circumcision is painful and embarassing, and a great deal to ask of a man.

Entourage

Actor Johnny "Drama" Chase (Kevin Dillon) says he is to have elective surgery (calf implants) but he doesn't want to talk about it. Would-be entrepreneur Turtle (Jerry Ferrara) jokes that "He's having a botched adult circumcision corrected."

The word "adult" is superfluous and out of place there - it was presumably added to negate any suggestion that anything could possibly have gone wrong with a routine infant circumcision.

Comety about two successful British TV writers trying to make it in Hollywood. Season 4, Episode 8, March 8 2015

An elderly man is in hospital getting prepped for surgery. A nurse is shaving his lower torso. She apparently nicks him with the razor and he exclaims "80 years old and now I'm circumcised!"

Underlining that it is not universal and (almost always) unnecessary.

E R

This implies:

1. "Circumcision is Jewish" (in fact, the man's chances of being intact in the US are quite low)
2. "American gentiles are not circumcised - unless they want to marry a Jewish woman."

Dr Benton is adamant that there is no need to circumcise his son, but a woman doctor "likes the look" and thinks circumcision is "cleaner". She (unethically) persuades the mother, who wants revenge (for ?) against Benton. (This is apparently deemed an acceptable reason.) She accuses Benson of just wanting baby to "look like him in the shower." (Since this common reason for circumcising is now being used against circumcision, it has become an unacceptable reason.) All discussion takes place at high volume in crowded places. Benton bursts in on the operation in progress, but it is too late and the baby is circumcised. The additional ethical issue of a doctor operating on the son of another doctor without consulting him is not raised.

Other anomalously circumcised babies on movies and TV.

This episode almost seems to be trying to make amends for the earlier one.

Dr Andy Brown (Treat Williams) shows a home movie to wisecracking friends including Irv Harper (John Beasley) and his wife Edna (Debra Mooney). The movie includes  himself with a Masai man.

Irv implies the Masai are primitive to cut boys at such a late age. Both Andy and Edna would prefer to cast the usual silence over genital cutting.

The Family Guy

Satirical cartoon sitcom
'When You Wish Upon A Weinstein' (Made for Season 2. but never broadcast, on DVD only)

Peter is worried his son is stupid, so he decides to convert him to Judaism, to make him smarter. He makes a comment about knowing lots of foreskin jokes.

The foreskin "joke" - whose role is to trivialise circumcision - has become such a cliche that a reference to them suffices, instead of actually making one.

As in the previous item, the inner joke is so old and feeble and Peter's superficiality so well-established that this is a joke about the lameness of circumcision humour. The real joke is on those who laugh at the Rabbi's wisecrack.

Talking baby Stewie is looking through a window at his younger self and says

Peter is telling the nativity story, casting himself as Joseph and Lois as Mary:

Handheld off-TV YouTube

Joseph: Listen, ah, I was wonderin' if you'd like to go out some time?

Mary: Why sure, that sounds nice. You know, there's a beautiful spot outside of town where they dump all the foreskins.

Subtext: "Only Jews circumcise".

Peter and Quagmire have formed a singing duo. In one of their songs are these lyrics:

Subtext: all men are circumcised; (circumcised) penises are short; penises are disturbingly ugly.

Series 12 Episode 09.

In a fantasy scene that is a parody of The Lion King, a group of animals are watching a lion cub being held aloft on a rock by a monkey and another cub being raised by Peter on a forklift. Two giraffes are watching.

Implying

• All circumcision is brit milah (only Jews circumicse) and/or
• All (anthropomorphic) animals circumcise/are Jewish, but
• Circumcision is distasteful.

The guys have fixed up Jesus with Lois to help him lose his virginity. In a family discussion of this impending action, Stewie remarks, "At least we know he's circumcised, so she won't have to deal with that nonsense."

"That nonsense" presumably meaning a foreskin - a variant on "disgusting"

Quagmire turns up in a scene and Peter refers to him as "Rumpleforeskin".

Stewie wants to get (the dog) Brian's attention, so he decides to get himself pregnant using Brian's DNA. While discussing this with his [silent] Teddy, Stewie suddenly says "I don't know. I haven't even thought about that. Why are you so so obsessed with circumcision?"

Considering the number of previous references, this joke may be self-referential. Since the hypothetical child will be interspecific and of unknown sex, the implied question is certainly premature.

Season 14, Episode 2: Papa has a rollin' son

Stewie is at the doctor's, who diagnoses that he will not grow taller than 5'1".

Implying that nobody should ever have to see an intact penis - what, Dasher can't just roll over or close his eyes? (Also implying that Rudolph is having sex with Mrs Claus). One small gold star for mentioning sensitivity as an asset.

The Family Guy has other casual and curious references to circumcision. In one, Peter implies he is circumcised every week, like having his hair cut.

Farscape

Cult science fiction epic

"Give me an arn with Aeryn and a tokar knife... " says Rygel, ominously. A tokar knife is a ritual Luxan knife used in a self-circumcision ceremony (mentioned in Episode 4, series 1, "I, E.T.").

According to the BBC cult page "It's implied that Luxan warriors like D'Argo are circumcised."

(In the UK, circumcision is treated as an ordeal, and perhaps as irrational.)
Thanks to NORM-UK

Five Days (UK)

A baby is found abandoned in the disabled toilet of a hospital. When it is suggested that he might be Asian, a staff member notes that

That may be true in the UK, but not generally.

Episode 3

An Asian friend of the foundling's stepfather pesters him as to when he is going to have the baby circumcised. The reply:

This refreshing reply reflects the current British attitude towards circumcision.

Frasier

Frasier (Kelsey Grammar) pretends to be Jewish so that Helen (Carole Shelley), the mother of his new girlfriend, Faye (Amy Brenneman), will not be upset that her daughter is dating outside the faith.

Freaks and Geeks

One-season series (1999-2000) set in a fictional suburb of Detroit, Michigan, beginning in 1980. Episode 6, "I'm With the Band"

The school district mandates that all students shower after gym class. The main character, 14-year-old high school freshman Sam Weir (John Francis Daley) questions the edict. He and his friend Neal Schweiber (Samm Levine), and their nemesis Alan White (Chauncey Leopardi), are climbing ropes in the gym.

While the series usually strives for accuracy (saying "pop" for "soda" for example), here it ignores the fact that all the characters would most probably be circumcised, in favour of the fallacy that "only Jews circumcise". (It is remotely possible that Alan's suggestion is intended to mean he thinks Neal's circumcision looks different from theirs, but with many Jews opting for hospital circumcision, it probably wouldn't.)

Friday Night Dinner (UK)

The Goodmans' extremely odd neighbor Jim, who frequently makes strange excuses to visit them, invites himself over to dinner one Friday. Despite the family not being devoutly Jewish, Jim improvised a yarmulke by cutting a circle of fabric from the back if his shirt.

After some initial, awkward conversation, Jim asks Martin if he's circumcised. Unfazed, Martin chuckles "Ask my wife". Jackie confirms that Martin is indeed circumcised. Jim asks Jackie if she had her two sons "done". She confirms that both her sons were also circumcised.

Figures are not available, but it is likely that circumcision is falling out of favour among non-observant Jews in the UK, as it is in Europe, so Jim's intrusive questioning was not superfluous.

Friends

(April 18, 2001)

Joey Tribbiani, an Italian-American Lothario and aspiring actor, returns from an audition. He is excited because he got a callback and he thinks the role - a young Italian man at the turn of the century - suits him well. One problem: the role calls for full frontal nudity. Joey is anxious at first, but agrees to the nudity.

He goes to the callback, only to be told by his agent that he doesn't need to read again; he's all but won the role. One catch: the agent tells him that the director is a stickler for realism and insists that Joey's naked body is "anatomically correct" for an Italian man circa 1900. Joey doesn't get it; his agent hesitates, then says that the nude scene involves a Jewish girl making love to a non-Jewish man for the first time, and Joey must appear, um, non-Jewish.

[This is ridiculous. Makeup and special effects have always been the stock-in-trade of the theatre.]

Joey looks puzzled, then quick-cut to the apartment of Monica Geller (an anal-retentive, Jewish gourmet chef) for the next scene . . .

Monica (amazed, to Joey): "So you said you aren't?"
Joey nods despairingly.
Monica: "And you are?"
Joey: "Yes."
Monica: "And there's nothing there you can - work with?"
Joey: "No."

Joey says he'll have to call back and admit his lie. Monica thinks a minute, then suggests a prosthesis. Joey is doubtful, but is willing to try.

Monica raids her friends' refrigerator for luncheon meat, all of which is rejected (especially the olive loaf meat) as inadequate for the task. Eventually she presents Joey with a beautifully arranged platter of fake foreskins made of various edibles and inedibles. (Recall that she is a gourmet chef.) Joey retires to the next room to try them on. Yelp of pain as Joey forgets to remove a toothpick; sound of pleasure as Joey, famous for his appetite, decides to taste some foreskins rather than wear them. Eventually Joey comes out fully dressed, declaring success. He has settled on the Silly Putty foreskin, which he says "isn't so silly anymore."

Joey shows up for a meeting with his agent and the director; he is all but offered the part. But he has to get naked first. He removes his shirt, then drops his pants. The camera cuts away as Joey's fauxskin would have been revealed to all; the next shot, à la Mike Nichols' The Graduate, frames the agent and director between Joey's legs. We see the backs of Joey's legs and the satisfied faces of the agent and the director. Joey says something like, "See? I'm all there!" Suddenly something falls down, and the agent and director are aghast. Cut back to Joey's face, now horrified. Joey: "I swear this has never happened to me before!" End of episode.

This show is anomalous. For perhaps the first time in US television, intactness is presented as desirable, Monica does not casually badmouth it - and no-one gets circumcised! - except symbolically.

Phoebe Buffay (Lisa Kudrow) busks outside the restaurant where Monica Geller (Courteney Cox) works, playing downbeat, disturbing songs with names like "Smelly Cat". She buys a new dress, saying "Oh, this will go well with The Ballad of the Uncircumcised Man.

The very use of "uncircumcised" is telling.

Game On
(UK)

A sitcom about three mismatched young flatmates.
"Roundheads and Cavaliers"
When naive, virginal Martin (Matthew Cottle) is propositioned by an Irish nurse to relieve her of her burdonsome virginity on her next day off, he asks her if she minds freckles, indicating "down there".

Martin and now-celibate flatmate Mandy (Samantha Janus) are in a pub. Two young women are in the background.

This is strikingly different from US presentations. Martin and Mandy's use of "matt" vs "gloss" betrays a familiarity with the real thing. Martin's feeling of inferiority is generalised, but Matt's clearly derives from being circumcised. In her final reassurance, Mandy thinks circumcision is less worth mentioning than freckles.

Girlfriends

[UPN, Mondays, 9:30 PM EST. Producer, Kelsey Grammer]

In the last two episodes of the 2000 season, the girls, Joan (Tracee Ellis Ross), Maya (Golden Brooks), Toni (Jill Marie Jones), and Lynn (Persia White) went to a Carribean island together. Lynn fell in love with a bell-hop named Bosco and he came back to the US with her.

Now Lynn is doing her laundry and the others are helping her fold it. Suddenly, Maya asks Lynn if Bosco is circumcised and Lynn very casually answers, "No, Bosco isn't." Maya screams "Ewwww!" in disgust and tosses Bosco's [washed] underwear across the room or back into the laundry basket and wipes her hands wth a disgusted look on her face. Everyone laughs.

This implies intact men are unclean. Imagine if men had had this exchange about a woman!

In a later episode, Maya describes something as being "like having sex with an uncircumcised man" and Lynn jokingly responds "Yes, he's the only one having an orgasm" (or words to that effect). Everyone laughs.

This implies intact men are lousy, selfish, lovers (unlike circumcised men....) Imagine if the four African-American women were as insulting about Black men. There are some 39 million intact males in the US, more than twice as many as African-American males (17 million ).

Season 5, Episode 1, f "Wedding Day" first broadcast February 21, 2016

Hannah (Lena Durham)  is in a car with her new boyfriend Fran (Jake Lacy) outside the wedding of a friend.

Bleeding after a tight cutting is a real thing and is not trivial.

Give My Head Peace

(BBC Northern Ireland)
Episode 10, 11 February 2005
The Passion of Red Hand Luke

Red Hand Luke launches a personal quest to find the "one true religion". His criteria are undemanding - his chosen faith must allow violence and drinking! As Luke careers wildly from being a Jew, to a Muslim, a Hare Krishna and then a Catholic bishop, Uncle Andy and Big Mervyn are in fear of not only their sanity but also of circumcision, head shaving, forced confessions, and sworn abstinence from alcohol as well!

In Britain, and especially Northern Ireland, the first (and most natural) reaction to the thought of circumcision is fear.

Ruth: what's with the [glass sculpture of a] horse head ?

Gregory (Ravil Isyanov): My cousin Michael is chess champion. Eighteen-and-under division. Very good.

Ruth: Oh, so, is this, like, a celebration for him or...? Did he die?- I can't tell from the faces.

Gregory: - He's new to America. Was very difficult for him to get out. So, we sponsor him, make big noise. And Russia likes Jews only slightly more than faggots.

...

Michael (being dragged in by two big men): No! No! I change my mind. Fuck religion. Don't touch my penis.

Man: Here we go. Say goodbye. It only hurts a little.

Ruth: - What's going on?

Gregory: - His bris. Now that we're in America, we're free to be Jews. Is covenant. We celebrate. [Michael can be heard screaming.]

[Michael is in a reclining chair.]

Gregory: Life is suffering.

...

Woman (to Gregory in Russian) What's the matter with her? What's she talking about?

Gregory (in Russian): She's in character. Actress. So she says. Maybe hooker. When Michael heals, she might be a nice present for him.

Woman (in Russian): Why did you bring an actress whore to a sacred rite of passage? - She's bothering everyone.

Gregory (in Russian): You know I have trouble saying no.

Michael: Somebody please get me a drink!

woman (to Ruth, in English): Nice to meeting you. I have to get the boy some vodka. Excuse me.

Ruth: Nice to meeting you, too.

Ruth (to Gregory): I love that. "Nice to meeting you." "Nice to meeting you." "Zoya, nice to meeting you." Okay, okay. I'm sorry, but isn't a bris supposed to happen when you're a baby? I mean, if you can scream for vodka, maybe you're a little too old.

Gregory: In Russia, it wasn't option. We had to live in secret. Now he's in America, he gets to be who he is.

Ruth: Oh... like Yentl. Yentl had to come to America to be who she was.

Gregory: Yes, Michael and me and all our relatives, we're just like Yentl.

Michael: Is she going to sing something from Yentl?

Gregory: - Don't encourage her.

Ruth: - Yentl!

Michael: But I love Barbra Streisand. And it's my party.

Gregory: Does anyone have a microphone?

Ruth: What's happening?

Gregory: Michael want you to sing song from Yentl.

woman2: You sing from Yentl, da?

Gregory: You know Yentl?

Rachel: Come on. Everybody knows Yentl.

Rachel (into microphone): This is for my buddy right here. You've had a very rough day. So, picture me in a little cap and glasses, okay, pretending to be a man.

Go Girls
(New Zealand)

Kevin has met Danni, who rides a Ducati and loves rugby - the perfect woman? His friends are skeptical that she even exists, and he has to introduce them.

The Good Wife

Series 4, Episode 9

Veronica (Stockyard Channing, in a guest appearance) visits the law firm of her daughter Alicia Florrick (Juliana Marguilies) on some probate business and consults with lawyer David Lee (Zach Grenier). Having discerned that he is Jewish she tells him:

Implying only Jews are circumcised. As our informant says, it's a gratuitous circumcision reference (and attack on intact men) shoehorned into the dialogue. It is mitigated by Veronica being presented as a crazy and unpleasant woman no one likes.

Grosse Pointe

A Jewish girl is dating a man who is pretending to be Jewish just to get with her. They end up in bed, taking each others clothes off. She grabs his penis and says ["You're not Jewish!"] At the end of the scene, she says she has to go and wash her hand.

Imagine if an African man said to an American woman "You're not circumcised!" and then wanted to go and wash his hand....

More details would be welcomed.

Help Me Help You

A Korean woman who has a thing for Jewish men is set up with an old friend, also Korean, whom she knows is not Jewish. He knows she isn't either, but neither will admit it. After having sex with him she says:

• All Jews are circumcised
• Only Jews are circumcised (and in particular {South} Koreans are not circumcised - she could as reasonably say, "You're not Korean!").
• Foreskins frequently grow back - so frequently that all Jews know it
• Every man wants to be circumcised
• Circumcision is a big joke.

As above, imagine if an African man organised a khAfiDah for his American girlfriend without telling her - or that such a scenario was presented on US TV as comedy....

Herman's Head

One of Herman's good friends makes a reference to circumcision and asks a leading question like, "You are cut, right?" Herman does not immediately reply. The friend, in complete surprise, says "Oh my god, you're not circumcised!" - but not in a negative way, more as if to say "How cool and different!"

A rare exception to the general rule, in keeping with the non-conformist nature of the show.

Rites and Wrongs of Passage, Season 2, Episode 2

Brad, edest son of Tim Taylor (Tim Allen), is going through a bad period, hanging out with the wrong kids and getting brought home by the police, so Tim seeks advice from his neighbor Wilson Wilson Jr (Earl Hindman).

American Routine Infant Circumcision is invisible. When other people do it, circumcision is outlandish and painful.

House
[aka House, M.D.]

Dr. Gregory House (Hugh Laurie) and his team of doctors try to prolong the life of a nine-year old girl with terminal cancer. In an opening scene Dr. House is asked to examine a young Asian-American man who has requested a male doctor. In the examining room, the patient lifts his books to reveal a blood stain on the crotch of his jeans. He explains that his girlfriend has never been with an "uncircumcised guy" and that he had sterilised 'box cutters' [a utility knife] and tried to circumcise himself with it. Viewers then get a rear view of his ankles as he pulls down his jeans and underwear. Dr. House falls back against the wall with a shocked expression. He says, 'I'm going to call a plastic surgeon to put the Twinkie back in the wrapper.' (It seems to be compulsory on TV for even doctors to use dumb metaphors to talk about circumcision. A Twinkie is a snack cake made by Hostess.) The story returns to the cancer patient and this patient is never seen again.

Unlike a similar scene in ER a few years ago, there is no mention of the doctors finishing the circumcision; instead they repair the damage (possibly a first for an American medical drama).

However, it passively promotes men having their genitals modified to fit their partners' desires, and the idea that a circumcised penis is better than an intact one. There is no mention of psychiatric or psychological treatment for the man for his self-mutilation.

Thanks to NORM-UK

Jackass
(MTV)

One of the characters is dressed like the devil and calls himself Satan. Walking around L.A., he tells someone: "For one thing, God didn't invent circumcision, I did!"

While some Intactivists may agree, the context of the claim makes clear that it is a joke.

Judging Amy

(CBS. US broadcast November 9, 1999, "a compelling new drama")
A divorced couple appears before Judge Amy Gray (Amy Brenneman). The father (a convert to Judaism from Catholicism) wants to have their newborn son circumcised, the Catholic mother does not. In her chambers, Judge Amy considers the suit hilarious, and in court she can barely contain her mirth. She says that in the divorce settlement they agreed to raise their children Jewish, so she rules in favour of the father. (In fact, since the mother is not Jewish, the son is not either, so he does not need to be circumcised.)

The mother stands up and says, "You're mutilating my son!"

The judge replies, "It's a standard medical procedure, it's done all the time. It's relatively short and painless."

"Painless for you, maybe! It's child abuse!"

"It's not child abuse. Broken bones and cigarette burns are child abuse. Get some perspective."

The mother hangs her head. (Baby is circumcised.)

[A swift exchange about peripheral issues - the rights of the child are not mentioned in this case - seems to be a standard method of dealing with controversies on US TV: "balance" has been served, so no-one can be offended.]

(CBS. US broadcast February 15, 2000)
Vincent's girlfriend comes over to his apartment, and his roommate remarks, "... if Englishmen had any sense of aesthetics, they'd be circumcised."

[This is apparently intended to illustrate wit, not bigotry: try substituting "Africans" for "Englishmen" and "bleached" for "circumcised" in the above and see how it looks.]

Kids in the Hall
(Canada)

Scott Thompson (to camera): Mom, Dad, Doctor, I want my foreskin back!

A quite remarkably complete statement, even including the m-word. The origin of the 70% figure is unknown.

The King of Queens

(broadcast February 2002)

Carrie's father, Arthur, is in hospital, about to be anaesthetised for an angioplasty, when he is visited by Carrie and her husband.

This illustrates the first myth: "only Jews circumcise" (and they'll circumcise anybody). He is probably in more danger in a gentile US hospital. It avoids the myths that wrongful circumcision is trivial and a big joke - progress of a kind.

See it on YouTube.

Season 1, Episode 16

Deacon, Richie, Spencer and his mother are watching video of him as a baby.

Trivialising.

King of the Hill

Peggy (voiced by Kathy Najimy) pretends to be a nun in order to get a teaching job at a Catholic school. She excuses herself to Hank, saying:
"It's not as if I was dressed up as a rabbi and circumcising people left and right. People do that, you know."

Refreshingly, presents circumcising as a bad thing to do.

The Kumars at No. 42 (UK)

Talkshow/sitcom about an Indian family in England (saucy Grandma, parents, bigheaded son Sanjeev [Sanjeev Bhaskar]) that has a talk studio in the house.

The great majority of circumcision in England is now Muslim. Grandma's remark trivialises circumcision.

Kyle XY

Episode 3, The Lies that Bind, Monday July 10, 2006

A strange, innocent youth, Kyle (Matt Dallas), has been found naked in the woods with amnesia. Perhaps he is an alien: he has no navel. He is put up with the family of a social worker in Seattle.

Lori Trager (April Matson), 16, wants to use the bathroom while Kyle is using it. When he doesn't come at once she asks him if he is modest.

Innocent Kyle opens the door completely naked, and declares, "I am not modest!"

Lori stares him up and down and exclaims, "No, you're not. And you're clearly not Jewish, either."

Cementing the fallacy that all Jewish males are circumcised, but really just finding an excuse to refer to his penis and circumcision. Apparently and unsurprsingly, aliens don't practice infant circumcision.

Ladies' Man

A baby is born and unexpectedly proves to be male. Comments are made about the baby's penis, how big and swollen it is, etc.

Cut to the parents in the hospital room admiring the baby. The father tells his son he's sorry but he's going home to a house full of women (the "sit." of this "com.") and the father won't always be able to protect him.

The nurse comes in and holds out her arms for the baby. The father unquestioningly hands his son over to her - and then as an afterthought, as the nurse is leaving, he asks where she is going.

She responds, "To get him circumcised."

Without batting an eye, the father says, "And so it begins."

The mother smiles at him as canned laughter ends the show.

(Then baby is circumcised.)

Law and Order: SVU

video

A man is murdered and thrown from the roof of a building after sustaining deep bite wounds on his penis. Detectives Benson and Stabler's investigation leads to a young teenage graffiti artist, Logan Stanton. His DNA appears to be a match to the salvia in the bite, but his twin sister Lindsay confesses to the crime, and it is then revealed that she was born male and was re-assigned as female after a botched circumcision. The parents describe the accident:

The circumcision is not discussed again (the episode focuses on Lindsay's painful experience of gender dysphoria and the unethical practices of their gender reassignment therapist, culminating in the twins' murder of him).

Loosely based on the story of David Reimer, a Canadian boy whose penis was burnt off during (an unnecessary) circumcision, who was unsuccessfully reassigned as female, and who later committed suicide.

The League

FX semi-scripted comedy series about a group of friends who are in a fantasy football league.

Taco (Jon Lajoie) is awakened in his hotel room by Pete (Mark Duplass) and Andre (Paul Scheer). He gets out of the bed naked. Everyone groans and hides their eyes. Most disgusted is Ruxin (Nick Kroll), who was sharing the hotel room with Taco and was unaware of Taco's nocturnal nudity.  

Andre: Oh!

Pete: Whoa! Really?! What is that?! What is that?!

Ruxin: Were you naked all night?

Pete: No!

Taco: Yeah, I always sleep naked.

Pete: No!

Taco: Alright, boys. Let's go. Let's go. Warm up. Stretch a little bit. (He does jumping jacks)

Pete: Come on!

Ruxin: I thought it was a rule that everyone in the country had to get circumcised.

Taco (Pointing at Pete) Hey, look at me. Look at me. We're gonna get you laid tonight. Right, boys?

Some people do "think it is a rule that everyone in the country has to get circumcised" - which makes it much easier to impose on new parents.

Season 4 episode 2 "The Hoodie" first broadcast October 18, 2012 on FX.
Episode Synopsis: Kevin (Stephen Rannazzisi) and Jenny (Katie Aselton) argue over whether or not their son will be circumcised and everyone takes sides... .

The male friends are of mixed circumcision status, and it is implied that it is arbitrary and really doesn't matter.

Intact Kevin is at odds with Jenny, who may be wanting baby Christopher circumcised because she has a crush on the handsome Jewish pediatrician, Dr. Levenson (Ben Lawson) who would do the cutting.

Jenny attempts to shame Kevin:

Ruxin (Nick Kroll) defends circumcision and, unsurprisingly, extols his own penis:

Kevin visits his ex and asks her to sign a statement saying she thought sex with him was better because of his foreskin [and he expects this to convince his wife?]. She refuses on the basis that it's not appropriate for her to get involved. Circumcision is so trivial that Kevin and Jenny resolve that they will play a match of fantasy football, the winner to decide if the baby is cut.

Meanwhile, Andre (Paul Scheer) mysteriously refuses to reveal whether is he is intact or circumcised, leading the others to talk to his ex, who eventually reveals that he is half-circumcised, due to his having been such a fat baby that his penis was buried and the doctor could only cut off half of his foreskin.

Jenny wins the fantasy football match, baby will be cut. At the moment the circumcision is being done Kevin bursts into the pediatrician's office (not to stop the circumcision, but to make an unrelated point) -

- and the doctor is startled, resulting in the baby being half-circumcised. The last shot is the baby screaming.

Comedy based on A. J. Jacobs' attempt to live according to biblical principles. Season 1, Episode 1 (pilot), broadcast February 26, 2018.
Official summary: "After losing his best friend and learning that his wife is pregnant, film critic Chip Curry embarks on a spiritual journey to start living a better, more moral life."

A rabbi tells Chip's pregnant wife, "If you need a little snip snip, call me."

Trivialising genital cutting.

Living in Captivity

1998 sitcom about three families of different ethnicities living in one suburb. Only a few episodes broadcast.

In one, Will (Matthew Letscher), proposes to Becca (Melinda McGraw). She wants a Jewish wedding, so Will has to convert, but "What about my ... shmeckel?" (Shelley Berman guest stars as the mohel.) Will's male friends don't like it that he has cut part of his penis off forever, but the women think it a bold act.

Again with the myth that "only/all Jews are circumcised" The fact that Judaism forbids conversions of convenience is ignored again.

HBO "Dramady" described as "gay Sex and the City shifted to SF",
Season 1, Episode 2, Looking for Uncut

Augustin (Frankie J. Alvarez) and Dom (Murray Bartlett) coach Patrick Murray (Jonathan Groff), "possibly the least savvy, least worldly gay 29-year-old ever to walk the streets of San Francisco", to be prepared for his new trick Richie (Raúl Castillo).

...

Patrick is working at home when he has a thought and Googles "uncut latin cocks". He thoughtfully studies the images that appear.

...

Patrick and Richie are making out, Ritchie on his back in his underpants. They are having fun till Patrick nuzzles down his chest.

Espisode 4, Looking for $220/hour

Patrick runs into Richie again, who says "I'm still cut."

The flipside of "All US men are circumcised": "All Latinos are intact.".

The Man in the High Castle

Drama series based on the novel by Philip K. Dick about an alternative history, set in 1962 after the Japanese and Germans have won World War 2. The USA is divided: Japan rules the West Coast, Nazi Germany most of the eastern side of the country, with a small neutral zone in the middle. Episode 2

The Japanese regime has an American, Frank Frink (Rupert Evans) marked for execution because they suspect him of being a subversive. He is detained by the secret police for interrogation, ordered to strip and an officer gazes at him:

In other words, the Axis powers use a "racial" definition of Jewishness, rather than Frink's matrilineal definition. Both the powers intend to eradicate every trace of Jewishness in the country. In the event Frink isn't killed, but members of his family are.

It almost sounds as though male genital cutting failed to catch on in the US after World War 2, but more likely, the scriptwriters make the common and convenient but false assumption that "only Jews cut male genitals". 

Married with Children

...
Extended gags about Al's pain
...

Incredibly, the option of blaming the doctors is never canvassed.
...

....

Extended gags about Al's sexual frustration.

...

The messages of this show are:

• Circumcision is trivial...
• ...and beneficial
• Accidental circumcision is a huge joke
• Circumcision is painful.
• The main disadvantage is the month's enforced celibacy.

M*A*S*H

A Korean woman asks for Bris for her baby, aged 3-4 months. (His father, presumably a deceased US serviceman, was Jewish. Orthodox Judaism decrees that only a Jewish mother makes a baby Jewish.) Doctors demur, one saying it is an elective procedure that would waste military resources, but eventually agree (and organise a rabbi to say the right prayers by telegraph).

Father Francis Mulcahy (William Christopher) agrees to attend the ceremony, and stresses to the mother "Don't worry about the circumcision...I have many friends with them!" (a roundabout way of saying "Some of my best friends are Jews," implying only Jews are circumcised.)

Ethics are not mentioned. Baby is circumcised The beautiful wide-eyed baby stares peacefully forward, never flinching or wimpering, but instead making a few happy sounds. The adults in the room are joyful and the doctor is patted on the back for the "good job" he did.

A young doctor, Ethan Haas (Nicholas D'Agosto), is meeting his fiance, Vivian Scully (Rose McIver), a nurse, to discuss wedding plans. She is late and comes in flustered:

In the 1950s when the scene is set, the circumcision rate the the USA was ~80%. It is inconceivable that a registered nurse would be unaware of circumcision, or a doctor unaware that gentiles do it. While the "anteater" insult is common nowadays, it would not be the first thing to spring to a naïve person's mind on seeing her first intact penis. The syphilis claim was more than 100 years old in the 1960s and was, and is, nonsense. Syphilis is highly infectious, a foreskin or not.

William Masters has just declared that he is set to announce that penis size is not the key to pleasing a woman, a revolutionary idea at the time. Virginia Johnson delivers a fiery reply:

Given that reality, and the fact that by this time in US history about half of adult males were circumcised - certainly most college-educated men - there was no conceivable way that Masters & Johnson were going to declare that the foreskin contributes to good sex. The only hope for their professional success - and the sales of their book - was to validate the status quo (and trend) and make the majority of men/couples feel good about themselves. The same is true today of every US medical association, university and government agency that pronounces on circumcision. To be credible and well-received, they must confirm that circumcision is good, or at least not detrimental. (h/t to Jason Fairfield)

Series 1 Episode 12 "Manhigh"

In fact Masters and Johnson made no study at all of circumcision and ejaculatory control or potency.

Mental

Episode MEN-108, "House of Mirrors" July 17, 2009

Official summary: When 16-year-old Heather Masters (guest star Allison Scagliotti) attempts to commit suicide by lighting herself on fire, Jack [Dr. Jack Gallagher (Chris Vance)] and the team must work to get to the bottom of her suicidal tendencies. However, when further testing and discussions with her father and psychiatrist reveal a dark secret that has been hidden from Heather since her birth, Jack is faced with a difficult ethical dilemma. Meanwhile, the relationship between Jack and ...

Reportedly the David Reimer story retold.

Season 2, Episode 2 3:50 in

April and Jess discuss a one-night stand April had recently.

Subtext: Intact penises are obviously abnormal/disgusting.

Monk

Episode 12 of Season 1: "Mr. Monk and the Red-Headed Stranger"

Lieut. Disher chased a nude man who has been running by every time the police chief gives a press conference. When the dispacher asks him for a description of the suspect, Disher says, "He's wearing grey sneakers"

Reinforcing the myth that circumcised=Jewish. He's even less likely to be Muslim, for example.

My Name is Earl

(Season premier)

Earl's rather slow brother Randy (Ethan Suplee) changes himself to be more like his girlfriends, but (according to the voice-over) eventually his true nature shows and reveals him to be plain old Randy.

In one scene he is trying to be like his Hassidic Jewish girlfriend. A small group of her Hassidic family are waiting in a living room when Randy enters.

(The chances of an American man of Randy's age and social group actually having a foreskin are slimmer than the chance of him finding ringlets to stick on a hat.)

My Wife & Kids

Official summary:
Season 3: Episodes 25 - "Graduation", broadcast May 21, 2003
[Michael (Damon Wayans) and Jay (Tisha Campbell) Kyle]'s hopes for Jr.[ George Gore]'s immediate future are dashed when he and Vanessa [Brooklyn Sudano] drop a bombshell on Michael and Jay.

Season 4: Episode 1 - "From Dummy to Daddy", broadcast September 24, 2003
Michael and Jay are reeling from the news that fresh-out-of- high-school graduates Jr. and girlfriend Vanessa are going to have a baby.

Dimwitted Jr. meets Vanessa for lunch and asks her how her parents took the news.

For circumcision (or something akin to it) to be proposed as a punishment is progress.

Mystery Science Theater 3000

Episode #622 Angel's Revenge

A group of vigilante women joins forces to bring down a local drug ring. They take a drug pusher hostage and begin to torture him for information. Suspended upside-down from the ceiling, the man is interrogated while one of the women wields a samurai sword over his genitals. When the pusher fails to provide the answers needed, the woman with the sword slices at his genitals while the other women look on with excitement and, for one woman, sexual satisfaction. Mike (Michael Nelson) exclaims, "It's a wanton, unauthorized bris!"

Implicitly, "Circumcision is Jewish."

Dan Kester (Robert Easton) is trying to open up a meteor-like object with a chisel and a hammer, not very effectively. After several botched attempts, Mike says "I'm glad he's not a mohel."

Unlike the previous example, there is no good reason to refer to circumcision here, except for a cheap laugh.