TITLE

SYNOPSIS

St Elsewhere
(UK)

A patient has a (surgical) foreskin restoration. A doctor becomes interested and rings to ask the patient's parents why he was circumcised*. The patient's father hangs up on him.

St Elsewhere
(US)

The hospital is approached by a local TV station that wants to air a series of one-minute medical information segments in their local news program, once per week. Dr. Victor Erlich (Ed Begley Jr.) is chosen for the job, and everyone wonders what he will choose for the topic of his first segment, but it's a secret right up to the minute of the live broadcast. Everyone at the TV studio (and everyone back at the hospital who are watching it live) are shocked and appalled to see that the bumbling Erlich has chosen circumcision as his topic. Erlich himself seems to be the only one who is oblivious to the fact that it is terribly inappropriate.

Victor presents the standard arguments, that circumcision is not painful, it promotes good hygiene, but some people just don't like it (he doesn't say why). He comments that some people believe that having a boy's penis look like his fathers' helps promote male bonding between them, or words to that effect. He wraps up his speech by saying if you choose not to have your baby boy circumcised you should pay extra attention to cleanliness so he doesn't get a "teeny weenie infection."

The stunned newscasters take a moment to collect their composure and then go on with the broadcast. The people back at the hospital think only a buffoon like Victor Erlich would choose such a distasteful subject for television at an hour when people are eating dinner.

The TV station decides to cancel any future segments.

Victor doesn't understand why, commenting that he thinks he did a really good job.

The contrast between the UK and US versions is striking: the UK doctor asks a father why his baby son was circumcised, the US doctor tells parents why they should be. All the focus is on the taste of talking about it at mealtime, none on the baby's feelings or rights.

Scott & Bailey
UK

Detective drama set in Manchester: Season 4, Ep 4, first broadcast October 1, 2014

The team are discussing how to identify a suspect in a recent murder. At 39'39"

Underlining that genitally cut men are now rare in the UK.

Scrubs

January 2, 2003, Season 2: Episode 11 - My Sex Buddy

Official summary: Carla is flattered when Mr. and Mrs. Marrick (Don Tiffany and Stacy Barnhisel) ask her opinion on having their newborn son circumcised. Even though doctors and nurses aren't supposed to offer their own opinions, or give more than a general answer about anything, Carla advocates for not doing the procedure. When word gets back to Dr. Kelso, he tries to convince the parents that they should have it done.

Nurse Carla Espinosa (Judy Reyes) and Dr John "J.D." Dorian (Zach Braff) are in a hospital room with a (bearded, overweight) father, mother, and newborn baby boy.

Chief of medicine, Dr. Bob Kelso (Ken Jenkins), is meeting with the new parents in their room. Dr. Dorian is observing from the doorway.

Dr. Dorian leaves the doorway and confers with Nurse Carla.

Dr. Perry Cox (John C McGinley) and his wife have a son, under a year, and in one of their boistrous conversations, they are fighting because he feels she has more say over their son than he has. He says "You're going to have to be the one to tell him why Daddy's wee-wee doesn't have a turtleneck like his."

His wife tells him to get over it.

A patient is told he has phimosis - "a hardening of the foreskin. As part of your treatment, you'll be asked to masturbate five times a week."

Phimosis is not a hardening of the foreskin. They seem to be confusing it with Balanitis Xerotica Obliterans (BXO), for which the treatment certainly does not involve cutting down on masturbation....

In surgery: Laverne asks, "I thought this patient was Jewish?"
Chris Turk (Donald Faison) confirms that he is.
Laverne explains that he is "uncircumcised".
Turk pulls a face. [This is both unprofessional and unlikely - even in the US, a doctor will have encountered plenty of intact penises]
Dr. Todd "The Todd" Quinlan (Robert Maschio) comes in and says that his appendicitis patient doesn't have an appendix. This means that the patients have been swapped.
Todd sees the patient's penis and shouts, "Whoa! What is going on here?!"
[presumably implying he knows the patient is Jewish and assumes all Jews are circumcised]

We are back to "Circumcision is Jewish" and "The foreskin is disgusting"

Seinfeld

Season 5, Episode 69, (1992-3) The Bris

Seinfeld is invited to be the godfather to Myra and Stan's baby.

...

Crazy Kramer (Michael Richards) believes genetic engineers are creating "pigmen" in the hospital. [This serves to undermine everything sensible he says against circumcision.]

At the Bris:

The Mohel arrives. He proves to be nervous, neurotic, and shaky: when Elaine leaves a wineglass at the edge of a table he lectures her about the danger of it falling, breaking and people later getting cut, going on to his hands and knees before the guests to demonstrate what might happen.

The Mohel is ignorant of the religious basis of circumcision and no prayers are shown. He regrets not having been a butcher like his brother. ("And, cows have no families. You make a mistake with a cow, you move on with your life...") He cuts Seinfeld's finger during the bris. Both accuse the other of flinching. Baby is circumcised. On the way to hospital Seinfeld (as if unaware of his own circumcision) complains: "Stitches? I've never had stitches. I'll be deformed. I can't live with that. It goes against my whole personality. It's not me!".

Stan and Myra make Kramer godfather for his concern.

Kramer
"How can you let this go on?"

In his closing stand-up routine, Seinfeld says "For every job, there's someone willing to do it. He elaborates with reference to doctors specialising in unpopular parts of the anatomy.

Nature imitates art:

Season 3, episode 38 (1991-1992) The Letter.

Elaine skips a bris in order to watch a baseball game.

7th Heaven

Matt (Barry Watson), 21, eldest of the seven children of Eric Camden (Stephen Collins), a Protestant minister and his wife Annie (Catherine Hicks), has secretly married a Jewish girl, Sarah Glass (Sarah Madison), whose father is a Rabbi (Richard Lewis). Matt's whole family, includng the youngest, Ruthie (Mackenzie Rosman), wise beyond her years and funny, goes to his "fiancée" Sarah's parents' house for a Sabbath dinner to get acquainted. There they discuss Jewish practices.

Ruthie: What is it with this circumcision thing? (Everyone gags on their food; there are snickers all around the table.)

Annie (embarrassed): Ruthie!

Rabbi: Annie, it's OK. It's always a good time for knowledge. By the way, Ruthie, you should know that circumcision isn't only done by the Jews. But for Jews, it's called a bris, and it came from a covenant - a promise - that Abraham made with God to show that he and his descendents would continue to honour Him through Judaism.

Ruthie (with a disgusted look): I just wondered what made Him think of that - circumcision?! (The Rabbi smiles and laughs but says nothing. End of scene.)

Ruthie's incredulity is well-founded because the Rabbi's explanation explains nothing. He fails to mention that not only do others than Jews circumcise, but most USAmerican boy babies are circumcised, and not all Jewish boy babies are.

Matt announces he's considering conversion for marriage.

Ruthie (to Matt): So, does this mean you're going to have to get circumcised? (Much sputtering at the table again)

Matt: Ruthie, I - my - it's none of your business!

End of discussion, subject is changed.

See the myths above.

Later, Eric, overcoming his initial shock that his son is considering converting to Judaism, starts talking about the need to discuss this first:

Matt: Of course I was going to discuss it with you, I was just looking for the right time!

Eric: And when would that be, at the bris of your firstborn?

The real point of no return would be Eric's breaking of the glass at the wedding, but bris milah is a hot-button issue, and has been mentioned.

Seventh Heaven, see 7th Heaven

Sex and the City

Old Dog, New Tricks (with the running theme, can men be changed?) [In New Zealand, it was broadcast as "Old Dogs, New Dicks"]

Charlotte goes to bed with Mike for the first time.

   
(left) a Shar-Pei and (right, to the same scale) a foreskin.
The same comparison is used in Nip/Tuck

Later:

Mike gets circumcised. It was extremely painful ("On a scale of one to five, I'd give it a 72.") and is again when he gets an erection.

Later, when Charlotte starts to make plans for them together:

The above sequence conveys a variety of anti-intact prejudice.

• The woman who prefers intact men is the slut.
• Intact men are only good lovers because they (know they are inferior and therefore) try harder.
• Charlotte is going to circumcise any sons to conform to the prejucides of hypothetical future women, on the assumption that they will all think as she does.
• Mike's "feeling good about making love" depends on him fitting others' expectations.

What the man might prefer, how missing part of his penis might affect his sex life - or hers - are not addressed. It is not clear how far the scriptwriters' tongues were in their cheeks when they wrote of intact men not being "normal", or "what went wrong" when Mike's parents left him intact, but that might go over the heads of most of the audience.

Sure, it's only a comedy - but would a TV sitcom that featured men discussing the modifying of women's anatomy in the same terms ("to break in his new merchandise"), or white people decrying the aesthetics of black skin or kinky hair, ever reach the screen?

A correspondent has gone to the trouble of editing the script and changing the sexes, coming up with lines like:

Facts are not this show's strong suit:

• The foreskin is actually softer than the glans.
• Significantly less than 85 percent of men in the world are intact, since 16 percent are Muslim.)
• A full moon is shown rising at 2am (they always rise at sundown.).

In another episode, they hold a bris for the baby boy of Charlotte York and her Jewish husband, but there is no serious discussion. (According to Orthodoxy, if she is not Jewish, nor is the baby.)

A somewhat heated conversation between Kevin (Steve Howey), Veronica (Shanola Hampton) and Fiona (Emmy Rossum). Kevin and Veronica have been arguing over whether or not to circumcise if they have a boy (they're not pregnant yet).

Later that same episode, Kevin complains about looking fat:

Kevin eventually has a baby boy with Veronica’s mother, but there is no mention of whether he is circumcised or not. Kevin and Veronica later have twin girls.

Veronica is adamant she will not circumcise any baby boy.
Fiona tells her "You have to. It's so dirty."
Kevin says there is nothing wrong with being circumcised.
Veronica emails Fiona a bunch of details about complications etc., and it is implied that Fiona changes her mind and circumcises.

Season 7, Episode 2 "Swipe, Fuck, Leave" first broadcast October 2, 2016
Carl is recovering from his surgery and tells his brothers that he can’t have an erection for 72 hours or he’ll pop his stitches. His brothers wonder how a 16-year old boy can keep from getting an erection that long and he says “eyes on the prize, my brother.” The “prize” is “a blowie from Dominique.” His brothers argue, however, that no chick is worth cutting your dick for. When Carl gets too school, he learns that Dominique has told virtually everyone about the surgery and Carl is subjected to harsh teasing. Other boys call him “tranny” and “freak.”

As the episode continues, not getting an erection proves to be too difficult for a 16-year old boy, because several times throughout the episode he pops his stitches and must return to the doctor for more stitches. The doctor warns him about not having much skin left and suggests that he think about “hairy balls” or watch Ted Cruz on C-SPAN in order to avoid erections.
On his third visit back to the doctor, the doctor tells him he can barely find any skin that hasn’t been torn to sew back together and that if it happens again he “may have no choice but to turn that thing into a vagina.” His brothers later see his penis and are horrified at the “mangled mess.” They tell him again that he “shouldn’t have gotten that stupid circumcision.”
Carl angrily tells them “I already feel like enough of a freak being the only Gallagher who’s not circumcised.” Later that day, his brothers give him a “jumbo dose of thorazine” to help him get through the 72 hour period. It works and the episode ends with Dominique giving him his “prize.”

Season 7, Episode 3, "Home Sweet Homeless Shelter" first broadcast October 9, 2016
Carl finds out that Dominque has gonorrhea. Carl thinks he gave it to her and accuses the doctor of giving it to him during the circumcision. Carl doesn’t understand why Dominique has stopped talking to him and he tries to apologize to her but she blows him off. He tells her “I cut the tip of my dick off for you.” He later finds out that he doesn’t have it himself; Dominique has been cheating on him.

Season 7, Episode 6,  "The Defenestration of Frank", first broadcast November 6, 2016
Carl confronts Dominique and her new boyfriend and the new boyfriend says “Wait! [Is this] Carl the dude that trimmed his dick? Damn, I wouldn’t let anyone within ten feet of my junk with a knife.”
Carl, surprised, asks “You’re not circumcised?”
The new boyfriend responds “Hell, no!”
Carl looks at Dominique. She shrugs and says “I don’t mind it anymore.”
Carl says to the new boyfriend, “You know she’s got gonorrhea, right?”

Mixed messages: the horrors of circumcision, but also the myth of  “scrubbing” being needed, and that all women are horrified by an intact male.

The Shield

Season 3, episode 30, production code 5012-03-304. 'Streaks and Tips'

Vic has a bet with the decoy squad, the loser to streak through the office. Someone asks him if he is cut or uncut. He wins the bet, so we don't find out.

The question might be irrelevant, unless we are coming from the position that "the foreskin is disgusting" and onlookers ought not to be exposed to one.

Shortland St
(New Zealand)

Over a series of episodes, a patient presents for foreskin restoration (only surgery is considered) and turns out to be a wimp and a no-hoper. A young man (played by Martin Henderson), influenced by him, briefly considers restoration, but is tricked into changing his mind, by a doctor who - abandoning his ethics completely and lying through his teeth - proposes to perform it immediately without anaesthetic using huge and comic instruments, a rare descent of the show into farce. Circumcision is criticised, but restorers more so.

The Simple Life

Season 2: Road Trip. A "reality" series in which two pampered airheads, Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie, forsake their wealth and accept internships on the US east coast.

At the dinner table with the Cash Family:

The Simpsons
(cartoon)

Season 3, Episode 6, "Like Father, Like Clown"
First broadcast October 24, 1991

Krusty the Clown (voiced by Dan Castellaneta) (finally) fulfills a promise to have dinner with the Simpsons, during which he reveals his Jewish heritage, and his estrangement from his father, who expected him to follow in his footsteps by becoming a Rabbi. Seeing how distraught he is, Bart and Lisa set out to reconcile Krusty with his father.

They confront Rabbi Krustofsky while he is performing a circumcision. Krustofsky makes a comment like, "I'm still not convinced, and this is hardly the time or place to discuss it!"

- presumably only because it is delicate and solemn, not because it would be ironical for a man to discuss his relationship with his own son while cutting a baby's genitals on behalf of the baby's father.

Episode 1506 EABF01 SI-1501, "Today I am A Clown"
first broadcast December 7, 2003

Krusty the Clown (voiced by Dan Castellaneta) finds he is missing from the Jewish Walk of Fame and learns it is because he never had a Bar Mitzvah, so he reunites with his father (a rabbi) and sets about having a belated one.

In a pre-Bar Mitzvah interview, asked if he was circumcised, Krusty replies, "Yeah, and then some."

Later, on his TV show, Krusty says, "I'm going to impart our traditions the way our people have done for centuries - through animation". He shows an "Itchy & Scratchy" cartoon (a regular feature of his shows, consisting entirely of outrageous gratuitous violence, at which Bart and Lisa Simpson always laugh uproariously).

Title (in psuedo-Hebrew lettering while Klezmer music plays):

A BRISS BEFORE DYING
[Image of Scratchy the cat in a yamulka holding a scalpel chasing Itchy the mouse]

Itchy as a baby lies on a table in front of Scratchy, in a room with a Menorah, while several Jewish mice watch.

Scratchy: Baruch Ata Adonai, Eloheinu Melech Ha'Olom
(Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe.)
Boreh -
(Creator -) [the beginning of a generic blessing, as over food etc.]

(He holds up a flashing scalpel).

Itchy reacts, then jumps up on Scratchy's head and pulls out his eyes. Scratchy swings the scalpel and cuts off his own ears. Itchy jumps down on Scratchy's nose, and Scratchy cuts that off. Itchy escapes by jumping on Scratchy's right shoulder and Scratchy cuts off his own right arm (with his left hand). Scratchy then successively (and very quickly) cuts through his own chest, thighs, calves, tail and tie, finally cutting off his left arm, and collapses in a heap. Itchy picks the heap up and puts it through a mincer. The eyes come out blinking.

Itchy forms the mincemat on to a tube, pokes it into a fire and blows it into a goblet (with eyes that still blink). He wraps it in a napkin, steps on it and shouts "Mazel Tov!" (A reference to the ceremonial breaking of a glass at a Jewish wedding. "Mazel Tov" [literally "good luck"] corresponds to "Congratulations!") The other mice applaud.

The End

The whole cartoon lasts 30 seconds. Itchy is not circumcised.

Krusty: That's what I believe now.

This revenge fantasy might apply equally to any man's view of his circumcision. The message must be among the most Intactivist ever screened on US television.

The video is at Youtube.

[There are two continuity errors in the segment:

• Itchy throws Scratchy's eyes out the window, but they reapper when the remains of Scratchy come out of the mincer.
• A menorah on the wall behind Scratchy vanishes. Stone tablets appear in a diffeerent place on the wall.]

images © Fox TV

It's not mentioned again. Santa's Little Helper proves such a hit at the nursing home that they leave him overnight and presumably don't take him to the v e t, but it's not clear what, if anything, happens to Bart. (This is an exceptionally cruel episode, even of The Simpsons, with references to hanging, suicide, repeated shooting with nailguns, knocking out with a mallet, and a prolonged sequence of Homer getting electroshock for giving wrong answers to Dr Hibbert's trick questions.)

This is a big letdown after the promise of Krusty's exposé. The best that can be extracted from this is a weak linkage between circumcision and castration. Apart from that, it seems to be saying that circumcision is trivial.

(season finale)
Bart is kicked out of Springfield Primary School and Homer and Marge send him to a Catholic school. Bart is about to take his first communion. Marge, Rev. Lovejoy and Ned Flanders confer.

As usual, circumcision is presented as purely Jewish. Ned's ignorance (or ignoring) of gentile circumcision is doubly odd in the light of the earlier episode.

These pages proposed a more striking hypothetical scenario several years ago.

Chief Wiggum is looking through a copy of the Springfield Constitution, mumbling the contents, which include "human rights and routine circumcision".

For those words to be juxtaposed is a step forward.

"Labor Pains" Series 25, Episode 05

Homer helps a woman to give birth in a stuck lift. He holds the baby and exclaims

(click to see clip)

Homer's ignorance of how males come to be "cut" or "uncut" at the heart of the joke is parallel to the implicit assumption of many adults in circumcising societies that "men are either circumcised or not" as if it were a given, a variant present at birth.

(The baby is born with a navel but no umbilical cord or placenta.
This is all a nice riposte to the several babies who have been shown on the big and small screen as anomalously circumcised.)

(The word "dude" has come a long way from its origins:
dude /du:d, dju:d/ n. & v. slang (orig. US).L19. [Prob. f. G dial. = fool (cf. LG dudenkop stupid head’).]
A n. 1 A fastidious, aesthetic person; a dandy, a fop. [Almost "a pansy"] slang. L19.
2 A holiday-maker in the western US, esp. one who holidays on a ranch; a tenderfoot. L19.

Shorter Oxford English Dictionary

Six Feet Under

Older brother Nate and girlfriend Brenda are going to a (woman) Rabbi for pre-marriage counseling.

This ground-breaking show grants that having to get circumcised would be a hardship. It avoids the twin pitfalls of "Only Jews are circumcised" and "All men are circumcised" (but not "All Jews are circumcised"), but for the sake of a gratuitous reference to circumcision (it can't be news to David), it falls into the trap of presenting a conversion of convenience as unproblematic.

Skins (UK)

Drama series following a group of teenagers in Bristol, South West England, through the two years of secondary school. Plot lines explore issues such as dysfunctional families, eating disorders, adolescent sexuality, substance abuse and death.

Rich (Alexander Arnold) approaches "the Angel of Death" (Scarlett Sabet) in the school library:

Season 7, Episode 4 "Pure" (First aired on 22/07/2013)

Cassie Ainsworth, accompanied by her co-worker, Jakob, visits her father Marcus and her younger brother, Reuben in their home in Wales. Cassie, Jakob and Reuben sit around the table as Marcus prepares a meal. He places some sausages (presumably pork) onto Jakob's plate.

The effect of circumcision is minimised (as it doubtless was to Jakob). The non sequitur is unexplained.

South Park

Episode 204: Ike's Wee-Wee, first broadcast May 20, 1998

Ike, adopted, is to be belatedly circumcised because "All Jewish kids have circumstitions", which horrifies the other kids: their reaction (38 KB .wav file - here is the text) is appropriate, and they smuggle him away to Canada. They substitute a dummy, which ... convinces his parents he is dead. The kids take pity on them and they go to Nebraska and find him.

He is told, "We're just going to snip it. It'll make it look bigger." Because he is Canadian, the mohel produces a pair of snippers in the form of a maple leaf.

A stranger appears who says he never misses a bris. Ike is circumcised. He says "Ouch", gets up as if nothing had happened, and all the others want to be circumcised.

Since Ike's birth parents are not Jewish, he is not Jewish and need not be circumcised. This episode was reportedly written by one producer to comfort the other when his son was being circumcised.

The word "circumstition" was first coined by the author of these pages in 1996 or 7, and had a permanent presence on the WWW some time after October 1998, but the "South Park" scriptwriters probably coined it independently - an idea whose time had come.

Mrs. Garrison (formerly Mr. Garrison) regrets her sex change operation and wants to return to being a man. She sees on the news that scientists are able to grow a human ear onto the back of a mouse. Using all of her money and some of her male DNA, the scientists are able to grow a new penis for Garrison on to a mouse. It is shown throughout as already circumcised. (If this is because Mr Garrison had been circumcised as a baby, it would be an example of Larmarkism, the discredited theory that acquired characteristics can be inherited.)

For South Park, the Movie: Bigger, Longer, Uncut, see the Movies pages M-Z.

With the rate around 55% and falling, St Julien will be far from alone in the gym. He's more likely to be teased for his name.

Stargate SG1

Teal’c (Christopher Judge), a Jaffa (former slave race), is talking to his son Rya’c (Neil Denis) after Rya’c's wedding:

Kar’yn, Master Bra’tac, Rya’c

TEAL’C: You have chosen the location for your shim’owa very well.

RYA’C: Master Bra’tac said this is where you took my mother.

TEAL’C (smiling): Indeed. Rya’c. (Rya’c turns and faces him.) I can think of no better mate for you than Kar’yn, and I am certain your mother would have felt the same.

RYA’C: Thank you. (He puts his hand on Teal’c’s shoulder. Teal’c reciprocates, then they hug.)

TEAL’C (once they have broken the embrace): Before your departure, there is a matter that bears discussion.

RYA’C: Father, I am aware of the ways between a man and a woman.

TEAL’C: Good. Then you are prepared for the Rite of Or’nok. (Rya’c looks horrified.)

RYA’C: Surely it is not still expected?

TEAL’C (looking very serious): On the first eve of shim’owa. My advice is that the knife be as sharp as possible.

RYA’C (staring at him in dread): Perhaps Kar’yn is right. Not all of the old traditions are worth holding on to.

(Teal’c looks at his son seriously for a moment, then his face breaks into a grin.)

TEAL’C: Indeed.

Teal’c

(They start to walk down the corridor again.)

RYA’C: What of you and Ishta?

TEAL’C: What of us?

RYA’C: Well, your relationship would be much easier if you’d both admit you are in love. For us all.

TEAL’C: Perhaps one day – when I am as wise as you are.

Strangers With Candy

Jerri Blank (Amy Sedaris) has been giving a baby boy to take care of for health class. After one sleepness night of watching the baby, she abandons it on a local playground so that she can hang out with her friends. Teachers Chuck Noblet (Stephen Colbert) and Geoffrey Jellineck (Paul Dinello) find the baby and report Jerri to the principal. The following day, Principal Blackman (Greg Hollimon) and Coach Wolf (Sarah Thyre) tell Jerri that she is deep trouble for what she has done.

The baby is given back to Jerri so that she may complete the assignment, but she tries to sell him on the black market. After pinning the attempted crime on her new class partner Tammi Littlenut (Maria Thayer), she returns the baby to Coach Wolf. Principal Blackman tells Jerri that she must be "exceptionally unfit for motherhood."

Since it is not conceivable that she circumcised the baby, either the show's makers have no idea how serious circumcision is (medically as well as ethically), or she does, and is making a joke so stupid it is ignored.

Strong Medicine

Parents from a Middle Eastern country bring their early-teenage daughter in to Rittenhouse Hospital to have her circumcised, saying "She'll be a social outcast", "She'll never find a husband", etc. if it isn't done.

The girl doesn't want it done, and the two doctors, Dr Dana Stowe (a Harvard-educated surgeon directing research studies, played by Janine Turner) and Dr Luisa Delgado (a major character, played by Rosa Blasi), do their best to talk the family out of it, saying how it's an outrage, mutilation, dangerous, etc.

The parents leave the hospital without checking out, apparently planning to have it done clandestinely in the US or elsewhere.

The two doctors discuss the matter:

Dr Stowe: You know, there's really not much difference between this and what we do to little boys in the U.S. [or words to that effect]

Janine Turner (Dr Stowe)

Dr Delgado: Well, I had Marc [her teenage son] circumcised, but I didn't cut his whole penis off.

In one of the side stories, parents of a newborn argue over whether or not they should circumcise their son. The mother wants to but the father says no. The receptionist, Lana, breaks the deadlock, telling them it's not how it looks, it's what a man does with it.

Implying that appearance is the only consideration

Suburgatory

That apparently refers to this scene:

Fred and another woman are playing croquet. Dallas comes onto the green arm-in-arm with a tall blond man, saying,

This is so gratuitous it may perhaps be a self-parody.

(Gentile) Toby Kennish (Lucas Grabeel) and (Jewish) Lily Summers (Rahel Shenton) return from London with plans to marry in the Kennish family's back yard
Toby mentions to Lily that they skipped out on "that ceremony where they chop of the baby's foreskin" for their son.

Clearly, neither took the ceremony very seriously. No mention of "medical" genital cutting.

After Eric is caught out lying about running over Donna's cat, Donna says that they should have no more secrets. Eric admits that in the first grade, he used to call her "Donna Pinch-my-buttie." Donna admits that she was the first one to call him "Eric Foreskin." Eric doesn't laugh, and points out that the name stuck.

Since it is a play on his name, this need not refer to his actual status.

30 Rock

Sitcom about a fictional TV show of the same name produced at 30 Rockerfeller Plaza, New York. Season 2, Episode 206, first aired November 15, 2007

Implying that circumcision is associated with wealth but only exceptionally with pride. ("Circumcised" could also be a metonym for "Jewish".)

Thirty-something

Episode 63 (or 401 - 4th series, 1st episode) "prelude to a bris"
[The extraordinary title suggests a gentle piece of music - and gives away the outcome.]
(Written and directed by Richard Kramer)
first broadcast September 25, 1990

With a black screen we hear gentile Hope Steadman (Mel Harris) giving birth to Leo. At home, her Jewish husband Michael (Ken Olin) tells her they must decide about a bris.

Michael's mother, Barbara (Barbara Barrie), comes to visit and unexpectedly brings her new lover, Ben Teitleman (Alan King). Michael doesn't get on with Ben.

Everyone pesters Michael about the bris, giving him advice on what kind of mohel to get. They all go to a science museum and have little conversations while walking through a model of a heart. The men and women then separately discuss circumcision, the men while jogging, the women in the kitchen.

Michael tries to talk to Hope about whether they should have a bris or not, and she finally expresses doubt that they should have one at all, since Michael's religion doesn't seem to mean much to him.

A rabbi (Philip Sterling) visits Michael, who quickly figures out that Ben sent him, but manages to stay civil while ushering him out.

Hope and Barbara talk about the pros and cons, which leads to Hope sniffling a little, wondering if the circumcision will hurt Leo, asking what the meaning of the ceremony would be for them and the baby.

Michael tells Ben bluntly that it was out of line to send a rabbi without asking first.

Michael and Hope argue bitterly about Ben's role, and how Michael is uncomfortable with his own Jewishness. Hope asks what the ceremony would mean for all of them.

Michael wonders what makes someone a real Jew. Ben tells him that he is one anyway, practicing or not, and he must decide whether he will "break the chain." [Notice that these two ideas are contradictory.] Michael imagines Leo approaching his thirteenth birthday - Leo (Joshua Smith) is neither interested in his family's past or in having a bar mitzvah.

Hope tells Michael that she's worked it out for herself (unlike him) and that she wants their son to be a "part of something." [...by having part of something taken from him...] They decide to go ahead with the bris.

At the bris, Gary has been selected (as sendak) to hold the child and seems nervous about it. Ben shows up suddenly and Michael makes a quick switch, asking Ben to hold Leo instead.

Leo is circumcised.

The parents' discussion is almost entirely about their feelings, and apart from a brief reference to the pain, involves Leo only symbolically.

Till Death Us Do Part (UK)

BBC comedy (1965 - 1975) Alf Garnett (Warren Mitchell) is racist, sexist and anti-Semitic, skewering those prejudices.

Mitchell said in an interview he had his son circumcised only to please his (Jewish) father.

'Til Death

Sitcom (based on the above) about a long-married couple [he's a goof, she's a nag, very similar to Married with Children] (with newlyweds next door) Season 3, Circumdecision (Episode 6, 10/8/08) (To view, click on TV Shows (at left), 'Til Death, Circumdecision)

Kenny (J.B.Smoove) freaks out after losing his swim trunks at a water park and his new girlfriend notices he isn't circumcised. When he decides to go under the knife, Joy (Joely Fisher) is impressed by his efforts to please a girl he hardly knows and badgers Eddie (Brad Garrett) to accompany her to six weeks of musicals in the park. Eddie loathes musicals and bets on them with Joy that Kenny will not go through with it. He takes Kenny to a bris so he can see what circumcision looks like. The baby's screams turn Eddie against the idea. His ex-wife Tina says she wanted him to be circumcised for years, but when he rings her, she dumps him. He eventually decides to be circumcised (reason not given) and Eddie forces him to go to the musicals with them, where Eddie refuses to co-operate with a singer performing "If I were a Rich Man" from Fiddler on the Roof.

The show has a total of 19 negative references to the foreskin and positive or trivialising references to circumcision, but only 5 of the reverse kind:

The effect of this kind of steady drizzle of anti-intact propaganda on a young intact man can only be imagined.

Friday night NBC sitcom, Oct. 30, 2015

A clown at a 6 year old’s birthday party has a costume malfunction. Shocked, the parents hustle their children away. A Jewish father (wearing a yarmulke) says, “It’s okay kids, he’s circumcised.” (laughter)

Subtext: cutting makes adult genitals less obscene. A mirror example is in Augusten Burroughs' book "Sellevision"

21 Up
(MTV)

UK documentary. "Born in the USSR"

A Kazakh Muslim man tells how he caused an uproar in his village when he kicked his circumciser in the face, because he didn't want it and he knew it would hurt.

What he does not tell is how he was then presumably held down by several men and circumcised by force.

Episode 9.18, The War Against Gingivitis

After several references in the episode to oral sex;

It is also progress that US TV sitcoms let it be known that not all men are circumcised.

Caroline gropes Nicholas and is relieved to find he's not "wearing a floppy beret".

Comedy about five friends in the north of England

Jonny (Ralf Little)declares he is a Jew, to which his girlfriend Janet (Sheridan Smith) tells him he is talking rubbish because he eats bacon and he likes to put marbles up his foreskin.

Implying all Jews are genitally cut.

Ugly Americans

(Adult cartoon)

Mark Lilly (voice: Matt Oberg) is a young man in the Department of Integration in an alternate New York. He works with former wizard Leonard Powers (voice: Randy Pearlstein). They encounter the xenophobic Frank Grimes (voice: Larry Murphy) in a corridor.

It is a plus that losing his foreskin is listed among negatives.

Season 1, Episode 12 "Truth or Dare", first broadcast 29 January 2002

American college student Marshall Nesbitt (Timm Sharp) and his British roommate Lloyd Haythe (Charlie Hunnam) compete in a game of Truth-or-Dare with friends Lizzie and Rachel. Marshall exits his room holding a ruler and announces his penis size.

Marshall: Six.

The scene cuts to Lloyd:

Lloyd: Six and a half. No mohel, no mohel.

Marshall takes back the ruler and heads back to his room.

Implying circumcision shortens the penis, but "Only Jews circumcise."

Undressed
(MTV)

[Official summary] Nice-guy Brett and his new girlfriend Shay are ready to go all the way. But when things start heating up and Shay pulls down his boxers, she realizes he's uncircumcised. Dismayed, Shay takes off, leaving Brett heartbroken. He's determined to win her back and will do anything…including going under the knife. Will he really go through with it? And is Shay worth self-mutilation? And what about that sexy co-ed, who loves her men au naturel?

Shay tells her boyfriend Brett (Wole Parks) she wants him to be circumcised.

At first he agrees, to please her. Her friends and his all tell him not to do it. The girls tell Shay not to make him, because they can't be sure they will like it. Annie (Rachelle Lafevbre) shows Brett what circumcision is like using a banana. She says she had never seen "one" before and asks if she can see his. He shows her - in the interest of science, of course - and she is very impressed, saying how beautiful it is.

She then wants to touch it, and they have sex - again, purely for science...

Brett's roommate tells him not to do it and asks what if he finds out that sex isn't any good circumcised. He replies that he'll do it for Shay anyway. The roommate says she will just find something else she doesn't like. Brett agrees that's a risk, and they cook up a plan to test the theory.

In the next episode, Brett is in bed with the covers drawn up to his waist. Shay is beside him on top of the covers. She says, "You did it. You got circumcised?" He tells her he did, but it was no big deal, because now with lasers they can just "beam the foreskin off". She falls for it, and is happy he had done it for her.

When Brett reaches for a condom, Shay sees a mole on his back and says he has to get that removed before she will have sex with him.

He says, "The problem is not my foreskin..." She agrees, "It's me." She just told him to get circumcised in an effort to get out of the relationship. Brett says no matter what he did it wouldn't be enough for her.

Brett starts dating Annie.

This is progress. No-one gets circumcised - and the summary uses the m-word!

James, 17, and Lilly, 16, are having a girl. Darlene, 43, is James’ mother. Brittany, 18, James’ sister, has just had a boy. They’re all eating at a restaurant (with two other sisters).

In 2017, this is unusually simplistic, self-contradictory ("Every boy is born with ... extra skin") and wrong.

Senator Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) has been Vice-President and President, and is now jealous of her successor, the first elected woman president.

Series 6, Episode 8, "Judge", first broadcast June 11, 2017

Congressman Jonah Ryan (Timothy SImons), butt of many jokes, is engaged to Jewish princess Shawnee Tanz (Mary Holland), daughter of one of his supporters.
In a government office, Jonah has been lobbying for some legislative changes. He has been granted several of these, but the final one, to end daylight saving, gets this response:

Episode 9, "A Woman First", first broadcast June 18, 2017

A brief exchange between Jonah and Shawnee after her father has threatened to cut her off, as he is no longer supporting Jonah.

...

Messages: "All and only Jews are cut." "Adult (but not infant) male genital cutting is exquisitely painful." In fact, both are.

The Venture Brothers

(Animated)
Official summary: Hank [Christopher McCulloch] and Dean [Michael Sinterniklaas] Venture, with their father Doctor [Thaddius] Venture [James Urbaniak] and faithful bodyguard Brock Samson, go on wild adventures facing megalomaniacs, zombies, and suspicious ninjas, all for the glory of adventure. Or something like that.
Hank and Dean Venture are relatively identical twins, only born six minutes apart, who live for the thrill of adventure. Their dated vocabulary and high-pitched voices are intentionally annoying, especially to their father ...

Unofficial summary: The Venture brothers ... are ... teenaged idiots who think, act and talk like it's the sixties (though it takes place in the present). ... Dr. Venture ... [really can't] stand them.

Another gratuitous swipe at the intact penis and the men who have one, apparently just intended to gross the audience out.

Dr Venture (trudging through snow, complaining about the cold): Oh great - I think my foreskin just broke off.

Trivialising.

Season 3, Episode: 6, "Dr. Quymn, Medicine Woman" First Aired: July 6, 2008

In the Amazon, the Ventures meet Dr. Tara Quymn, with her identical twin daughters, Nancy and Drew. She takes them to the village of a tribe that has been attacked  by a creature called a " wereodile". Hank becomes infatuated with Nancy and Drew, but they become infatuated with Dean, and try to seduce him, to no avail. Hank inadvertantly helps defeat the wereodile and is "rewarded" by the natives with a warrior circumcision that makes him ill. Realizing that Dean is still intact, Nancy and Drew are immediately disgusted by him.

In the first season, Hank was circumcised, but his clone, activated in Season 2, was intact up until this episode. The writers just can't seem to find enough opportunities to say "the foreskin is disgusting".

In the church of Santa Maria della Sanita, Minniti learns there is a picture of Jesus' circumcision by Caravaggio:

Minniti learns that Caravaggio has been killed on the way to Rome, and goes back to the church:

Minitti learns from Caravaggio's former lover, "Cecco", (Francesco Boneri) that Caravaggio had been blinded in one eye by three attackers, two holding him down while one slashed his face. Cecco says his heart was no longer in the painting.

The painting is real.

click for larger

It was completed in 1612 by Giovan Vincenzo Forli and a commentator says "it is impossible to discern Caravaggio's original intentions" but it is entirely plausible from the way he painted intact males - and if he portrayed the mohel as blind - that Caravaggio deplored circumcision.

Waking the Dead
(UK)

Forensic drama, BBC1 TV (Series 7, Pieta, Part 1)

A young war crime victim may have been a Muslim. Forensic pathologist Dr Eve Lockhart (Tara FitzGerald) says he could not be, because he was not circumcised.

Peter Boyd (Trevor Eve) is told that Muslim boys are circumcised when they are 8 years old - as soon as they can read the Qu'ran. He responds that it would hardly be an incentive to learn.

Eve replies, "On the contrary, it's an important rite of passage from boyhood into manhood."

The age actually varies regionally. Both of the last two statements could be true, but Eve's non sequitur discounts Boyd's realistic appreciation of the pain involved.

Video for people in the UK. Torrent for those outside. Thanks to NORM-UK.

The War At Home

(Fox) "Episode 114: How Do You Spell Relief Broadast 28 February, 2006

Dave Gold (Michael Rapaport) is discussing with a male co-worker that his wife Hillary (Anita Barone), wants to have a fourth child. The co-worker suggests he have a vasectomy, which he refers to as "snip-snip".

Implying that all (and only) Jews are circumcised, but at least suggesting that genital operations are in general undesirable. The word 'circumcision' is, typically, avoided.

Thanks to http://www.norm-uk.org

Thirteen-year-old Mike Gold (Dean Collins) wants to have a bar mitzvah, and in preparing for it, becomes ultra-Jewish, including learning Hebrew even though it's "a new age synagogue and the rabbi says God doesn’t care what language you do it in." The rabbi says, "The three most important days in a man's life are his bris, his bar mitzvah and his marriage..." The parents point out that he didn't have a bris but was instead circumcised in hospital. Dave says something like "Yeah... we don't want 'm walking around with a turtle neck..." (applause)

The rabbi says the only way for him to have a bar mitzvah is to have a 'ceremonial bris' [hatifat dam berit] first, in which his penis is pricked to draw some blood. Mike changes his mind about having a bar mitzvah.

... suggesting that if he had had any choice, he would have refused to be circumcised too.

Unsuprisingly, the programmes writers are confused: Mike's mother Vicky is a practising Catholic, so if Dave is Orthodox, Mike is not Jewish. If, on the other hand they are Reform, Mike is not obliged to undergo hatifat dam berit.

The Wayans Brothers

Brothers Shawn and Marlon Wayans play brothers Shawn and Marlon Williams

Marlon is suing his older brother Shawn. Shawn is cross-examining him:

Weeds

Adult soap opera. Series 5, Episode 8, A Distinctive Horn, first broadcast 27 July 2009

A baby is born to Nancy Botwin (Mary Louise Parker) and Esteban Reyes (Demián Bichir), a Mexican politician, who refuses to have his name on the birth certificate. So she turns to her Jewish brother-in-law Andy (Justin Kirk), to put his name instead. He agrees, but while changing the baby, he says,

In a sub-plot, Silas' drug-dealing colleague Doug agrees to let entrepreneur Dean slam Doug's dick [sic] in a desk drawer in return for some marijuana, saying "If I'm hard, it won't be so bad." At the crucial moment we cut to a shop next door and see the people's reactions to his screams. The parallels between the two themes is not noted.

Note the assumption that baby must be circumcised. Shane's comments are a sign of the times.

Watch video

Will & Grace

Season 4 Episode 64405
PAST AND PRESENTS
written by Tracy Poust & Jon Kinnally
first broadcast October 4, 2001

Karen (Megan Mullally) buys Grace (Debra Messing)'s boyfriend Nathan (guest star Woody Harrelson) a motorcycle. Grace is ashamed of her own small present.

GRACE: Uh, well, that's just - that's just really - that's part one of my present, and wait till you see part two. You're just gonna- You're gonna- Aah! Um, not - not today. It's a Jewish thing. You know how we like to stretch out the gifts.

NATHAN: Oh, you Jews are great - except for that circumcision thing.

Grace laughs nervously and the scene ends.

As if only Jews are circumcised - but it is progress that Nathan doesn't like it.

Comedy. Season 5, Episode 5, Mother Knows Breast, first broadcast March 16, 2021

Kate Foster (Catherine Reitman) and Maya Bronte( Aiza Ntibarikure )'s sons Charlie (Mason or Nolan Gahan) and Axe (uncredited) are urinating against a fence, watched by their mothers.

It's unusual in using the m-word, especially to a child and so brutally.

Three hypotheticals

1. A prediction:

The X-Files

A mysterious sickness strikes a remote village. It turns out that the local GP refused to circumcise any babies. Scully is skeptical but Mulder organises a mass circumcision. The plague vanishes. The citizens rejoice and Mulder is invited to the next village to be Master of Ceremonies at another mass circumcision, where nothing goes wrong and nobody feels any pain.

2. A wish:

The Simpsons

One of the boys (probably one of the bullies, Martin Munz or Jimbo Jones) is circumcised and comes back boasting about it. The other bullies sneer at anyone who is not. Bart wants to be "circle-sized" too. Homer defends Bart's wish, saying "A boy should look like his father." Marge imagines Bart looking like Homer (on the couch drinking Duff, burping), growls "Rrrrrrrrrr." Homer says, "If it's good enough for them, it's good enough for my son. It's not as if they're going to cut part off his pee-pee or something." Bart repeats this remark to Lisa. Lisa whispers in his ear, "Well, actually, Bart...." Bart screams "Noooooo!" with tongue waggling. Bart is not circumcised.

Unfortunately:

"There are weekly fan-written Simpsons scripts posted on the Internet. I can't read them - I will be accused later on down the line of having stolen somebody's idea. But I love the idea of it."

- Matt Groening in "Wired" Feb 1999

And sadly:

This month, [Larry] Doyle, the proud father of a newborn son, Benjamin, discusses perhaps the most important issue he has faced as a dad.
"The big question, I suppose, is did we circumcise the child?" says Doyle, who writes for The Simpsons and is a former editor at New York and Spy.
"Yes, we did, and it looked like it hurt a lot. But after they brought him back, my son looked me in the eyes and said, 'Thank you, Daddy.' I don't know if that means anything."

- Esquire, June 1999

Yes, Larry, it means you're a dickhead.

The Simpsons did treat circumcision negatively in an episode broadcast on December 7, 2003, then somewhat trivially in an episode broadcast in May 2005. Doyle is no longer mentioned as a writer for The Simpsons.

3. Another wish:

Futurama

After drinking Slurm (the most addictive soft drink in the Universe), Leela overcomes her usual repugnance and goes to bed with Fry. But she suddenly leaps out of bed, calling him a freak. He consults Dr Zoidberg who finds (luckily the wall chart his consults happens to be for male humans) that part of his penis is missing. Consulting a very dusty book (Fry has to show him how to open it), he discovers that circumcision ended in the year 2008. Fry is devastated, but Bender offers to retore his foreskin by stretching. Fry declines but is so touched by the offer that he forgets his woes.

Actually, I didn't write this, Arthur C. Clarke did it for me.