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

Official summary: 131. JOEY'S BAPTISM 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.

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."

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. [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.

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. video of the full episode

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.)

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 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?

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.

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."

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.

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).

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.

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.

Cybil?

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

Dawson's Creek

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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 ).

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.

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:

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.

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)

Carie's father, Arthur, is in hospital, about to be anaesthetised for an angioplasty

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.

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 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 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

A pair of pre-adolescent twins are psychotic. One is charged with the other's murder. Both were born as males, but one was raised as a girl and has no idea she was born a boy. The circumcision that led to this is referred to only briefly.

(More details welcome)

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 recently committed suicide.

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 Jews are circumcised" The fact that Judaism forbids conversions of convenience is ignored again.

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. (His father was Jewish. Orthodox Judaism decrees that only a Jewish mother makes a baby Jewish.) Doctors demur but eventually agree (and organise a rabbi to say the right prayers by telegraph). Baby is circumcised.

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.