Jewish guys get an image makeover

"That movie with Eric Bana kicking . . . ," Rogen says. "For every movie with Jews, we're the ones getting killed, 'Munich' flips it on its ear. . . . If any of us get [lucky] tonight, it's because of Eric Bana."

It's a funny scene, with some interesting subtext -- in a riff that lasts just a few seconds, the film touches on three familiar Jewish stereotypes: macho Israelis, Holocaust victims and the whiny, often immature urban male neurotic, à la Woody Allen, Jerry Seinfeld, Larry David, the Ross Geller character in "Friends" and most of the protagonists in Judd Apatow films like "Knocked Up."

"Anybody who's having that conversation is obviously neurotic Jewish," Rich Cohen says of the "Knocked Up" scene. Cohen wrote "Tough Jews," a book about Jewish gangsters, and "The Avengers," about World War II Jewish partisans.

"To be obsessed with Jewish image is a classic Jewish thing," Cohen adds. "It used to be when you had tough-looking Jewish actors they played Italians, like James Caan and Henry Winkler. Now you have tough-looking goyim [like Eric Bana] playing Jews, and that's progress."

In fact, the release of "Defiance" last week -- a film starring Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber as real-life World War II Jewish partisans so tough they make the "Munich" crew look like Cub Scouts -- caps a recent sea change in the way Jews are depicted in the mass media. In "American Gangster," for instance, Russell Crowe plays a Jewish detective who wears a Star of David but is also one of the guys. Last fall's teen comedy "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist" features actress Kat Dennings as a self-identified Jew who is not only the beautiful love interest but also easily the coolest kid in the room. On TV, "Numb3rs" star Rob Morrow is a gun-toting Jewish FBI agent who in recent episodes has been talking with a rabbi about some personal issues.

"There are more Jewish images now in popular culture than there have been since the '70s," says Lisa Rivo of the National Center for Jewish Film at Brandeis University, who nevertheless feels that images of Jewish women are still few and far between. "The idea of presenting the diversity of Jewish experience is an advancement," she concedes. "But there is still a limiting way in which Jews are presented and seen and digested. There is more out there."