alt title(s): Alter Kacker
Heh?
— Old Jewish Man
A senior citizen with a Yiddish accent. In fiction, Yiddish accents are common for old characters, even if their families are of a completely different culture. Alter Kockers are most common in comedies, due to the influence of Jewish comedians. Many Borscht Belt comics had immigrant parents with thick Yiddish accents.
Incidentally, the phrase
alter kacker means "old shitter." It's the Yiddish equivalent to the American slang phrase "old fart."
Examples:
Film
- Miracle Max and his wife in The Princess Bride. Miracle Max is explicitly written "old Jewish coot" in the original book. William Goldman the author (who remember, claims he is adapting a centuries-old story) even hangs a lampshade on it on several levels. The movie version of Miracle Max was, on VH-1's I Love The 80s, referred to as "a little Jewish troll."
- Arthur from The Holiday...though he's one of a handful of old Jewish guys hanging out in LA, and he even refers to himself as an "old Kocker".
- Mel Brooks is fond of playing these:
- Eddie Murphy plays one in Coming To America. The character is a regular at the barbershop and tells a classic Jewish joke.
- In Snatch, the Jewish gangsters in the opening credits dress up like Alter Kocker, with Hasidic dress and Yiddish accents. Frankie Four Fingers' natural accent, however, is very Yiddish.
- Jeff Goldblum's father in Independence Day is an old Jewish man who kvetches constantly and speaks Yiddish As A Second Language.
Live Action Television
- In an episode of Boy Meets World, where Cory and Shawn imagine what they would be like some sixty odd years from now. Quite inexplicably, they are shown talking with Yiddish accents, despite being explicitly shown as Christian in earlier episodes.
- The same thing happened on Ugly Betty, when the title character dreamed of her and Daniel in the far future. Betty is Latina, and Daniel certainly isn't Jewish either.
Theater
- Mushnik from Little Shop of Horrors, though some cottage productions give him a German accent just for fun.
- This was how Gravis Mushnik was played by Mel Welles in the original film..."Gravis" sounds like an Old Country name—-enough so to be used as the surname of Andy Kaufman's character in Taxi—-but it is rather of a piece with the "sick" jokes in the film, many of which reference illness and medicine, the last particularly in the scene involving Seymour's mother. (Yes, he has a mother; let a man start singing, and all of a sudden he thinks he's an orphan...and he never calls.)
Western Animation
- Pa Grape in Veggie Tales, which is kind of odd because he was originally introduced as the patriarch of a hillbilly family, and none of the other members of the family sounded Jewish.
- This may be from the limitations of placing most characters on the shoulders of Phil Vischer and Mike Nawrocki, due to limiting most characters to whoever they can record in-house.
- One of Grandpa's housemates at the retirement home in The Simpsons is known solely to fans by the nickname "Old Jewish Man" on the basis of his accent.
- King Tooten Pooten from The Grim Adventures Of Billy And Mandy, despite being of the ancient race that supposedly enslaved the Jews, speaks in this accent, complete with Yiddish phrases, like threatening to potch his grandson's tuchas.
- On Rugrats, Boris and Minka, Tommy Pickles' maternal grandparents, who actually are Eastern European (presumably Russian) Jews.
- Nana, the feisty old lady from New York in the Madagascar films, is an Alter Kocker.
- An alte, surely?
- Well, if you want to be grammatically correct...
Web Original
Anime
- In Yu-Gi-Oh GX, when Chazz is under the control of the Society of Light, Jaden duels him using Chazz' favoured Ojama cards against him. One card causes Ojama tokens to appear on Chazz' side of the field, which look like elderly versions of the normal monsters. In the English dub, they sound Yiddish.
