When you compare the number of Jews to the number of Blacks, it makes sense that there are a lot more black villains than Jewish ones. If there were a lot of Jewish anything in movies it would probably be an overrepresentation of their people, hell, there’s only a few million of them left.
Krokodil –
To expand on what C K Dexter Haven has said, as we have shown, it is possible to differentiate between a Jewish actor and a Jewish character, and to limit our religious characterization of heroes or villains to those who are specifically identified as Jewish in the storyline.
It is not possible to do this with black actors and characters. We can say that Leonard Nimoy played a non-Jewish hero in Star Trek, and a Jewish hero in the TV movie Never Forget. But it’s almost impossible to find a movie in which we can say that Denzel Washington played a non-black anything (except perhaps for Much Ado About Nothing, and even that one is debatable). Therefore trying to compare the number of Jewish villains (which would only include those villains specifically identified in the script as Jewish) with the number of black villains (which would include every villain ever played by a black actor) will not yield any meaningful information.
Badtz – I think the idea is to compare the percentage of Jewish characters who are villains to the percentage of black characters who are villains. But in any case, any comparison would be invalid for the reasons stated above.
Just one more interesting point. In doing a little research on this question, I found some offensive anti-Semitic rhetoric which criticized the Jewish control of Hollywood on the basis of a belief that movies made by Jews are too sympathetic to black characters, and that you can tell a Jewish-made movie because of its open-minded multiculturalism.
I think the conspiracy theorists need to get their story straight.
Dracula, Boris Karloff, Universal, 1931.
Roughly as large a libel as Birth Of A Nation - the Count wears a Star of David pendant (until recently, at least, this was usually cropped out of the scene when shown on TV). The “Universal’s Monters” series re-release version is intact.
C K Dexter Haven and SpoilerVirgin:
I appreciate the point you’re trying to make. But every time I’ve seen someone on Usenet asks for examples of heroic Jewish fictional characters, the response is a huge list of them. I’m asking for (and, for the most part, receiving) a comparable list of Jewish cinematic villains, and your hedging trips my BS alarm.
Can Black actors play non-Black characters? It’s unusual, but yes. Michael Dorn has made a pretty lucrative career at playing Worf, for instance. Whitney Houston’s role in THE BODYGUARD was written for a non-black actress and watching her in it does little to deepen my understanding of African-American life; Forrest Whitaker’s ethnicity was relevant in BIRD but not in THE CRYING GAME; Thandie Newton played someone specifically Black in JEFFERSON IN PARIS, but not in MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 2. It’s perfectly reasonable to compare Black vs. Jewish depictions in popular cinema.
There was a thread here a few months ago that delved into whether that was a “star of David” rather than just a pendant with an interesting shape. I tried to look for it but the hamsters apparantly have the night off.
In either case, Dracula was played by Bela Lugosi.
Any movie about Jewish gangster Meyer Lansky.
The OP wrote:
“Blacks do come off disproportionately badly in their film and TV depictions, but I can think of a couple of Jewish heavies…”
I think you might want to check that statement with the facts. IIRC a few years back there was a study that concluded that in films and on TV blacks were grossly OVERrepresented in high profile “positive role models” and authority figures – like judges, school principals, doctors, elected officials, lawyers, CEOs, military officers, etc. – as compared to their real life numbers.
I don’t recall how the “negative role model” numbers mirrored the real life stats though.
But here’s an experiment for you. Try, just try, to find a TV commercial that depicts an overt bad guy – like a bumbling burgler in a home alarm ad or some other thug up to no good – as a black guy. Good luck. I’ve NEVER seen it (al least not here in NYC). Maybe, just maybe, you’ll get a pair of robbers and one of them is black, but invariably his buddy is white.
Mea culpa - I have the tape - no doubt of what it is. The opening scene of the townspeople securing the baby in the center of the home, with all doors and windows closed and shuttered, is a classic depiction of the blood libel against Jews (thanks to the RCC).
It wasn’t a very good movie, but wasn’t the murderer in A Stranger Among Us (Meg Ryan, 1992) a jew?
Come to think of it, so were the killers (Landau and Orbach; don’t know about the actual hit man) in CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS, Woody Allen’s best movie to date.
stuyguy, I can think of lots of examples of TV commercials with black thugs. Most of them are ads for movies and cop shows, though. Some PSAs as well.
I thought Alec Guinness’ Fagin in David Lean’s Oliver Twist was an impressive piece of observational acting, and the make-up was astonishing if you look at his boyish appearance two years earlier in Great Expectations. Considering all the boggle-eyed, black-face, Al Jolson stuff happening around the same time, I’d say the Jews were over-reacting. Does all this make me an Anti Semite?
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Incorrect. It was 60 years ago today that Himmler gave the order to deport 26,000 German Roma and Sinti to Auschwitz - Birkenau. There they were tortured by Josef Mengele in the course of his experiments and, ultimately, murdered.
Maybe you should get your information about the Romani experience of the Holocaust from places other than a comicbook FAQ.
[/hijack]
I found a link with some insight on the controversy about The Penguin in Batman Returns being an extreme Jewish stereotype.
http://www.timburtoncollective.com/article134.shtml
Not sure I buy it myself, but there it is. At least it proves I wasn’t imagining things.
Eh, there is a Bad Black guy, and the Isralei guys are bad in that they “turn” the protagonist into betraying the police department.
um, Dark Willow was/is Jewish.
Was because she’s no longer(I think) Dark. Is because she’s still Jewish.
Krok says: << But every time I’ve seen someone on Usenet asks for examples of heroic Jewish fictional characters, the response is a huge list of them. I’m asking for (and, for the most part, receiving) a comparable list of Jewish cinematic villains, and your hedging trips my BS alarm. >>
In my “hedging” comments, I have said that you now have (and are continuing to have) a list of Jewish villains. My point was not that there aren’t any Jewish villians, but that the category is much harder to define.
<< Can Black actors play non-Black characters? It’s unusual, but yes. Michael Dorn has made a pretty lucrative career at playing Worf, for instance. … It’s perfectly reasonable to compare Black vs. Jewish depictions in popular cinema. >>
Oh, please. Your Michael Dorn example is no different from my Darth Vader example. Or a cartoon character voiced by a black actor. Sure, there are a few exceptions of black actors playing characters who are not intrinsincly “black”. But that’s a drop in the bucket compared to Jewish actors playing characters who are not intrinsicly Jewish.
My point is that if you’re counting numbers, you’re not going to wind up with anywhere near the number of black villains, and I’m explaining that this has to do with the definitional problem that is inherent in the OP.
And I repeat my challenge: give me a list of Methodist or Unitarian villains. In comparison to those, the list of Jewish villains is quite large. In comparison to black (or Asian) villains, the list of Jewish villains is smaller. The question is what conclusions you draw from these. Your OP draws the conclusion that Jews control the media. I say that is nonsense. A more logical conclusion is that race is more obvious in a movie character than is religion.
One could argue that the gangsters in gangster movies are actually the HEROES of the gangster movies, rather than the villains.
By “gangster movies” I mean things like THE PUBLIC ENEMY and LITTLE CAESAR and SCARFACE.
I don’t think of something like KISS OF DEATH (1948) as a “gangster movie.” That one had a bona fide villain gangster…Richard Widmark as Tommy Udo, who pushed old ladies down the stairs in their wheelchairs and shot Victor Mature in the belly and called prople “squints.”
Perhaps we see few Jewish bad guys for the same reason that we see no Nazi good guys. Maybe it’s just not in good taste.