As late as 1921, the [Henry Ford owned] Dearborn Independent still proclaimed: "The motion picture influence of the United States -- and Canada -- is exclusively under the control, moral and financial, of the Jewish manipulators of the public mind." The publication asserted that "the picture business, on its commercial side, is Jewish through and through" and that "the American Public is as helpless against the films as it is against any other exaggerated expression of Jewish power." It concluded that "When the people know who and what is this intangible influence we call the 'movies,' the problem may not appear so baffling."
The Anti-Defamation League
AN APOLOGY TO THE READERS is, perhaps needed because yesterday I let Simps go on a bit because I knew from experience he'd say something stupid and I'd get a post out of it. Really, I generally count on him saying several stupid things at any given time, all based on the current tropes on the stupid and so most influential part of American pop culture. I had the feeling the first times I saw him do that that I could predict where he would end up because that's what that kind of non-thinking is, IT ALWAYS ENDS UP IN THE SAME STUPID PLACE. It was especially satisfying for me because he did one of the things I suspected he'd do, parrot one of the most enduring of modern American antisemitic tropes.
As it developed he claimed that the author and film critic Neal Gabler wrote a book saying "Jews control Hollywood." I, like Simps, haven't read Neal Gabler's book about the early days of Hollywood because, unlike him, I've had more than my fill on the topic. Hollywood loves, just loves to talk about itself and I don't especially enjoy reading about it. Though I confess I did think Scotty Bowers' "Full Service" was entertaining and, in its exposure of the lies the lives of the biggest stars was . . . well, satisfying.
I have, in the past, enjoyed some of Neal Gabler's writing about more than just movies and respected his thinking so I was certain he never said such a stupid thing. Looking around to find out if Gabler had said that's what he said I found something much better, an article that a Hollywood film writer Malina Saval wrote in which she started this way:
Several years ago, a non-Jewish film producer turned to me and announced, casually and with an air of arrogance and ignorance reserved particularly for bigots, “Jews control Hollywood.”
He assured me this was a compliment, as many antisemites are wont, trotting out Neal Gabler’s seminal text on the subject, “An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood,” as evidence. But it was clear that said producer had either never read Gabler’s book, or missed one of its key points entirely: the founding producers of the film biz were Jewish, most of them Eastern European immigrants, excluded and ostracized from virtually every other industry in America.
William Fox, Carle Laemmle, Louis B. Mayer — they created Hollywood out of collective necessity, a decidedly human desire to realize the American Dream. They were not wanted anywhere else. But if these pioneering studio heads were Jewish, the majority of directors, writers and actors were not. Preston Sturges, Frank Capra, John Ford, Howard Hawkes — these were the artists largely shaping early 20th century cinema in the U.S.
In short, there is a core etymological difference between invent and control.
This was not, of course, the first time I’d heard uttered the weary and delusional trope that Jews, who comprise roughly 0.2 % of the world’s total population, are somehow at the totalitarian helm of an industry that, per the U.S. Dept. of Labor, supports some 2.6 million jobs. Growing up Jewish in post-Holocaust America, I’ve experienced antisemitism in all its various nefarious forms, from violent physical assaults to passive microaggressions shrouded in the guise of woke intellectualism.
But, for whatever reason — aside from the well-documented epigenetic trauma, antisemitism can breed introspection in its objects of hatred — said producer’s assertion that Jews dominate decision-making in Hollywood prompted me to examine the years working in the film industry in which I, a Jew, had zero decision-making power.
For the record, this was written in 2021, fresh off of Trump I. I have a feeling that given the abuse of the term in the past four years, she wouldn't have used "woke" here in the same way. I like to think someone who can think, as she clearly can, would have learned that, though she does use the term more subtly than it has been generally used and distorted by Trumpzi-fascism.
Risking violating fair use, I'll let Malina Saval have the say in the rest of it, demonstrating how her and other Jewish People working in Hollywood with little power AND THE CONTENT OF HOLLYWOOD'S PRODUCTS, prove that Jews do not control Hollywood. And supporting my contention that if they did, the content of Hollywood films would be far, far different from what that crap is now. I will note that she touches on one of the things that I am on record as having noticed and said, How so many, especially secular Jews, seem to have internalized the perhaps not yet pervasive but all too common antisemitism that really hates Judaism and constantly reassures other People that they're not "like 'those' Jews."
But, for whatever reason — aside from the well-documented epigenetic trauma, antisemitism can breed introspection in its objects of hatred — said producer’s assertion that Jews dominate decision-making in Hollywood prompted me to examine the years working in the film industry in which I, a Jew, had zero decision-making power.
In 1997, after graduating from USC with an MFA in screenwriting, I spent that summer penning a semi-autobiographical script that would ultimately land me a deal at a major motion picture studio. Before sending it out, however, my then-agent advised me to make the storyline “less Jewish.” Could we change the Jewish characters to Irish-Catholic ones? she asked. We could, so I did. Because I was new to the biz and assumed that is what one needed to do in order to work as a screenwriter.
In truth, it wasn’t difficult. I grew up in Boston, a city with the highest percentage of Irish ancestry in the United States. I wore green on St. Patrick’s Day and sat through annual elementary school screenings of “Darby O’Gill and the Little People.” So, I changed the bat mitzvah scene in my script to a First Communion and switched the Cohen family to the McConnells. The essence of the script felt lost, but at least I’d scored a job.
From that moment on, the message was clear: you can be Jewish in Hollywood, but not too Jewish.
For decades the watering-down of Jewish representation in TV and film, namely in terms of casting, struck me as an annoying but not necessarily harmful casualty of Jewish life in America, one in which assimilation — not just for Jews, but for every ethnic group — has always come at the expense of subverting one’s cultural identity. But amidst a surge of antisemitism in the United States — per the FBI, 63% of all reported religion-based hate crimes in 2019 were directed at Jews, making it the single-largest category — and the fact that scant few individuals are speaking out against these crimes, it bears reminding those in the industry that, as with any other ethnic minority (Asians, Blacks, Indigenous peoples), the perception of Jews onscreen does matter. In a day and age in which a focus on diversity and inclusion is front and center, it’s a hypocrisy to affirm it doesn’t.
Are there Jewish characters on screen? Of course. From Jerry Seinfeld to Fran Drescher’s nanny and Debra Messing’s “Grace,” there are Jewish protagonists that are writ large in the American pop cultural canon. But for every Larry David, there’s a Cheryl Hines, a non-Jewish spouse, friend — foil, if you will — to offset the Jewishness. To make it more “accessible” for American society at large. (Unless the storyline is about the Holocaust; then Hollywood seems to be OK with an entire family being Jewish, especially if they die at the end.) When there is a Jewish actor playing a Jew, Hollywood effectively demands said actor to express at least slight moral disdain and psychological discomfort with one’s Jewishness. The edgy, neurotic misfit Jew has become synonymous with Jews in film and TV, from Woody Allen in every movie he’s made to every actor playing Woody Allen’s surrogate to Seth Rogen’s nebbish-y pothead slacker in “Knocked Up.”
Because, God forbid, Jews like being Jewish. Far more fashionable to be a little self-hating.
Actors ignoring or nonchalantly brushing off antisemitic comments — statements further perpetuating the damaging mythical assertion that Jews imagine the hatred directed their way —can be cast as Jews. And they are. Hollywood has no issue with this at all. Take “Mank,” for example, David Fincher’s biopic about “Citizen Kane” screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz. Gary Oldman, who netted an Oscar nom for his portrayal of Mank, told Playboy magazine in 2014 that people should “get over” Mel Gibson’s infamous 2006 antisemitic rant. And they did, of course. Despite Gibson’s antisemitic (and misogynistic and racist) slurs, he’s continued to work as a director and actor. His status in the biz has thrived; in 2017, Gibson earned an Oscar nom for directing “Hacksaw Ridge.”
The messaging here, too, is clear: You can say and do things that are antisemitic, and still go on to have a flourishing career.
With rare exception in the way of Barbra Streisand — perhaps the singular Jewish superstar whose cultural identity, not to mention her unrelenting support of Israel, is allowed free rein across music, television and film —Hollywood seems to find an almost obsessive, near-pathological need to dilute female Jewish characters. Or erase.
The examples are vast, and they are also maddening. In “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” Jewish heroine Midge is played by non-Jew Rachel Brosnahan. In “On the Basis of Sex,” Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the modern-day thinking Jewish woman’s pin-up for her groundbreaking contributions to constitutional law, is played by non-Jewish British actor Felicity Jones. And in Hulu’s “Mrs. America,” Jewish second-wave feminists Betty Friedan, Bella Abzug and Gloria Steinem are played by Tracy Ullman, Margo Martindale and Rose Byrne — none of whom are Jewish. Julianne Moore (not Jewish), also played Steinem in Julie Taymor’s “The Glorias.” And in ABC’s long-running sitcom “The Goldbergs,” shopaholic balabusta Beverly Goldberg is played by non-Jewish comedian Wendi McLendon-Covey. Even Elsa, the adolescent “Jew in the Wall” in Taika Waititi’s Oscar-winning “Jojo Rabbit,” is played by non-Jewish actor Thomasin McKenzie.
It's an excellent article that tells me, someone who has more or less boycotted Hollywood since the late 1970s, that it's far, far worse and more subtle than I'd suspected. I'm sure a very similar article could be written about People of Color, Women, LGBTQ+ (the exact same trope about queers controlling show-biz exists and is widely believed*). You should read the rest of it, though I didn't want any of the points she made get lost to those who don't bother with links, as Simps generally doesn't.
You should read the ADL article, too, though, being based on what can be factually stated, it doesn't have the depth and nuance that comes from the personal experience of someone who knows the situation first hand. Simps, being a washed-up pop-music "critic" thinks about things he has no first-hand experience of working in and, like inferior critics, which is what most of them are, he thinks superficially and in stereotypes and tropes. As I've said, I don't do that by a reasonable and fair consideration of the complexity of reality and because my Irish Catholic parents and grandparents rejected such thinking as immoral, closely related to gossip and inevitably including the bearing of false witness. In short, such stereotyping, bigoted thinking and expression is a serous sin, one which violates one of the most important of the Commandments. If such thinking is a part of modern secular culture, it wouldn't surprise me, anymore.
* I can't get used to using the term "queer" in that way, to start with. And I've heard and read the parallel accusation that "queers" control show biz, not infrequently said by straight men who aren't talented and don't get work. Sort of how a Jon Voight or a washed-up "talent" like Bo Derek claims that liberals control Hollywood and so they can't get work.
Update: I had a few minutes I didn't expect to have and found where I said it back in 2017.
What I noticed was the pains he took to describe both sets of great-grandparents as "secular," something I always feel a little uncomfortable with hearing Jewish people say, as if it is an assurance to other people that they're not all "that Jewish" or something.
I always feel uncomfortable when people feel the need to explain away their identity or to diminish it. When it's a Jewish person making sure that people understand they're safely secular it's worse than when an ex-Catholic (as if there's really any such thing) talks about themselves as a "recovering Catholic" because the persecution of Catholics in the United States is far more remote in time and far less likely to become as seriously bad is it has so recently in Central America and elsewhere, I guess.
In the case of Stern doing it, it reminds me of something especially troubling, that was the talk among the Nazis of how the Einsatzgruppen, the soldier-murderers who murdered hundreds of thousands, probably well over a million Jews by shooting them, found it easier to kill religious Jews, especially those in Poland and the Soviet Union and other places who didn't look or dress so much like non-Jewish Germans or, I'd guess, others who they might think looked too much like they thought they did. It was one of the reasons they decided to develop a "more efficient" means of committing genocide. I'm sure that's not something Stern would think he was signaling with what he said, indicating that, somehow, "secular" Jews were .... I don't know, it comes down to superior to religious Jews in some way. He should certainly indicate what he means by it, especially in the context of that topic. But, as I've experienced, the declaration by Jews that they are safely secular is widespread in the United States. It's a practice which is a lot more serious and fraught with implications and danger than someone declaring themselves an ex-Catholic or ex-Protestant.
