Comedy and offense

[Keith Houchen]

2 minutes ago, Carbomb said:

Has Baddiel ever actually apologised for the blacking up? I was under the impression he'd doubled down.

He says he has and gets arsey when it’s mentioned and, unsurprisingly, cites his own book as proof he apologised. Jason Lee says he hasn’t ever reached out and apologised to him, or spoke to him. 

[Devon Malcolm]

The only funny thing Baddiel ever did was that Bill of Deaths thing in a stand-up show ages ago and all that was was reading an old document out loud.

[Chris B]

I can't remember where I saw it, but I saw someone describe Baddiel as having been in two famous comedy double-acts in which he was neither the funny one or the clever one.

[BomberPat]

yeah, even in the book he says that he "has apologised for it many times", rather than actually using the opportunity of being in print to apologise for it "again".

I agree with @Carbomb that antisemitism is perhaps little understood in this country, partly because the majority of us are unlikely to knowingly encounter it, but also partly because it's such an insidious prejudice that has well-practiced means of disguising itself that unless you understand it, you'd probably not notice an awful lot of antisemitic tropes. It's like the bizarre defence of the Harry Potter movies' hook-nosed covetous financial goblins with the Star of David on their bank, that that depiction somehow wasn't antisemitic because it was trading on existing antisemitic stereotypes from folklore - that, somehow, having been antisemitic for long enough robbed that characterisation of its antisemitism.

What's more concerning with Baddiel's book, though, is that it was - despite its many, many flaws - praised by people who really should know better. I'm an idiot for expecting more of him, but should Kier Starmer really be acting as if a glorified pamphlet by the bloke off of Fantasy Football was a real eye-opener for him in terms of institutionalised prejudice, when every single job the man has ever held would lead you to believe that he should already have a pretty firm understanding of that kind of thing?

Saying that, I fully expect that there was a PR guru behind Starmer absolutely convinced that a positive review of a David Baddiel book about Jews would be a golden opportunity for him, as it would both be him saying that he's not antisemitic like what Corbyn was, and a chance for him to cosy up to one of the blokes who did Three Lions.

[Carbomb]

8 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

I agree with @Carbomb that antisemitism is perhaps little understood in this country, partly because the majority of us are unlikely to knowingly encounter it, but also partly because it's such an insidious prejudice that has well-practiced means of disguising itself that unless you understand it, you'd probably not notice an awful lot of antisemitic tropes. It's like the bizarre defence of the Harry Potter movies' hook-nosed covetous financial goblins with the Star of David on their bank, that that depiction somehow wasn't antisemitic because it was trading on existing antisemitic stereotypes from folklore - that, somehow, having been antisemitic for long enough robbed that characterisation of its antisemitism.

It's a tricky one. I am personally of the view that we shouldn't use the term "antisemitism" because that, in itself, is racist - the idea that racial/ethnic discrimination against one group of people is different in some way to that against most other ethnic groups is something I'm just not comfortable with, especially as we regularly see the impacts of it: on the Right, this difference is used as a means to push the agenda of the more extreme/supremacist/racist elements of the Zionist sphere, in an attempt to split Jews off from others ("see, we're the only ones who fight for you, not those others, now support everything the Israeli government does"), and consequently enable silencing of criticism of the Israeli government by labelling it antisemitic. On the Left, the tactic ends up working; I don't believe Corbyn is antisemitic at all, but he and many on the Left do lazily fall into the trap of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" and siding with absolute pieces of shit around the world simply because they oppose Israel and by proxy the US. You can't declare that you believe that US-backed, Western imperialist, right-wing Zionism =/= Jews when you then step up on podiums or make conciliatory gestures to some of the worst antisemites on the planet.

That said, I do also understand why antisemitism is considered different, even if I don't agree with it: the positioning of Jews as controlling the world via arcane and malevolent financial conspiracy is unique compared with other forms of racism. It's not just well-disguised, it's often dangerously re-packaged in the minds of Gentiles; case in point is when Trump said that the only people he wanted doing his books were those in yarmulkes. I've heard the whole "Jews are good at business/good with money" thing plenty of times before, and it's the fact that the people who say it think they're being complimentary that shows just how insidious and pervasive a notion it is. It's a sort of punching down that thinks it's punching up. I still don't agree - people who say black men all have big dicks </jimdavidson> are doing the same thing - as I just think racism is racism is racism, it's all bad and should be opposed at every opportunity, but I can appreciate why other people feel it's necessary to differentiate.

[BomberPat]

I think it's complicated, because the other end of the spectrum is Corbyn's repeated use of "I condemn antisemitism and all forms of racism", which on paper sounds like you're treating them the same, but when no one was accusing him of other forms of racism, it always felt like a failure to just come out and condemn antisemitism outright.

I think the concept is old enough and differs significantly enough from any other kind of racism that the distinction is significant, but can see why you might disagree. It ties into a lot of things around the nature of anti-Jewish prejudice in general, and how that differs from racism toward other groups.

I don't think it's just that its reasonably unique in positioning the objects of its hatred as more powerful (though, paradoxically, often also as weak and filthy), but just the multifarious forms of antisemitism - whether that's religious antisemitism (either hating Jews because "they killed Christ", or the evangelical Christian support of Israel that's born of seeing the success of a Jewish homeland purely as a means to an end to support their own religiously motivated belief that it will bring about the second coming of Christ or whatever), racial antisemitism (the Nazis seeing Jewish people as a distinct and inferior race), cultural antisemitism (the sense that Jews are more loyal to "Jewishness" than to their country, that they somehow don't belong or are separate to others of the same nationality, the "stabbed in the back" myth), or financial or conspiratorial antisemitism (Jews control the media and the banks).  I think all of that is just so profoundly unique to antisemitism compared to other forms of prejudice that, in terms of knowing how to understand and tackle antisemitism, it would do it a disservice to treat it as "just" one of many other forms of racism - you risk trying to combat it without fully understanding how it operates, and has done so for centuries. That it can cover anything from "Jews are good at business" to Holocaust denial, let alone the countless euphemisms for perceived Jewishness that most people wouldn't even pick up on, and the confusion to a lot of people around Jewish as a religious and as an ethnic or cultural identity, means that it's just - I don't want to say more complex than other forms of racism, but that it's sufficiently distinct from them.

In terms of left or right-wing antisemitism, I spent plenty of time over the last however many years it's been practically pulling my hair out at how terrible many people are on the Left of addressing or even recognising the issue. Some of it comes of being so fervently pro-Palestine at the expense of almost all other causes that I think there's a genuine ignorance to their tone and language - most people completely fail to accurately make the distinction between Jewishness and Israel, and think that just saying that they're anti-Zionist and not antisemitic rather than demonstrating that fact is enough. One thing that David Baddiel gets right is that he doesn't really give a fuck about Israel at all, so questions why people are quick to claim that they don't see Jewishness and Zionism as equivalent rush to his Twitter account demanding condemnation of Israel's actions. Though on the flipside, the usually very good on this topic Deborah Lipstadt wrote in her last book that she felt that the only reason any Jewish person is ever critical of Israel is because of internalised antisemitism or because they want to fit in in liberal circles, so there's some absolute mad takes on the Israel issue on all sides.

Similarly on the Left I just think there's - and this was certainly true for Corbyn - a blind spot to some of the more insidious antisemitic tropes and stereotypes. If you're critical and suspicious of big banks, big business, and global capital, or the ownership of large corporations by a relatively small number of individuals, that's all perfectly valid, but can also lead to stuff like Corbyn endorsing a mural that he simply didn't recognise as antisemitic in origin, because there are other people out there who believe that the problems of the world are a result of global capital and too few people owning too much of it, but they differ in a very significant way as to who they think those people are. If you're not paying attention, you can end up in some pretty ugly company. And across both of those kinds of Left wing antisemitism, I would say there's a level of ignorance bordering on naivety that comes down to most left wing people being really quite earnest to the point of gullibility, in assuming that everyone is arguing in good faith and informed by some sense of reason, but also from a sense that people on the Left tend to "know" that they're the Good Guys, so when confronted with a suggestion that they're racist, that doesn't really compute. We can't be racist, that's what the other side do. What should happen then is introspection, or conversation, to come to terms with what you might have done or said that could be construed as racist and why - but too often, the result is a kneejerk, "well, I can't be racist, they must be wrong". And then, compounding the whole thing, you end up with the prickly question of who exactly is "they"? When people were attempting to defend Corbyn against allegations of antisemitism, one thing that certainly wasn't helping was people suggesting that it was all a conspiracy cooked up by powerful Zionists who control the media, which really wasn't as strong an argument against antisemitism as they might have thought...

Edited February 7, 2022 by BomberPat

[Keith Houchen]

1 hour ago, BomberPat said:

It's like the bizarre defence of the Harry Potter movies' hook-nosed covetous financial goblins with the Star of David on their bank, that that depiction somehow wasn't antisemitic because it was trading on existing antisemitic stereotypes from folklore - that, somehow, having been antisemitic for long enough robbed that characterisation of its antisemitism

A defence of this is that’s how they were portrayed in the movies, not in the books. I believe in the books, they were described as having long fingers and toes and the head goblin had a pointed nose. But as you say, in the films they had hooked noses and really played up the historical tropes connected with anti Semitism. 
 

The Star of David again has nothing to do with the books and appeared in the films. And it isn’t a Star of David.  The filming location for Gringotts was Australia House, and the star in the floor mosaic  is a Commonwealth Star that appears on the Australian flag. 

[BomberPat]

Just now, Keith Houchen said:

A defence of this is that’s how they were portrayed in the movies, not in the books. I believe in the books, they were described as having long fingers and toes and the head goblin had a pointed nose. But as you say, in the films they had hooked noses and really played up the historical tropes connected with anti Semitism. 
 

The Star of David again has nothing to do with the books and appeared in the films. And it isn’t a Star of David.  The filming location for Gringotts was Australia House, and the star in the floor mosaic  is a Commonwealth Star that appears on the Australian flag. 

yeah, I made sure to say that it was the movies, as I've been made aware that they aren't described as such in the books. There's plenty of problematic bollocks in the books, and on Rowling's Twitter feed, as there is, without pinning that on her.

Wasn't aware of the stuff about the star, so cheers for that!

 

I'm finding it hard to tell which pretentious statements on social media at the moment are defending Joe Rogan and which are defending Jimmy Carr, but it definitely seems to be more on the American and Americanised side of things to think that the comedian has some high and mighty place in culture. Probably comes of every tedious arsehole to have ever picked up a microphone there thinking that it makes them Lenny Bruce or Bill Hicks. Would love to see them try and explain how comedians are speaking truth to power over footage of Tim Vine doing "pen behind the ear". 

[Hannibal Scorch]

Don’t defend JK for the look of the Goblins in the film. She had creative sign off on everything in those movies and the theme parks. 

[Factotum]

7 minutes ago, Hannibal Scorch said:

Don’t defend JK for the look of the Goblins in the film. She had creative sign off on everything in those movies and the theme parks. 

She has control of the brand and had the final casting say as well as script approval, but she essentially handed over control of the making of the films to the Directors and execs. She was a producer, but to single her out rather than the plethora of others involved in those productions is odd, especially given the description in the book. If anything that is a Director's call, and I didn't see anyone having a pop at David Heyman.

Anyway, on the topic of comedy and offence, I see the Government is having its say. Mad how they care about the joke but not that their latest policing bill effectively makes being a Traveller illegal.

[Keith Houchen]

3 minutes ago, Hannibal Scorch said:

Don’t defend JK for the look of the Goblins in the film. She had creative sign off on everything in those movies and the theme parks. 

She didn’t. Her involvement was scripts and character story, as well as casting (insisting on a British cast) She was hardly head of design. She didn’t have to sign off everything for the movies. I’m sure she was shown scripts, design etc but did they change “Pupil sat ten rows backs wand” because she didn’t like it? Did she change the change the shade of grey for a pair of trousers?

I can just picture her arriving in the production office as they wheel out Warwick Davis in ten different prosthetics for her to choose which one personifies her hatred of the Jews. 

[Carbomb]

1 hour ago, BomberPat said:

I think it's complicated, because the other end of the spectrum is Corbyn's repeated use of "I condemn antisemitism and all forms of racism", which on paper sounds like you're treating them the same, but when no one was accusing him of other forms of racism, it always felt like a failure to just come out and condemn antisemitism outright.

I think the concept is old enough and differs significantly enough from any other kind of racism that the distinction is significant, but can see why you might disagree. It ties into a lot of things around the nature of anti-Jewish prejudice in general, and how that differs from racism toward other groups.

I don't think it's just that its reasonably unique in positioning the objects of its hatred as more powerful (though, paradoxically, often also as weak and filthy), but just the multifarious forms of antisemitism - whether that's religious antisemitism (either hating Jews because "they killed Christ", or the evangelical Christian support of Israel that's born of seeing the success of a Jewish homeland purely as a means to an end to support their own religiously motivated belief that it will bring about the second coming of Christ or whatever), racial antisemitism (the Nazis seeing Jewish people as a distinct and inferior race), cultural antisemitism (the sense that Jews are more loyal to "Jewishness" than to their country, that they somehow don't belong or are separate to others of the same nationality, the "stabbed in the back" myth), or financial or conspiratorial antisemitism (Jews control the media and the banks).  I think all of that is just so profoundly unique to antisemitism compared to other forms of prejudice that, in terms of knowing how to understand and tackle antisemitism, it would do it a disservice to treat it as "just" one of many other forms of racism - you risk trying to combat it without fully understanding how it operates, and has done so for centuries. That it can cover anything from "Jews are good at business" to Holocaust denial, let alone the countless euphemisms for perceived Jewishness that most people wouldn't even pick up on, and the confusion to a lot of people around Jewish as a religious and as an ethnic or cultural identity, means that it's just - I don't want to say more complex than other forms of racism, but that it's sufficiently distinct from them.

The thing is, the implication there is that other forms of racism are largely the same and enacted in the same way, when they're just as varied and insidious. Racism against East Asians, for example, is still nowhere near as scrutinised or dealt with as stridently as racism against black people - not only were Hollywood productions as recently as five years ago were casting white actors in Asian roles, people were still trying to defend it. A lot of it's based on the Yellow Peril, but there's a whole host of tropes and aggressions.

Racism against black Americans is quite different from that against black Africans in the way it's enacted across the world, as is that enacted against Arabs, South Asians, Latinx people, Travellers, Roma, and Eastern Europeans, which is why, for me, it's more important to recognise that any form of discrimination based on your ethnicity is wrong, regardless of how, which comes afterwards. 

1 hour ago, BomberPat said:

Similarly on the Left I just think there's - and this was certainly true for Corbyn - a blind spot to some of the more insidious antisemitic tropes and stereotypes. If you're critical and suspicious of big banks, big business, and global capital, or the ownership of large corporations by a relatively small number of individuals, that's all perfectly valid, but can also lead to stuff like Corbyn endorsing a mural that he simply didn't recognise as antisemitic in origin, because there are other people out there who believe that the problems of the world are a result of global capital and too few people owning too much of it, but they differ in a very significant way as to who they think those people are. If you're not paying attention, you can end up in some pretty ugly company. And across both of those kinds of Left wing antisemitism, I would say there's a level of ignorance bordering on naivety that comes down to most left wing people being really quite earnest to the point of gullibility, in assuming that everyone is arguing in good faith and informed by some sense of reason, but also from a sense that people on the Left tend to "know" that they're the Good Guys, so when confronted with a suggestion that they're racist, that doesn't really compute. We can't be racist, that's what the other side do. What should happen then is introspection, or conversation, to come to terms with what you might have done or said that could be construed as racist and why - but too often, the result is a kneejerk, "well, I can't be racist, they must be wrong".

That, I absolutely agree with - it's the main thrust of the problem with the Left, and I think a big part of that naivety is down to seeing "anyone wronged by the West/US must be one of the good guys like me".

Quote

And then, compounding the whole thing, you end up with the prickly question of who exactly is "they"? When people were attempting to defend Corbyn against allegations of antisemitism, one thing that certainly wasn't helping was people suggesting that it was all a conspiracy cooked up by powerful Zionists who control the media, which really wasn't as strong an argument against antisemitism as they might have thought...

Only issue I have with that is that there is the implication I mentioned above, which is that the term "Zionist" to a lot of left-wingers is exactly a political term and not a short-hand, because some of the most significant and most powerful Zionists are rich, right-wing, American evangelical Christians.

Like I said above, the issue as regards the weaponisation of antisemitism that stands out to me is that, in the grand Venn diagram, there are many different circles: Jews, Zionists, Israelis, the Israeli government, the Right, and a few others - the strategy of the Right is to convince everyone that all those circles are in fact the same when they are demonstrably not.

[Chris B]

28 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

I'm finding it hard to tell which pretentious statements on social media at the moment are defending Joe Rogan and which are defending Jimmy Carr, but it definitely seems to be more on the American and Americanised side of things to think that the comedian has some high and mighty place in culture. Probably comes of every tedious arsehole to have ever picked up a microphone there thinking that it makes them Lenny Bruce or Bill Hicks. Would love to see them try and explain how comedians are speaking truth to power over footage of Tim Vine doing "pen behind the ear". 

At the risk of being pretentious myself, I wrote a bit of a long thread yesterday about comedy and power, but from a different viewpoint. Basically, I think comedy can be a really powerful thing as a shared group experience. I've seen someone become very upset over a comedian doing jokes which involved rape as a subject - and struggled because while they were in the middle of dealing with their emotional response, they were stuck in the middle of a dark room with people laughing, and it's very, very isolating.

So comedy can absolutely be a powerful thing. Which is why so many people going to the wall to defend Jimmy Carr making a shitty joke is frustrating - because they're talking about power in one sense, while making out that they're just jokes and can easily be ignored in another. 

 

On the Zionist stuff, I strongly recommend Will Eisner's book, 'The Plot' - it's a fantastic deconstruction and history of the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion' propoganda: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Plot-Secret-Story-Protocols-Elders/dp/0393328600

[Hannibal Scorch]

23 minutes ago, Keith Houchen said:

She didn’t. Her involvement was scripts and character story, as well as casting (insisting on a British cast) She was hardly head of design. She didn’t have to sign off everything for the movies. I’m sure she was shown scripts, design etc but did they change “Pupil sat ten rows backs wand” because she didn’t like it? Did she change the change the shade of grey for a pair of trousers?

I can just picture her arriving in the production office as they wheel out Warwick Davis in ten different prosthetics for her to choose which one personifies her hatred of the Jews. 

Thats interesting because I have read a lot of articles to the contry, even to minute details (though maybe not pupil set ten rows back). But I am almost certain she would have signed off on the looks of those goblins. 

For the theme parks she had to sign off everything even down to the materials used for the uniforms the staff wear. Universal proposed lighter, less warm clothing materials and she didn't want to compromise on the look of people working there against the films so they have to wear bloody clokes in over 40 degree heat.

[Keith Houchen]

9 minutes ago, Hannibal Scorch said:

For the theme parks she had to sign off everything even down to the materials used for the uniforms the staff wear.

It’s partly because of the lack of final say on the Potter movies that she has it with Fantastic Beasts and the Theme Parks. 
 

I’m pretty sure she would’ve signed off on the goblins too, or at least initial designs, but I’d say that hints at the unconscious bias previously mentioned and not “Make the money hoarding ugly fuckers look like Jews”. Doesn’t make it right, obviously.