Chaim Amalek: “This entire movement to “diversify” the Academy Awards is really a not much more than an attempt to de-Judaize Hollywood. Only white liberals are unable to confront this from either end, so there is this. YIDDEN BEWARE! AN ATTACK ON HOLLYWOOD’S WHITES IS AN ATTACK ON US! THE DEFENSE OF YIDDEN BEGINS WITH DEFENDING WHAT IS OURS: HOLLYWOOD AND WALL STREET!”
With movie director Spike Lee much in the news for denouncing whiteness in the entertainment industry, my Taki’s Magazine column points out that Spike got in all sorts of trouble way back in 1990 for making too clear that his resentment of whites being in positions of power over black entertainers is especially focused on Jews.
Here’s a 1990 New York Times article that’s fairly explicit about what can and cannot be gotten away with:
Critic’s Notebook; Spike Lee’s Jews and the Passage From Benign Cliche Into Bigotry
CARYN JAMES
Published: August 16, 1990In Spike Lee’s ”Do the Right Thing,” there is a scene he refers to in the published screenplay as ”The Racial Slur Montage.” One by one, a range of ethnic characters stare into the camera and spit out vicious, stereotypical descriptions of some other ethnic group. … The variety of types demonstrates that all bigotry is interchangable, all equally harmful.
There is nothing that reasonable in the stereotypical portrayal of two Jewish characters in Mr. Lee’s new film, ”Mo’ Better Blues,” the story of an obsessed and troubled black jazz musician.
Mo’ Better Blues from 1990 is probably my favorite Spike Lee movie. Here’s a pleasant musical interlude from the film:
Although, like most of Lee’s pictures, it’s chaotically plotted. (Spike has numerous talents, but plotting isn’t one of them.)
Denzel Washington plays a jazz musician (presumably inspired by Lee’s father), with the movie featuring lots of other star power, such as Wesley Snipes as a rival musician, and in a small but important role toward the end, a young Samuel L. Jackson. The film nominally takes place in the present, but looks like it is set in his father’s younger days. (That kind of ambiguity could be considered sloppy, but I like it.)
Because it’s a movie with an almost all-black cast, it has a conservative family values message.
However, the brothers John and Nicholas Turturro play two white club owners, and that wound up causing no end of trouble for Lee:
In creating the minor characters of Josh and Moe Flatbush, club owners who exploit the black musicians in the film, Mr. Lee has elicited charges of anti-Semitism from many critics, a charge the film maker disputes.
In his review in Newsweek, David Ansen called them ”Shylocks.” In Newsday, Mike McGrady said they are ”craven” caricatures. Garry Giddins in his review in The Village Voice labeled the roles ”undoubtedly anti-Semitic,” but went on to say, ”Don’t let that lapse keep you from seeing” the film. When I reviewed ”Mo’ Better Blues,” in The New York Times, I described the Flatbush brothers as ”money-grubbing, envious, ugly stereotypes with sharks’ smiles.”The Anti-Defamation League said last week that the characterizations ”dredge up an age-old and highly dangerous form of anti-Semitic stereotyping,” and that the organization ”is disappointed that Spike Lee – whose success is largely due to his efforts to break down racial stereotypes and prejudice – has employed the same kind of tactics that he supposedly deplores.”
And so what began as Mr. Lee’s least overtly controversial film may become one of his most controversial nonetheless. The depiction of Jews in ”Mo’ Better Blues,” as well as remarks Mr. Lee has made in recent interviews, distills two questions: When does a fictional character become an offensive stereotype? How do an artist’s public remarks reverberate and shape an audience’s perception of a film? These questions are acute in the case of Mr. Lee, whose work always has a political undercurrent and whose career is rooted at the crossroads of art and publicity.
The difference between the intelligent analysis of bigotry among blacks and Italians in ”Do the Right Thing” and the disturbing Jewish stereotypes in ”Mo’ Better Blues” is more than the difference between an artistic success and a failure. It’s true that ”Mo’ Better Blues” is muddled in its conception of the musician-hero, who must lose his art to gain a family, and its portrayal of women is pathetically shallow. But Josh and Moe, mirror-images whose repetitions of each other’s opinions are meant to be comic, are not merely stylized or failed characterizations.
The Flatbush brothers (played by real-life brothers, John and Nicholas Turturro) are so loaded with despicable traits typically used to disparage Jews that they might have been invented by someone in the Racial Slur Montage. They become rich by gouging others; they are deceitful; when challenged they threaten to sue. In thick New York-Jewish accents they accuse the underpaid black musicians of ”trying to take food from my children’s mouth.” And when the hero is seriously injured in a back-alley fight, Moe demands that the rest of the band go back onstage. Josh objects, in a tone that has little to do with human sympathy and much to do with the businesslike recognition that the star cannot go on. These caricatures are wildly out of synch with the film’s other roles. …
But the Flatbush brothers are the film’s villains, their greed inseparable from their Jewish identity. And because there are no other Jews to offset them, they become tokens of an entire ethnic group. In ”Do the Right Thing,” the Italian characters are fully defined and represent a fair range of qualities, from Danny Aiello’s ambiguous pizza-parlor owner to his two sons, one an unbiased peacemaker and the other a trouble-making bigot played by John Turturro. In that broader context, Mr. Turturro portrays an individual who is Italian and who has offensive ideas – a clearly conceived role far from his simplistic stereotype of Moe. …
Mr. Lee, among others, has cited the black chauffeur played by Morgan Freeman in ”Driving Miss Daisy” as a demeaning throwback. The charge carries a great deal of validity. The chauffeur, Hoke, exudes an older generation’s sense of ”knowing his place” socially: it is far beneath that of his imperious employer, Miss Daisy, who is Jewish but indistinguishable from any Southern, Protestant white lady. Both characters, however, have sympathetic features that rescue them from being insulting stereotypes. Hoke has a strong sense of self-worth; Miss Daisy’s hidden emotions surface when her synagogue is bombed. They are simplistic throwbacks, but they were not conceived in one-dimensional or malicious terms.
… Whether the Flatbush brothers were born of artistic carelessness or intentional malice, they leap off the screen as such strongly offensive types that they have taken on meaning beyond the film itself. They have moved into the realm of public controversy, where Mr. Lee’s personal opinions come into play.
In a great flurry of interviews given before and after the release of the film, in newspapers and on morning, afternoon and prime-time talk shows, Mr. Lee has denied being anti-Semitic yet sent a contrary message about Jewish control of black artists.
Mr. Lee told Daily Variety that his father, the bass player Bill Lee, ”worked for a majority of jazz club owners who were Jewish; this is not an indictment of them.” He went on, ”When I wrote the film, I wanted to put in how black artists had to fight against being exploited.” But because the exploiters in ”Mo’ Better Blues” are stereotypical Jews, Mr. Lee does make an ethnic indictment. (He also ignores the fact that Jewish club-owners like Max Gordon and Barney Josephson were important promoters of black jazz performers).
In the same interview, Mr. Lee said: ”I am not anti-Semitic. Do you think Lew Wasserman, Sidney Sheinberg or Tom Pollock would allow it in my picture?” He was naming the heads of the parent company, MCA, and Universal Studios, which made the film. And when asked on ABC’s ”Prime Time” whether his films can express any message at all as long as they make money – a wide-open question that did not refer to ”Mo’ Better Blues” – Mr. Lee answered, ”I couldn’t make an anti-Semitic film.” Asked why not, he said that Jews run Hollywood, and ”that’s a fact.” In such statements, Mr. Lee is taking on an issue that heated up last month when a panelist at the N.A.A.C.P.’s annual conference charged that ”Jewish racism” is holding back blacks in the film industry.
Watching ”Mo’ Better Blues” with these comments in mind, viewers are likely to find that Mr. Lee’s sense of Jewish control informs the Flatbushes far more than his disclaimers about good intentions. The characters seem even more loaded with the weight of his public opinions, even less forgivable as misguided artistic failures.
Mr. Lee’s use of his public presence has sometimes been greatly effective; on- and offscreen, he has done a great deal to combat the racism that undoubtedly still exists in Hollywood. But in his remarks about Jews he seems on an inflammatory course. And ”Mo’ Better Blues” suggests that attitude has done his art no good.
Poor Spike had to reply in the columns of the NYT with an op-ed with the self-defeating headline:
by Spike Lee
August 22, 1990
In 2012, Spike looked back on this turning point in his career in a profile by Ariel Levy for New York:
“B’nai Brith and the Anti- Defamation League, they were on my ass,” he says. “You don’t know what it is for someone to get on your ass until B’nai Brith and Anti- Defamation League …”
Eventually Lee placated his persecutors by writing an op-ed piece for the Times, but the whole thing still makes him mad when he thinks about it. And the truth is, he’s not sorry about portraying Mo and Josh Flatbush as Jewish bloodsuckers, feeding off the talents of black musicians. “Here’s the thing, though: It’s more than being a stereotype,” says Lee. “In the history of American music, there have not been Jewish people exploiting black musicians? In the history of music? How is that being stereotypical? For me, that’s like saying, like the NBA is predominantly black. Now, if that makes me anti- Semitic …” For a minute, he actually engages and sort of laughs. “I’m not writing any more op-ed pieces,” he says. “I did it once. I’m not doing it again. Seriously. I’m not doing it again.”
My Taki’s column, “The Oscar Grouches,” puts all this in wider perspective.
COMMENTS:
* Wait a minute.
If one were to meet a couple of bad Jews, it would be wrong or ‘antisemitic’ to assume that ALL Jews are like that.
Fair enough.
So, how does it make sense to assume that Spike Flea believes that ALL Jews are bad because two Jewish characters in his film are negative?
So, if I make a movie with two nasty Japanese characters, it means I hate all Japanese?
If anything, the Jewish critics are the real bigots because they wouldn’t have raised a fuss if the two baddies in Mo Worse Jews were Polish, Irish, Italian, Chinese, or etc.
This stirs up some memories.
In my city school in 6th grade, there was one Jewish kid named Ted. Rest were black, white, Asian, and etc. Around that time, the Viet Boat kids were coming in.
And one had a name Chieu but he pronounced it as ‘Joo’.
One day, I did a cartoon where everyone’s killing and destroying one another, and I titled it “Jew’s World”. I really meant “Chieu’s World” but since he pronounced his name as ‘Joo’ or ‘Jew’, I just used ‘Jew’. Since Vietnam was associated with war and violence, my cartoon was all about people killing and blowing each other up in the most horrible way. Anyway, Ted sees my cartoon and gets all angry and starts fuming.
So, I tell him it’s not about his people. It’s about Chieu’s people. “Jew’s World” is really “Chieu’s World”. And then Ted was all smiles and thought the images were pretty funny. It no longer mattered that it was ‘offensive’.
We see the same pattern in all this bitching about Spike Flea.
Worse, didn’t Hollywood give us so many movies with bad Russians, bad Arabs, bad Asians, bad blondie ‘aryans’, etc?
* Spike learned well that attention must be paid.
* Spike Lee has always had a lot of animus against Italian-Americans. You can see that in “Do the Right Thing”, “Jungle Fever”, “Summer of Sam”, and “Miracle at St. Anna.” For some reason, that’s not brought up much.
Sort of how like Rev Jeremiah Wright said that Italians have “garlic noses”, but it was his comments about Jews and Israel that got him (and Obama) in trouble.
* I don’t care about some woman I’ll never meet sleeping with someone not like me. Thiugh Jungle Fever is a leading indicator f anti White behavior. Why would I since it doesn’t affect me?
I ***do*** care very much when White women move the culture so I am not hired, or given a raise, or fired simply because I am a White man. Anti Whitism was unthinkable in Jewish run Hollywood, back when Jews made Yankee Doodle Dandy and Holiday Inn and Miracle on 34th Street. So too in the 20s when Zane Grey and Dashiell Hammet pulps often contained unironically “mighty White of ya.”
There is a reason Tancredo, and Brimelow, and Sailer, and Coulter, and Sessions all failed to move public opinion on immigration/immavasion. Brimelow in articular has been failing, for almost thirty years. Why?
Because he failed to account for the female support for immavaders. Period. Trump moved the window because he’s been the funny Alpha male boss on tv for thirty years. That simple. Alphas can do nearly anything they want.
Bill Gates can buy or sell Trump. But its not money. Look at their respective wives. Alphadom is charisma, presence, persuasion.
And in six months a reality tv star with Alpha status dud more than Tancredo did in thirty years. But hey charge right into those machine guns. Pretend they are not there and they will go away.
* Spike Lee also including unflattering and stereotypical brief Jewish roles in Summer of Sam and The 25th Hour. Has he ever had a positive, or moderately human Jewish role in any of his films?
* Spike isn’t bad at dialog, but his plots are poor. That seems like a soluble problem, but he largely hasn’t solved it.
* The funny thing about Spike Lee and Jews is that he fits some Jewish stereotypes himself, being a short mouthy highly verbal quarrelsome art-house director. You could compare him to a black Woody Allen, although I think Woody Allen is a better auteur/director.
To some degree stereotypes of American Jews and stereotypes of New Yorkers align very closely; some characteristics we associate with being Jewish in America come from being a New Yorker and on occasion vice versa. Donald Trump is of course not Jewish but in his brash, aggressive personal he comes off as more ‘ethnic’ and ‘Jewish’ than e.g. someone like Ben Bernanke, who is a calm, quiet, polite Jew from the deep south.
* Some of Spike’s beef with Jews comes from his being similarly bourgeois. He’s a third generation college graduate.
* I think Lee uses Italians as stand-ins for Jews. He knows he can say negative things about Italians that he could never say about Jews.
* He shows Jews pretty much the same same way he shows whites. This is why he is called an anti-Semite. An anti-Semite is someone who refuses to believe that Jews are better than whites.
* John Turturro can play loathsome Jew “Bernie Birnbaum” in the Coen Brothers’ MILLER’S CROSSING without anyone having to mass-apologize via an op-ed because…..oh, I dunno….let’s say “Holocaust”. Because Holocaust.
Mystifyingly, however, the Coens can lovingly depict nearly every white middle-American gentile in all of their films as either vacuously tasteless boobs or jolly, affable psychopaths (capable of any atrocity in the twinkle of an eye), without feeling the need to explain themselves to the nation at large.
* My favorite of Spike Lee’s movies is 1992 Malcolm X.
Last year, Chris Hedges claimed that when it comes to understanding White racism against Black, Malcolm X was much smarter than Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Malcolm X, unlike Martin Luther King Jr., did not believe America had a conscience. For him there was no great tension between the lofty ideals of the nation—which he said were a sham—and the failure to deliver justice to blacks. He, perhaps better than King, understood the inner workings of empire. He had no hope that those who managed empire would ever get in touch with their better selves to build a country free of exploitation and injustice,” Chris Hedges says at Truthdig on February 1, 2015.
Chris Hedges says that Malcolm was against Capitalism (Usury). He quotes Malcolm X: “It is impossible for capitalism to survive, primarily because the system of capitalism needs some blood to suck,” Malcolm said. “Capitalism used to be like an eagle, but now it’s more like a vulture. It used to be strong enough to go and suck anybody’s blood whether they were strong or not. But now it has become more cowardly, like the vulture, and it can only suck the blood of the helpless. As the nations of the world free themselves, then capitalism has less victims, less to suck, and it becomes weaker and weaker. It’s only a matter of time in my opinion before it will collapse completely.”
However, for obvious reasons, Chris Hedges avoid to mention that for the above two reasons, Malcolm X was hated by the Organized Jewry. Rev. King on the other hand, was, and still is, loved by the Organized Jewry.
* Dylan’s “Dear Landlord” is a complaint to his manager, Albert Grossman. It’s fair to say that Dylan and Lee share some sentiments.
* The unvarnished truth is that exploiting black musicians is a long tradition. For years, most of the venues featuring blacks outside of the black-run juke joints and the chitlin circuit were mob connected, Jewish run, or both. Most of the small record labels that featured black musicians were also Jewish run. Herman Lubinsky (Savoy) and Bob Weinstock (Prestige) left a trail of resentment from black musicians over their business practices. We can be thankful for their role in distributing some great music that might have otherwise have never been recorded, while acknowledging that they were shysters. Portraying tightwad, grasping, coercive Jewish club owners was merely portraying a facet of reality that it is not politically correct to acknowledge. Spike Lee owed no apology.
My feelings about Spike Lee are kind of like my feelings about Miles Davis. Great artists, raised in comfort and privilege, with an obnoxious and inauthentic tendency to leverage star power to mouth off in a posture of racial resentment.
