You People branded 'horribly damaging' over Jewish stereotypes
Netflix’s new hit comedy You People starring Jonah Hill and Eddie Murphy is branded ‘horribly damaging’ to Jewish people for pushing stereotypes of them being ‘white, privileged and racist’
- You People has been branded ‘irredeemable’ by the Jewish community for taking ‘cheap’ shots at the Holocaust and playing into stereotypes
- Author of Jews Don’t Count, David Baddiel, said the film showed the ‘Jewish family positioned as white, privileged and racist’
- Allison Josephs, executive director of nonprofit Jew in the City, said it was ‘an erasure of Jewish history and like an invalidation of all that we’ve been through’
Netflix’s hit comedy You People has been branded ‘horribly damaging’ to Jewish people for pushing stereotypes of them being ‘white, privileged, and racist.’
Jonah Hill and Kenya Barris’ new movie has more than 55million viewing hours and is currently sitting at the number one movie spot on Netflix after its release nearly two weeks ago.
The main premise of the film follows a Jewish man (Hill) falling in love with Amira Mohammed (Lauren London), who is a black, Muslim woman. Their relationship is tested as their respective families react to the cultural differences.
Critics have branded the movie ‘damaging’ after they claim the movie leans too heavily on stereotypes and was anti-Semitic.
Author of Jews Don’t Count, David Baddiel, tweeted: ‘It’s a Jews Don’t Count fest. The Jewish family are positioned as white, privileged and racist. The black family just have a stern dad. At the end, there’s much Jewish apologizing for racism. None for antisemitism. That word never appears.’
You People has been branded ‘irredeemable’ by the Jewish community for taking ‘cheap’ shots at the Holocaust and playing into stereotypes
Author of Jews Don’t Count, David Baddiel, said the film showed the ‘Jewish family [as] positioned as white, privileged and racist’
Allison Josephs, executive director of nonprofit Jew in the City, agreed, calling the movie ‘really, really bad.’
‘Not sure what they were hoping to accomplish, but it didn’t work,’ she tweeted. ‘Jewish & white are one and the same in this film.’
‘I’ve spoken with so many Jewish people who are really, really upset by this movie,’ Josephs also told Newsweek. ‘I think one of the biggest frustrations for me, watching the movie was not being able to comeback to some of the outrageous claims that were made.’
She said the movie took ‘cheap’ shots at the Holocaust and suggestions Jewish people were successful through their large communities of connections and came from generations of wealth.
‘In the trailer, they were already making Holocaust jokes and kind of minimizing the Holocaust. So that’s not good when your trailer includes cheap and really offensive Holocaust humor,’ she told Newsweek.
Allison Josephs, executive director of nonprofit Jew in the City, said it was ‘an erasure of Jewish history and like an invalidation of all that we’ve been through’
She called the film ‘really, really bad’ in a tweet
‘I couldn’t even imagine how bad it would be. The things that they did here are different than other forms of antisemitism that I’ve seen in the past.’
In one of the trailers, Hill’s character’s progressive parents (Julia Louis-Dreyfus and David Duchovny) make a joke about Jews being the ‘OG slaves.’
‘We were technically OG slaves,’ Duchovny’s character Arnold told Akbar (Eddie Murphy), Amira’s father.
Akbar replied: ‘Are you trying to compare the Holocaust to slavery?’
‘Our people came here with nothing like everybody else,’ Dreyfus’ character Shelley countered.
‘They do a comparison of slavery versus the Holocaust. It certainly shouldn’t be a competition, but the pain of the Holocaust also shouldn’t be downplayed as not mattering or being insignificant,’ Josephs told Newsweek.
‘It completely erases the fact that most Jews came to this country fleeing systemic Jew hatred, whether it was Cossacks or Nazis or a systemic exile from the Arab world in the mid-1940s. There are very few Jews that came to the US in positions of power.
She also criticized the Holocaust vs slavery jokes seen in the trailer between Hill’s character’s parents and his girlfriend’s family. ‘It certainly shouldn’t be a competition, but the pain of the Holocaust also shouldn’t be downplayed as not mattering or being insignificant,’ Josephs said
Baddiel also claimed the only black stereotype in the movie was the ‘stern’ dad, played by Eddie Murphy
‘Yes, there were some Jews who did have slaves in the South. That was a thing. But this idea that Jews had some disproportionate role in the slave trade is untrue. It’s honestly some Louis Farrakhan type of garbage.’
The Mohammed family are follows of Farrakhan in the film, who Josephs called a ‘virulent anti-Semite.’
‘A direct quote from him is that he’s not an anti-Semite, he’s an anti-termite,’ she told the outlet. his is a guy that literally uses Nazi-like language to describe Jews. It’s deeply disturbing that Farrakhan is put up on this pedestal [in the film].’
In addition, when Hill’s character buys his girlfriend a ring, he jokes the small stone has been passed down from the Holocaust, which Josephs said was ‘probably the most disgusting “joke” of the movie.’
The movie is currently the number one movie globally on Netflix
‘Because [the message is] the Holocaust is just not a big deal. So it’s kind of what you use when they want to garner some fake sympathy,’ she told Newsweek.
The hardest part of Josephs is that fact that the Jewish community has to sit back and watch Hill – who is also Jewish – make fun of their culture and are not able to respond to it.
‘As the viewer, you’re just subjected to listening to the conversation. There were so many falsehoods, or so many claims put out there without any challenge. And so now that becomes just part of what people may accept to be true. It’s an erasure of Jewish history and like an invalidation of all that we’ve been through and all that we continue to go through. It was a really painful movie to watch.
‘I think the film is irredeemable.’
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