MovieChat Forums > Oliver Twist (1951) Discussion > Anti semitic

Anti semitic

posted 11 years ago by rp_roger
7 replies | jump to latest

Considering the timing of this movie, just 3 years after the war to defeat the anti semitic Nazi regime as well as the holocaust, the end of the horrible stereotype of Jews presented by them, one would like to think that one of the major players in the world to defeat that would have tried to produce a less Nazi like stereotype in Fagin. After all, your nation was all but destroyed and 60 million innocent people killed and murdered by the hatred and racism of Hitler and the Nazi's and in only 3 years you make the character in the movie, albeit Jewish in the same stereotypical image as they did? Isn't that just planting the seed for the next generation of racism, bigotry and anti semitism that you just fought a world war to defeat???? I'm not talking political correctness but must he have been portrayed with the huge nose, ruddy huge eyebrows etc... as the Nazi's portrayed Jews when they wanted people to think of them as vermin?

[–] richard.fuller1 11 years ago

Do you look at Jews as sporting the nose worn by Fagin?

England is well aware of what Nazi Germany did to such an extent that no recognition of Nazism would be allowed on their soil without there being chances of criminal charges.

Shows such as Fawlty Towers with its mockery and Tomorrow People having to pinpoint HItler as an alien were just some of the permitted depictions and those were in the 70s.

So its highly unlikely a movie about a classic English story would resort to such a petty contrivance as endorsing a Nazi supposition as the big nose being Jewish and showing them as underhanded.

I've never looked upon the big nose as being Jewish. It's always been what I've referred to as a Roman nose, an imposing feature, but usually sported by the upper class or bankers and such.
If the Nazi regime declared two eyes to be anti-semitic and everyone wore eyepatches to show their loyalty to Hitler, if anyone appeared in a movie afterward with both eyes visible, would that be anti-semitic because Nazi Germany had regarded it as such?

The nose looks silly, but just as the Nazi Germany rhetoric was Jews were despicable, to look upon a movie taking place in the 1800s and deduce it is anti-semitic is just as horrible behavior.

One will see what one will see.

[–] beninu-1 11 years ago

This is actually a very valid point.
Just because a despicable person in a story is of Jewish descent, doesn't necessarily make the story anti-semitic. All persons are of some heritage. What if the person in the story was depicted as of Italian heritage? Would that implicate an "anti-italian" storyline? I think not! A detailed portrait of a character will often - if not always - contain one or more references to that characters heritage. That in itself is not anti-semitism.

And just because a typical nazi-stereotype was that Jews should have a very characteristic nose, it doesn't mean that there aren't Jews that actually have a very big nose, just as some people of Asian, Middle-Eastern, European, African and other descent, have a particularly big nose. Some people do!

As someone in a similar thread pointed out: What if there was another Jewish character in the story, but only one was portrated with a huge nose and bushy eye brows? What if there were ten Jews in the story but only one was portraied with a huge nose? Would it still be anti-semitic? How many different Jews do you have to put in a story to make sure it cannot be construed as anti-semitic if one of the jewish characters in the story has a huge nose?

I personally am sensitive to anti-semitism, but I also try to maintain a balanced perspective. Some point out, that the Fagins character in the movie most of the time is referred to as "the Jew". Yes, and?.... Does that make the movie anti-semitic? Is referring to a person by referring to his Jewish heritage in it self anti-semitic? I'm not sure it is. One of my friends has a greek father, and in our group of friends almost everyone amongst us, refer to him as "the Greek". Does that make all in our group "anti-Greek"?

Ben-Inu Andersen
DENMARK

[–] 11 years ago

[deleted]

[–] Nihilistic4254 9 years ago

Isn't there a word for Fagin? Sure, there are many beguiled and baffled huge nosed and greasy people, but not many of them are as educated as Fagin was. He sure had such a posse because of his social-skills. The thing is, that character seems to be recurring. Fagin's not the only person I can think of who has a greasy personality, regardless of characters. I could use devil, in terms of the olden pictographs of the "one man in front of the people who wear a monstrous face," but that would be deeply misleading to most people who just see it as wicked, even though you could say the same shiet about "G rappers," who may talk of good, God, and righteousness.

[–] poetcomic1 9 years ago

ONE thing is horribly wrong - it is that huge jaw-dropping cartoon of a caricature of a Jewish nose. It evoked protests at the time as well.

I have no problem with Fagan the Jew as a Jewish criminal (I'm Jewish myself) and he is a typical character of East End London slums of the time. The slums were a 'United Nations of Crime'.

[–] Earl-Janoth 8 years ago

Ummm. Okay...

But the make-up for the character was designed to emulate the early illustrations of Dickens... there was never any anti-Semitic intention on the part of the film makers, and probably not on the part of Dickens or the illustrators either. It's a character.
And frankly, I think if you look at Fagin and go "WHAT A JEWISH NOSE!", you're probably the anti-Semite. Grow up.

[–] marktayloruk (2375) 2 years ago

Fagin was based on a real.gangster who was Jewish.