Racist? Ignorant?

My boss described someone the other day as resembling a Ferengi. This got a laugh out of me, as I haven't seen Star Trek since high school, and it seemed like an odd thing to compare someone to. Today I mentioned offhand that I always thought the Ferengi were a Jewish caricature. My (Jewish) co-worker told me he had never considered that, never considered that the grubby, short, big nosed, big eared, money obsessed merchants could possibly be considered offensive.

This is what they look like, in case you are wondering.



Do I think that Star Trek is anti-semitic? Not at all. That show has had a long history of preaching tolerance and acceptance (and as people love to point out, the first interracial kiss on television happened between Kirk and Uhura). So how can something like the Ferengi pass unnoticed? It doesn't even seem very subtle to me.

I wrote a paper in college about this same issue, what I feel is unconscious racism. It may have something to do with the use of cultural shorthand to convey an idea without too much information, but when that cultural shorthand stems from something unsavory, well, it no longer becomes a valid shortcut.

Some examples.

I'll start with Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. This movie is full of them.

George Lucas is not an anti-semite. He's best buddies with Steven Spielberg, who is hardly quiet about his heritage. So how do we then end up with this guy?

A hook-nosed, conniving merchant/ slave trader. And what's more, he kind of SOUNDS Jewish. You half-expect him to start complaining about his mother.



We also have the Neimoidians, who look and sound like villains from a Charlie Chan episode.

Let's not even get started with this jive talking, cowardly dreadlocked guy.

Have you seen the new Transformers movie? Speaking of jive-talking, we've got a robot named Jazz that speaks with an urban African-American voice, dances at strange moments, and of course is the first one to die. I'm aware that he was originally a character from the cartoon, but I'm willing to forgive the Japanese for that. I'm imagining that the black population of Japan in the early 80's was probably limited, so they had very little material to work with. But how the hell did he get into the movie? It's not like there weren't another 10,000 other Autobots they could have replaced him with.



(If you wait until the end of this clip, you can see Jazz jive and dance)

That's not to mention these other faces we might recognize.





(above two images from hongpong.com)

I don't have any answers for you here, just questions. But when you're watching something on TV or seeing a movie, and you're thinking...something about that character bothers me...you are possibly right.