Noah Berlatsky
By Noah Berlatsky
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Film & TV ‘Star Wars’ is influenced by the Nazis — and it fails to hold them accountable
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, there were lots of Nazis. But no Jews. The Empire in the “Star Wars” franchise, the totalitarian regime which serves as the antagonist throughout the series, is modeled on the Nazis both visually and throughout the films’ narratives. References to fascist totalitarianism give the genocidal…
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Culture How The ‘Alt-Right’ Normalizes White Supremacy
Making Sense of the Alt Right By George Hawley Columbia University Press, 232 pages $28.00 Since World War II, American political life has been defined, in part, by a rejection of overt anti-Semitism. Following the Holocaust and the creation of Israel, conservatives and liberals alike have largely agreed that anti-Semitism, and anti-Semitic dog whistles, should…
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Culture ‘Star Trek’ Goes Less Jewish Than It Has Ever Gone Before
“Star Trek” has always embraced diversity. Gene Roddenberry’s vision of a utopian future was intentionally, ideologically inclusive. The first “Star Trek” series included Asian and black crew members, at a time when that was rare on network television. Later series featured a woman captain and a black captain. The new CBS show, “Discovery” is focused…
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Culture Stephen King’s ‘It’ Shows Hollywood Still Has A Jewish Problem
If you took your assumptions about U.S. demographic data from horror films, you’d think that Jews were a substantially smaller portion of the American population than serial killers, vampires, ghosts, demons and poltergeists. Horror films are fond of Catholic priests and Christian imagery, and they not infrequently include Jewish actors (like Jeff Goldblum in David…
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Culture Does ‘Death Wish’ Show How Jews Benefit From White Supremacist Fantasies?
“He looked like a white dude,” an earnest cop tells her superior in the new trailer for Eli Roth’s remake of the film “Death Wish.” She’s describing Paul Kersey (Bruce Willis,) a heavily armed vigilante engaged in a one-man war on crime. But she could also be talking about director Eli Roth himself — a…
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Culture The New Post-Racial Spiderman Ignores His Jewish Superhero Roots
Is Peter Parker, your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, Jewish? In the new film, “Spider-Man: Homecoming,” the answer is an emphatic “no.” Tom Holland, who plays Peter, is of Irish and English descent; in the film he and his Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) are Italian. Spider-Man isn’t Jewish canonically in the comics either; when his religious or…
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Film & TV The Jewish Aryan Contradictions Of Scarlett Johansson
Nobody is saying that “Rough Night” is a great film, but what charm it has comes from Scarlett Johansson playing against type. Johansson’s roles tend to cast her as the perfect woman — her last appearance earlier this year as an icy superhuman cyborg in “Ghost in the Shell” was typical. In “Rough Night,” she…
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Film & TV Why Do White People Get Mad When We Call ‘Wonder Woman’ White?
When I wrote a piece at the Forward pointing out that Gal Gadot is white, I did not expect there to be a backlash. Gadot is, after all, playing a white character; she was clearly cast because people see her as white. The argument that she was a person of color was transparently made in…
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