Canadian ‘Jersey Shore’ Knockoff Under Fire Over Anti-Semitic Comments
It didn’t seem possible to make MTV’s inexplicable smash “Jersey Shore” look like “Masterpiece Theatre.” But a Canadian knockoff called “Lake Shore” — set to start production next spring — has done just that with a slur-laden “sizzle reel” aimed at building early-stage buzz, according to Canada’s National Post.
The eight-minute promo includes gems like this, according to the Post, from one Sibel Atlug, a 23-year-old loud-mouthed woman cast as “the Turk”: “I’m not racist because I hate everybody equally, especially Jewish people.” The comments come “during a mud-flinging free-for-all in which cast members share first impressions of their future housemates,” the newspaper said.
Montreal-based producer Maryam Rahimi used a less-than-convincing free-speech defense in an interview with Canada’s Globe and Mail. “I’m not supporting what one person says in comparison to another. But kids are all entitled to state their opinions … and I’m just trying to create entertainment,” she told the newspaper. Rahimi noted the reel has close to 112,000 hits on the show’s website, and over 550,000 YouTube views.
Globe and Mail writer Gayle McDonald seemed to write off the controversy as a predictably PC tantrum from south of the border. The reality show, she noted, “has got some American on-line media in a tizzy.” Entertainment Weekly’s website, she wrote, said ‘Lake Shore’ looks like an “ethnicity circus, where ridiculousness and stupidity are things to be valued.” Then added: “Finally, idiots of every race and creed can pour Grey Goose down each others’ throats!”
Bernie Farber, CEO of the Canadian Jewish Congress, seemed to agree with EW. “It’s silly, puerile trash TV. … But it’s sadly the kind of television and entertainment that seems to titillate people nowadays,” he told the Toronto Star. “You throw in a racist comment, or a sexist comment, or an anti-Semitic comment and it becomes provocative.”
On Thursday, the National Post reported, the original trailer was pulled offline due to accusations of copyright violation, but a shorter clip including Ms. Atlug’s comments remains.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO