Racialicious writes:
Apparently there’s been a lot of anti-semitism in Seattle lately, prompting their alt-weekly to devote an issue to Jewish issues. But check out the graphic they chose to illustrate one of their regular columns. Textbook hipster racism.
That’s the graphic over to the right. Racialicious is one of my very favorite blogs, but I’ve gotta say, this case doesn’t look so textbook to me. I asked about it in Racialicious’ comments, and Lyonside wrote:
The drawing is reminiscent of the hooked-nose portraits of Jewish men so common to the medieval and modern era. A more subtle dig may be the thinning hair on top, but in general, the nose that was longer than the cartoon’s HEAD (in profile) is the obnoxious part.
I’m sure it was meant to be ironic, but I see it as a lack of taste. And awareness.
It’s just not true that the nose is longer than the profile’s head. It’s a big nose, but it’s not that big. And although the nose is exaggerated, it’s not distended and freakish, like the noses in “classic” antisemitic cartoons often were. Look at the noses (especially the husband’s) in this German cartoon from 1934, for example:
Look: I have a big nose. And it hooks. Many of my relatives also have relatively big, hookish noses. It’s a common trait among Jews whose folks came to the US from Eastern Europe. Are cartoonists supposed to pretend that me and thousands of Jews like me don’t have this nose? And how will wiping out representations of Jews with a classic Jewish nose — those Jews, in other words, who are least likely to be mistaken for gentiles — be a blow against antisemitism?
[Crossposted at Creative Destruction. If your comments aren’t being approved here, try there.]
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Maybe they are hoping to prevent some people from developing a coherent concept of what a stereotypical Jew looks like? I grew up in a smaller city and had no idea until I was grown and living in a bigger city and watching programs such as the Nanny, and the Daily show which point out stereotypes. For example Jon Stewart comparing noses with John Kerry. I don’t think such a desire to prevent those who don’t have a mental stereotype of what Jews look need be motivated by anything other than idealism. It would be nice if people socialized with others without mentally pegging them into certain pigeonholes before even talking to them.
i don’t find the first image anti-semitic. i find it somewhat ironic that the noses in the image in the blog banner sport noses larger than the figure in question.
I must confess I’m wondering why a German anti-Semitic cartoon depicts a stereotypically Jewish couple dressed up in stereotypical Chinese dress in a Chinese environment. What does the caption say?
I’m glad I’m not the only one who was left scratching my head when racialicious claimed that the image was anti-Semitic. The image has a largish nose, but it’s not disproportionate enough to raise red flags for me.
It’s a classic image of a Jew.
Why are Jews always men?
They could have done a lot better – it looks like they didn’t even try to find an image that would be interesting or thought provoking or even reflective of reality (the majority of Jews are, shock, not orthodox men).
It may not be quite anti-semitic, but it’s not doing anything against the perpetuation of stereotypes either. Sort of like having a picture of an enormous black basketball player to illustrate an issue on black people, a slight male nerd with glasses or a slender seductive woman to illustrate an issue on Asians, etc. I’m not impressed.
Tara, I agree with you about the mediocrity of the image. My claim isn’t that the image is especially good or clever; just that it’s not anti-semitic.
It would have to be put in a context to be anti-Semitic. If the little fellow’s emotion lines are coming off of him because there’s some gorgeous blonde girl walking by and the caption reads “Another Jew Thinking About Defiling Aryan Maidens”, that’s pretty fucking anti-Semitic. If he’s just a picture of a guy, who could be viewed as Jewish since he has a hooked nose, well, big deal.
Does anybody know what article the drawing is illustrating?
Drawing pictures that call on ethnic stereotypes is an area where there is a lot of painful history and artists should use good judgment in respecting that history, but when the ethnic stereotype is at least partially true, there’s nothing wrong with drawing it in a descriptive, non-hostile-propaganda way.
No idea about the context, but as an apologia, Amp, your last paragraph was unbelievable.
Unbelievable in a bad way? Why?
The article the illustration appears with – which was apparently part of an entire Jewish-themed issue – is fairly dumb. It can be seen here.
To me that picture at the top really doesn’t look much different than the of the guy on the right in the bottom picture.
At the very least it is stereotypical, and like Robert I think it should be interpreted in it’s context, which doesn’t seem to make it less stereotypical.
However, I think this whole idea that you can “spot a Jew by looking” is really dangerous, and given the controversy about the Menorah in the airport that has sparked many blatantly anti-Semitic comments, they should be more careful.
OK. Given the article, it’s not anti-Semitic. It’s possibly insensitive about ethnic stereotypes, but most such sensitivity is overwrought handwringing and deserves a swift kick anyway. Here is an article about Jews, here is a silly clipart depicting a Jew, no big.
“It’s not that bad of an exaggeration, lots of Jews have big noses, like me, and anyway there are much worse caricatures out there”? That’s about as good as Robert’s insistence that if a ‘racial’ stereotype is ‘partially true’ that it’s OK to caricature it. You know, like all those cartoons showing blacks with enormous lips.
But lots of Jews do have big noses, Mythago, and some blacks do have (relatively) enormous lips. Are creators of the graphic arts to deny what they know about the world, because other people have used that knowledge for evil purposes?
And I didn’t say it was OK to caricature something; I said it was OK to represent it. Caricature is an entirely different question. You’ve been getting pretty bad about this again, lately. “there’s nothing wrong with drawing it in a descriptive, non-hostile-propaganda way” and “caricature” couldn’t be farther apart.
I’d say that caricature is okay, too, as long as the caricature is done in a “descriptive, non-hostile-propaganda” way.
Mythago wrote:
I’m not saying “big noses are bad, but the way the Nazis drew them was even worse, so let’s accept big noses.” I’m saying that a rule that “big noses are bad when drawing Jews” has an unintended anti-Semitic effect, because it suggests that Jewish characters in cartoons, to be acceptable, must have small noses.
What’s required is some taste and sensitivity. “Big noses on Jews are bad” is too coarse and dumb a rule, and it has pernicious effects, because there are many Jews like me who do have big or hooked noses, and representing us shouldn’t be out of bounds.
The point of showing the Nazi cartoon was that the problem with how the Nazi cartoonists drew Jews wasn’t just “big noses.” It was that the noses were drawn as not just big, but often warped and malformed, as part and parcel of a worldview which believed that Jews themselves were inherently warped and malformed. If a cartoonist can avoid seeming to do that — or in some other way taking a warped or mocking approach to big noses — then I think it’s okay for them to draw a Jewish character with a big nose.
To address your example, drawing blacks with enormous lips, as this Jim Crow-era cartoon does, is unquestionably racist. On the other hand, a cartoonist can draw black characters with consistently larger lips than most non-black characters, and not be at all racist, if their approach and style is not cruel or mocking, as in this recent Dykes To Watch Out For cartoon.
Nexyjo:
Yes, that’s true. But I would never have drawn noses like the two in the banner if the characters were in any way intended to be seen as Jewish.
Ron:
If you click on the Nazi-era cartoon, you’ll be taken to the site I found it on, which includes this translation of the words: “Caption: “Perjury.” Isidor (Joseph Goebbels’ pejorative nickname for Bernhard Weiss, a leader of the Berlin police before 1933) says: “Were I Chinese, I would have lost face once it was learned that I had committed perjury.” His wife responds: “How fortunate that we are Jews. Your face was never that attractive to begin with, Isidor!””
Actually, I find the first illustration to be more vaguely semitic. The beard and thick lips could represent a Middle Eastern man in his mid-30s, regardless of religion. He could be a Palestinean as easily as an Isreali. The cartoonist used very broad strokes to render a very simple image. Like Robert and others, I think it’s pretty boring. A better drawing would have included more people representing a range of Jewish men and women from different parts of the U.S., Europe and the Middle East.
Speaking as a cartoonist, I find that the simplification process of drawing cartoons, the use of very few elements to represent an idea of personhood, can be a tricky, at times dangerous process. But that only means that we should be careful how ethnic character traits are used and in what context. Like Ampersand, I don’t think such care should mean eliminating or avoiding ethnic character traits altogether. That only gives in to standards of beauty imposed by small nosed, thin-lipped, alabastor-white, ultra-skinny, blindingly blonde character traits stereotypical of ethnic groups hailing from the Northwest corner of Europe.
Again,what makes this discussion difficult is the vagueness of the first illustration. The artist was asked to draw a cartoon representing a religious and ethnic identity that includes millions of men and women living around the world and arising from a long, complex history. And the cartoonist had to make it instantly recognizable. He chose a white guy with a big nose, a dark beard and thick lips. The recognition worked, more or less. Is that Anti-Semitism at play, or is it the left brain’s tendency to abstract and codify?
As a counter-example, it would be a mistake to draw Jerry Seinfeld with a big nose. What really sticks out about Seinfeld (to my caricaturist’s eye) are the teeth and the ironic sidelong look of his eyes. Barbra Streisand, however, has a big nose and big lips, as well as a helmet of hair. To not draw her big nose would be to deny an essential part of her physical presence.
The more I look at the image, the more confushed I get about the issue, but–as someone noted–context is the way out of confusion. Those who draw caricature-type cartoons, however, well…they draw caricature cartoons. I have no problem with that. I guess the question is: At one point does the caricature slip into offense?
Mostly, I have the same reaction that I have to standup comics: Make fun all you want–that is your job–as long as you’re making fun of EVERYONE.
Mostly, though, I’m with Tara: Why are Jews–and everyone else depicted in images–always men?
Hey thanks for the link to Racialicious! (I’m slowly but surely catching up on my blog/email reading). I’ve enjoyed reading everyone’s comments here – interesting perspectives. Especially about the fact that Jews are almost always depicted as men.
“Why are Jews always depicted as men?”
Several possible reasons:
1. Recognition factor(s). As you may recall, Art Spiegelman once produced a cover for The New Yorker depicting a male Hasidic Jew and a female African-American kissing. This drew a number of negative comments, some people claiming that this was racist and sexist because it played into the stereotype of Black women as sex objects etc. etc. Spiegelman replied a) with the question if the same people who attacked him for the cover he did would not have attacked him if he had done a cover of a Jewish woman and a Black man kissing for playing into the stereotype of Black males as sexual aggressors, and b) by pointing out that a Hasidic woman would not have been as readily and unambiguously Jewish (Hasidic) as a male one because her garb etc. could easily be confused with those of other ethnic and religious groups. (While with the male version you have the beard, the payes (spelling? I mean the locks hanging down from the temples), the distinctive hats etc.).
2. The artists concerned believe that the world is shaped by males and thus see the leaders and agents of the Jewish world conspiracy as primarily male. Sexism and Anti-Semitism have gone together well for centuries (in the middle ages there were countries where Jewish men were forced to wear a distinctive yellow hat of specified shape (1), but IIRC had no corresponding distinctive item of clothing for Jewish women).
(1) This hat then also was incorporated into Christian religious imagery and thus there are a number of paintings and sculptures depicting the Nativity in which Joseph is wearing one and even a few where Jesus wears it, e.g. in depictions of the meeting at Emmaus (where the ressurected Jesus at first is indistinguishable from an average man in Judea).
Caveats: As the Nazi cartoon shows, it is not impossible to produce cartoonish female Jews and there were a lot more where this one came from.
And on the symbolic level, where entire nations etc. are personified in the shape of a female (like Columbia, Britannia etc.), there also exist representations of the Jewish people or religion as one feminine personification, e.g. in the Roman “Judaea capta” coins ca. 70 AD and in the Synagoga statues (with eyes bound over and holding a broken lance) you see in many medieval churches standing opposite a statue of Ecclesia (the church triumphant).
I’m still wondering what the heck is up with that second Orientalist illustration from the German mag…? Was it common for the Nazis to link Jewishness to Sinophobia or other Orientalist racism?
Context is everything. What was the context? And, then, since when is the schnozz exclusive to one or another race?