Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Masterpiece Jew-Hating Theater

From Hollywood screenwriter Robert Avrech, at Big Hollywood:

I must have missed a few subtle literary points in college when I was taking a Charles Dickens seminar.

I missed the spot where Fagin, in Oliver Twist, is wearing a gigoondo yarmulke.

Also, blasting right by yours truly—alas, never the best of students—is the part where Fagin abstains from eating pork chops because they’re not kosher.

Who knew that Fagin was an observant Jew?

And I must have skipped the part where Fagin—going all bi-polar—talks to himself in fractured Hebrew and intones: “Never trust the goyim.”

char_lg_fagin.jpg
Timothy Spall as Fagin: “Never trust
the goyim.” Gotta check the Cliff notes.

Fagin’s thick as lard accent—whoops, forgot Fagin is religious, let’s  make that syrup—eastern European accent pegs him as an immigrant street rat, a dirty foreigner seducing and corrupting young British manhood.

Last night I was flipping through my 150 channels—you can get obese watching all the cooking shows—when I stumbled on this new adaptation of Oliver Twist.

What a surprise, I didn’t know I had access to Al Jazeera. It was kind of scary, I mean, I know the Arab world is a sewer of Jew-hatred, but this Fagin is pretty darn close to the image of the evil Jew pushed by the Nazi propaganda machine.

He’s not just the Jew, he’s the devil.

This Fagin is such a leering, salivating monster that I wouldn’t be surprised if, in next week’s exciting installment, he molests a few doe-eyed kids then slaughters them so he can use their blood to bake matzo.

The Blood Libel is alive and well in the Arab Muslim world and making headway, once again, in oh-so-civilized Europe.

Imagine my surprise when the station ID popped up and I discovered that this was not Al Jazeera, but PBS.

Okay, I really wasn’t surprised.

Just as I wasn’t surprised that this grotesquely anti-Semitic Oliver Twist is a British production. Most sane people recognize that Britain, in about 25 years, will be ruled by Sharia and cheerily Judenrein.

Say hello to the happy-go-lucky 7th century.

In truth, early editions of Oliver Twist were tainted by Jew hatred. But Dickens bravely confronted this bigotry and eliminated anti-Semitism from all subsequent editions. He knew it was wrong. He knew it was poison.

Not so for this BBC productions. They have departed from the standard text and and defaulted to the Jew-hatred that Dickens rejected.


Go read the whole thing at Big Hollywood.

2 comments:

Epaminondas said...

Excellent spot of a depressing item.
Now I have to give them hell.

I don't expect much from the sons of Edward I, but it appears as if Bill Moyers' racial views have infected PBS' programming choices

David Golden said...

I watched some of it. It was cringe-worthy.