You Have to Have Jews: Difference between revisions

{{quote|''"In any great adventure, if you don't want to lose,''<br />

''Victory depends upon the people that you choose.''<br />

''So listen, Arthur, darling, closely to this news:''<br />

Of course, like so many others, this rather sensitive and in no way value-judgemental trope began as an inversion of another trope. There was a time when working in media was one of the few options for ambitious, intelligent, well-educated people who happened to be Jewish. Anything considered to be academic or high art would be under considerable pressure to appear "respectable," and cater to the segregationist views of the time. Anyone who was not (or could not pass for) white, American- or British-born, heterosexual, Christian (most likely Protestant), and often times male might be considered a risk to the company's reputation. Since radical new media, such as [[Film]], [[Radio]], [[Comic Books]] and, later, [[Television]] were [[New Media Are Evil|often callously dismissed as vulgar]], they tended to hire the people no one else would take -- itake—i.e. Jews. Despite the doomsday warnings of segregationist [[Moral Guardians]], new media took off and people who once had to scramble for an employer became part of history. In short, many might say that the Jewish people who ran Hollywood did so because ''they were the ones who built it''. Creative types usually write what they know, and despite the ever-lingering specter of anti-Semitism in the early twentieth century, many writers, directors, producers, etc. most certainly [[Write What You Know|would have passed on their own perspective into their work, intentionally or not]].

* In Roddy Doyle's ''A Star Called Henry'' (set during the Irish Revolution just after [[World War I]]) has the hero have a rather [[Anvilicious]] friendship with a Latvian Jewish refugee. At the time there were about 3000 Jews in Dublin (0.8% of the population) so it comes across as a bit forced since the only real reason for them to be Jewish is so Doyle can make the IRA seem [[Author Tract|even more evil]] when they disapprove of his friendship.

* Lampshaded in the FAQ (Future Alien Questions) section of ''[[Earth the(The Book)]]'' for religion.

{{quote| '''Q''': We were surprised you devoted so much time to Judaism, since it made up only one fifth of one percent of the world's people.<br />

'''A''': What do you mean?<br />

'''Q''': It just seemed disproportionate.<br />

'''A''': Oh. Well. Sorry you had a problem with the pages about the Jews.<br />

'''Q''': We didn't have a problem with them.<br />

'''A''': Really? Because it sounds like you had a problem with them.<br />

* [[The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and& Clay]] explains this in relation to [[The Golden Age of Comic Books]].

== Film[[Live-Action TV]] ==

* Rick Sanchez blamed this trope for his dissatisfaction over his career trajectory as a TV journalist. In an [http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/richard-adams-blog/2010/oct/01/rick-sanchez-cnn-jon-stewart-jews-television-bigot interview that quickly went viral], Sanchez blamed the abundance of Jews in the media, and specifically Jon Stewart, for his failure to become a leading name at CNN. Apparently he [[Captain Oblivious|couldn't think of a single reason]] other than his [[Everything Is Racist|Cuban heritage]] for why he wasn't the most respected journalist at CNN.

* On a sketch from ''[[Mr. Show]]'', David Cross played a [[Right -Wing Militia Fanatic]] who claimed that his property was his own country. He ran cameras off his land whilst yelling that [[HBO]] stands for "Hebrew Box Office" and various complaints about the liberal Jew-run media.

* Surprisingly averted in ''[[Star Trek]]'', which made a point of making the crew visibly multi-cultural but has never contained any main characters of explicitly ethnic Jewish background (or any other religious background, for that matter; historically, the producers of ''Trek'' have all been atheists or agnostics; when in one episode Picard talks about humanity "outgrowing primitive superstitious" like a belief in gods, [[Author Tract|he's speaking for the producers]]), although the two most prominent characters in the original series were played by Jewish actors.

* The website [http://www.jewornotjew.com/profile.jsp?ID=619 Jew or Not Jew], which profiles which celebrities/historical figures/fictional characters are Jewish, inverted this with [[Snow White and Thethe Seven DwarvesDwarfs (Disney film)|the Seven Dwarves]]. They concluded that six of the dwarves are Jewish (Dopey being the non-Jewish one) because apparently in a large group of Jews you have to have at least one non-Jew.

== [[Professional Wrestling]] ==

* Strongly averted, with Jews being perhaps the ''only'' major ethnic group not prominently featured in American pro wrestling over the past century. This could simply be due to the fact that Jews usually don't aspire to professional sports in general, but some small-time Jewish wrestlers (Scotty Goldman, a.k.a. Colt Cabana, for instance) have claimed to have been subjected to anti-Semitic taunts from non-Jews from the highest echelons of [[World Wrestling Entertainment|WWE]] and other promotions as they have tried to work their way up through the territories. Perhaps the most famous exception is Bill Goldberg, World Heavyweight Champion in both WWE and [[WCW]] and of Romanian Jewish ancestry.

== [[TheaterTheatre]] ==

* Not explicitly invoked, but [[Last Res 0 rtRes0rt]] has shades of this -- threethis—three of the sixteen players on the show are implied to be Jewish (being from [[Space Jews|planet Arael]] and all). The three in question -- Jigsawquestion—Jigsaw, Daisy, and Slick -- areSlick—are also the show's biggest characters.

== [[Real Life]] ==

[[Category:YouTheater Have To Have JewsTropes]]