The Netflix January Bomb: You People (Jews and Blacks)

Nadene Goldfoot                                            

Critics such as Malina Saval, editor on Variety,  are not enthused but are critical of You People shown on Netflix.  I mention it because evidently unknown to the writers, they wrote too too much of anti-Semitic trope into the script.  Ignorance is running throughout our people about our history.  If you're aware of our history, you'll notice it right away.                                     

It was written by Jonah Hill, 39 year old Jewish comedic actor who has appeared in   films as The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Accepted, Knocked Up, Superbad, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Funny People, and 21 Jump Street. and Kenya Barns.  It was a good idea to have a Jewish writer and a black writer write about Jewish-Black marriages, but these two only wrote of what they had heard without checking into facts, evidently.  They might have cared that they could be harming Jewish people and was it worth it to squeeze out a laugh from some anti-Semite, let alone some uneducated Jew?  Not today, please.   

Kenya Barns, the other writer, is a marriage and family therapist.

They got together and tried to write a script which turned out to be   You People which was meant to be just  a 2023 American romantic comedy film directed by Kenya Barris, which she co-wrote with Jonah Hill. The film features an ensemble cast that includes Hill, Lauren London, David Duchovny, Nia Long, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Eddie Murphy. Its plot focuses on an interracial couple and how their families reckon with modern love amid culture clashes, societal expectations and generational differences. Their efforts are neither really funny nor classic, with an awful lot of anti-Semitic stereotypes thrown in.  In this day and age of anti-Semitism being as bad almost as 1939 was in Germany, it's not funny nor appreciated.  It angers.  

Did they mention inter-faith marriages between Jewish and Gentile? 

Abie's Irish Rose tried to handle that one.  The smart sneered but the play won the day.  One hundred years ago this month, the interfaith marriage comedy “Abie’s Irish Rose” kicked off a five-year Broadway run — critics be damned.  It's happened more and more when the people have lost interest and don't care to follow either religion.  

Katherine Hepburn played her mother.  You can't find a better actor than Sidney Pointier.  That was a real movie.  

One critic said it reminding him  of the movie, "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" with Sidney Pointier, a marriage of a white and black couple and how their parents felt.  A critic then said, Problem: how to tell an interracial love story in a literate, non-sensational and balanced way. Solution: make it a drama with comedy. They pulled it off.  Of course, the white girl was not Jewish, so they didn't have this problem.  

I do know personally of one couple where the man was Jewish and the woman was black.  Their son was a great student of mine.  They seemed to be doing very well.  I think she converted.  

It shows me what I have thought, that even our own Jewish Americans know very little of our history.  They may know a little about our holidays if their parents still provide the dinners that go with them, but that's it.  However, when writing about historical facts, that's the time to get out the history books and know what you are writing about.  It's not funny to say in the movie that Jews were slavers with ships.  There was no rebuttal in the script.  

Japanese people who watched the movie already actually thought after watching that we were into the business of being slavers.  

It was the time to throw in the fact that Jews were slaves for 400 years in Egypt (counting from entrance to Egypt to leaving).  I don't believe Blacks were slaves that long for the English or for the Americans, starting with 1776 to the Civil War ending in April 9,1865-a total of 89 years.  Jews never did become citizens like everyone else in any country.  We were 2nd class citizens with laws and laws stacked up against us of what we could not do in their country.  That's why the USA was the golden medina;  we could be 1st class citizens.                       

A scene from The Golden Era of the Catskills. (Photo courtesy of Coolcota.com.  People went for vacations in the Borsht Belt in the Catskills to hear comedy. 

                                             

It took real talent to be a well-known Jewish comedian.  Some were Jack Benny,  Groucho Marx, Milton Berle, Buddie Hacket, Don Rickles,  Jackie Mason, Mel Brooks, Lenny Bruce, Gilda Radner, Bette Midler,  Jon Stewart Leibowitz,  Billy Crystal, Adam Sandler, Sarah Silverman, Jerry Seinfeld, Larry David, Sacha Baron Cohen, 

You People was released in select theaters on January 20, 2023, before its streaming release on January 27, 2023, by Netflix. The film received mixed-to-negative reviews from critics and has stirred questions of anti-semitism.  

Marriages have changed sine the 1930's.  We went into many stages since then, so people are still getting married today.  Our language has changed and our mores.  What we're getting is what you see and hear in the movies.  People believe what they see.  This movie had terrible stereotypes of Jews in it that were as bad as can be.