fairytales of yesterday grow but never die

NCIS 10x04: Lost at Sea

MCKENZIE KURTZ as Glinda WICKED

The Case of the Gilded Lily [x]

Bonus:

epic iii · and brother, you know what they did? they danced. » 17/?

@spot-the-antisemtism

Yeah, I don’t even know where to begin.

I do know where to begin. Please note that when I use the word 'you', I am referring to the person in the screen shot.

1. Yeah jews aren't the only group to face oppression and experience attempts at being entirely killed, however that doesn't mean that antisemitism is not worthy of being talked about. By that logic, no group ever can talk about oppression or they've got "main girl syndrome"

2. The oppression of black pepple is utterly terrible, it is also not unique. Jews also have centuries long history (2 thousand+ years) of being dehumanized, enslaved, treated like cattle and killed en masse. It being not a unique experience to black people doesn't make it any less terrible or any less worthy talking about, just like it not being a unique experience to jews doesn't make it any less terrible or any less worthy to talk about. Obviously, there is nuance in the difference of oppression between black people and jews, but I'm not the best person to talk about that. If any black jews do want to talk about the nuances, I will share your reblog.

3. Saying that no one here is asking for jews to disappear is straight up false. Giving you benefit of the doubt assuming you used a hyperbole and didn't genuinely mean it, using language like that will shut pepple off from the rest of what you are saying and gives off a bit of a red flag. Assuming it's in bad faith, you are just purposefully ignoring a large part of antisemitism.

4. The most important part, Jewish oppression doesn't need to take a sideline in discussions surrounding oppression or any other time. You are quite literally going "joos pls stop talking about your oppression as I think your oppression matters less". That is antisemitic. You are applying a different standard to Jewish oppression than other groups oppressions.

5. It's fine if you don't want to constantly see posts about Jewish oppression. No one is forcing you to read every post. The not interested and block buttons exist for a reason, use em.

In my (albeit limited) experience, Armenians are usually great allies against antisemitism because they understand what it's like to have that much of your population wiped out in a short time frame.

The person in this screenshot is just pulling them out as an example, while not listening to Armenians. Who, by the way, ARE STILL IN DANGER OF GENOCIDE. They're getting physically expelled from Azerbaijan and Turkey is helping. Are Armenians suffering from "main character syndrome" because they'd like people to pay attention to their plight?

Also, some Natives still exist. There are tribes that are now extinct, and that's horrific. There are entire cultures and languages and religions and PEOPLES wiped out by colonialism. We all know that we could join them. We know we could also go extinct, and we're trying our damnest to avoid that.

LEVERAGE: REDEMPTION, 2.5 THE WALK IN THE WOODS JOB

I'm built different. like incorrectly i think

— THE GARDEN (insp.)

this isn’t exactly comforting, but I think the shift has been even faster than this. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, which ended in 2019 (so only five years ago!), allowed itself cheeky jokes about Jewish culture and even Israel, from its Jewish protagonist (and Jewish co-creator/lead actress, Rachel Bloom). The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, which ended last May, had a scene on a kibbutz in its final season, and other references to Israel, though as it was set in the late 50s/early 60s, that was a vastly different time for American Jews and culture. I keep thinking about how British publishers are refusing to take books by Jewish authors, and wondering if a similar (albeit probably unspoken) path is going to be taken in Hollywood regarding film and television. there already isn’t a lot of Jewish representation (and many Jewish characters/people are played by non-Jews, which is another discussion), and the few things I know of being released this year - which likely would have been completed before October - are about the Holocaust. that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially given the terrible state of Holocaust education, but as far as stories about Jews living and thriving and seeking goals and finding joy and just being human…I fear there will be less and less, because it will be seen as a “risk.” looking at how people have gotten up in arms about Timothee Chalamet and Dune, or Aaron Taylor Johnson being considered for Bond, screaming for boycotts for no other reason than actors being Jewish, the lists of authors to blacklist just because they’re Jewish (but accused of Zionism as a slur), and so on - even if those boycotts aren’t effective because they’re baseless, it still causes noise and controversy and anger. studios and publishers tend to like to avoid that and play it safe. I can very easily see a path where “playing it safe” means excluding and erasing Jews from media for a while. definitely removing references that could cause kvetching.

to that end, erasing Jewishness also isn’t new. we could talk about that phenomenon with the MCU at length, for example, but since anon was watching The Nanny specifically (she had style! she had flair!) - I mentioned this in tags on another post last night, but when Fran Drescher pitched The Nanny, CBS tried to convince her not to make Fran Fine Jewish. they wanted her to be Italian. Fran had to fight for the integrity of her vision and character, and she co-wrote jokes in almost every episode, so her Jewish humor and references came through in that way.

Fran won, but historically that wasn’t often the case. Estelle Getty and Bea Arthur, both proud Jewish women, weren’t allowed to be Jewish on The Golden Girls (a show created by a Jewish woman!) because producers didn’t think it would be relatable (they likely meant palatable) to audiences, and that making Estelle’s character Sicilian (and thus Bea’s too) was easier.

all this to say - Jewish identity has always had to be fought for and championed…by Jews. there’s really never been a time when existing while Jewish, when portraying Jewish characters and vitality, wasn’t making someone mad or nervous. and Jews created art through all of that anyway. Hollywood and Broadway particularly have such indelible, vibrant, eternally important Jewish roots.

the moment we’re seeing right now is ugly and painful and worrisome, and it does feel like things have regressed and unraveled into hatred and dehumanization quickly, and I worry where that will lead. I worry about Jewish existence being demonized and history being distorted and representation being erased.

that said, there’s a blessing in all the Jewish created and inspired art and stories that do exist because it still stands as a testament - we’ve gotten through things, even worse ones, before, we’ve survived, we’ve created. we will dance again, and hopefully, we will laugh again too.

in the meantime, I wish us all Fran energy in dealing with the haters:

I need you all to understand just how amazing things like what was just explained about The Nanny and The Golden Girls are, and just how recent they are. These women had to fight to be Jewish on screen, not in the 40's but in the goddamn 80's and 90's. And it didn't end there! You know we have to talk about Seinfeld and Friends...

George Costanza and his family are known as the most Jewish-non-Jewish family in the history of television because they weren't allowed to have two Jewish men on screen at the same time, so they had to do exactly what they tried to do to Fran and succeeded in doing to Estelle - make them Italian (**Regina George's voice** so you agree? Jewish people are Mediterranean?). And on top of that of course there's Elaine - there is no greater sin than a Jewish woman on screen, and so Julia Louis-Dreyfus was turned into the ultimate shiksa.

And this particular hatred for Jewish women is probably the most constant and present (if technically invisible) form of antisemitism on screen, and the examples given before show just that. Obviously Jewish men suffer from antisemitism as well, but there is a sort of bar of acceptance of at least one Jewish man on screen. Any more will have to be negotiated. But Jewish women? God no!

And so we find our way to Friends. Here the antisemitism was tripled - The Costanziation of Rachel, the blurring of Monica and the casting of Lisa Kudrow.

In case you didn't understand the hints (don't worry, I didn't either before they were pointed out to me), but Rachel - rich doctor daddy's little spoiled girl who loves shopping from Long Island and had a nose job in highschool - Green is indeed a hundred percent Jewish, but we're not allowed to say it out loud. Now, I just want to be very clear - I have seen people criticizing Rachel for being an antisemitic stereotype of a JAP. I understand where you're coming from, but she's not. Rachel Green might be one of the greatest most incredible subversion of antisemitic stereotypes ever - she is a rich Jewish girl who on episode one leaves her stereotypical privileged life to start from almost scarch and build herself from the bottom up. She literally cuts the credit cards her dad pays for and goes to find a shitty job. She is a fashion lover, yes, but instead of being a consumer of fashion she slowly but surly becomes the fashion industry itself, working her way into an incredibly high level position in one of the most famous fashion houses in the world, and so having other people essentially consume her products. She is also, and I cannot emphasize enough how lovingly I am saying this, an absolute slut. One of the stereotypes of the JAP is that she is sexually frigid, having the hots only for daddy's money. Rachel screws her way through highschool and remains a very sexually active and sex positive woman for the rest of her life. I'm sure there are a couple more aspects to this that I'm forgetting right now, but Rachel is truly an amazing character that I dearly love and believe is a fascinating work of resistance within the boundaries of US television.

So Rachel is Jewish, that's her whole schtik. And that's exactly why Lisa Kudrow didn't get that role, the one she actually auditioned for because of the Jewishness of the character, since she is a Jewish woman herself. The studio just couldn't handle the thought of not only a Jewisg woman character on screen, even if her Jewishness is hushed, but a Jewish woman playing her? That's just way too much. Which is why both Rachel and Monica are palyed by non-Jewish actresses.

Which leads us to Monica - the half Jew half White woman, who conveniently has a male sibling, who happens to be played by a Jewish man, so he gets to be the Jewish part of the family while she gets to never ever mention anything about the subject. Why half and half in the first place? Oh because if they were fully Jewish that would require their mother to be Jewish on screen... And let's be honest, the only thing worst than a JAP is her MOM. Nah. We have Elliott Gould and David Schwimmer, that's enough Jews on screen. Thank god they're men. Do you know how many times Monica's Jewishness is explicitly mentioned in the show? Once. In the last season, when she and Chandler meet Erica, and she thinks they are a reverend and a doctor. Monica says she could be a reverend, and Chandler says "you're Jewish". That's it. That's the only mention. 10 seasons of episodes, one joke, made by someone who is not Monica. Ross gets to teach Ben about Hanukkah and celebrate his tenure with "Israel's finest" champagne (we do have great beer, I swear), and Monica gets to decorate the Christmas tree every year and celebrate Thanksgiving. Fun.

"Hollywood is controlled by Jews" is such a complicated concept. Jews "control" Hollywood because, just like banking, gentiles thought it was an immoral profession while simultaneously barred Jews from working in anything else, especially if it was guild related (or owned by Ford...). So guess what Jews did? Can you? Can you guess what they did, like they were always forced to do? And can you guess what happened when it became a very lucrative business, like it always does? And even before the rest of the US flocked to Hollywood, Jews still worked within the boundaries of a society that saw them as foreign, under laws that dictated what could and couldn't be shown on screen. And those rules might have been cancelled since, but the social rules remain, and they are often surprisingly similar.

Anyway. Yeah. This sucks.

🏳️‍🌈 Happy Pride Month to Our Favourite Super Soldier Husbands 🏳️‍🌈

@possibleplatypus i mean... tom holland did think they were filming a wedding, so... 😏

Anyone gets in my way, they’re gonna regret it. Anyone. Understood.

Steve could have said those very words about Bucky. And here Pierce is saying them to Steve knowing exactly whose brainwashed, tortured best friend he sent to kill Fury…

“Understood” - Not agreeing or disagreeing. Yet Pierce knows what it means …

Steve has no idea who this man actually is and what he truly represents.

But Steve’s face! He knows there is something here unsaid and that something is not going to be good.

Some fics have Steve as very trusting. Yet when you watch most of his first interactions with people he is on guard to some extent.

Here there is no question. He has zero confidence in this man before him.

What I see in Steve’s face is “I would not trust this guy with a pet dog let alone the lives of millions of people. There is shit going down and I intend to find out what it is and put a stop to it.”

This!

You know that bit in CATWS where Fury says his dad “loved people, but he didn’t trust them very much”? I feel like that’s Steve. It’s interesting, because he’s polite, and he’s kind, and he believes in giving people a chance to do the right thing, but he’s not open, trusting, or naïve. I think Sam is the only character he seems to trust soon after meeting him, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that he approached Sam first, not the other way round. (I think it also helped that Sam opened up first– “It’s your bed, isn’t it?” and telling Steve about Riley.)

Think of the scene at Sam’s house, right after Natasha and Steve escaped from Camp Lehigh. Natasha says, “If it was up to me to save your life, would you trust me to do it?” Steve’s response is, “I would now.”

They’ve been working together for two years, and he only feels like he can trust her now, after she proved herself in a pretty major way. And it’s pretty clear from his interactions with the other Avengers that while he seems to trust that they’ll do their jobs on the field, he hasn’t gotten emotionally close with any of them. In CACW, he seems to be a mentor figure for Wanda, suggesting some degree of emotional closeness, and he seems to trust T'challa enough to accept sanctuary from him. But that’s still a pretty short list!

And Steve is definitely astute enough to know Pierce is Up to Something. Steve starts out being polite and friendly, but after Pierce tries to persuade him that Fury hired the pirates for nefarious purposes, you can see how he closes off completely. And Pierce’s attempt to course-correct by implying that he believes Fury was framed quite clearly doesn’t work– you can see Steve growing more and more suspicious throughout the entire interaction, while Pierce keeps trying different tactics to get him onside. Pierce has fooled a lot of people for a long time, including Nick Fury, but he doesn’t fool Steve.

All the children... all the giants... no more.