Too Jewish?

[eveningblue]

Something that has always interested me (and that came up in this discussion of Jewish characters played by non-Jewish seeming actors) is this notion of a tv show seeming "too Jewish" by Hollywood standards. rydra_wrong explains this phenomenon here:

Neal Gabler's An Empire Of Their Own: How The Jews Invented Hollywood argues that this is precisely why

Comments

Magneto

[wickedgoodgrrrl]

Interesting read on Magneto; I'm assuming you're taking it from the "X-Men" movies? Since I came late to comic books and still later to the Marvel Universe, my only point of reference for the X-Men comes through the movies and a few Wikipedia articles.

What I remember of the opening of the very first X-Men movie was the concentration camp scene. I was watching it with a Jewish friend and the two of us just clutched each other's hands in horror. As an opening to set up the mutants as "ousiders", it was brilliant. In the back of my mind I remembered the Nazis imprisoned a lot of people: homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Poles, Romany. To my way of thinking at the time, Little-Boy Magneto's character tested Jewish (possibly Polish), who might not even been "out" with his metal-manipulative ability before (or like Stephen King's "Carrie" not manifested his abilities so _dramatically_ until that moment). Due to the youth of the character at that point, it wouldn't have occurred to me to think he tested "gay" at all.

I think it wasn't until the third movie that the movie-makers were making a strong (blatant!) analogy that being a mutie was like being gay. (Of course, the San Francisco setting only added to the analogy.) At this point, Magneto's character may have, to me, started to feel "gay". It took me a while to realize Sir Ian McKellan was gay--no clue through the run of LOTR movies--let alone he was trying to play Magneto as gay. For this viewer and fan, Sir Ian had great initial success as playing a "Jewish character", rather than a "gay character". If you'll forgive a pun: oh, the irony!

WGG
(Not Jewish, grew up in very Scots-Irish rural Maine but thinks "Jews are pretty darn cool"...and has it on word-of-mouth that etrogs make "great marmalade".)

Re: Magneto

[executrix]

I'm completely outside comics fandom, although I have seen the three XM movies a) because mofic rocks and b) because I was writing a story where UglyVeiny!Willow applies for a job with Magneto using their three-fer status as gay Jewish supervillains as a CV. But I think irrespective of whether Magneto was played by Sir Ian McKellan or Straighty McBreederson, I don't think it's unreasonable to look at Magneto's relationship to Xavier as being just like Giles' to Ethan: passionate relationship-->bad breakup-->ideological problems with reunion.

Re: Magneto

[polaris_starz]

There was a scene in the second movie that definitely coded mutants as "gay". When the characters end up at Iceman's house and he tells his parents that he's a mutant, there's a very awkward moment and then his mother says "Have you ever tried not being a mutant?" That's a very stereotypical reaction to have to a child coming out.

Re: Magneto

[executrix]

That's a very stereotypical reaction to have to a child coming out.

AND a shoutout to BtVS--I think the audiences overlapped a lot.

Re: Magneto

[tahnan]

Because I'm thinking of the way an actor approaches a role, yes, I'm speaking specifically of the movies. (As it happens, I've not at all read the comics. I'm not a very good geek, sometimes.)

And, also, yes, the opening concentration camp scene was particularly hard-hitting for me as well.