as small as a world and as large as alone

10:31pm September 6, 2014

glegrumbles:

turnedtostardust:

fegeleh:

thegeekyblonde:

livianalemay:

waltdisneyconfessions:

“Mother Gothel’s design makes me uncomfortable. Her dark, thick, curly hair, her sharp nose, and the way her features are generally perceived as more "ethnic” in comparison to all the other human characters in Tangled—it all reminds me of an archetype for Jewish women"

Interesting fact: The stereotypical witch found in fairy tales was usually portrayed as the stereotypical Jew in order to spread anti Semitic propaganda.

This is also where we get the “greedy Jew” stereotype, as goblins, hobgoblins, gnomes and dwarves were also portrayed as the harmful Jewish archetype.

In the middle ages, it was a sin for a Christian to hoard or handle large amounts of money, which left the profitable banking industry open to Jews. It’s ridiculous that Christians created the stereotype to avoid a sin, and this stereotype is still portrayed and spread today

I’VE BEEN THINKING ABOUT THIS FOR MONTHS especially since if mother gothel looks like a nazi propaganda-esque jewish woman, and she steals the most aryan-looking baby in the kingdom to use its essence in a ceremony…

like does that smell like blood libel or am i paranoid

RELEVANT

glegrumbles, is this pretty much the summary of whatever sources you were going to pull out on the matter of stereotypical witch appearances being derived from anti-Semitic stereotypes?

Sort of. It touches a bit on some of it, but it goes preeeeetty damn deep. And it’s very frustrating to try to track down scholarly resources on it because it does tend to get shoved under the rug. I was having a conversation with some friends and thetwistedrope about it, trying to gather up what I can find.

But there’s a lot of folkloric racism and Othering. In fairy tales, in folklore about supernatural things and witches. Jewish people were heavily associated with magic, but there was a lot of… well, “let’s take their neat stuff but also we still don’t like these people and will oppress them” stuff that happened. (Look at all the historical Western Tradition magic that draws on Jewish ideas and culture, but continued to have no problem shitting on Jewish people and culture as a whole.) A lot of people don’t know the coded things they’re looking at, just like they miss references to other racist things in society and popular culture.

And being blissfully ignorant and perpetuating this stuff, I shouldn’t even have to say, is not in any way, shape, or form a good or ok thing. Most especially because anti-semitism is visibly on the rise. It’s not a blast from the old-timey past that is interesting but not relevant anymore. It’s still very much relevant today, not just in Europe but all over the place, including in the USA and Canada.

And one thing I’ve noticed, since starting to track this: it doesn’t get talked about. People who reblog stuff about anti-semitism and anti-semitic crimes tend to be… pretty much only Jewish community members, and other SJ blogs ignore it. Posting gets you crickets. (And I’m guilty of this as well, not reblogging some of the stuff that goes past on my dash. This is something I need to change.)

Other links:
The Past Didn’t Go Anywhere - Making Resistance to Anti-Semitism Part of All of Our Movements
Coordination Forum for Countering Antisemitism - includes news stories and also a worldwide map of anti-semitic acts year by year, consistently updated.

So… yes. This is an issue I am very much paying attention to.

I always wondered when someone was going to bring up the connection between the goblin bankers in the Harry Potter movies and the Jewish stereotype.  :-/

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