Netflix’s hit comedy You People has been branded as “terribly harmful” to Jewish people for promoting stereotypes that they are “white, privileged and racist”.
The new film from Jonah Hill and Kenya Barris has clocked up more than 55 million viewing hours and currently sits in the top spot for movies on Netflix after its release almost two weeks ago.
The main premise of the film follows a Jewish man (Hill) who falls in love with Amira Mohammed (Lauren London), a black Muslim woman. Their relationship is tested as their respective families react to the cultural differences.
Critics have branded the film “harmful” after claiming the film relied too heavily on stereotypes and was anti-Semitic.
Jews Don’t Count author David Baddiel tweeted: “It’s a Jews Don’t Count celebration. The Jewish family is positioned as white, privileged and racist. The black family has only one strict father. In the end, there are many Jewish excuses for racism. None for anti-Semitism. That word never appears.’
You People has been branded “irreplaceable” by the Jewish community for “shooting cheap” on the Holocaust and playing on stereotypes
Jews Don’t Count author David Baddiel said the film portrays the “Jewish family.” [as] positioned as white, privileged and racist
Allison Josephs, executive director of the nonprofit Jew in the City, agreed, calling the film “really, really bad.”
“I’m not sure what they were trying to achieve, but it didn’t work,” she tweeted. “Jewish and white are one and the same in this film.”
“I’ve spoken to so many Jewish people who are really, really upset by this film,” Josephs also told Newsweek. “I think one of the biggest frustrations for me was not being able to go back to some of the outrageous claims that were being made while watching the film.”
She said the film captured “cheap” footage of the Holocaust and suggested that Jewish people prosper through their large communities of connections and come from generations of wealth.
“In the trailer they were already making Holocaust jokes and downplaying the Holocaust. So that’s no good if your trailer contains cheap and really offensive Holocaust humor,” she told Newsweek.
Allison Josephs, executive director of the nonprofit Jew in the City, said it was “an erasure of Jewish history and like a debasement of everything we’ve been through.”
She called the film “really, really bad” in a tweet.
“I couldn’t even imagine how bad it would be. The things they have done here are unlike other forms of antisemitism I have seen in the past.’
In one of the trailers, Hill’s character’s progressive parents (Julia Louis-Dreyfus and David Duchovny) make a joke about Jews being the “OG slaves.”
“We were technically OG slaves,” Duchovny’s character, Arnold, told Akbar (Eddie Murphy), Amira’s father.
Akbar replied, “Are you trying to compare the Holocaust to slavery?”
“Our people came here with nothing like everyone else,” replied Shelley, the character of Dreyfus.
“You compare slavery to the Holocaust. It certainly shouldn’t be a competition, but neither should the pain of the Holocaust be downplayed as insignificant or insignificant,” Josephs told Newsweek.
“It completely obliterates the fact that most Jews came to this country fleeing systemic Jew-hatred, whether they were Cossacks or Nazis or a systemic exile from the Arab world in the mid-1940s. There are very few Jews who came to the United States in positions of power.
She also criticized the Holocaust vs. slavery jokes seen in the trailer between Hill’s character’s parents and his girlfriend’s family. “It certainly shouldn’t be a competition, but neither should the pain of the Holocaust be downplayed as insignificant or insignificant,” Josephs said
Baddiel also claimed the only black stereotype in the film was the “strict” father, played by Eddie Murphy
“Yes, there were some Jews who had slaves in the South. That was one thing. But this notion that Jews played a disproportionate role in the slave trade is incorrect. It’s sort of Louis Farrakhan trash, honestly.
The Mohammed family follows in the film Farrakhan, whom Josephs called a “virulent anti-Semite.”
“A direct quote from him is that he’s not an anti-Semite, he’s an anti-termite,” she told the outlet. he’s a guy who literally uses Nazi-like language to describe Jews. It is deeply disturbing that Farrakhan is being placed on this pedestal [in the film].’
Additionally, when Hill’s character buys his girlfriend a ring, he jokes about the tiny stone being passed down from the Holocaust, in what Josephs called “probably the most disgusting ‘joke’ in the movie.”
The film is currently number one on Netflix worldwide
‘Because [the message is] the Holocaust just isn’t a big deal. So it’s kind of what you use when they want to gain false sympathy,” she told Newsweek.
The hardest thing about Josephs is the fact that the Jewish community has to sit back and watch as Hill – who is also Jewish – pokes fun at their culture and is unable to respond.
“As a spectator, all you have to do is listen to the conversation. There were so many untruths, or so many claims made without any contradiction. And so now that becomes just part of what people can accept as true. It is an erasure of Jewish history and like an invalidation of everything we have been through and what we must continue to go through. It was a really painful film to watch.
“I think the film is irrevocable.”