Anti-semtism is one of the cornerstones of prejudice in western media. It takes many forms and thinks of itself as slyly disguised. It even hid from jewish children such as myself while we closed our eyes and went about our idle worship of button noses and fear of blood libel;both enthusiastically displayed in Disney’s 2010 revival of Rapunzel: Tangled. To come to the realization that some of my favorite media as a child, a media that was supposed to have lessons of morality was actively betraying my jewish identity, was quite a painful awakening. It is extremely important that others must come to this realization. The goal of this paper and these interviews is to give people an accessible guide to identify anti semitism in the media, and discuss how it shapes our conception of good and evil.
Amongst the Disney franchise many movies (modern and past) hold anti-semtic stereotypes within the villainous characters. In this paragraph I will break down a few and detail how this trope came to be. First we must begin with how the villains are designed. Most every Disney villain has a hooked nose while the protagonists usually have button noses (Peter Pan & Captain Hook, Ariel & Ursula, Rapunzel & Gothel, Cinderella & The Evil Stepmother, Snow White & The Evil Queen as a Hag, Aurora & Maleficent). Whether consciously or unconsciously the animators gave these villains jewish features. This dilemma dates back to Nazi propaganda where Jews were given unchararistically large noses to make them look unattractive and dangerous. The intention was to ensure that the message of jews as enemies of the state using all media. You can see this in movies like The Eternal Jew (1940) and Süss the Jew (1940) that brightly display jewish men with hooked noses on the poster. Hitler’s Ministry of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment did their job so wonderfully that it ended up embedding anti semitism in western media as a staple archetype.
Disney villains are written where many of them either don’t sing or use a combination of singing and speaking. Disney villains didn’t even sing before The Little Mermaid (1989) unless they were horrible as seen with Cinderella’s step sisters. We see this sing-speak with Jewish coded villains such as Gothel (Tangled) and Ursula (The Little Mermaid). This is an example of a trope that is centuries old referred to as “The Music Libel Against Jews” that is written about in a book by Dr. Ruth HaCohen. The book discusses the history of Music Libel where jews were told to have cut the throat of Christian children because they could not stand their hymns. This is especially prevalent in The Little Mermaid where Ursula (a coded Jew) can be made to parallel the devil in her deep dark lair, King Triton can be made to parallel Jesus and Ariel is the humanity. Ursula is seen trying to silence Ariel’s voice and take away her puritanical music because the quality of being musical is seen as a sign of goodness while the evilness creates a non-musical or not fully musical status.
While Disney’s legacy of villains does not bode well with jewish people, it’s not the only franchise that has coded anti semitism. J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series also has many coded antisemetic stereotypes and references. It is so obvious when we look at the Goblins that work for Gringotts banks, the blood purity theme, and the failed Nazi allegory.
When Harry Potter first enters the Gringotts Bank there is a star of David on the floor. The hooked nose Goblins are displayed up on high beams looking down disapprovingly. Just their appearance should be alarming as they are remarkably similar to Nazi’s propaganda of Jewish men specifically highlighting the largeness and hooked feature of jewish noses. But Goblins have a history of rebellion, oppression, mistrust, exclusions, segregation. Goblin’s major personality trait is their impassioned greed and their untrustworthiness. In the largely moral war they remain neutral and remain concerned with the economics of the wizarding world. Goblins are the perfect stereotype, they are what the Nazi’s feared Jews to be.
Then there is the theme of blood purity. Mudbloods (a mix of human and wizard blood) are looked down upon and treated poorly by purebloods. The whole concept reeks of the Nazi’s look into what constittues Aryan or Jewish blood. Rowling herself even visited the Holocaust musuem and said that the charts werent so far-fetched from her own thought process.
The final Jew related thing in the series is something called the failed Nazi allegory. Many other bodies of media have attempted to correspond their villains with Hitler and their armies with the Nazis. For example; Star Wars does this with Darth Vader and the Storm Troopers as well as DC comics DarkSeid and his parademon army. In Harry Potter the Hitler is obviously Voldemort with his army being the death eaters. Rowling herself admitted that Voldemort was based in Hitler’s evil and his need to impose a hierarchy of blood purity. The allegory of evil and facism speaks for itself but there is no stand in for jewish people and if it is the mud blooded population for the wizarding world it’s an incredibly weak willed story line to impose.
As a huge Disney and Harry Potter fan, learning these truths were extremely difficult and harmful. I have internalized anti semitism about jewish archetypes that I am still unraveling. I think this content is extremely important to be aware of so I will continue to educate those around me and facilitate productive discussions on the matter.
