Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 exptools 1/6/84; site ihuxt.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!floyd!harpo!ihnp4!ihuxt!martillo From: martillo@ihuxt.UUCP (Yehoyaqim Shemtob Martillo) Newsgroups: net.comics,net.religion.jewish Subject: Re: Marvel Comics, Jews and Other Ethnic Groups (Ciaraldi) Message-ID: <402@ihuxt.UUCP> Date: Tue, 10-Apr-84 22:46:39 EST Article-I.D.: ihuxt.402 Posted: Tue Apr 10 22:46:39 1984 Date-Received: Wed, 11-Apr-84 07:43:46 EST References: <393@ihuxt.UUCP> <6119@rochester.UUCP> Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, IL Lines: 255 >Since the author of the original article asked for responses, >here are some from someone who has read a lot of Marvel >and other comics over the years. >I have never noticed a SYSTEMATIC bad treatment of Jews in >Marvel Comics, but I would certainly admit that an author's >personal beliefs can color his writings. This can be blatant or >subtle, and is probably unavoidable to some extent >(since, almiost by definition, someone's "world view" colors >his perceptions of the world and how he or she describes it.) I was simply curious about Non-Jewish opinion on Marvel's treatment of ethnic groups. So far I have not seen any replies from members of the ethnic groups which Marvel seems to have targeted. A lot of Italians do appear in Marvel comics but I have not seen any particular Italian cultural issues featured in any Marvel magazines. I did not expect Non-Jews to understand exactly what a Jew might find offensive. I often do not understand why Blacks find certain books like Huckleberry Finn offensive but I tend to accept their statement that the books are offensive. Did many Non-Jews understand why "Bridgette Loves Bernie," (A CBS television program) was offensive to the Jewish community? Many Jews seem not to understand what is offensive to the Jewish community. Anne Roiphe in "Generation Without Memory" confessed to being stunned by the reaction when she wrote a column in the New York Times in which she described how her family celebrated Christmas. >A few general points to start off; >Because of the sheer volume of mail Marvel receives, the author >will not, most likely, receive a personal reply to his letter. >In additon, by not addressing it to a particular b >magazine, it may have wound up at the bottom of the mail >pile instead of going right to the editors involved >. Marvel does have a policy that EVERYONE reads all the mail >that is addressed to him. The only exception is Editor-in-Chief >Jim Shooter, (who made the rule). His volume got to the >point where he had to hire somebody to read the mail so >he would have time to do the rest of his job. He does get >reports on the letters, and interesting or important ones >get sent on to him. The letter was on very official stationary in a very official envelope. Marvel editors probably do not get many letters where the name of the organization is embossed in Hebrew, Arabic, and English. >Most Marvel characters are deliberatley non-ethnic, WASP >types, I suppose mostly so they would have broader appeal >(rather than SEMING to be targeted at a specific group). >Some people who are conspicuously Jewish have appeared. >Besides Bernie Rosenthal and Kitty Pryde, there a lot of >bit players. I specifically remember one of Nova's high school >buddies as someone who was delibieratley very Jewish >(Star of David, yarmulkah (sp?), etc.) Sorry I can't remember >his name, but the comics was cancelled 6 years ago. >Moon Knight (Mark Spector) is Jewish, and his father is >a rabbi, as revealed in the last few issues. I only started reading Marvel comics seriously about 4 years ago when I began to receive the first complaints. Therefore I probably missed this particular character. >Many people on the Marvel staff are themselves Jewish, although >I would gues that most are "assimilated". The founders of >modern Marvel, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, and Jews, as were the >Goodman family who owned the company for many years >(before selling out to a conglomerate). Len Wein and Marv >Wolfman (both at DC now, but shapers of Marvel in the Seventies) >are Jewish. And, I seem to recall that Mark Gruenwald is, too >(oddly, the person the letter was sent to). I wrote the letter to Mark Gruenwald because he was the editor of almost all the issues (except the Assassin issue of the Defenders) which was either weird or somewhat offensive. Probably the most Jewishly offensive movie ever made in the USA was "The Heartbreak Kid." It contained a genuinely nasty depiction of Jewish women, and based the story on a Jewish man's irrational lust for a Non-Jewish woman. I believe the writer, the producer, the director and most of the actors were Jewish. The presence of so many Jews at Marvel would not prevent the dissemination of Jewishly offensive material. >Some more specific stuff: >I don't think you can condemn all of Marvel based on a >few issues picked either at random or deliberatley. >The general tone of Marvel seems to be that tolerance is >desirable, and prejudice is undesirable. >In addition, although superheroes operate to a large extent >outside the law, they have (perhaps paradoxically) >a pretty strict code of actions. Thus, Spider-Man would not >go killing Russian diplomats for the crimes of the soviet state. >He wouldn't even kill some supervillain who was trying to >kill him, when that would certainly be termed self-defense. >Rather, he would try to capture the villain and turn him over to >the criminal justice system. Why? As said many times by many, many >heroes, if they go around killing people they would not really be any >better than the "villains" they oppose. I don't know if I >buy this totally, but that is the stanadard marvel hero. >So, when Captain America is confronted with a neo-Nazi group >and a JDL-type (perhaps exaggerated for the story) group that >advocate violence as a general rule, he opposes the >TACTICS of both groups. He appeared, to me at least, to be >more sympathetic to the JDL-type person, at least willing >to admit that he had a grievance. >One of Steve Rogers' (Cap's secret identity) neightbors is >a Nazi concentration-camp survivor, and about 2 years >ago had a long flashback about how Cap broke into the camp >and tried to help the prisoners escape. Is this the character who was called an old Jew by one Steve Rogers' offensive business associates. Steve Rogers immediately reacted to this act of bigotry. I assume Marvel used Jew in place of Kike or some other slur. I would have preferred the Author to have used an actually offensive term. English is a nice language because saying "I am a Jew" is not like announcing one suffers from some disgusting contagious disease. "Soy un Judio" should never be said in Spanish. "Soy un Israelita" is preferable. If I identify a classmate as "that handsome Chinese fellow," the idea is very different from saying "that handsome Chink." The Author of the story seemed to say merely to be identified as Jewish is necessarily bad. >Why didn't Cap try to get the death camps bombed? >I don't know, but I suppose that, since they were not bombed >in real life, there was no reason why they should have >been bombed in Marvel history. It might have been better for the >characters, but what would be the rationale with respect to >the existence of superheroes (the primary change of history >compared to our real world). Marvel constantly deals with real political issues. The Invaders had a story on the wartime imprisonment of American Japanese in concentration camps. The Warsaw Ghetto rebellion also occurred in Marvel History. Since Captain America was answerable directly to President Roosevelt and frequently consulted with him, a story in which Captain America asked the President about the death camps would hardly be unreasonable though of course such a question need not be the main point of the story. >Why did Kitty and Peter fall in love? Why did an Israeli and an >Egyptian superhero team up? Could it maybe be for the same reason >that you seem to see an Israeli Miss Universe contestant or >Olympic athlete willing to talk with his or her Arab >counterpart? Namely, that these people recognize that people >are individuals, that they do not necessarily believe or >support what their government says or does, >(and might not have the power to change it anyway), >that they may not necessarily believe what others of >the same ethnic group beileive (or are said to believe). >There is a word for the practice of assuming that anyone >you meet of a particualr group will be like your >pre-conceived notion of that group. >It's called "prejudice." I perhaps should have explained in more detail exactly why these story lines were weird or offensive. Pyotr Rasputin is specifically identified as coming from a class of Russians which is historically and currently the most anti-Semitic group in the Soviet Union. One of my complainants was a Russian Jew who was using Marvel Comics to learn idiomatic English. (I also did the same 14 years ago when I came to America but I preferred DC). He felt it was inconceivable that Kitty Pryde's Jewishness could not be an issue in such a relationship. The teamup of Sabra and the Arabian Knight was mishandled for several reasons. Their personal conflict was reduced to an issue of sexual chauvinism. Such reduction is silly because in fact traditional Muslim and traditional Jewish attitudes toward women are similar. All Marvel stories of Muslim/Jewish interaction have ignored the history of Jews in Muslim lands. Such a criticism may seem minor. Yet most Israeli Jews have their origins in Muslim lands. This demography has become an overwhelming political consideration in Israel and consequently in any settlement. If Marvel is going to treat Middle Eastern issues, Marvel has an obligation to do a little research and note the demographic situation. In France where the demographic composition of the Jewish community is similar to Israel, the persistent obliviousness of certain sections of the leftist press to historic Muslim subjugation of Jews has been termed antisemitism even by Non-Jewish political writers. There is some more inappropiateness to Sabra. Sabra is not a Hebrew word. It is a Yiddishized form of an Arabic word. Current usage considers "sabra" inelegant. The proper word is Tsabar. No one in Israel takes Russian anarcho-sexual egalitarianism seriously anymore. A woman would never be selected to be Israel's supersoldier. As Sabra is described, she comes close to being an offensive Ashkenazi stereotype (at least to Spanish and oriental Jews). >Now for the personal stuff: >I think the author of the article to which this is a reply >reveals his own pre-conceptions, and that these particular ones >are such that almost ANY treatment of Jews in comics >would be unacceptable. He maitains catagorically that >assimilation into a non-Jewish culture is bad. He says >people who do this a somehow "not as Jewish" because of it >(my choice of phrasing). He says that, since 1945, no Jew >should even consider marrying a Gentile, because of what happened >in Germany. And so on. Marvel always portrays American Indians who maintain or return to Indian culture as somehow morally superior. Marvel has never made a similar statement for even one Jewish character. I am curious about the reason. In Massachussetts, I met several totally assimilated American Indians who would never have considered returning to their roots. Such an American Indian has never appeared in Marvel comics. Actually in my letter I did not say a Jew should not consider marrying a non-Jew. I happen to believe that but I emphasized the casualness of the relationships. >The point is, he has opinions, to which he is certainly >entitled. I happen not to share those opinions. I have a >somewhat brighter view of the human race, one which says that >people all over are pretty much the same, with similar >fears and goals, and not at all >easily pushed into pigeonholes because of their >racial, religous, or ethnic backgrounds. >This is based on my own experiences. I believe the same but I also believe that cultural diversity in one of the nice characteristics of this planet. Marvel seems to hold similarly in the case of American Indian, Japanese, or Vietnamese culture but not in the case of Jewish culture. For this reason I wrote my letter to Marvel. >For the record, my own background is Italian Catholic, >third generation American. I have traveled in the USA >and Europe, met people from around the world while at >Cornell and the University of Rochester, and found >many of my own prejudices demolished over the years >by facts. For the record I am half-Spanish/half-Arab Jewish. I will confess that I have some difficulties with prejudice toward people of European and Muslim background. I generally like East Asians. In view of Jewish history, my preferences seem fairly rational though I try not to let them affect my personal relations. My family lived in Israel at a time when unless you were East European, Socialist and anti-Jewish religion, you were dirt. Since my family is Middle Eastern, anti-Socialist, and rather traditional, we had a lot of problems. I have some residual contempt for European Jews. >I hope this will stimulate discussion. >I also hope the discussion will be of the form >"I agree with so-and-so (or disagree with so-and-so) >for the following reasons.", and "I think so-and-so >misinterpreted what so-and-so saids", and "So-and-so's >arguments don't hold water, because..." and so on, >and not "He's wrong, I7m right, that's it." -- Yehoyaqim Shemtob Martillo (Some ideas are so stupid only intellectuals can believe them)