©2004 Arthur Meiselman
For more commentary and articles by Arthur Meiselman, check the Archives.
Arthur Meiselman is a writer,
telomeres hunter, and zingaro.
He's also the director of the Talos Ensemble
This on Gibson's movie – A standard, well-conceived Hollywood-commodity marketing job. Gibson and his people took a note from the Reagan-Bush music and played to the American doomsday heritage. The hungry press bought it. The enema-driven churches bought it. And the sports-loving public lapped it up and spewed out a blockbuster. Gibson is also a good merchandiser. Crucifixion nails-on a pendant, mugs, t-shirts, blood-colored hiking sandals – all are selling like hot cakes. He gets a "found-money" percentage. This in the tradition of George Lucas who did it withStar Wars ( a movie about the same story as Gibson's) and Spielberg who did it with Schindler's List (also about the same story). Gibson is not Jewish, neither is Lucas. Spielberg is… Spielberg.
This on the Academy Awards – someday, someone is going to recast this Kodak moment of a party into a true peer-recognition ceremony. Tell me that outside of the sound people and a few directors there are more than four other people in the Academy membership who know what the hell sound mixing is all about. Billy Crystal is Jewish, Peter Jackson is not. A fair tradeoff.
This on Angels In America – Tony Kushner is Jewish and so is his mother. He's also Gay and not quite a Hollywood fixture. But he created a blockbuster Broadway show that Hollywood could not handle so HBO (not a Jewish cable network) took it on as a blockbuster three-part television program. Incidentally, one of the key characters is also Jewish and Gay, the famous mumzer and bandeet, Roy Cohn. You can translate those adjectives as "son of a bitch". Roy Cohn's mother was Jewish. Presumably, the Angels in that show were not.
Now what about this Jewish thing. For one, there were no Jews in the ancient biblical times. If there was a Jesus of Nazareth, he was not a Jew… he was a Semite, a Middle-Easterner, and a man of color, not a Christian evangelist with blue eyes and blond hair. There were also no Christians then. If he existed, his mother, his apostles, his supporters, his detractors were the same… call them Semites, Hebrews, Israelites, but don't call them Jews. The Jewish culture didn't emerge until the 15th century in Europe. At that time in the Middle East and in Africa and China, they were still Semites. In Northern Europe, they picked up a version of middle-high German and merged it with a bit of dead ancient Hebrew and a lot of the Slavic language that they happened to find wherever they were settling. It became "Judisch" or as the Anglos say: Yiddish. In Southern Europe, they did the same except they used Spanish as the base which they brought with them when they were shoved out of Spain just as Columbus was voyaging to find a new place for them to merge.
The new place was "The New World", America. In the early 20th century, some American-Jewish merchants, who had learned merchandising in the merchandising mecca of New York City, recognized that the new entertainment of moving pictures had a promising future. They merchandised the hell out of it. They became distribution kings. As with all good business plans, they looked to control their product. So they began producing it. And as with all good production plans, they looked for better and cheaper. At that time, there didn't seem to be anywhere better and cheaper than the Los Angeles basin (still true today). That's where they went along with a number of other entrepreneurs who were not Jewish. Together they created Hollywood and the rest is hyperbolated history.
It's important to note that most of the Hollywood power (the money), even during the Golden studio era, was and is controlled by banks and financial institutions that were not and are not controlled by Jews – that were and are controlled, in large part, by White Anglo-Saxon Christians. It's also important to note that most powerhouse media organizations, print, radio, television are controlled by the same indigenous cultural group.
And it's important to note that during the notorious Hollywood Blacklist period of the 1940's and 50's, a vast majority of those who were condemned were Jewish and a vast majority of those who did the condemning by naming names… were not. This during the reign of Dwight Eisenhower, which is a fair tradeoff.
Now what about my mother. She was indeed an incarnation of the Virgin Mary. My conception was not just immaculate, it was beyond immaculate. And she was Jewish, so she skipped around the Jesus-connection because she had a direct line to her god. She would go into a closet and talk to him (her, it). She would get advice, guidance, comfort. It was a special relationship.
One day, my Madonna was particularly distressed. It was revealed to her that her favorite nephew had a liaison with a man. In those unenlightened days, that was almost as bad as marrying a Black or Puerto Rican girl. So she went into her closet to talk to her god. She cried and wailed and flooded the little dark room with her misery. Then (as it was "revealed" to me) a voice came, a disembodied, non-directed voice which said: "Take comfort, fegela (little bird), at least he's doing it with a Jewish boy."
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