#antisemitic coding

Dear Dirtbag,

Yeah that's because vampires mean different things to different people. The original strigoi legends ranged between regular ghost story of wronged people lashing out at their abuser or just random innocents. They WERE closely tied to romani people in the Romanian myths but (usually) in a "those romani are tied to the mystical and make good hunters of the supernatural" way. Which is still antiromanyism

But in the hands of Victorians hopped up on eugenicism it was the fear of the other. Dracula is every orientalist stereotype in one. He's not neccesarily Jewish but he's very much not christian and almost a satanist. Which is clearly the same thing to the antisemite. Nosferatu is absolutely about the fear of the other betraying you and ties to the "stab in the back myth". Nosferatu was absolutely an antisemitic caricature.

Nowayadays vampires are tied to class and so telling someone on their allegory for bloodsucking aristocrats has antisemitic connotations has a a tankie go into a fit. "you think admititng vampires embody the bourgouise means I think Jews run the banks?" they'll cry.

That said I think it's weird to say the problems with Twilight is that Edward is codedly Jewish when he's so painfully mormon. The allegory isn't that literal. the problem isn't that we should view all vampires as Jews. The problem is that many writers truly saw all Jews as vampires

I am indeed Jewish (patrilineal and reform but Jewish) but I am terrible with 'this is antisemitism in media' as opposed to 'this is antisemitism in real life'. My thoughts on media anti-semitism are complicated.

I actually enjoy characters that are antisemitic* caricatures if they're charismatic enough. I actually like Shylock and Svengali** because damn they really manipulate people and get what they want. I also will analyze that Shakespeare and Du Mariner were appealing to antisemitic tropes of their times and that those characters are now archetypes wielded against us. People are accused of being a "Svengali" or a "Shylock".

Tangled doesn't have that kind of reach so it's not as worrisome to me but it's disturbing to see tropes from the Middle Ages and the 19th and 20th century surfacing in the 21st.

Mother Gothel also has an appeal to her that will likely make her a nostalgic Disney villian to Gen Z and younger millennial. Those who are gentiles and don't catch the coding. I didn't as a teen until it was pointed out to me.

Mother Gothel has both a hooked nose and the bouncy black ringlets typical of young Jewish women. She steals a blond-haired child to live forever and while she doesn't steal Rapunzel's blood or life force she's clearly using a very typical white gentile child in order to live forever so it's still blood libel just watered down (pun intended).

Also this is a film that associates broken and hooked noses with villians and (reformed) thugs, while our two leads are traditinally attractive. This is of course classic Disney but here it just so telling.

The fairy tale story of Rapunzel itself positions a witch stealing a child from a good christian couple but it was the movie that made her look as Ashkenazi as possible.

It's antisemitic as the early harry Potter books are antisemitic**. Accidentally tapping in to old fantasy narratives that are very bigoted and not updating the bigotry.

Did I answer your question?

footnotes:

*apparently it's better to not hypenate 'antisemitism' to distance from the roots of the it's coiner who was a racist antisemitic eugenicist who wanted something more pseudo-academic sounding than 'Judenhass' - 'Jew-hatred'. I write it as one word but I don't see how one is better than the other.

** The antagonist of Du Mariner's book 'Trilby' who hypnotises people to his bidding so he doesn't have to get his hands dirty. He is explicitly an ashkenazi Jew who is so many antisemitic stereotypes that a 'Svengali' is now a derogatory term for a manipulative person especially a one who is Jewish.

Dragon antagonist trying to overthrow a kingdom

Having him be an anomaly in dragonkind, and having the good guys be more dragonlike, will help. Because then it shows that reptilian-ness, in your world, is not the reason he’s a bad guy. So yes, you’re right that adding more good lizard characters would help.

How do you feel about switching his character design with the bat princess character? Or even making her more dragonlike (without making him less so necessarily?) Just some thoughts.

--Shira

I’d like to gently move you away from looking at this as “am I inadvertently checking a box that I don’t want to check?” and toward “What are the ways in which I am and am not playing into a constellation of tropes that might or might not add up to something I don’t want to say?” Dragon = reptilian = antisemitic is a decent start, and it’s good that it got your attention. Taking a deeper look will help you evaluate what’s happening with your character development.

“Lizard people,” as in the accusation of literally being reptilian, or the use of “Lizard people” as a dog whistle to imply “Jewish” without saying it, grew into significance in the 90s, but it builds on tropes that had been established in art and literature for the span of Western history. “Lizard people” works as a dog whistle because of how many of the tropes for negatively portraying Jewish characters also work for negatively portraying humanoid reptilians. So instead of simply giving the sign-off on whether “dragon-man” is a subset of “lizard person” and therefore antisemitic, let’s look at the various components of the trope and how a writer might find themselves upholding, bypassing, or directly counteracting any selection of them. 

Here’s a short list of character design elements often linked with negative Jewish coding in male characters (the tropes for non-men Jewish characters can overlap with these but will also have their own components). 

Note that a lot of them are only negative if the context establishes them as negative:

Skinny and nerdy, not physically strong or imposing, gaining power through trickery rather than force;

Fat and lazy, not physically strong, gaining power through financial pressure or tricky contract language;

Narrow, pointy nose and chin, close-set eyes, high forehead, black or red curly hair, olive undertones to complexion; portrayed as negative in contrast to the fair and square or rounded features portrayed on non-Jewish-coded characters;

Cowardly in a setting where physical violence is a virtue, violent toward family members or politically bloodthirsty in a setting where the virtue is pacifism, but never personally a warrior and never willing to take personal safety risks;

Never shown wearing armor or holding weapons except in 20th-21st century settings;

Elements of autistic coding including monotonous, robotic, cracking, or otherwise “unmasculine” voice;

Failure to dominate women, romantically or in his own family, but also failure to respect women who are outside of his family. Pursues women who have made it clear that they are not interested. Not a supportive or attentive partner;

Dismissive of others’ boundaries, whether sexual/romantic or just personal space;

Excels in careers that don’t require charisma, especially in math and technology fields. 

Lacks loyalty to the group that includes them: that is, lacks a sense of noble patriotism in settings where patriotism is noble; lacks loyalty to the revolution or resistance movement where those are the heroes; even when an antagonist will show disloyalty to the other antagonists. This will be the case either because he values nothing above personal gain or because he has a stronger loyalty to another group or nationality than the one he is betraying.

Unpleasant, unlikeable, unappealing: even people who work for him find him repulsive and follow him because they have been manipulated out of other options or are villainous themselves.

Right off the bat, we see that some of these are contradictory. Your character--and any other character we hold up to it--might wind up upholding one of these elements specifically by intending to counteract another. Some of them are only understood as negative when placed in a context that specifically extolls a different virtue. Historically, Jews have been a handy all-purpose antagonist: to capitalists, Jews are communist, to communists Jews are capitalists. To radical Leftists Jews are faking being marginalized and to racists Jews are faking whiteness. In the face of this, a checklist attempting to encode tropes to avoid would quickly become too sprawling and unwieldy to use. Since “vibes” are hard to convey in text, though, let’s do our best to figure out what applies here.

Your character is an antagonist who gains power through trickery, by using his draconic appearance to gain the trust of a people who revere dragons. He’s also red-toned, armored, and motivated by something other than greed, characteristics which generally run counter to negative Jewish coding. You have a two-sided task: to make it clear that he isn’t intended as a dog whistle, and to avoid implying that the actions he takes that make him an antagonist are inherently results of his Jewish-coded aspects. 

What are his other attributes?

Do people follow him because he offers them kindness or because he tricks them into contracts or maneuvers them out of options? 

Does he respect and listen to his allies? Is he loyal to them? 

Does your story frame his motives as noble even if his methods are misguided? 

What would it take to get him to sell out his allies? 

Would he do it for money? To save their lives?

Is he heroic on the battlefield, a formidable foe, or does he send others to take risks he wouldn’t take? 

Does he have romantic relationships? If so, how does he treat his partners? 

Is he loyal to a long-term spouse? Is he predatory and coercive? 

Does he have genuine friendships and loving familial relationships, or only yes-men? 

I’m not saying that your bad guy has to be a good person; rather these are some openers to considering what the coding of villainy consists of, and how one codes for evil without employing antisemitic coding as a handy shorthand. 

Dear Going Rampant,

Considering none of the characters are codedly Jewish no I don’t so. However…..

The queen in older versions of Snow White is half non human hence her craving for human flesh so do with that what you will. Considering the original story was written in reconquista Spain, she’s portrayed as a mixed cannibal jealous of her step daughter’s pale skin I don’t think the stereotype is antisemitic as much as racist, honestly.

The replacing humsn flesh with pig or lamb is a staple of not olny snow white but also sleeping beauty stories and why it’s there is a subject of debate that I’m not qualified to comment on.

Yours,