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Picture of Prejudice

Posted by ROBERT STEIN in Arts & Entertainment.
May 10th, 2008 | Comments

The Fox Movie Channel showed “Gentleman’s Agreement” last night, a preachy drama about anti-Semitism that won the Academy Award 60 years ago, and it brought into focus the realization that I may live to see a black man inaugurated as President of the United States.

What Barack Obama faces from now until November would be unimaginable to the people who made and saw that movie then, including a 23-year-old just back from World War II who had little audacity and even less hope of living in the rich, glossy world it portrayed.

Gregory Peck played a magazine writer who pretends to be Jewish. A decade later, I was an editor on one of those magazines, unknowingly hired by George W. Bush’s grandfather as the first Jew among thousands of employees, working with Laura Z. Hobson, who wrote the novel on which the picture was based.

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PaulSilver

I feel that same way, as a Jew, about the movie and the prospect of an African American President in my lifetime. I would feel pride when any minority breaks through the glass ceiling as a symbol that our culture is becoming less prejudiced and more cooperative.

Be aware that we still do have "gentleman's agreements' of a sort. In Austin the City Council is elected "at large" and so in response to a legal decision years ago it is "understood" that only a black can run for a particular seat and a hispanic for another. We may be moving to single member districts in which only the residents of an area can vote for that council member.

runasim

In no way do I criticize anti-prejudice literatue or movies. I applaud and welcome all !
Something in the corner ro my mind keeps nagging at me , however.

Because they are art of stark extremes (good vs bad), I don't know if they do enough to prepare viewers for the real world.

The Diary of Anne Frank was the rare exception unabashedly admitting that not all victims are perfent human beings in every way Because the characters were more like everyone else in their imperfection, it made the story of Anne Frank even more compelling.

That real-life element is missing in most art, and even in histories and documantaries. I fear it sets up, sometimes, false expectations and a backlash of sorts when the minority member next door turns out to have warts.

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