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Netflix culture-clash comedy You People branded ‘horribly damaging’ to Jews
New film - based around relationship between Jewish man and black Muslim woman - accused by David Baddiel of portraying community as 'white, privileged and racist'
New Netflix comedy You People has been branded “horribly damaging” to Jewish people with claims it enforces stereotypes of them being “white, privileged, and racist.”
The new Jonah Hill and Kenya Barris’ culture-clash movie is currently the top-rated release on the channel after its release nearly two weeks ago.
It follows a Jewish man (Hill) falling in love with Amira Mohammed (Lauren London), who is a black, Muslim woman.
After watching the film David Baddiel tweeted: “It’s a Jews Don’t Count fest.
“The Jewish family are positioned as white, privileged and racist. The black family just have a stern dad. At the end, there’s much Jewish apologising for racism. None for antisemitism. That word never appears.”
Baddiel claimed the only black stereotype in the movie was in the stern dad, played by Eddie Murphy.
Allison Josephs, executive director of non-profit group Jew in the City was also scathing.
“Not sure what they were hoping to accomplish, but it didn’t work,’ she tweeted. “Jewish & white are one and the same in this film.”
White also claimed the movie took”cheap” shots at the Holocaust, while also forcing stereotypes around Jewish wealth.
“In the trailer, they were already making Holocaust jokes and kind of minimizing the Holocaust. So that’s not good when your trailer includes cheap and really offensive Holocaust humour,” Josephs told Newsweek.
In one of the trailers, Hill’s progressive parents (Julia Louis-Dreyfus and David Duchovny) make a joke about Jews being the “OG slaves.”
“We were technically OG slaves,'”Duchovny’s character Arnold told Akbar (Eddie Murphy), Amira’s father.
Akbar replied: “Are you trying to compare the Holocaust to slavery?”
“Our people came here with nothing like everybody else,” Dreyfus’ character Shelley countered.
Some viewers suggested the film raised difficult, but necessary issues around race.
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